Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

This poem by Hopkins is one of my favorites with its descriptions of the natural world with the closing remark to praise G*D for all things created. Love it! 

"Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore. - Lord Byron
Happy Monday Y'all! 

"Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was."  -Jackson Pollock
I do not seek to be confrontational in the manner of Pollock. In fact, it would seem that my abstracts seek to blend in, at the moment. That may be every bit as subversive. Certainly things to think about. Happy Thursday Y'all! 

"I often paint tranquility. If you stop thinking and rest, then a little happiness comes into your mind. At perfect rest you are comfortable." -Agnes Martin
22"x30" Watercolor on Rives BFK 
Happy Wednesday Y'all! 

White flowers are certainly a favorite of mine. My post-bac roommate, the wonderful Lydia Makepeace, remembers that even 10 years ago my preference was always for white flowers. I think it is because of their nuance. You can observe their form & delicacy clearly without the assault of riotous pink or purple. That being said my computer wallpaper is this gem by Molly Jacques Illustration. I will leave you with this quote from Abraham Lincoln, "All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle & plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought & mind." Happy Tuesday Y'all! 

The Amen of nature is always a flower.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Here are photos & a little bonus video of some of the flowers I observed over the past month. I always marvel at the diversity of blooms & colors, & think this batch runs the whole gamut. Happy Thursday Y'all! 

"You gave me a forever within the numbered days." -John Green 
Yesterday I painted this painting & watched this movie. The quote above struck me as particularly poignant in a series of excellent takeaways from the movie. You should take a box of tissues with you to the movie, but it is worth seeing. It will make you think, if you are open to metaphor & big questions that have no answers. 
As it relates to my work: I try to paint in such a way that little universes/infinites are contained within the page. To bring attention to the little details, the overlooked moments, because if attention is paid to those things than time infinitely expands. Happy Wednesday Y'all! 

Occasionally I want to crop one of these paintings, because I feel that one section is more successful than another. And while it might be more alluring & interesting there is always something that stops me from cropping the image. Perhaps it is because there is something more subtle, but still informative in the "boring" section. Things are still transpiring to be captivating & I must be patient with those quieter sections of the painting. I do the cropping digitally, but it would be easy, perhaps easier to do it with the tangible object too, just a tear of the paper. While the overall image might not receive that adulation of others, & some might straight up call it a flop, "patient looking is rewarded."*    Happy Monday Y'all!
*A college professor, Bruce Herman, wrote this in the gallery book for my senior thesis & the phrase stuck in my head.
** These thoughts are directly influenced by things I saw transpire over the weekend i.e. be kind to your fellow travellers. 

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.      - Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935 
I am not suggesting, by pairing this painting with the Twain quote, that my work is radical or new, in any way, but I have been thinking about what behaviour, or ideas, are considered extreme, which are blaise, & what does it mean to be a radical? Happy Thursday Y'all!