Month: December 2021

Embracing the Darkness- “Skijoring on Hoar Frost” a One Page Memoir

memoir, The Creative Process

It is winter solstice today. This story came to mind of a much younger me living in Alaska…

photo by Pixabay

In December, the sun dips low in the peach and lavender sky at 1 PM in Fairbanks, Alaska.  Night begins to fall slowly at that latitude. When I lived there I learned to embrace the darkness lest I get claustrophobic in the small confines of our cabin. Dressed in layers of wool with a headlamp, I’d go chop firewood, shovel snow, or better yet, go out for a night ski.  We lived on Yellow Snow Rd., aptly  named for the many dog teams that lived on it so there were plenty of dog trails to ski on in the neighborhood.

Hoar frost was an event.  At subfreezing temperatures, moisture present in the air would freeze in a crystalline structure and collect on the surfaces of branches eventually coating them in a sparking beard of white.  At 10 below zero to 10 degrees above, a hoar frost provided the perfect conditions to ski.

Continue reading “Embracing the Darkness- “Skijoring on Hoar Frost” a One Page Memoir” →

First Friday Art Talk- The Story Behind the Painting

ARTifacts, The Creative Process, Uncategorized

This is the painting I wake up to in the morning and go to bed to at night.  It brings me a sense of peace and order when I look at it.

Why did I paint this?

The migration of birds fascinates me: What inspires them to leave?  How do they navigate their journey?  How can their tiny bodies withstand travel of thousands of miles of such rigorous travel?  Then there’s nature- always an inspiration.

In this painting with a base of sponged, brushed, and stenciled acrylic on a 12 x 12” dimensional artboard,  we look down on a flight of white birds over forest.  Stenciled ferns are below the abstracted trees.  The symbol of a river is collaged on the upper left quadrant and the collaged 4 negative triangles in the lower left quadrant symbolize direction.  Most of my collage papers are made up of “failed prints.”I bless my failures as they never fail to add the perfect touch elsewhere.  Rain is represented in the upper right quadrant by stamping a painted piece of corrugated cardboard.

To add a little sparkle I added a bit of gold leaf at the top. A stamped Asian symbol on the lower right quadrant adds a zen quality to the piece. 

I took a larger cradled artboard, flipped it over, and painted it black.  Then I mounted the painting inside of it to add a dimensional frame. This is an intuitive painting meaning I paint by what inspiration shows up at the time.  The color palette was inspired by another artist’s work and then I tweaked it to make it my own.

Even when I can’t travel, I look at this painting and I can go somewhere else.  I’m so glad no one purchased this at my last studio sale. It is called Spring Migration.