Category: Uncategorized

Our dates connected us: to each other, to nature, to color.

They connected me to the meditative practice of painting, which I had never really done and now practice almost daily.

This collective project connects me to many humans I don’t know, but who are undoubtedly beautiful because they were chosen by you.

August 16, 2020

Farnsworth House

September 4, 2019

Gompers Park

July 20, 2020

in person remote cemetery for Dana

“Large ceremonial plaza. Too much on my mind. Tiny table. Painting shining white columns and a patinated bronze buffalo. I hate this chair. People meet to rehearse in the park. The leader has a bullhorn? Spilled my mixing tray. Watercolor is annoying if you try to do something with it. Leslie is effortless as usual.”

August 6, 2019

Humboldt Park

June 9, 2021

Humboldt Park

I miss my mom, everyday, in all seasons. She is with me in my heart but I go to the Chicago Botanic Gardens to think and pray and cry, when I’m feeling lonely and miss her. My spirituality and connection to her spirit and God now comes through flowers and plants and watching the colorful and inexplicable cycle of life continue it’s brutal and always again beautiful pattern

August 3, 2019

Botanical Gardens

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