THE SECRET GARDEN

I had never read "The Secret Garden" and so for a little light reading, this summer I decided I would.  It might be a children's book, but I really enjoyed it.  I'm sure most people know it's about three children who find a walled in garden that has been locked up for 10 years.  It brings them great delight to bring the garden back to life.  It's a joyous book filled with beautiful descriptions and endearing children. Mary and Colin start out being frail and sickly but running in the wind and breathing the fresh air gives them health, appetite and strength.
The book, though, is really about the power of our thoughts.  As we believe so we are.  Colin believed he was a sickly child who would die at any time, but when he changed his thoughts, surrounding himself with beautiful growing things, he changed too and became well. He believed magic was in the garden and in him and so he got healthy and full of life.

I believe in magic.  As I sit here writing, a thunderstorm is shaking my windows, and my dog, Yukon, is worried and whining. Who wouldn't believe in magical forces when nature rumbles and lights up the sky? The sounds are frightening and awesome at the same time. Apparently, when lightening strikes it heats up the air to 48,000 degrees fahrenheit.  That causes the air to rapidly expand and as it does, it makes the loud sound that is thunder. And yet, I prefer to think of it as magic.
I think everyone needs a secret garden, if only an imaginary one.  A place where one can go to be alone and clear out the rubble of thoughts that accumulate all day. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "There are voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world."  Magic is there all the time but we need a sanctuary of solitude to let the magic blossom.  But then maybe magic happens all the time and we're just too busy to notice.  I could be doing housework right now, and ignore this light show of nature, but instead, I've chosen to sit at my desk to watch the storm play outside my window and give Yukon a reassuring pat now and then.

Which brings me to Yeats. He is a poet. Yeats sits inside his own walled sanctuary quietly observing what nature has put on display for him.   He sees the the dragonflies and ants, the birds and feathers, the daffodils and the dewdrops on the leaves. He watches the ivy grow and the clouds change shapes overhead. Here, he can observe, and think and write. He allows the magic to flow through his pen, creating beautiful poetry.
You can enter the Secret Garden, too, but there is a price of admittance.  You have to pay attention.

HAIDA ART

I am descended from a North Coast tribe of Native Americans called Haida.  My People come from the Canadian islands of Queen Charlotte and Prince of Wales, and my great + Grandfather was named Chief Sonnihat. I have always embraced this heritage and grew up imagining that I was an Indian Princess.  (Well, he was a chief.)  I love the art of the Haidas' and I am not the only one.  It is on display in great museums around the world including the Smithsonian. The ancient people were known for their beautiful totem poles, long houses, carved boxes, masks, silver work and basketry. Thankfully their unique kind of artwork has not died out and is being taught and produced today.
When I decided to study the design elements of Haida art, I was overwhelmed by the beauty and cunning of it. I have a reverence for its simplicity and its complexity. I have done some designs for a school and my children but when my son asked me to do a painting on a piece of wood that he could hang in his home, I admit I was daunted.  This was a couple of years ago and I am ashamed and proud to announce that I have completed it.  Happy Birthday, Adam!

Because Haida art is so complex it has taken me quite awhile to design  something I thought worthy of my culture. I thought I might walk you through the process it took me to produce this piece.
Each person in the Haida tribe has an animal spirit.  My 1st instinct was that Adam's was the Raven, a cunning trickster who stole the sun and brought fire to man. Then I argued with myself for awhile assigning him other animal spirits. Yet I always came back to Raven.

I couldn't actually do the full design until I had the piece of wood that it was going to be painted on, but I played with ideas for heads and wings and feathers and feet. Oh there were many, many, many drawings.

Finally I bought the wooden plank from a man on the island who builds beautiful natural furniture.  The piece spoke to me about a bird.  I have lived with that piece of wood for about 2 years and finally I was ready to paint it.





