March 8, 2016 – Fine tuning my promise to paint every day

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It’s been over two months since I promised to paint every day, and I haven’t missed a day yet. Though one day in January, all I did was paint colored squares in preparation for a color class, and there have been more than a few days that I’ve painted for only a 10 or 15 minutes. But making the promise – and making it publicly to all of you – has had a marked effect on my relationship with time, scheduling and my dedication to paint. There have been days that I did not start out painting – which is the best way for me to start any day. And as 9:00 or 10:00 at night rolled around, I realized I’d not painted. Because of my commitment, I’ve picked myself up and gone into my studio (which is just one of the bedrooms in our house) and worked on a painting. In the past, I’d absolutely have just let it go for the day.

At the end of January, I went to LA for a workshop and a visit with my aunt and uncle. In order to have something to paint to take with me, I drew a small one of roses and raindrops, and I made myself a teeny little palette of paints. I painted each day before the workshop, as well as in the airport – both on the way there and back – a first! There was even one night – it was after 11:00 – I was in bed, cozy and warm and ready to call it a day – and I called bullshit on myself, when I told myself that I had painted. I had really just fiddled around for a few minutes. So, I got out of bed, wrapped up in my bathrobe, turned on the space heater at my feet under my painting table, listened to the silence of the sleeping house, and painted for half an hour. It was probably the most precious time I’ve spent painting yet this year.

As successful as this commitment has been so far, I see it’s time to guide myself to another place, with my promise to paint every day. I’ve been holding it largely as something I need to “get in” each day. I set the commitment as a way to bring meditation into my life on a regular basis. And the way I’ve been doing it – and more importantly, the way I’ve been holding it – has often not been in the spirit of meditation. I’ve been aware of the deeply-felt place painting holds in my life for a while now. I remember one day – something like 8 years ago – talking to Sara, when she was the pastor at the church I used to go to. What came out of my mouth was that for me, painting is a devotion.

As I was putting away the dishes from last night and thinking about what I’d write about today, I remembered saying this – and wondered, what really is a devotion? So I looked it up! (I am letting myself look things up for my posts!). English is such a rich language and there are often many synonyms for a single word. The collection of synonyms can define a little universe which can say a lot. Here they are for devotion: loyalty, faithfulness, fidelity, constancy, commitment, adherence, allegiance, dedication, fondness, love, admiration, affection, care. When I look at these words, I see two things – there’s steadfastness in the words from “loyalty” through “dedication”, and there’s a heart-centeredness in the words from “fondness” to “care” – a steadfast love. I’ve been doing the steadfast part – what I’m feeling the lack of, and wanting to bring in – is my heart – or more of my heart.

This is one part of it, but there’s another – a distinction I learned from Alison: there is a masculine (produce results) and feminine (in the timelessness of the moment) way to do just about anything. I can get ready in the morning, choose my clothes, do my hair and makeup, take my vitamins with the idea that I have to get it all done in as short a time as possible, efficiency expert front and center – OR I can feel my hands on my face as I put on my moisturizer, look at myself in the eye for a second as I put on my eye makeup, choose clothes that I feel good and lovely in. Who emerges from my bathroom is a whole different person depending upon which I am able to choose. Cooking is another arena to see this – I can produce food for dinner, or I can lovingly prepare a meal to nourish our bodies.

Time is what makes the difference – either time is limited and I’ve got to get a move on, or I have all… the… time… in… the… world. Here’s the thing, time is limited on this earthly plane. We’ve only so much in a day and in a lifetime. So how do I give myself the experience of getting myself ready, cooking, painting – living my life, a time-limited universe – in such a way that I feel I have all the time in the world?

I feel resistance in me as I realize what this means. I need to actually schedule my time and have priorities. When I worked in the corporate world and had a boss and commitments to others, I was very good (well, a whole lot better anyway) at scheduling and “time-management.” But now, that I work for myself I have been rather loose with time – especially on the days that I don’t teach – the days that are all mine, to do with what I see fit. I let myself get pulled away by all kinds of things that are not on my radar. I schedule my appointments and meetings with others, but not my painting time, my marketing time, my email time. It’s really time. In order to make my work my devotion, my prayer, it needs me to protect it from the other things that are crowding it out.

As I think about spending time every day looking at how I’m going to spend this day of my life, with an actual calendar, the resistance is re-doubling inside me, making it really apparent why I’ve not been doing it. This part of me needs my attention! I’m making the promise to that part of me – in front of you – I will listen to hear what it has to say, what there is to caution me about – what its fears are. Because I now know I must provide containers – pockets of time – to get lost in my painting – every day. Even if the pocket of time is 15 minutes, I want to have set it with intention – not just squeezed it in. I know that when I do, it’s much more likely that I can arrive to it with that sense of devotion.

I’m also aware of the break I’ve given myself as of last week – and that this may seem like self-improvement. But it’s clear to me, that “pink time” isn’t pink unless it’s given the space to be so. I know I won’t be perfect at this. But it is my intention to keep coming back to it, when I fall back on getting pulled here and there – and when my inner-teenager wants to rebel.

I feel a softness and a resolve in me as I finish this post. And I am so grateful for my relationship with you. Knowing you are there, knowing you are reading and listening – and taking on commitments of your own, as I’ve heard a few of you have, pulls me along on. It reinforces a central belief – that life is lived in connection – on the web of invisible threads that bind us.

With my love,

Cara

March 1, 2016 – Taking a pink break

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I am a thought-ful person – I mean to say not so much that I’m kind and I think of others – which I do aim to be and do – but that I am full of thoughts. I’ve been watching myself think, and am realizing how incredibly busy it is inside my head!

There’s almost always the “efficiency expert” – this is the one who plans ahead, nearly constantly, about how I am going to do everything, strategizing as how to maximize the results of my efforts. Like when I wash up after dinner: I very intentionally wash the sheet pans first, so they can lean up against the inside of the garden window, then skillets, then saucepans. Bowls are last, smallest to largest – all so that everything will dry well, and will fit on the drying pad without water getting everywhere. It’s like this all over my life. And even when I’m scattered, which I am plenty, my mind is keeping track of how in-efficient I’m being.

There’s the “relationship monitor”, who tells me that I really need to be in touch with this person or that, evaluating how that last conversation went and whether there is something else I need to say – if I may have hurt someone, or overlooked something. There’s always someone I’m overdue to get back to – an email or text message to reply to, an appreciation to offer. This part worries about whether I am giving enough, or saying enough to those who provide so much to me.

