Soul Floating in Cosmic Star Sky

This painting was inspired by two recent experiences, both were gifts from dear friends. The first one was described in the previous blog post about a moonlit arrival by boat on an island. The second was another experience of night and the sensation of my soul rushing out and up into the star filled sky.

Soul Floating in Cosmic Star Sky / 24" x 30" / acrylic on canvas

We decided around midnight to take a boat out into the middle of Upper Saranac Lake and float. It was the loons that lured us there with their shimmering calls across the dark water. No moon. No light at all when we turned off the boat lights. Darkness. Then we looked up and fell into a sky of stars. A swath of spilled milk filled with galaxies spread over the heavens from north to south. The Milky Way, dazzling in it's beauty, punctuated with the streak of a falling star every so often. We floated, the loons sang and I became the sky. The night is when we are most in touch with our intuition, when logic and reason step down and our instincts come alive.

What will we do when we have obliterated all the darkness from the planet? When we no longer can look up and see the stars? Will we forget them? Will we forget how tiny and insignificant our small and short existence is on this planet? Will we forget to be awed and humbled by gratitude. I pray that we remember to preserve the darkness and the stars for our grandchildren.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
~Albert Einstein

The Ways of Water

An impromptu exhibition of some larger landscape pieces is now showing at the E.K. Voland Art Gallery in my St Henri studio building.

One Wild & Precious Moment / 72" x 48" / acrylic on canvas

The Red Line / 48" x 72" / acrylic on canvas

Undercurrents / 72" x 54" / oil on canvas

Stone Carvers / 60" x 40" / oil on canvas

Mystery Alive

The Edge of Mystery / 30" x 30" / acrylic on panel board

Preview of Tremblant Exhibition

This is the launching of my new store as well as the online preview for the upcoming exhibition at Galerie 806 in Mont-Tremblant, QC which opens December 19th and runs until January 15th, 2014.
This exhibition is a celebration of an amazing year; meeting new people, traveling to new places and discovering the endless potential of this planet to reveal her beauty in new and invigorating ways. I am humbled and awed by the process of painting and the magical, mystery tour it continually takes me on. I feel it to be a great privilege to live this world as a painter. The paints not only guide my heart & hands but opens my eyes to marvels I would never have even noticed were I not stopping and taking the time to look as is necessary when making a painting.

Ferocious Beauty

This spring after a yoga class I went and searched out the Lachine Rapids which I had never seen before. I had to walk through a bird sanctuary that was erupting with spring birdsong. There were photographers everywhere capturing the many different species singing their hearts out in the marshes leading up to the river. I heard and felt the river before I saw it. As it was early spring there were a few tender green buds on the trees but no leaves yet and the water was roaring! I sat on a rock by the rapids and felt a wellspring of gratitude bubble up from inside. Sitting in that spot of sunshine listening to the roar of the rapids, I felt thrilled to be alive in the moment. I love when life takes you by surprise and knocks the breath out of you with one of its endless forms of beauty!

Three New Waterfalls

Tumbling into Ecstasy / 60" x 40" / oil on canvas

 I'm not sure what it is about falling water and rocks but I can't seem to get enough of them.
I love to sculpt the rocks with brush and pigment onto canvas and then paint those swirls of flowing, tumbling water that erupts over and around the ancient rock. I love the relationship the water has with the rock. One so solid and unmoving the other so fluid and full of movement, perfect partners.

Carving Rock / 60" x 40" / acrylic on canvas

The two paintings above were inspired by the same place, different times, different moods, different energies. No one moment is like another and so it is with paint and painting. If I painted the same place over one hundred times, each painting would be different. Every moment is fresh, alive and new when we are able to see it that way.

"Rough and Tumble" is a smaller piece that was painted with much love for this erratic tumble of rocks. A place in the forest where the light and the water are left to play and tumble across the rock's surfaces in an endless choreography of changing beauty.

Rough & Tumble / 30" x 24" / acrylic on canvas

Painting from the Inside Out

"The power of painting has to come from the inside out, not the outside in. It's not just an image; it's an image with a body and that body has to contain its spirit.... it's the weight of the intention that defines everything." 

-Sean Scully

 Cloud Garden, 30" x 24", acrylic on canvas

Return to the Source

This week-end I headed for Mont-Tremblant to escape the extreme heat of the city. I brought a pile of smaller paintings and set up under a tree at Place de la Gare in the old village.

 I stayed with a friend who lives in a magical cabin perched amongst the rocks along the edge of a lake. There is no road to this little piece of wilderness bliss so she came to

pick me up in her small motorboat every evening.

I was happy to visit with my friends, the rocks and roots again. They had much to tell me and I loved listening to the silence of their textures and crevices.

As the days grew hotter, plunging into the lake was like slipping into a cool, silk gown, refreshing for body, mind and soul.

"Crying Lake" was painted one week before I encountered this lake. Did I paint the lake into my reality? or did the lake beckon me? When does the imaginal realm cross over?

Liminal Space / Sacred Space

Crying Lake / 16" x 20" / acrylic on panel board

Sometimes painting is a magical, mystical ride.

Violent Beauty

Violent Beauty / 24" x 40" / acrylic & mixed media on canvas / 2011

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?

and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

~Rainer Maria-Rilke

Blood of the River God

Blood of the River God / 36" x 48" / acrylic on panel board