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April 15, 2015

Ballerina

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My first creative passion was dance. When I had to stop, due to an injury, it was as if my world had come to an end.

Years later I “got dance back,” in the form of social dancing: salsa, ballroom, Argentine Tango. I think nothing makes me happier than dancing!

And painting is dancing, just on a smaller scale. With a small painting like this, I may be dancing only with my forearms, wrists, hands, and fingers, but the marks are a frozen record of my movement.

Turns out I never truly lost dance after all. 🙂

April 9, 2015

Zen

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When I sit in silence on my meditation cushion, I endeavor to focus my mind on my breath. Thoughts inevitably come in, but that’s not a problem — this is the practice: noticing the thoughts, then simply letting them go and returning my focus to my breath, gently, and with self-compassion.

(Since I notice my mind wandering approximately a thousand times during each ten-minute sit, meditation is, therefore, one of the most effective ways to practice self-compassion! I call it a self-contained self-compassion machine. 🙂 )

April 8, 2015

Let’s Party

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One of the things I love about working improvisationally and abstractly is that I discover stories in my paintings that I had no idea were there when I started out.

If I were invited to a party like this one, I’d definitely want to go!

April 7, 2015

Rose Garden

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I don’t have a real garden. Living in a townhouse with a postage-stamp backyard, which gets very little direct sun, space is limited. And face it, gardening just hasn’t climbed up to the top of my priority list.

I do love other people’s beautiful gardens, though.

Years ago, I thought writing was for other people, not for me. So perhaps gardening will become a creative passion later in life.

Or not. You never know. In the meantime, I’ll stop and smell (other people’s) roses whenever I get the chance.

April 3, 2015

Phoenix Rising

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I don’t start out with an idea when I paint; I just start painting, and allow myself to discover what emerges. A hooked shape appeared in this painting, and soon I found myself looking at a bird, buzzard-like.

Over on Facebook, people started referring to this as the Dinwiddie Bird. I thought of it as a phoenix, rising from the ashes, but Dinwiddie Bird works nicely, too. 🙂

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