There’s the “look it up addict”, who is always on the lookout for what I don’t yet know. Here’s how this goes – just yesterday morning, at the start of the trail on my hike with Bo, I saw an oval bumper-sticker on a car that had the word “VIOLIN” on it. My mind went: violin, viola, cello… the last two instrument names have their roots in Italian, it seems, but what is “violin” in Italian? I took out my phone to find out it is “violino” and in then French, it’s “violon.” Viola is “viola” in Italian, but “alto” in French. Ok, that’s enough! Thank God for another part of me that had me put the phone back in my pocket, to be present with my dog on the trail in the beautiful sunshine!

There’s another version of this part of me that is compelled to not just know, but to understand. I want to be able to put everything into the grand scheme in some way – and these are big things – the dark side of humanity – violence and suffering, the evolution of human consciousness, climate change and our future, and this incredibly unusual and unpredictable US presidential election. This part reads the opinion pages of the paper, listens to public radio, reads emails from all kinds of people working to further the causes of humanity – all with the questions: “are we becoming more conscious?” or “how are we evolving?” in the back of my mind.

Added to these parts, there’s still the part of me that is food – and body – conscious, and the part that fears every little twinge, wondering if I could be really sick. There’s the part that worries about all the trash we generate – sorting garbage wherever I go. There’s the part that feels compelled to make something out of myself and my art business. This part that tells me I really need to be on social media more! And the part that makes and teaches art, always on the lookout for painting subjects and ideas about being a better teacher.

I’ve recently come to realize, how completely exhausting all this mental activity is! And I see a thread that runs all through these patterns. I am positively compelled to self-improve. I am rigorous with myself, turning things around in my brain, looking for the “lesson” for myself in all that challenges me. As much as this way of being has made me who I am now, has given me the capacities I have to perceive and understand and sometimes share helpful ideas and thoughts, I’m also really hard on myself.

It’s the season of Lent in the Christian calendar. I don’t hold myself tightly to the tradition of “giving something up” as a Lenten fast. But I have decided, even if I’m a bit late, that I am going to give up on self-improvement for a while. It’s time to give my precious self a break from the scrutiny and diligence. It’s time for more sweetness, acceptance and ease. And having some fun while I’m at it.

In preparation for this past weekend’s Oscars, I’ve gotten started on the fun part – I’ve been going to the movies! I’ve seen more movies in the past month, than in the past year. Brooklyn was my favorite – what a lovely, lovely film. But I also thoroughly enjoyed The Big Short, Spotlight, The Martian and The Bridge of Spies. 45 Years was powerful – not a feel – good movie as such – but rich with humanity. And my mom and dad and I went to a gorgeous documentary of the spectacular tenor, Jonas Kaufmann’s all-Puccini concert, at La Scala in Milan – what a big treat it was, to experience all that emotion-filled music and inspiring talent.

I’ve put away all the books on my nightstand, except two – “Lisette’s List” and “Delicious.” Both books were passed on to me by ladies in my groups – about things I love – art and food. I can feel the need for some time in museums – I’ve not seen the Pierre Bonnard exhibit at the Legion of Honor yet, and in gardens. I want to paint tulips! Filoli, here… I… come!

As part of this effort to give myself a break, I’ve decided to paint only what I really want to paint. I’ve been working away on one of deeply colored hydrangeas sitting on a decorated tile resting on a fountain. The colors are more jewel-y and muted – like late summer or early fall, when the image was taken. I’ve left paintings unfinished in the past, but last year I’d circled back and finished them all – giving me a sense of accomplishment – which has me reluctant to start a new stack of partial paintings that would “talk” to me. So I’d been dutifully working to finish it.

Spring has started in northern California – the earliest blossoming trees are full of petals, daffodils are up, the hills are green thanks to some rain this winter. All of this has me wanting to be painting with springtime colors. So Saturday, I drew two new paintings – both of roses in pinks, corals, a range of sunny greens. I’ve started in on the “fuzzy background” of one of them, looking forward to painting rose petals in tropical punch colors.

My sense is that what drives this part of me, to seek and transform into some increasingly improved-version of myself has in part, to do with shadow beliefs that doubt my value. There is no defeating shadow – not in me, not in you, not anywhere. My seeking has taught me that what we are here to do, is to shine the light of consciousness on it. For me, this means putting away the self-help books, turning off the radio, unless it’s something that feeds my feminine soul, feeding myself through my eyes, my ears, all my senses. I’m shining the light of love, of mercy, of grace on the driving, striving parts of me. And I’m letting myself live pink!

I invite you to shine the light of awareness on the parts of you that may be calling for it – and live in your color.

With my love,

Cara

February 23, 2016 – One of us flies away

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It was almost three years ago when I got a voicemail message from someone who was looking for an art class, an art group – a regular place to paint. She’d just moved up to Marin from Huntington Beach, in the LA area, where she had a watercolor group that she’d been attending for some time, and was missing terribly. She’d found my number through Perry’s, one of our local art stores. Mickey and I talked, I told her about us and she decided to join our Friday group. Starting in early April, 2013 until last Friday, Mickey came every week she could – which amounted to 116 weeks out of the 137, that we’ve met in that timeframe. She has been devoted – to us and to herself and her artwork. On Saturday, she’s on a plane to Portland, Oregon where she’s moving to join her son and his family. We are going to so miss her. And she us.

Friday we had a going-away/celebrating-our-time-together party. Our hearts were full and heavy all at the same time. I showed a slideshow video I’d put together of all of the watercolors that Mickey painted while she was with us, along with some of the photos of us I’d taken, so she’d have that to take with her.

Every week, I take pictures of each artist’s work-in-progress. I don’t know why, but something had me start doing this, not too long after I started leading the Tuesday (now Thursday) group in the fall of 2011. I miss some artists’ work some weeks, though and when I saw that I hadn’t captured some of Mickey’s paintings after she finished them, I called her earlier in the week, to see if I could come visit her and take new photos. I told her it was so that I could have a complete record of all she painted – I wanted the slideshow to be a surprise!

On a rainy afternoon last Wednesday, we had a sweet visit. She had framed a couple paintings, given away a couple more, and thrown away two she said were “busts.” The rest were stored in portfolios, which she pulled out from under the bed. It was really wonderful to see again, these paintings I’d watched come to be, week after week.

