I’m at the same Art Hop stop this year! June 11 & 12 on the porch of a beautiful house here in Ann Arbor at the corner of Second and Jefferson.

June 11 & 12 | 10am-5pm / 12-5pm

It's a cross between an art fair and and art walk—and it’s lots of fun. This year, there are more than 80 artists hosted outside homes all throughout the neighborhood’s historic West side. I framed a big batch of new paintings to bring with me—come out, enjoy the day, and say hello if you can.

I’m Stop #33 (454 2nd Street)—you can find a map and more details at Westside Art Hop.

A new exhibit at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens celebrating the University of Michigan peony garden centennial opens tomorrow, May 21. I'm pleased to have a painting in it.

The exhibit shows work from 30 artists in the community—all considering the perception of time, especially in the context of nature.

In 2019, I showed my work for the first time ever with a solo exhibition of 40 paintings at Matthaei. It was one of the best experiences of my life for many reasons. The Gardens are a beautiful spot that I'm thankful to have right here in my town.

The peony garden at Nichols Arboretum is home to nearly 800 peonies with more than 10,000 flowers open when at peak bloom—it's definitely worth taking the time to see if you can make it to Ann Arbor in the next month.

The exhibit runs May 21 - June 26 and admission is free.

This new growth suits me,
this green light behind my eyes,
these leaves in my hair.

View up close in the gallery.

This painting is one of ten that I’ve just added to my site. Plus, right now I’m offering 10% off all paintings. Use the promo code: SPRINGSALE at checkout through the end of March.

Woven into breath—
the strands of me from before,
made of sky and earth.

This set of paintings and poems reflect the reading and woods walking I’ve done so far this year. Thinking about the connection with nature, other people, and ourselves. The writers in the photo of my stack of books below show that living is losing and regaining that connection over and over again. Pain comes from it, but beauty, too.

The change of season brought out a lot of new work for me. Observation, exploration, introspection, plus, a weekly activity that has grown increasingly important to me, which I haven't shared with anyone before...

I read poetry to my dog on Sunday mornings.

We've made it through an impressive stack of books over the past few months. Mack nods in and out of sleep but if I stop reading for any reason he opens his eyes to see why. Poetry is meant to be read out loud and shared. I'm so thankful to have his ears to fill with poetry, the morning sun warming his fur.

At the moment, we are reading The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, a Michigan poet born in Saginaw. In this particular section of the poem, A Field of Light, he uses the words, "The lovely diminutives," which is a good way to describe the the things that usually interest me the most and help me create anything.

I invite you to read this passage out loud:

Listen, love.
The fat lark sang in the field;
I touched the ground, the ground warmed by the killdeer,
The salt laughed and the stones;
The ferns had their ways, and the pulsing lizards,
And the new plants, but still awkward in their soil,
The lovely diminutives.
I could watch! I could watch!
I saw the separateness of all things!
My heart lifted up with the great grasses;
The weeds believed me, and the nesting birds.
There were clouds making a rout of shapes
crossing a windbreak of cedars,
And a bee shaking drops from a rain-soaked honeysuckle.
The worms were delighted as wrens.
And I walked, I walked through the light air;
I moved with the morning.

***

Go to Gallery.

It is a thrill to be featured in the latest issue of House & Garden magazine. The November issue focuses on art and artists and they curated a showcase of artists called The Art Edit. My painting, The Mind Bloom, is featured on the bottom right of the grid on page 271 (#82) along with a little bio.

Check out the print version at your local bookstore…it's a beautiful magazine.

This summer, a friend took a portrait of me at my desk. It's adjacent to the painting table and large tackboard that make up my home studio. The portrait reminded me of something that at first I couldn't place...

Then the image popped into my head: a painting by Matisse called Interior with Etruscan Vase. It's been a favorite of mine for years. I like that the woman is gazing back at the viewer, completely at ease and confident. Her plants, book, and objects in vivid color and shape surrounding her. Discovering this image in my late teenage years was a revelation.

