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  LOVE DOES THAT All day long a little burro labours, sometimes with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries about things that bother only burros. And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting  than physical labor. Once in a while a kind monk comes to her stable and brings a pear, but more than that, he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears and for a few seconds the burro is free and even seems to laugh, because love does that. Love frees. Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1328) Today I spoke to my Cousin, who has taken on the work of caregiving for my 98 year old Aunt and my 101 year old Uncle. Aunt has been taken off of medical supports to prolong life and put on 'comfort care' as her body cannot survive the pneumonia she contracted after hip surgery from a fall.  Although we had not talked for years, our conversation picked up where it left off, insightful, empathetic, spiritual, and extremely funny.  I am remembering the winter that my Cousin g...

  The work I do at my art desk speaks an allegorical language. It speaks to me as I am in the midst of collecting and then working on drawing the image. It speaks to me after I step away from the image. It speaks to others in its various stages of completion. It speaks a visual language. The subject of the image. The quality and organization of the pencil lines. The comportment and composure of the composition. The size of the work, the scale of the image. The relationship between figure and ground. The relationship between light and darkened areas.  It speaks in a language in constant dynamic formation between centrifugal forces that seek to keep things apart and centripetal forces that strive to make things cohere (Bachtin et al., 1981). It speaks in a language that is fragile, with meaning emergent and declining in relation to our individual reading and understanding, but also the context within which we encounter the language.  I may not necessarily have the words to ...

  One of the most important things I learned during my graduate studies at UBC was how we are always in relationships. We do not exist without relationships. Our lives depend on our relationship to nature. Our lives depend on our relationships to each other and to other living things. The quality of our lives can be understood by the quality of our relationships. We have a great deal of influence on the kinds of relationships we form, we foster, we endorse and we live by.  I find it comforting to know that I can create the world I want to live in through the relationships I develop - with myself, my family, my neighbourhood, my community, my professional and non-professional affiliations, etc.  We are entering a time of greater challenge for our elders, our aging selves, and our young ones coming up in the world. I believe we will prevail, we will solve, and we will become a better adapted species through our intention to support each other to achieve our best versions of...

  It can happen at any age. We need to make a change. The pressure of our current situation reaches a tipping point, where the uncertainty of change becomes more palatable than the certainty of remaining stuck, still, unmoving. Change entails movement. Movement from certainty puts us into a state of uncertainty. Our need to initiate change can happen at any point in our lifespan, from pre-verbal to frail elder. In order to activate change to improve our current circumstances or conditions, we need to activate our internal capacity and capability to implement and sustain change. Our internal capacity and capability to identify issues, define needs, adopt new perspectives, practice new behaviours and implement new boundaries requires inputs from outside our field of perception. We cannot change what we do not understand, we cannot put into words, and we cannot discuss with supportive people to help us find a new way of being in our current situation. We benefit from hearing others' e...

  New year crow contemplates the new year ahead. Thinking about what is the situation, what are the circumstances, what are the pressures that are coming to bear on what is known but uncomfortable, and what is unknown, and also uncomfortable.  We don't always know what is our next right step. That is when we need to struggle to find the words.  Where we are.  Where we want to be.  How we are going to get there.

  I have managed to get some time to myself after family caregiving during the holiday season that left me frayed and exhausted. I was recently reminded of the writings of Ellen Dissanayake, an American author and scholar who focusses on "the anthropological exploration of art and culture". She uses an behavioural approach to understand our continuing, pervasive human activity of art making. She is concerned with the importance of artistic activity as behaviour rather than a pre-occupation with perfectionistic finished works. She talks about how the results of art making, what she calls 'artification', is the treatment we give to ordinary objects, surroundings, etc. that imbues them with extra-ordinary meaning. Last winter I spent time with a flock of chickens and collected reference photographs for future drawings. There was something evocative about the spirit, the movements, and the presence of the chickens that fascinated me. These digital reference photographs yi...

  I sit down to work on a drawing. I have carved a bit of time out of the day after Mom goes to bed. I have no idea how the drawing is going to turn out. I turn off my brain. I turn off thinking about what it is I am doing. I turn off how I think it should go.  I listen for guidance from my eyes, my hands, my fingers holding the graphite, pencil crayon or brush. I observe what happens and sometimes laugh to myself with surprise at the humour of my subconscious making itself known in the marks it leaves on the page. Often I don't have the time, patience or energy to finish a drawing in one sitting. It will get through the first gesture and then wait on the display board for me to get back to it. Many times I have fallen in love with that first effort and I know the drawing isn't finished but I also can't bring myself to put the next layer over those first, simple, vulnerable lines. Finally I get tired of knowing that it needs more work and I take it down for the next layer. ...

  I have started the process of turning my drawings and paintings into original art cards for gifting and re-gifting. It is very different to see my drawings in their new package. One of my problems with this idea is that I fall in love with my drawings and it is very difficult to sell them or even give them away.  However, needs must.  I still have to set up the information sheet and make sure there is an email included in the package for story telling. It could be a Facebook page but I would rather set up a google account and provide a dedicated email, blog and google site for the project. Come to think of it, I could make a google site page for each card that gets sold, and then the stories of that card being given and received would show up on that specific page. What an interesting history that would tell! It is so important that we write down our stories and share them. Otherwise, the young ones will not know what our lives were, how we organized ourselves, how we o...

  The images I use for drawing are all collected with my phone camera. The crows are picked up on our dog walks through the neighbourhood, caught in a moment of being close enough but usually getting ready or actively moving to put more distance between us. The amount of detail I am able to capture depends on the angle of the sun in relation to the position of the crow. Nine times out of ten I don't have enough detail to elaborate feather edges but there is always enough character. Often I don't know what the crow is telling me until I start to work on the drawing and discover what comes through the lines. These drawings are experiments on a canvas coloured ground that I tinted years ago and then never made a picture. I transferred the technique I have been developing on paper to the canvas. I am enjoying the results so far.  This is work in progress. There will be at least two or three more layers to apply and see what happens.

  I'm prototyping the card sizes to set up production to turn original works of art into one-of-a-kind cards that can be gifted and re-gifted into perpetuity. At present I have three different sizes to work with: 1. Drawings (w/ paint) on small cards - 4.25 x 5.5 cards w/ envelopes Christmas Crow 2023 is an example of this type of card. Experimenting with classic Italian renaissance drawing techniques on coloured grounds. These cards are shipped in the 6 x 10 mailer for re-gifting. They have a removable message panel on the inside. 2. Drawings w/ paint on different media cut to fit a 6 x 10 or 8.5 x 11 in mailer envelope This is a picture of Neighbour Cat on card stock. This was a bigger drawing with paint on duralar cropped to fit the 6 x 10 mailer. The card opens up to the message panel, which is removable so the card can be re-gifted. The picture at the top of this post is another view of Neighbour Cat cropped to fit a single card panel that will be shipped in an 8.5 x 11 mailer...

  Crow 2023 12 22 - 4" x 6" graphite, pencil crayon - in progress Instruction Sheet DRAFT Welcome to the neighbourhood of giving and receiving original art cards! This is a neighbourhood of sharing original works of art to commemorate personal milestones, seasonal celebrations, and showing appreciation for the work we do to build strength in our families and communities. This card has been purchased by a benefactor who is helping to build and strengthen our connections and relationships through original art cards. Each card package includes a re-usable mailer, extra inserts and mailing labels and postage to re-send / re-gift the card 5 times.