She told me she was trying to get her address changed with Social Security, and had been on hold for nearly an hour, and still had no luck. So I sat down at her computer to see what we could do online. And while there, she asked me if I wanted to see all her paintings. She’s kept a photo record of every one of her pieces of art. Other than the beautiful paintings she’d framed on her walls, I had no idea what she’d painted before she moved here. I was blown away by how prolific she’s been! I didn’t count, but she’s done dozens and dozens and dozens of paintings.

It was very clear how she felt about each one. A few, like the two she tossed from our time together, she called “a bust.” Some she said were “okay.” But some she really liked and called “successful – a really good painting.” She’s painted portraits, landscapes, buildings (barns, a Victorian house surrounded by flowering shrubs), flowers, fruits – all kinds of subjects. She knows where each one is and whether that person has it hanging or up not. Mickey is very connected to her body of work!

She’s kept in very regular contact, with some of the artists who she painted with two days a week, in Southern California. One of them still calls her every week! She’s also still connected to her teacher, who has come to visit every time he comes up here. She told me that some of them have been painting for 30 years, and that at 11 years, she a mere newcomer as an artist. The thing is, we just helped Mickey celebrate her 88th birthday at the end of January. I asked incredulously, “you started painting when you were 77 years old?” And she just twinkled back at me.

Mickey didn’t just start painting, she became a painter, an artist. She made making art a major part of her life, and she didn’t even start until she had outlived many, many people. What I told her I found so remarkable, is the force that is in her to just keep going. As soon as one painting was finished there was another idea, a plan for the next one. I didn’t have this kind of impetus to paint consistently, until I had an outlet, an audience. I found it really easy for life to crowd out my painting time. But not Mickey. Painting has ahold of her in a way that inspires and emboldens the rest of us.

Mickey has been living in an assisted living community, where she found many of her neighbors hard to relate to, as they aren’t as engaged in life as she. So, coming to her art group has been really important to her well-being. She told me not long after starting, “you are stuck with me! I’m not leaving, you know.” This has been the topic of a loving tease between us – I’ve – we’ve been so happy to have been stuck with her! And now that she’s moving away, she told us that though she’s made friends where she lives, what’s really hard is leaving us. She said “it’s intimate, this is home.”

Mickey is tiny – not even five feet tall, but inside that little body, is a spirit that has captured our hearts and shown us how it’s possible to be very alive, and creative well into our years. Sue, who is closer to my age, was traveling last week and couldn’t say goodbye to Mickey herself, so she emailed me: “Let her know that she has been a big inspiration to me as well … as I now intend to paint till I’m 100!” When I told this to Mickey, she said, “so do I!”

That’s our Mickey – gosh are we going to miss her something awful! But, I’ve heard that Portland has a beautiful rose garden, which I’ve never visited. We’re already plotting a trip this summer to see the roses, see our Mickey and paint together again.

I’m happy and grateful to you, Mickey, for being one of us. You are in our hearts always.

Love,

Cara

February 16, 2016 – Taking a breath of self-love

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After reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Big Magic” recently, I began following her somewhat frequent Facebook posts. Last Wednesday, she wrote a long post on her worry about the extent to which, we are hard on ourselves – she asked if we can love all the parts of us we hate. Hate is a strong word, but I can understand the wisdom in using it. If she were to understate our self-criticism, she’d be leaving out, those of us in the deepest pain. The rawness and realness of her post compelled me to share it on my own personal page – inviting you all to join me, in a self-love movement.

The next morning I woke with a fire burning inside. I felt the various threads, of what has been coming through me lately to write on Tuesdays, weaving together. I realized I needed to actually preach, in my three watercolor groups. So, I did just that with each of them – and now I am again here with you – the rest of you who “listen” to me.

In EG’s post, she recounted a meeting between the meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg, and the Dalai Lama. When Sharon asked him what he thought of self-hatred, he had no idea what she was talking about. It seems that bashing ourselves is a Western phenomenon. This triggered something in me about the left and right brain – and what I’m gleaning from, “The Master and His Emissary.” Iain McGilchrist is also worried about our Western culture-run world, because of the dominance of the left brain. It makes sense to me that when we habitually operate more from our left brains, with their lack of context, fixation and tendency to manipulation – without the wider view of our right brains that are connection-oriented and relational to balance us out, we are at the mercy (or lack thereof, more accurately) of our inner-critical voices.

Iain McGilchrist gave me another incredible piece to the puzzle, that I’ve not yet written about, which weaves in here too. In an interview I listened to, he said that matter – physical matter – is a state of consciousness. Like the forms H2O takes – steam, water and ice, our consciousness has a non-physical form, which then can become physical – and in doing so, we create our world. I was blown away by this. Of course! Every physical thing – at least those that we create – starts as an idea before we make it into form. I’ve said that the consciousness of the artist is in her or his work, but this takes it a bit further, our artwork is our consciousness – in physical form. Ok, so then when we are picking apart our work, as we are creating it, it’s the same thing as picking ourselves apart.

Iain McGilchrist says that the dominance of the left-brain has been increasing over time, worrying him about our future. If what we need is to operate more from our right-brains, minding our thoughts as we paint, is one way we can do our part to turn the tide. In my “sermons” last week, what I asked of the artists in my groups is this: every time we notice the voice that says, this doesn’t look right, I can’t do this, what a mess this is, I’m ruining this painting, to stop and take a deep, soft belly breath. I invite us to bring our attention out of our heads, and remember we are in a body that breathes. We are alive and here. I have no idea where this came from. I have no idea if this indeed, brings us into our right-brains, but our breath always happens in this moment and brings peace and calm – so it can never hurt. And then I want us to remind ourselves, that there is no reason to think, that we could or even should be painting any differently than we do in this moment – with our experience to date, the extent to which we’ve practiced, our own personal sensibilities and tendencies – we paint as we paint in this moment – and that is just fine – it has its own kind of perfection, even.

Since I fervently shared this with my groups last week, I’ve been painting myself (every day, haven’t missed one so far), and I see that the tricky part is actually noticing the voice. We are so used to living with these voices, that it seems normal to have them yammering and hammering along. This draws in the thread of the importance of awareness and attention – the subject of another recent post. It takes practice to grow our awareness, to have the capacity to interrupt the autopilot to bring in the breath – and the reminder that we are ok. I’m hearing over and over lately, that meditation helps this. (Here are 5 forms that don’t require standing still.) It expands our pre-frontal cortex – the part of our brains that makes conscious choices.