I started with my pencil sketches, then traced the shape of wood onto a large piece of paper accounting, I thought, for the knots. I did several rough sketches and then a formal one which I traced onto the wood. I had to redesign because I wanted the wood's beautiful skin to show.

The natural knot between his beak is the sun he is stealing.

Then I started painting.  I completed the1st layer in black, but needed to give the paint a 2nd coat. Then I did 

the red layer. 

This is the completed piece.  I hope you will notice that the positive spaces are a design as well as the negative spaces.  I like to believe that I did justice to the beautiful organic form of the wood and let it tell the story of Raven stealing the sun.

JAY

My brother, Jay, was born 49 years ago.  He has Down Syndrome. He is a funny little man who stands about 5'6" and is getting quite wrinkly.  He loves all of the members of our family and asks about them often. He enjoys drawing and painting and I think he is a good artist. He lived with our Mother until she died in 2009.  Now he lives with my sister, Lynn.

One day when I went to visit him and Mom, she gave me a piece of paper and asked me to draw a teddy bear she had.  I did a simple line drawing of it and gave it back to her.  She then showed me the drawing that Jay did of the bear.  Then Mom asked my sister do do a drawing of it, but she declined. Mom wanted to have the three of us draw the bear so she could frame them together as art from her 3 children. That was the inception for a project that Jay and I did last year.  I thought it would be cool to have an art show displaying paintings that Jay and I did using the same subject matter and medium.  We painted during the winter of 2010 and hung our show last June in a local coffee house, Bainbridge Bakers. I called the show, "As Renee Sees it, and As Jay Sees It". It was a great success. People seemed to really like the concept of the artwork and we sold several paintings as pairs. We were delighted.

 We have been painting things I see around the Island and fruits and vegetables.  As a sneak peak I'll display a couple of paintings we've done.  This is my mailbox.  I like to point out that the story is not the mailbox but the bushes behind it.

This is Jay's mailbox.  I think he did a great job capturing the flora behind and the perspective of the box.  He works hard at his art and takes it very seriously.  It makes him happy and he is proud of his accomplishments.  Mom would be proud, too.

As we finish our sets, I'll post them.  There are too many things going on in our lives right now for me to get a firm date on our next show, but hopefully in September. Until then, enjoy our work.

CONGRATULATIONS 2011

Permit me a moment to brag.  Yesterday, my daughter, Roxanne, became a graduate of the University of Washington.  I am so full of pride that I am bursting at the seams.

 I thought that graduating from college was no big deal.  A lot of people do it. As it turns out, it is really quite difficult. Many kids attend college at a young age when they are full of questions, and rebellion with the urge to live life on the edge and experience new things and sensations.  That, in itself is dangerous. Then you throw in all the hard work, the studying, the expectations, the hang-overs and it can become a bitter uphill battle.  But then, maybe I'm talking about my college experience.
Most of the time, kids don't have a plan. They know they want an education, NEED an education but don't know what they want to do with their lives. Those are difficult choices to make at 19. Junior or senior year they can reach a burn-out where the burden and the decisions become too great, so they take "a year off" and alas, never go back. I'm not sure what you learn in college except maybe stamina. So to all of the graduates of 2011, who had the stamina to see it through, Congratulations! YOU DID IT!

Roxanne graduated with a BA in Dance.  She is a beautiful dancer and it gives me great joy to watch her.  She has always enjoyed dressing up in costumes and dancing around the house.  Wherever there was music, in a grocery store or department store or elevator, she would dance. I think she still does.  Beyond the obvious, however, Roxanne believes in the social, political importance of movement as a way of making a statement and causing change. (Rox, if I got that wrong, forgive me.) I certainly think it's true when I watch the varied forms of dance from modern to ballet, contemporary to hip hop. I may not like what I'm watching all of the time, but it certainly makes me think.

