Sharing .... Christmas

This poem by Howard Thurman, shows us how to incorporate Christmas all year:

When the song of the angels is stilled,            When the star in the sky is gone,                  When the kings and the princes are home,    When the shepherds are back with their flocks,      Then the work of Christmas begins:              To find the lost,                                              To heal the broken,                                      To feed the hungry,                                          To release the prisoner,                                      To rebuild the nations,                                      To bring peace to others,                                And alas, to make music in the heart.

Sharing .... Enthusiasm

While waiting for the Orthopedic to look at my knee in Richmond, VA, I was struck by the words on this VCU poster of student RAM fans cheering their basketball team on. It's a quote by Dale Carnegie and is as true today as it was then: "Flaming enthusiasm backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success."

Cheer each other on!

Sharing ... Silence

In reading this month's Town & Country I came across an article that "spoke" to me. And it was ironically titled: Do Not Speak. In our digital charged world, I am not alone in craving peace and quite. This article lists places people pay for just that. Their called digital detox camps as people realize their addiction. It sites the proven benefits of silence from a Duke University study.  They found mice that had two hours of silence everyday, had triggered brain cell development. And in a study in the journal of Heart, found that silence had more of a calming effect on breathing and  blood pressure than even soothing music.

Enjoy some silence!

Sharing at Hollins University

Yesterday I had the privilege of participating on the Visual Arts Panel for my alma mater's Career Conference in Roanoke, VA. To kick off the event Tina Wells, CEO and founder of Buzz Marketing Group spoke. There are 3 mantras that she lives by and encouraged the audience to adopt:

1. Assume that everyone has a POSITIVE INTENT

2. Always hold yourself ACCOUNTABLE

3. Choose a solution that is on a HIGHER GROUND - where the most benefit

Great advice for students and alumni alike!

Sharing Japanese Aesthetics

new piece

Sunday's sermon in Richmond, VA was the first time I'd heard of Wabi-sabi. It means finding beauty in broken parts. Wabi-sabi originates from Japanese aesthetics and celebrates imperfection in art. Seemingly the opposite of the Western world. As I start a new series, this phrase seems timely and appropriate to use as it's cornerstone. More to come ...

Sharing Art With Charlottesville

Spent last Friday driving to Charlottesville, VA to put new art in Harris Fine Art on First Street South off the mall. Bryce's eye and focus on abstract art for the home make such a wonderful shopping experience. A true breath of fresh air.

Sharing ... Flaws

Summer 2012

Daring Greatly - Brene Brown

Perfection is self-destruction. Perfection is addictive. "I'm not interested in hiding my flaws ... it's important to have self-kindness, especially when we fail."Perfection stifles creativity. From Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem":"There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Sharing the Strife to Have a Mary Heart in a Martha World

Fall 2012

Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World - Weaver

This sentence sums it up and I agree 100%:    p. 57 "The problem is, contrary to popular belief, we can't do it all. We're not even supposed to try."

Sharing ... Solitude

In February 2012, I was reading Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter. In it she describes a new word that I relate to when painting: synesthesia - an innate condition in which the stimulation of one sense triggers another as well. Mr. Greenberg, art critic, on page 266 states, "The emotion in that picture (painting) reminds me of all emotion. It is like a Beethoven quartet where you can't specify what the emotion is but are profoundly stirred never the less." On page 371 art critic Michael Gibson's review of Joan's June 1982 show at Musee d'Art Moderne Paris on Alfred North Whitehead's view of religion ... "religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness." Solitariness is something most people want to avoid at all costs, which explains why there are so few authentic artists.

Sharing and Relating to Robert Motherwell

Motherwell: Beside The Sea

In October 2011, I was reading

Robert Motherwell by Dore Ashton, Robert Buck and Flam 

These few sentences grabbed me as I could completely relate to them:"The painting are not skills, that can be taught, but a process, whose content is found, subtle and deeply felt; that no true artist ends with the style that he expected to have when he began, anymore than anyone's life unrolls in the particular manner that one expected when young: that it is only by giving oneself completely to the painting medium that one finds oneself and one's own style ... such is the experience of the School of New York."The physical act of the hand moving in a painting is of great importance, it cannot be detached from the meaning of the image itself. The hand moves, feeling is transmitted. A gesture makes feeling intelligible.On p. 12, I like how Motherwell responds when asked, "what does the painting mean?""There are so many levels. So many decisions made through the creation of the painting that it becomes a slice of life ... a 'voyage'."Naming a painting is a primitive, inadequate but deeply rooted way of identifying the ineffably complex nature of reality."An artistic medium is the only thing in human existence that has precisely the same range of sensed feeling as people themselves do -"'The inner world' of the artist was a complicated human affair, and consequently difficult to express. That is why I invented my art. In this sense art is a necessity, a natural out growth of man's life."And it is our pictures, not ourselves, that live the social life and meet the public ... It is interesting that the creations of solitary individuals should turn out to have such a gift of socialibilty!" - Abrams (Wallace Art Gallery)p. 23 "My hand just flies and I do not even have to think; my my hand just does it, as though I am not there."p. 25 "It is more what you unconsciously know then what you think. In fact, I would say that most good painters don't know what they think until they paint it."p. 30 The central problem for all modernists remains:1. How to insure meaning which requires a certain amount of stability2. How to change meanings which requires a certain amount of innovation and disequilibrium.In short: a surprise. How far to go?