But also so does showing up – for ourselves and for each other. I see it in every single group meeting on Thursdays and Fridays – all the appreciation that is shared from one artist to another, for the work they are doing. We are each other’s reminders, of the perfection of this moment and the art being created in it. Our paintings are a result of a whole bunch of these moments. With awareness – self-generated or when reminded by another – we have an opportunity to re-focus our attention – away from fixating on the part/parts of our paintings (or ourselves) that we find fault with, to the expanded view of the whole painting and our whole selves. What we attend to creates our reality – attending to the goodness of this moment brings that goodness – appreciation – love – into our lives.

For a few weeks, I’ve been finding myself being edgy and short with a few people who are closest to me, including my husband and my dear friend. I have been feeling really terrible about it, and was beating up on myself for it. In my coaching group it was pointed out to me, that I might be being edgy and short with myself. This was an enormous gift of awareness which had me realize, I needed to be patient and gentle with myself, extra patient and gentle, actually. Whatever we do to ourselves, has a ripple effect. When I can bring to myself the gaze of accepting love – for all my parts, even and especially those I’m picking apart, I can bring that gaze to all the parts of everyone in my life, that I want to pick apart too. I believe with all of me, that loving ourselves is the most important thing we can do to change the world. Bringing our light to darkness wherever we encounter it, is the whole enchilada. We all have the light of God in us – the light of love. It’s hard to remember this, but when we do, it shines brighter.

With all my love,

Cara

February 9, 2016 – Photos or life? We get to decide

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The very first time I painted in watercolor, I painted from life. It was a blue Dutch iris in that first Saturday class, I took with my mom. From there, I painted a few more quarter sheet paintings of flowers, also from life. My mom quickly shifted to working from photographs, and I remember saying, that I couldn’t really see what I was painting, unless it was sitting in front of me. A few years after this, I made the shift – and for something like 16 or 17 years now, I’ve painted only from photographs, and have come to appreciate photography, as an integral part of my process.

It is often said in the art and art instruction world, that working from photographs is bad or inferior. Here’s a post that describes the problems with working from photos, encouraging us to work from life. Using reference photos isn’t perfect. There are often ambiguities in a photo, that are no longer resolvable, because the subject isn’t in front of us when we are painting. There are weird or at least curious shapes that don’t “make sense” – and since the complete conversion to digital cameras, I am frustrated by too much contrast and “blown out” highlights – where light areas are just big splashes of white, losing the subtlety. Regardless, I’m nowhere without photos.

Looking through all my paintings, I can see almost none of them would have been possible without a camera capturing the image for me, to paint at another time and in another place. I’m not drawn to paint in the vein of classical still lifes and plein air landscapes. My images come from impractical painting places, like in a fancy food shop in Paris or up a ladder inside a fruit tree, or crouched to catch the last bits of evening light, in my brother’s backyard micro-vineyard. And they come from subjects whose time has passed, like two of our dogs, who I painted after they were no longer living. Then there’s the problem of time. I capture light as it is in a fleeting moment – and I want to get a compelling composition. When it takes me on average a month to make a painting, there’s just no way to do what I do, without a photo to work from.

Even more, I’ve come to see photography and “playing” with my images in the computer, as an integral part of my creative process. It’s actually the more fun part! I’ve been asked about whether I get into a flow state when I’m painting. Maybe some artists do, but for me this part is real work. It requires me to focus intensely and I’m almost always accompanied by that critical voice. Towards the end of a painting, when I’m glazing over with a big wet brush to shift color or temperature, the process can feel really loose and flow-y – but mostly it’s not. The more free part of my process, is when I’m out with my camera. I’m in a state of expectancy, open to whatever tells me to paint it. Then when I’m back at my computer, looking through what I’ve captured, I can happily spend hours and hours, cropping and making shifts to the color and light. I collage several images together sometimes too – to make a final image, that I can imagine happily spending a month or so zoomed into, as I bring it back to life on watercolor paper. I spend time with the projector, looking at these images expanded on the wall as the final step. Some images “work” when I see them big and some that I thought might, just don’t. The final decision comes, when I imagine it amongst those I’ve already painted. If it would live happily, holding its own amongst my work-so-far, I’ll paint it.

I’ve just about finished these candy hearts. The idea to paint them came to me a couple years ago. I went to Rite Aid and bought a few boxes of the candies, dumped them in a bowl and took a bunch of photos. I don’t know what it is about one image that makes it more pleasing than another, but some just stand out. Here are two of the photos as I took them, before cropping. I decided to play with the one on the right.

To accompany all of the other paintings I’ve done of sweets, I cropped it square (left image). Not so sure about “CU SOON” as the most prominent message, I took another photo that had a pink heart with “DREAM” on it. I lifted the lettering and replaced it (center image). Then the colors seemed out of balance. So, I made more of them pink, blue and yellow to make myself happy (right image).

Lastly, it took me a couple of years to actually get to painting it! I kept thinking about it too late to finish by Valentine’s Day – and this painting definitely has a season! Now that it is done in time this year, I find it light-hearted fun – the sentiments and all the pastel colors. Though it doesn’t grab me and feel somehow as “important” as my floral paintings of late do, I had a good time painting all the colors and shapes – and it and it will make a sweet card. But I hope sharing this with you, shows you that I followed my own process, to make these candy hearts into a painting. I used photography to compose – then I chose the image, the cropping/composition and the color, all based on the photos I took.

In a Tuesday group about two years ago, I heard myself say something to Robin, that I’ve repeated over and over since. As she was laboring over the details of her reference photograph, to reproduce it absolutely faithfully, I said “you are not a slave to this photo, it is your servant.” Our reference photos have preserved much of the information, that was there when we experienced our subject matter in real life – at least to the best of the camera’s ability. And they provide infinitely more information than – at least my – memory can. Using it, I’m able to re-create the shapes and shades and colors to make my painting. I’m very happy to be an artist at this point in time – with all the technical tools we have at our disposal, to bring through the art that is in us.

My purpose has become increasingly clear to me – I’m here to provide the environments, the instruction and the encouragement, to help you bring forth the art that is in you. To that end, I’ll use and provide anything to free you from the constraints that prevent you from making art that pleases you – even astonishes you. Besides this, it’s hard enough to do what we do – why not use these tools? Especially if we start to paint later in life, we just want to get to it – to play with color and subjects that light us up, without spending time – months or even years – making art as part of a prescribed curriculum. I’ve always wanted to paint what I’ve wanted to paint. And by doing so, I’ve learned to do what I do.