 Roxanne worried about being a dance major, but quoting the author Virginia Woolf who recommended that women honor and hone their creativity and not "become crazed with the torture" of silence, I urged her to follow her passion no matter what. The artist within us cannot be silenced, it just can't.  It creeps out in unexpected ways.  Bring it out into the light, give it wings, let it soar.

I know that Roxanne will go on to do great things.  Her talent is amazing and she is an intelligent, articulate young woman. I wish her every blessing that life has to offer.

(I love this picture because it shows how far off the ground she has jumped.)

MAKE HOLY

A dear friend of mine, Susan, sent me a wonderful book a couple of months ago.  It is called "SIMPLE ABUNDANCE" and I read it every morning. It is a book of days and obviously, I'm on June 1 today.  The author is a woman, Sarah Ban Breathnach,  who has inspiring thoughts on the art and joys of being a woman, a wife, a mother, a cook, a housekeeper, a lover, a teacher, (you can fill in more...)  Her insights really make me stop and think and maybe rearrange my life just a little bit each day.  She brings authenticity to the art of being a homemaker, which unfortunately, has become a disgraced and a lost art. It is too bad that we, as women of the 21st century, do not take the same kind of pride in homemaking as the women of the 19th century. We are just too busy.

I was contemplating laundry day.  Years ago, a woman set aside one day a week to do the washing.  It took all day and was quite a chore.  Today, of course, every day can be wash day and the job is much easier. We put less and less time in the simple joy of making our family's clothes look nice, though.  We grab clothes from the dryer in any kind of rumpled state and throw them on.  I still iron, but I know few women who do.  Not that I'm better than them, I just find it to be a meditative process. I like doing it.

In today's article, Breathnach writes of the Goddess, Hestia, who has deemed that housework is holy.  Hmmmm, some days it seems far from that. So I found one of my paintings, a facing page from my elf book, and I wrote a little script for the inside.  I might make it into a print for women like me to put in our laundry rooms, just as a reminder that the things we do matter.

CEDAR PLUG

Leap Year.  Such a difficult time to remember one's birthday.  Is it Feb. 28th or Mar 1st?  Well, I never know so I just forget about it until I remember that I forgot about it and then I panic. Panic might not be the best word, I get "anxious" to send a card and a present.  This year, I waited a couple of months to send the present, but I had a good excuse.  I wanted to do a watercolor portrait of Chris' dog, Cedar. The dog died a couple of years ago and Chris was heartbroken.  It's difficult to lose someone you love, the pain lingers.  I had a photograph of Cedar snuggled up to one of his toys, a large pink polka dot fish.  I loved the colors of the fish and the dog and the towel Cedar was laying on.  Chris lives in Florida and the colors are very much Florida.  I waited to post this until I knew that Chris had received the painting.  He has, so.....This is Cedar. Don't you love his big brown eyes?  Happy belated Birthday, Chris.

Happy Mother's Day

Today was a very wonderful Mother's Day.  I woke early.  The sun shone, briefly.  My youngest son got up and fixed us breakfast. What miracles!  I talked to all my kids on the phone, spent the day painting with my brother, (more on that later), and produced this little painting I call "Room for One".  Beau came by to plant some raspberries and play with the dog. My son, Jordan, cooked dinner for me, my daughter, grandson, sister and brother. We watched a funny movie and now it's time for bed. It was a beautiful day.

We found this little bird's nest outside one day.  Jordan brought it in, I believe.  The kids all know how much I love to paint nests.  I appreciate the intricacies of them and the many colors and threads of grasses and leaves and moss.  This one even has some insulation stolen from a house, I guess.  I had a dyed egg left over from Easter and plopped it into the nest just to give it some shape and definition.  I liked how it looked even if it was a bit (a lot) too big.  I imagined a small bird laying this large egg and giggled, then I thought of a large bird using a teeny tiny nest to lay her egg and that made me laugh, too. 

And so I wish all the mother's out there, no matter how large or small, no matter what your abode, no matter the number or age of your children,  HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! from one mother to another. God bless our kids.