Story Painting page 2

These stories and bits of inspiration are from years living in different places across the US: Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Washington and Pennsylvania.  While these stories are true, the images are composites, made up from scraps of everyday life embedded in encaustic.  Some stories are long narratives and some are just fleeting bits of inspiration.  They're each an extraordinary moment in an ordinary life that shifts a perspective, fixes a dream, or strengthens a purpose.  And sometimes they just make me laugh.
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10 Lies I Was Told As a Child:
1. You can be anything you want to be when you grow up. (So now I’m an Irish gypsy?)
2. You are so talented. (teachers disagreed)
3. It’ll be fine. (who even knows what fine is anyway)
4. Clowns are so funny. (terrifying)
5. Santa is watching. (creepy, really creepy)
6. Maybe… (just a stall tactic for ‘no’)
7. Girls don’t climb trees. (umm…)
8. Your bangs will grow out before anyone notices.  (still a problem)
9. If you tell me the truth I won’t get mad.  (cue danger music)
10. You’ll understand when you’re older.  (the older I get the more I know that I really don’t know anything)
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Not From Around Here
I was born of the Bering Sea coast far from where I now live.  My family was living in the village in which my parents had been married.  It was home, but it wasn't mine.  Since then I have lived in many different places, always aware that there were others that had been living there for a long time and the place wasn't men to claim.  At some point I just have to look around, respect what isn't mine, and accept being an alien in a foreign land.  
​This piece contains scraps from an ordinary life: old photos, music scores, candy wrappers, teabags, monopoly money, wrapping paper, handmade papers.
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A Flying Leap
It was the very worst and very best flying I’ve ever done.  When a wild fire swept across the tundra near the village one of the high school students said he would spend the afternoon flying over the tundra to scout the fire’s path.  Sure, I’d go along!  We walked to the landing strip, basically a long, flat gravel area edged by a few parked planes.  We walked past a Cesna, a sturdy Beechcraft, a couple of nice Piper Cubs until he stopped at what he insisted was a sound flying craft.  It was actually a cobbled together wreck.  It had no instruments of course, and rivets or duct tape patched every mismatched part of the body and wing.  The fuel gauge was a pencil stuck into a cork which bobbed through a hole in the open gas tank (front and center on the plane’s nose as you looked out of the cock pit).  This plane was nothing but a jumble of derelict parts.
So, since I was curiously stupid I took a leap of faith.  In this case, an actual flying leap was the only way to get into the rickety, mangled cockpit. The plane rumbled and rattled down the gravel path and with a great deal of rib-shaking agitation, took off.  With no buffers between the workings of the plane and the two makeshift seats, the noise forced sign language over speaking.  I could hear the cables stretching and creaking between my feet as they moved the wing flaps.  I could smell the grease, and strangely, a strong scent of tundra plants and dirt.  What could that mean?

It took some time before I felt comfortable enough to look over the tundra below.  We found the path of the fire and tracked it for a while.  Along the river we could see which fish camps had burned and which were safe, making notes as we searched.

After briefly showing me how to work the hand and foot controls he said. “Okay, your turn.”  Welp, what else was there to do - I took the controls and flew that plane.  It was exhilarating.  I admit it - I was completely  buzzed by the power.  

Eventually we had to land, the bobbing pencil had disappeared into the bottom of the gas tank.  I handed back the controls, I knew my limits.  On descent to land, I realized that at the end of the runway was the cemetery.  hmmm 
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Red Geraniums
Every fall my Grandmother would bring her red geraniums inside, repot them and set them in her living room windows.  She planned to set them out again the next summer.  Sitting in the windows these red blooms were bright spot of hope in the face of cold, dark New England winters.  Time to bring in the geraniums!
This series is a work in progress.  Check back for more.

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​"Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is."  Mason Cooley

When we look at a particular work of northwest coast art and see the shape of it, we are only looking at its after-ife.  Its real life is the movement by which it got to be that shape.  Bill Reid, Haida carver

"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing."
Mark Rothko, artist