Freedom – mine and yours – is my priority. Fortunately, most of us live lives that allow us to choose it. But sometimes, we hear the voices of others – often including the words “should” or “shouldn’t” in our heads. And, as we are starting out, we may be inclined to have these voices lead us off our own path. I’m here to remind you that you are not a slave to any of it. Anything that comes your way as you learn to paint – instruction (including from me!), other’s processes, other’s art – is all there to serve you and your process. You and only you hold the vision of your art. You get to decide how it comes to be.

Here’s to your freedom!

Love,

Cara

February 2, 2016 – Fifty shades of love

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Nearly every Sunday, my folks host a dinner for us – their four kids and our families. My dad plans and cooks – with help from us. And lately, my mom has been making homemade bread and rolls – there’s hardly a better smell, than that of yeast bread baking in the oven. We aren’t all there every single Sunday, but it’s usually a table of at least 10 of us. My family is one of the greatest blessings of this life of mine. We all not only get along, but we genuinely like each other, and the discussion at the Sunday table is often lively and engaged – we are an interested and curious bunch. This past Sunday, my brother Mike and I got on the subject of the different words the Greeks have for “love.” We couldn’t think of all of the three we thought there were, so out came an electronic device to ask Google. The Wikipedia page for the Greek words for love, includes not just three, but four. They are:

Agape – (pronounced ah-gop-ay, nothing to do with having one’s jaw hanging down, as Matt joked!) which is love for everyone, love of God for us and us for God. Its Latin equivalent is caritas, from which we get charity – which could also be metta, loving kindness in Buddhism.

Eros – often seen as passionate, sexual love, it also has meanings that extend to the appreciation of beauty within another person, and even to just an appreciation of beauty itself – as well as an appreciation of truth. Eros is the love of lovers and philosophers.

Philia – means affectionate regard or friendship – usually between equals. It’s the root for the name of the city Philadelphia, and in words like “Francophile” and “bibliophile.” This love includes loyalty to friends, family and community, and involves familiarity.

Storge – the love and empathy felt and expressed in families, especially between parents and children – I don’t have kids, but I can imagine how strong that love is, that it would certainly warrant a word of its own. I do have parents and I know that love. All I need to do to feel the depth of it, is to imagine what life will be like when they are no longer here.

The Wikipedia article says there are at least these four words. I found other pages online that include six Greek words for love – and not the same six. Who knows how many there could be? A chat with my brother and a hunt around the web, has me looking at all the ways we love. Here are more I’m seeing:

The love we share with our pets. The pet food and supply industry isn’t in the billions for nothing. Our pets meet our hearts in a way that other beings just somehow don’t. We love our Bo-doggy something crazy, and though it often takes the form of wanting food or play, I know he loves us back. Around here, our days start with a lick-bath all over our faces and necks. We have a kissy dog!

The love we have for our planet and also that it has for us. It’s evident to see the love we have for the earth – it fuels an enormous environmental movement, but I think our Mother Earth loves us too. Her electromagnetic field protects our atmosphere, from being swept away by solar winds and gravity hugs us close to her, so that we don’t float away. This sounds just like what mothers and fathers do. Add to this the intricate, complex web of life-giving, life-supporting elements that is our Earth. She must have a vast love for her creatures.

There is the love that we have for ourselves – when it comes from higher consciousness – it is what has us know we belong, and are a unique, and precious expression of the “big love” that is all of life. Without it we can’t express love – and in fact it has us be destructive. It can be really hard at times to love ourselves, and I’ve taken on growing it as a practice. I had a really uncomfortable moment last weekend, at the workshop I went to. No one else really knew it at the time, but I felt an icky wave of self-doubt and regret at something I shared publicly, and how it was responded to. I am really thankful to be at this place in my life, that led me to the reaction I had. I reminded myself not to take the response personally, and I appreciated the experience as an opportunity to love myself – all of myself – even in that moment. How do we know we really love ourselves, if we don’t know we can love ourselves in times like these!?

Then there is the love that we can have for our creations. Loving our art can be just as hard as loving ourselves. Our hyper-focused left-brain can take over the response to our work, and all we see is what’s “wrong” with it – it’s a painful place! But if we don’t have some kind of loving relationship with our creative work, it’s neither rewarding nor any fun to do. I’ve come to hold painting as a devotion, one that I come to with reverence. And I have a deep appreciation for my materials. I’m in love with good watercolor paper, and don’t get me started about my love of color!

And… there is the love that that our creations have for us! This is another gem from Liz Gilbert’s, “Big Magic.” Our art, our work, our creativity loves us back! She says: “Why would your creativity not love you? It came to you, didn’t it? It drew itself near. It worked itself into you, asking for your attention and devotion. It filled you with the desire to make and do interesting things. Creativity wanted a relationship with you.” I think it’s really useful to think of our work as an entity outside of us, that cares about our well-being. Ideas come to us as gifts, invitations to create, for us to make manifest. They want to come into form, and they come to us out of an appreciation – a love – of each of us as creators. Seeing it this way, I hold myself as an artist, as a creator in a whole other light. Plus, it certainly helps my capacity to love my creations in return!

A confession: I’ve not read any of the Fifty Shades books, so I really don’t know what I’m alluding to in the title of this post. But, like the myth that Eskimos have a whole bunch of words for snow, it follows that – as creations of love, expressers of love, givers and receivers of love, we’d need a whole bunch of them for love too – the Greeks just got us started. Rather than simply come up with words, though, I suggest we make love. Sure – in the sense that “making love” usually means – sex can be a beautiful expression of human love. But we can make love in all that we do: make art love, make food love, make business love, make politics love, make relationship love, make healing love. When we do, fifty shades just barely scratches the surface.

With my love,

Cara

January 26, 2016 – Awareness and attention are EVERYTHING!

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Somewhere along the way – a really, really long time ago – an idea got ahold of me that the most important thing, what makes us us, is what we pay attention to and how we pay attention. I have no idea how this idea came to me – maybe it was a spontaneous insight that was bestowed upon me, like passing Go and collecting $200 on my way around the board. But it’s stuck with me. And lately it’s really alive in me. I’m hearing from others and trying it on, and am seeing that it’s so true! I know a woman Nancy, who pays attention to birds. She sees them wherever she goes, she learns about them, so she has enormous knowledge about them – she knows about their migrations and habitats. And it is through her, that I’ve been converted so that I only buy recycled paper products, in order to help save the virgin Boreal forests in Canada, that are lumbered for fluffy toilet paper. Her attention to birds has changed me.