Interior with Etruscan Vase, Henri Matisse, 1940 | The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Since then, photographs and paintings of artists and writers in their studios or at their desks always interest me. Seeing all of the little details of the everyday space where creativity takes place. An art teacher I once had referred to Paul Klee as a 'kitchen table artist.' The small scale of his paintings was in direct relation to the space that he had to make them. But it doesn't matter. Seeing a Paul Klee painting in person is just as enthralling as any monumentally-scaled painting or sculpture. The imprint made by a human hand is still a portal that can transport.

There are a handful of images that come to my mind all the time of artists and writers at work: Frida Kahlo, often confined to her bed, painting; Anne Sexton at her typewriter (in a pose similar to Matisse's woman with the Etruscan vase); Sylvia Plath, with her books lined up behind her on shelves or her typewriter precariously perched wherever she was; Wendell Berry in his work overalls with his legs up on his desk looking outside through a wall of windows; Toni Morrison smiling at her desk at Random House; E.B. White on a wooden bench in his simple shack with a window opened to water; Jay DeFeo, who made a painting in her apartment that ended up blocking out most of the light and had to be hoisted out through the window when she completed it.

It might be that the spaces shown in these images are usually so ordinary. Not much is needed to think and start to make something. To get lost in the portal that your own space allows you.

I've just updated my web gallery with a dozen new paintings made over the past few months. Plus, through September 30th I’m offering 20% off all paintings on my site. Use the promo code: SEPTEMBER at checkout.

New paintings in my gallery! For me, new groups of paintings don't always necessarily feel like a series, but these seven do. They all share an 'automatic' black brushstroke with accompanying haiku about the seemingly automatic things that happen in the natural world, especially in spring.

I've been reading a lot of poems by Jane Kenyon in the past month or so. She was born in Ann Arbor (where I live now), went to school here, and lived here until she met the poet Donald Hall and moved to his family’s ancestral home in New Hampshire to work and write poems.

She dealt with depression throughout her short life and was forthcoming about it in her poems. In the final words of her long poem, Having it Out With Melancholy, she describes the reprieve that nature can provide from the darkest depths, if even for a moment:

What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird
singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.

To me, the word 'unequivocal' gets at the essence of the matter here. For humans, it can be harder to access that feeling—seeing things clearly, without hesitation, fear, or doubt.

It does feel like flight.

View up close in the gallery.

I’m having an end of year sale! All of the paintings on my website are 20% off. Use promo code at checkout: WINTER20. The offer is valid through December 28, 2020.

Even in these dark months, there is still beauty—and mystery— to find every day.

Dreaming of journeys,
a deep wood filled with noises,
a deep lake, quiet.

Imaginary and meditative travels can ease the mind. As the late poet John O’Donohue said, “Beauty ennobles the heart and reminds us of the infinity that is within us.”

I’ve been painting as much as I can and am pleased to have four paintings in the 2020 Michigan Made | Holiday Art Exhibition at the Lansing Art Gallery & Education Center. It takes place November 5-December 23, 2020.

There will be a strong online presence with socially distanced-opportunities to see all of the work in person as well. I’ll post details on my site when they are available.

For the month of May I’m offering 20% off paintings on my website…just use the promo code: MAY20. This painting, Sun over the forest, has just been added. The forest is a bounty, especially in May.

View up close in the gallery.

Sun over the forest does different things to it depending on the time of year. In summer, it can hardly penetrate the green ceiling of leaves—sending down funnels of dramatic light. In fall, it creates an otherworldly sense of change. In winter, it casts long blue shadows on snow. In spring, it pulls up the wildflowers out of the wet earth. They come in waves: Bloodroot, Trout Lily, Jack-in-the-pulpit, Wild Geranium, Marsh Marigold, Trillium, Lily of the Valley, St. James Wort…all of these and more appeared just this month.

