Category: Uncategorized

Plein Speech

a painting
a break
a chance

denial
of discipline
of meeting in muddy gray

beyond the orange-pink pond
under the red tree’s severed limbs
of terror

May 16, 2018

Humboldt Park

Table set, Zooming
Blank paper wants color, action
Familiar looks new

Excited to paint
Look outside, inside bubble
Cactus, window, car.

In the April sun
Observation connection
Children like this too

Despite pandemic
A way to share space and time
Unexpected view

April 10, 2020

Remote Oak Park

Patient and encouraging, meditative and imperfect. We sit in the garden noticing the unnoticed, rendering a moment.

January 25, 2020

Ventura California

I was nervous about painting with Leslie. It’d been years since I picked up a watercolor brush. The day before, I spent three indecisive hours at the art store trying to pick out the right supplies that would match my romantic, Merchant-Ivory film notion of plein air painting. The next morning, Leslie and I met up inside the Garfield Park Conservatory. I painted, timidly so, and watched as Leslie’s brush worked swiftly and intuitively with no second-guessing, joyfully wedging shapes and color combinations into gorgeous compositions. I had recently read about “flow,” the term coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe a heightened, immersive state of positive productivity, and I wondered if Leslie was experiencing it. After our date, I went home and made some drawings and thought, “Is this flow? How do I get to flow? Should I ask Leslie?” Flow came, eventually, once I stopped being so conscious of it. Also, chocolate helped. And thinking about the way Leslie’s brush moved.

January 16, 2019

Garfield Park Conservatory

An Afternoon at the Beach: Pink puffy clouds, soft wind, a grassy knoll and crashing waves. A splendid afternoon with my cousin at the beach.

March 5, 2020

Boca Raton Beach

Green and Yellow Waves
Sunlight
Yellow-Green
Edges
Blue-Green
Shadows
Yellow-green
Yellow
Yellow-green
Sunlight

April 20, 2018

Garfield Park Conservatory

in the thick warm air
wet color with you and I
a thousand greens here.

February 28, 2020

Garfield Park Conservatory

September 29, 2021

Humboldt Park

It was the most beautiful Summer day. The kind of summer day where time seems to slow down. I was thinking about how you perceive things that are alive, when juxtaposed with death. Painting with Leslie that day felt like praying. Made me think about this Mary Oliver poem.

July 23, 2019

Humboldt Park