I’m continuing to read through parts of “The Master and His Emissary” – the book by Iain McGilchrist, that I shared with you last week. In describing what he’s discovered about the left and right brain, he talks a lot about attention. He says: “The kind of attention we pay actually alters the world: we are, literally, partners in creation. This means we have a grave responsibility, a word that captures the reciprocal nature of the dialogue we have with whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves.” So, based on this, how we pay attention – how we attend to everything apart from us, creates our relationships with all of it, which then creates our reality. He uses the example of a mountain: to a navigator it’s a landmark, a source of wealth to a prospector, a many-textured form to a painter, a dwelling place of the gods for another. He says there is no way to distinguish from these points of view, what the “real” mountain is. I find this fascinating but also really key, if we want to be intentional about not only our own lives – but the future of life on earth.

I just spent the weekend – along with 195 others – with Alison Armstrong – one of my teachers. We explored the questions that we consciously – and more often unconsciously – “live in” and the impact they have on us. In looking at it, I see the questions we live in determine the quality of our lives, because they govern our attention. If – as I realized I do sometimes – I am living through the filter the question of: “what if I don’t know enough, have enough experience, have what it takes?”, then I pay attention to all the things, for example, how many more years other art teachers have been teaching – I compare myself to them and I don’t measure up. This can stop me from moving forward on my ideas and inspirations. But I also realized that I don’t just live in that question – I also have come to live in the same question shifted: “what if risking not knowing enough, is exactly what is required and what will give me the knowledge and experience I fear I don’t have?”

Alison had a guest, Bill Harris, an author and teacher on the brain, who talked with us about the role awareness plays in our lives. Without it, we have no choice in how we feel, think or act. We operate on autopilot. Awareness is the observer that pays attention to us as we do what we do. If there is something that isn’t producing our desired results, with awareness, we can choose to do things differently in the future. Without awareness, we have no such choice. We are stuck.

And of course awareness and attention are critical in our painting lives. Maria a new retiree, who has just taken up painting and is really throwing herself at it, came in one day to report that she’s seeing differently. She is noticing things she hasn’t before – like, while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, the interesting view of the far tower through one of the openings in the tower close to her. I hear others report similarly – in the middle of their days – wondering how to paint clouds or trees, or whatever is in front of them. I find myself noticing light and how it casts itself on things in the world – all the time. We start painting and our attention shifts to the ways our visual world is calling out for us to paint it.

I realize that mostly what people want, when they are drawn to paint in one of my groups, are painting skills. They want to know how to paint – a water drop, a fuzzy background. I’m really happy to share all I know about painting watercolor, in order to help free the art that is within whoever is in front of me. And what I’m really, more deeply, called to do is to help grow your awareness – your capacity to see. I want for you to be able to discern – color, shape, shade in your subjects – the what you are painting, as well as to pay attention to what happens with a certain amount of water, paint, size of brush – the how you are painting.

What I was reminded of this weekend, is that the more we focus our attention on things, become aware of things and practice things, we actually change the physical structure of our brains. We grow our capacities. And by becoming more aware of our surroundings, by paying closer attention, we shift our experience of the world. When our experience shifts, everything changes.

I’m often amazed by the incredible specialization that people have in our world. The internet has revealed this – and even fostered it. You can find out about anything on Wikipedia – all because there are people who pay attention to these things – giving the rest of us the gift to grow our awareness of them. I’m so glad that all these bases are covered, so that I can do my part – attending to the transformation that we undergo, as we bring forth the art that is in us. We make our art and this changes us, and it changes the world.

With my love,

Cara

January 19, 2016 – Left and right brain – not what we thought!

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There are a couple of themes that have taken ahold of this life of mine – one of them is a seemingly insatiable curiosity, about how we work as humans, why we do what we do, how our consciousness grows and changes, and leads to the evolution of our species. And the other is the dance between the masculine and feminine – not necessarily male and female. Rather than physical biology, I mean energies and modes – yin and yang, passive and active, receptor and provider – elements that we all embody and live out to varying degrees.

These two elements have come together recently in some new discoveries. My Sister Mary (my spiritual-director, not my sibling) pointed me to Iain McGilchrist – a psychiatrist and author who wrote a book called, “The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” I’ve started reading it and it’s interesting but dense, and I’m not making much headway. So I’ve found other resources – including a TED talk and a much shorter e-book, “The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning” (which is downloadable for only $.99) that gave an idea of what he’s discovered and the conclusions he’s made. It’s completely fascinating to me, and it’s something that I think is useful to our lives and art-making.

In it, I’ve learned that how we think of the left and right brain, means something completely different than we thought. Common thinking of the left and right brain, have been along these lines: the left brain is rational, logical, language and math-oriented and deals in symbols, while the right brain is spatial, emotional, and creative and sees the world in shapes and curves and lines – rather as “things.” It’s been known in the scientific community for a while, that this is false. We use both halves of our brains for language, for visuospatial imagery, emotion and reason. Yet, there is a very distinct difference in our two hemispheres, both physically and how they operate, as is revealed in stroke patients who lose parts of their brain function.

What he reveals is this. It’s not so much what the two halves of our brains do, it’s how they do it that is the big differentiator. Here’s how:

Looking at this list, I can imagine how some of us may have a preference for the right brain. It goes without saying, though, that we need both in order to function. So that we are not on overwhelm, we have to be able to draw upon what we know and understand already. I cannot imagine a life where everything was new all the time! I remember when I was a teenager, learning to drive a manual transmission car. It took all my attention, to manage the timing of releasing the clutch as I pressed the accelerator, in order to not have the car lurch or have the engine die.

The way I interpret what he says, this was an engagement of my right brain. But then once I became skilled, how to do this became second nature, and I didn’t have to think about it. My intense focus is no longer required every time I get behind the wheel – but rather my left brain guides my driving based on what I already know. Please note, though, I could be entirely wrong here. What he says may not apply to motor skills (that is mine, not the cars!). It’s just that this was a really powerful memory of learning something new and – to me – it seems relevant!

It’s also how it goes when we learn to paint – we rely upon our left brains. There is knowledge – about paints and pigments, about paper and brushes – and our experiences of working with them, that we use to do the work of making our art. If every time we sat to paint, we were enthralled with everything, as if it were the first time we used it, we’d never progress in our skill and be able to evolve our capacity to express what is inside us – in the form of paintings.

