Drawings

works from the Wheeling drawing group

Getting into prints...

This is a reduction lino-cut that I made for the Black Sheep (first one!) It stars their three very famous dogs- Arnie, Foch and Markko.

words of wisdom from a 19th century "autograph" book....

A series of monoprint/collages that I am working on.

Sacred Springs

When I was in Romania, I learned how important mineral water was. I found a spring not too far from here in Pennsylvania. Frankfort Springs was a resort in 1790, most likely important long before that to the Natives, and now seems a haunted place. The water taste good.

I love Svankmajer

In another time, I will speak Czech like my grandfather, and I will make films like Svankmajer.....

Murmurations

The women in my families are dreamers.
When I was younger I had a very close cousin, we were like sisters. Sometimes we would have the same dreams. My paternal grandmother has dreams of her lost love- she knows he has visited her.
My mother herself tells me all the time how she looses sleep over her crazy night visions. This happens to another cousin on this side as well.

So, I inherit dreaming from both sides of the family. I could have filled many books now with all of my relentless, memorable dreaming. Every night I am in these other worlds and I always remember them.

'The Starlings' by Gertrude Hermes

Inner Contemplation

In preparation for the next painting:
We are all faced with big questions. Which of us will choose to answer them?

The Young Woods

oil on linen, 34x42in.

What happens when you never allow your forests to mature? Can the children?

from C.G. Jung:
"The forlorn-ness of consciousness in our world is due primarily to the loss of instinct, and the reason for this lies in the development of the human mind over the past aeon. The more power man had over nature, the more his knowledge and skill went to his head, and the deeper became his contempt for the merely natural and accidental, for that which is irrationally given- including the objective psyche, which is all that consciousness is not."

Waiting

Wilma Worwa was born Wodja, and she had a twin brother named Wodju, who died as a babe. Wodja (Polish for Wilma) met her future husband in the small coal towns of Appalachian Ohio, and his name was Wodju (Walter) too.  They were married for almost 60 years. Wilma, who has been blind her entire adult life, and she’s 92 now, waits until she can see my grandfather again. 

Here is the journey

Here is the journey:

 Eyes open

feet land outside

your mother’s front door

going through the spaces where

everything falls

in place.

Shades of grey

now a dream within a dream

the time between morning and day,

evening and night.

Your eyes again, blind

off moisture, prisms and stars

fractured in the atmosphere and

glittering, like so many beads

on the dew dropped spider’s web.

Misty haze of humidity-

squinting vision from stinging wind.

Hands grope to find the

well- worn treads of others

so your feet may finally

touch the soil

where the never ending

glow of glorious home is

from which you started anyway.

from John Ruskin

In 1859, John Ruskin stated outright that English art was vulgar. This vulgarity, he contended, arose from the absence of  "right, and therefore, all softening, or animating motive for their work...chiefly by the loss of belief in the spiritual world...belief in some invisible power- god or goddess, fury or fate, saint or demon."

.............................

"Young painters must remember this great fact....A stout arm, a calm mind, a merry heart, and a bright eye are essential to a great painter. Without all these he can, in a great and immortal way, do nothing....Frequent the company of right-minded and nobly-souled persons; learn all athletic exercises, and all delicate arts...be kind and just to everybody; rise in the morning with the lark, and whistle in the evening with the blackbird; and in time you may be a painter. Not otherwise."

these spaces are Holy, and Wholly Ours.

These things are beautiful

I went to see my grandmother in the hospital...my uncle was there. He told me stories of my great-grandfather Stemkowski, who was Polish and crippled from the coal mines. Once, my uncle was afraid to enter the barn because there were hornets. He (my great grandfather) took off his cap and waved it around gently talking to them in polish....then, turning to my uncle he told him it was now okay to enter. And it was.