Sun over the forest also does different things to you while you are in it.

I just added a batch of new paintings to my website, including this one, Inner workings. I’m offering 20% off all orders for the month…just use the promo code: MAY20.

View up close in the gallery.

This painting reflects the daily walks I’ve taken over these past couple of months as things change quickly here in Michigan. I have tried to become privy to the inner workings of as much as I can along the paths that I take. The pond comes to life as the patience of geese gives way to successfully hatched goslings. Larger fish appear from deeper waters and young painted turtles learn about a sunbath. Lichen and moss bloom like badges in the rain and suddenly the trees leaf out and bloom, too. The spring sky seems an indestructible blue.

I’ve got a box of artifacts collected during walks: rocks, pieces of fallen bark, feathers. It is the imprint of these magical things that give strength. It is the same as the horses that Dylan Thomas describes in his poem Fern Hill, dazed at the sheer beauty of it all:

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

May in Michigan just might be the most beautiful time of year. To celebrate the yellow willow tree buds busting, the tiny (yet mighty) hepatica and bloodroot poking through last year’s leaves, and the newly hatched goslings at the pond this morning, I’m offering 20% all orders on my website for the month…just use the promo code: MAY20.

Even though in-person exhibits have come to a halt for now, I’m still painting every day. Watch for new paintings to be added to the site throughout the month. I’m also walking daily, writing, and re-reading favorite poets and learning the work of new ones. One poet who I came to learn about just last year is Wendell Berry. I’m not sure how I lived so long before reading his poems but I’m so glad I finally did. His poems express a fervent observation and reverence for nature—and how we as humans, can take comfort and rest in our place within it. This is the second half of his poem, The Finches, wishing them, and us, well as we emerge from the cold of April:

May the year warm them
soon. May they soon go

north with their singing
and the season follow.
May the bare sticks soon

live, and our minds go free
of the ground
into the shining of trees.

View the full gallery.

Next Wednesday, January 22, 6-8pm, I’ll be leading a workshop on poetry and painting. There are a few spots still available. It will take place in the gallery space at the Village Theater in Canton, where my solo exhibit, Transmutations, is currently hanging through the 29th.

The practice of combining words and painting is an endless puzzle. It requires observation and articulation and is something that I will never grow tired of: the moon in all of its phases, the tiniest mushroom on the forest floor, the city’s light on the river, the face of a friend, the memory of a hard time, the hope of a new idea. The poet Mary Oliver said, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

All 40 paintings are hung! Please stop in to the opening reception for my solo exhibit, Transmutations, this Thursday, January 9, 7-9pm at the Village Theater in Canton.

Each one has a title, a poem, an idea behind it. Each one was made over the course of about a year. Slowly, these paintings became a set, and the best way to describe them was Transmutations.  

One thing becomes another. This is the story of many things in nature: the river, the leaf, the rock, the star, the butterfly, the tree… It is also the story of people and ideas. Every day—every moment—changes us. Sometimes it is as dramatic as the metamorphosis that we see in nature, sometimes it is only when we stop to look back that we realize how much we have changed, and what made it happen. To me, this is what these paintings represent: the blank piece of paper, putting down marks to see what they can become, to add words and see what feeling emerges from that, and finally to share them with others and have it become yet another thing.

This is the best part—I hope you can be there.

Lucky to say that I’ll start 2020 with a solo exhibition of 40 paintings: January 3-29 at the Village Theater in Canton, with an opening reception January 9, 7-9pm.

Please stop in if you can to see the new paintings and say hello. In conjunction with the exhibit, I will also be conducting a workshop on January 22, 6-8pm in the gallery space discussing how I approach my painting, specifically, combining poetry and painting, with a focus on haiku.

It’s been a busy year of sharing my work in exhibits and through my website. Meeting the people who purchased paintings and hearing why a specific painting was meaningful to them was the best part for me. It confirmed for me the power of creating and sharing—I think that this is what humans are best at. Certain images and words speak to us and stay with us as we go through life.