I also think that we use our left brains, when we evaluate our work as we go. When I’m in the process of painting something that doesn’t quite “live” like I want it to, I use my powers of evaluation and comparison, to determine what information is there for me in the photograph I’m working from, that differs from what I’ve painted. Is it darker or a different shape, what might have I left out? I also think that it’s our left brain that causes us a lot of heartache, in its criticism of what we’re painting – especially as it is in progress. The left brain can tend to fixate on little parts of the painting, that aren’t “right” in its estimation. Just recalling the experience of that kind of thinking, and I feel heavy inside.

But it’s our right brains that hold the big picture in our work. This is where we respond to a composition, where we sense the spark of inspiration – that “I want to paint this,” where we find things interesting. It’s the where we find the motivation to do our work and the meaning in it. It’s also our right brains that have us really see what’s there – which is consistent with what I’d previously though was domain of the right brain.

I take a photo of everyone’s painting, at the end of each painting session. They often – especially at the beginning of a painting – tell me there’s nothing to take a picture of. But I insist, as the germ of their genius is already there, and it becomes really useful and interesting, once the painting is done. As well, it’s fleeting – as soon as more is painted, that particular state is no more. When the paintings are further along, they are often surprisingly pleased when they see their work in my phone. Since the right brain sees the big picture, when we are in progress with our work, it takes distance to catch the glimmers of what’s coming to be. The image in the phone provides this distance. We can’t make the critical judgements, so we can see the painting more as everyone else does – and we see that it’s not that bad!

I just had a conversation with my coach Lissa, who was bowled over by my latest painting – Firelight. Her reaction was powerful, emotional, and it touched her so deeply, it brought her to tears. This was after I just wrote two weeks ago that, “it’s not my most inspired work, but I think it’s ok.” She clearly saw this painting in a right-hemisphere way, while I was/am still stuck seeing it in my comparing left-brain. I am grateful that in time – though sometimes it takes months – I do develop the capacity to see the spirit in my artwork as others do – who were not in the nitty-gritties of painting it.

We live in a world that is dominated by our left brain sensibilities: rules, facts, being “certain” about things. Iain McGilchrist makes a strong case, for the need to bring our right brains into our lives more – he even intimates, that our survival may depend upon it. We need to grow our capacities to see the inter-relatedness of everything, to have our intuition guide our decisions, to seek meaning in life. He says this: “the left hemisphere’s values are those of utility and pleasure. But meaning cannot come from this linear project any more than happiness can be pursued. Happiness and fulfillment have to be the by-products of something else, of looking elsewhere.” We can practice this in our creative endeavors. This says to me, that we have to make our work largely with one part of our capacities, but then we need to see it, receive it, find its true value and meaning with the other.

I’d love to know what you think.

With my love,

Cara

January 12, 2016 – Showing up

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Last night while I was painting, I was having a conversation with my dear friend, Vicki. At one point, she said “You show up. You show up for your family, for your friends, for your students, you show up in your life.” I love Vicki and our friendship. She affirms me in a very particular way, that provides such support to me. After she said this, we had a whole conversation about “showing up.” It then occurred to me, that I could write about “showing up” this morning. I continue to be amazed by how ideas for these posts come to me. There’s something about having made the commitment to write every week, that puts the sources of inspiration on notice – that by first thing Tuesday morning, I’ll be needing some!

Vicki is right, I do show up. I was born to a family of people who all really show up. We show up for each other, for our work, for the people in our lives. It’s what we do. Vicki and I wondered what has us show up – what causes our engagement. Environment seems to play a part – either we were raised in a family that shows up, or we show up as a response to having been raised in a family that didn’t. What occurs to me this morning, is that showing up is related to being connected. We show up for who and what we feel connected to. And – in order to show up, we have to have a sense of our own value – somewhere along the way we got that who we are matters, what we bring matters, and our making a contribution matters. All of this energizes us to show up in life.

My writing this morning was interrupted by my brother-in-law, Paul. He’s a plumber and he came over to fix the leaky flapper in the upstairs toilet. So, I asked him what “showing up” means to him and why he shows up. He told me: I don’t have to show up. I’m an independent person, and have the freedom to show up or not show up. But I choose to show up because it increases my humanity. It’s a vitamin. Showing up is important – there’s a power in showing up. If I don’t show up, my humanity is eroded.

I think he’s speaking to that connection.

I have so many people in my life who show up for me – my husband, my mom, my friends, the artists in my groups. All of you who come to shows to see me and my work, show up for me. Being on the receiving end of showing up is both wonderful and challenging. It’s wonderful to be so supported, and it’s hard sometimes to receive all that comes my way – all the ways in which I’m contributed to. It takes a sense of our own value, to fully be on the receiving end of showing up too.

If you look for it, the pull to show up to in life is everywhere. Our help is needed in all kinds of ways. Events lure for our attention. People invite us to be with them. And we can’t show up for everything. Our lives offer us a limited amount of time, energy and attention. Showing up too much for our work or causes in the world, can mean we don’t show up enough for our families or our bodies – or to listen to the whispers of our souls. It’s a dance, a balance. Showing up, as Paul said, is choosing.

This got me wondering what it really means to show up. The definitions I found online though didn’t seem complete. They center around making an appearance, being present, materializing. This is part of it, but it misses a whole lot. There’s also a being quality to showing up, as in being present, focusing, paying attention – as well it also means taking action, supporting, pitching in.

Woody Allen is famously quoted has saying, that “eighty percent of life is showing up.” On his Wikiquote page, there is a more extensive quote which expands upon this, talking about the difference between wanting to write a novel or screenplay, and actually writing one. Yes, we also can show up – or not – for our creative work. This means making an appearance at the keyboard, or in the studio, present, focusing our attention – and taking action. Showing up for my painting requires me to sit down and paint!

Yesterday morning our group show came down – the Incredible Edibles show at the Marin Civic Center. There was lots of art to pack into the truck, and deliver to Larkspur and to my house. There were calendar orders to pack and get to the post office. Then I had my regular Monday admin work to do – this meant I didn’t get home until 7:30, and by the time I had a bite to eat and cleaned up, it was almost 8:30. I really, really wanted to cozy up on the couch, and watch Sunday’s Downton Abbey episode. (We were out Sunday night, so I missed it.) Because of how the day went, I hadn’t painted yet, so instead – because of my commitment to paint every day this year – I showed up and painted while I talked to Vicki. I made this commitment, because I’m connected to the creative source and expressing it through my art. Connection and commitment leads to showing up.

