"Fügelfjell i mitnattsol" (Birdcliffs in midnight sun) by Frithjof Tidemand Johannessen

The laughs of the seagulls invade my imagination. I run in circles asking myself what it is that I want from them, myself, or anyone else. I find no answers ever, but I keep asking these questions. Keep returning to the same places over and over again as if it is my destiny. As if I have no control over how my vacation time is spent. Let me lay here overlooking the restless waters; rest a while, alone, surrounded by such painfully beautiful geometry. I need a breather, just for bit, before the next lap around the track that has been set begins.

Monotype: "Eulabee"

Monotype (water-based inks on Rives BFK)
5" x 7" (image) 6.5" x 10" (paper)

I recently taught an intro to monotypes workshop to a group of teenagers, and so to prepare I did a bunch of monotypes in my studio. It had been years since I made a monotype, and I was never that into it. I made six pretty awful images before I created this lovely little sketch of my younger daughter.

I should do more of these. A lot more.


I should. 

"She Never Liked Dresses" by Belinda Del Pesco

Image reposted with the permission of the artist. Learn more about Belinda Del Pesco and her artwork at her website here.

...and it was just as well since she preferred to not be leered at like a piece of steak to be gnawed on. This particular dress wasn't so bad. With its collar and belt, it wore a bit more like a shirt and loose slacks, and worked well with her simple, easy-to-care-for haircut. Not to say she was a tomboy, for certainly she could never be mistaken for a boy. Just feminine in her own way, on her own terms. A flower over the ear, delicate hands, and a curvaceous figure, subtly emphasized by the way she walked. Never noticed by the lowest-common-denominator, but always loved for who she really was, and therefore happy in the most profound sense of the word.

"At the Piano" by Ethel Mars

The hours of practice run together in my memory and are now more like a dream. I could never say how often or deliberately I played. There is only a smattering of details left: the faintest streaks of wood-grain I perceived through the dark stain on the piano's heavy, wood frame; a wall painted the color of split pea soup; the musty smell of the living room on humid, late-spring afternoons. That room could be so dark and dull (even more so in the foggy din of memories), but when I tapped those keys with the soft pads of my fingers, all was color and light, like a strawberry blonde standing in an endless field of poppies on the sunniest of days.  

"Sisters" by Carrie Lingscheit

Image posted with the permission of the artist. Learn more about Carrie Lingscheit and her artwork on her website.

They are sisters, but they seem more like mother and child...

I'm looking up at you, but you don't look back at me. You glance downward, as if in deep thought, a subtle smile on your face. You are in another place, worlds apart from me, and I long to be there with you. Your shadow falls over my face like a birthmark. I am forever torn between who I am and who I might have been without you. 

Wolf Study

 Wolf Study 
4" x 4" (image) 6.5" x 6.5" (paper)
Reduction woodcut, watercolors and water based ink on Stonehenge paper
Edition of 4

This is a small study I did for a friend. I wanted to mess around more with printing with a combination of watercolors and water-based block printmaking ink. This is a four layer reduction, and I documented the printing of each layer as I went along (see below.) The first layer I painted watercolor onto the block, separating the background from the foreground with a thinly carved line. The second layer was a solid silver, the third a solid brown, and the final layer I did a gradation from a deep burgundy to a dark bluish-purple. I wish a little more of the wood grain came through, and overall I didn't expect the piece to come off quite this flat. I sort of wish I had pushed more deliberately in that direction and made it weirder - more bright and surreal color, less line-work and more abstract/expressive. I never know exactly how these things are going to turn out, but I always learn something. That's what I like about this medium.

"Excitement" by James Mitchell

I am on the outside looking in on this spectacle of violent revelry. Though they form a singular cluster, they are not of a single mind. Some seem to try to control the crowd, while others scream in terror, furiously shake sticks, obliviously pound back more drink, and at least one woman covers her ears and lowers her head. Spots of debris encircle the mob, emphasizing the empty void around their communal shape. They seem contained by this void, but that is a hopeful illusion. In fact they are more like a bomb about ready to burst, for at least one drunken fool is already stepping out. Where all these pieces of broken humanity will end up, only time will tell.