On the wall next to my painting table I have an eight-foot-long tackboard where I put up bits and pieces of interesting or meaningful things. Throughout 2019 it slowly built up with layers of mini paintings and textures, posters of songbirds and the constellations by month, strips of birch bark and dried maple tree seed pods. Last week I had the urge to take it all down, so I did.

With the end-of-year urge to sort, I was looking through a box of old paintings and collected images last night. Up on the tackboard this morning went a few treasured things to welcome the new year: a charcoal drawing my dad made decades ago of the Detroit River at night from Belle Isle with a sickle moon in the sky and a weeping willow probably still growing there to this day; an old pen drawing of mine of a bare-branched stand of spring trees; a quote from Wallace Stevens from a poem-a-day calendar I had in my 20s; a priceless (to me) 5 cent stamp with a portrait of Thoreau by Leonard Baskin on it; a Hiroshige print I never framed with a V of geese criss-crossing the moon; a copy I made in ink of a Ben Shahn painting of two brothers because I loved it so much; and a photo of some woods in the deep north of Michigan where I got lost one morning with my first dog.

These words and images are as familiar to me as my own hand, but pulling them out now and putting them on this wall they are mysteries to be unlocked again. Things, people, and experiences percolate inside us over the years, they turn in our consciousness, run in our dreams, and continually break out into new things. Henry David said, “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” These words by Robert Frost sum up the year for me so far. Showing my work is such an honor.

I could have never imagined having so many opportunities to show it in such lovely settings. I’m pleased to have six paintings in the 2019 Michigan Made | Holiday Art Exhibition at the Lansing Art Gallery. It starts this Friday, November 8, with an opening reception from 5:00-8:00 pm.

The exhibit runs through December 23. I’m planning to be there on Friday and look forward to seeing the work of all of the artists. Hope you can make it to Lansing to see the show.

So pleased that this painting, titled The butterfly, will be a part of the Ann Arbor Art Center’s 97th Annual All Media exhibit, which will be October 18-November 15, 2019.

It’s a special painting to me, representing a shift into a new area of exploration and expression.

The opening reception will be the evening of Friday, October 18…stop in if you can.

See The butterfly in its natural habitat…and in a frosted gold frame (a new option)!

A lot of things have happened in my life that I could never have predicted. Having two of my paintings hanging in a beautiful museum is one of them.

The 91st Michigan Contemporary Art Exhibition is up through November 13 at the Muskegon Museum of Art. It is a lovely show of 125 works from Michigan artists across the state. My paintings ‘Luck and Beauty’ and ‘Atoms and Ideas’ are hanging there now—I am honored to be included.

The opening night reception was a lot of fun…discovering the beauty in Muskegon and along the way there and back.

Check it out if you can.

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“So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute.” The poet Wendell Berry wrote this in his poem, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. I just learned about this poem a couple of weeks ago by chance. The entire poem is beautiful but this particular line means a lot to me. It’s in doing the things that have no clear end that I find the most comfort in and interest me the most.

This also describes my painting habit well. I rarely have the end in mind. It’s more interesting to see what appears. To build up, remove, think, destroy, start again—a time to free my mind and let go to what ‘won’t compute’. This painting was not trying to be figurative, but it felt that way in the end so those words followed. No plan, no pre-sketch, no set of steps to get there, but suddenly there is this thing that is beautiful to me with a sentiment that has meaning.

Later in Berry’s poem he says,
“Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.”

View up close in the gallery.

Just shipped a couple of paintings off to the Muskegon Museum of Art! They were invited to be a part of their 91st Michigan Contemporary Art Exhibition. The exhibit will run from September 5 - November 13, 2019.

I’ll be there in the evening of September 5 for the opening. Please come and see it if you can.

Read more about the exhibit here.

Atoms and Ideas blog post

Luck and Beauty blog post

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