In the Strenthsfinder world, my number one strength is “Connection.” Connection is the filter through which I see all of life. It may be because of this, that for me “showing up” is directly related to connection. Having started this conversation with Vicki, and continued it with Paul while exploring it here with you, has me wanting to look for the ways in which we show up for each other – for life. I imagine I will see the connectedness that is everywhere. Try it on. See if this way of looking at it works for you too.

They say that ministers have only one sermon, and each Sunday they offer a slightly different version, another perspective on the same message. After 14 months of weekly posts, I’m starting to see the same. There is a thread that winds through many of my posts. The way in, the starting place may be different, but there is something about the connection that is there amidst the dual nature of our incarnate world, that is what I want to share in this life of mine. Today, I see that showing up is a way that this connection is made real.

With my love and gratitude for our connection,

Cara

January 5, 2016 – The story of a painting – and a video!

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Over the weekend I finished a painting, I started two and a half years ago. The finished painting is so far from what I’d imagined and what the original photograph inspired, so I thought I’d share its progress with you. I had no conception of this as the finished painting, nor how much time it would take.

I took the original photograph in May of 2012, just after I’d left working at Light Rain and had re-joined my mom part time, to help promote her real estate business. I was out “on tour” with Mom and Gary, looking at houses for sale. I saw these sunlit roses in the backyard of a gorgeous house in Kent Woodlands. I had my iPhone handy and took this picture. It sat in my phone for a while and every time I saw it, it said, “paint me” or it said “paint me?” There was so much red and I’m just not a red person – but I loved the light!

In preparing for a trip to Kauai, I drew it on a full sheet of Arches 300lb cold pressed. I started it there, while on vacation in April of 2013. The background was nearly black in the photograph, so I just made up something with greens and a few spots of cobalt blue, because I just can’t help myself! Not sure if the background was done, – I can always go back – I moved on to the bud in the lower left, then the start of the flower. I remember sitting there on the covered front porch, working on these “hot” colors in the soft tropical breezes and it just didn’t feel right.

So, I picked up a plumeria painting I had started sometime earlier, and worked on it the rest of the vacation. I named this one “Melia,” Hawaiian for “plumeria” – which was just what I was in the mood to paint. I also had “Chocolat”- also in progress – with me on that trip and painting rich browns wasn’t working either! Time and place matters to my painting process.

So there it sat, among the paper collection in my studio, for a couple years. At the start of this year, I attempted to see why I wasn’t interested in finishing it, by doing a color composition. Those of you who’ve taken my two-day color class know what this is. It’s a way to abstract color from an image, to see how the combination of colors play with each other. It’s amazing how these compositions can be instructive. I find myself either loving them, or… not. I didn’t love this one. I didn’t even have enough in me to finish the composition! So there’s something not right in the color for me. Hmmm.

I thought about my painting “Awakening”, with the combination of pink, orange and yellow. This gave me the idea to play with the colors of the image in Photoshop – shifting away from so much red – to both pink and yellow-orange. Better!

Ok, so I started in with the bud at the top and some of the orange part of the left rose. This was in February, not quite a year ago.

Other paintings then crowded it out for my attention. I had Eternal (my clock painting) to paint and something for Open Studios… There it sat again until just after I finished the grapes called “Juicyfruit” this fall. Without a lot of energy in me, I thought it might be nice to get it done by the end of the year.

In late November, I got a call from someone who had seen “Lustina”, at the Marin County Fair this past summer. He wanted to buy it for his wife for Christmas! Holy cow! Pretty fun, except, she – “Lustina” – already has her home – she was on loan from Pam, for the show at the fair. I emailed him the image and current status of this one. He was interested, but said his wife liked all the green in Lustina, and he thought that there wouldn’t be enough green in this one to please her. I thought “Why not? Why don’t I do something else with this background?” I dove in with a big soft scrubber, and stripped away as much as I could of that dark background I’d painted in. The tricky and painstaking part, was all the edges along the tops of the roses. I really wanted to keep them clean and white, and not mess up all the parts I’d already painted!

I found another image with some sunlit rose leaves taken on our side yard, along with a few other images with good fuzzy backgrounds, and collaged them all together in Photoshop. I am so incredibly grateful to Steve Kimball and my time at Light Rain, to have given me the ability to work with images like I do. It’s become a major part of my creative process.

I projected this new collaged image in, to draw the leaves in the upper right. Painting then, was a problem. The previous background had stained the paper – there was no white. I had to use opaque paint to get the whites in. I used Acquacover, mixing it with yellow, yellow-green and turquoise to get the sense of light. I’d recently read about gouache and learned something. It’s not meant to be mixed with water like watercolor is. I had played around a bit with gouache in the past, and found it not all that different from watercolor – because I’d been mixing it with water! I painted it straight and this did the trick! I also learned that I’m such a sucker for the way watercolor paint, with the bright white of the paper shining through, it gives a sense of luminosity. I’m not switching to gouache anytime soon!

I also needed some opaque paint, to give the rest of the background some sense of light.

The new background in, I returned to the roses.

I heard from the guy who was interested in this for his wife, that he was instead, interested in a piece from someone else they saw at the fair last summer. It happened to be Karen, who painted with us for a while at the beginning of the year. I knew exactly the painting he was talking about – I’d watched her paint it! So, I put him them in touch with each other. Karen sold her first piece, they got a beautiful painting for Christmas and I didn’t have to then rush to get this one done in time. All is just as it should be. And without having had the discussions with him, I’d not have re-visited the background. I really was liking it – so much better!

Then Christmas came, and I was pulled away from my studio. I picked it back up on the last day of the year, and got it done by the end of the weekend.

It’s not my most inspired work. But I think it’s really ok. It is so far from where it started. And the transformation it took, wasn’t anything that I could have planned. It took the time it took – and the inputs from both inside me and the world outside me. It’s a confirmation that paintings do have lives of their own – and we as artists are really along for the ride.

Here’s a color composition I did just this morning, based on the new image. So much more pleasing to me!

And as we all start a new year, it leaves me with great expectancy, for the art that will come through me this year – and through all those I have the privilege to paint with every week. It’s fun to have no idea what that will be!

With my love and appreciation for your companionship on the journey –

Cara