Category: Musings

Sharp ridges slash brilliant clear skies at midday.
Haunting shapes can appear like a mirage in the
canyon depths.
When hikers journey deeper,
courage is summoned with each meditative step.

 

The earth perpetually plans, prepares and presents
gifts
of awesome magnitude.
The Desert-Southwest, a life-shaping force
creates its gifts with
powerful winds, blazing sunbeams and parched clouds.
Its rich wisdom
like broken bread and wine
at a sacred altar
nourishes daring communicants
who boldly engage it.

The gifts that are available to us from our natural surroundings are no simple matter. My beloved Desert-Southwest with its ancient enduring cliffs and canyons draws me toward its gifts; some are vast and obvious but some are subtle and hidden. My involvement with the “Cliff Gifts Series,” an extensive group of mixed-media paintings, leads me deeper into the canyons of my being and into the canyons of God’s creation. I’m finding rock-solid grace, the bedrock of endurance, and the continuity of hope. It’s all there, and also to be found there, though it sometimes requires a search, are the seeps of delicate newness, fragile growth, and even streams. In the crags, among the boulders, between the rocks of life, there are poignant gifts of exquisite beauty, tiny graces that feed the ponds of joy and embellish the textures of each day.

The CLIFF GIFTS are my depictions of powerful rugged landscapes with tiny gift packets, folded, tied, embellished and tucked into each composition. Each “gift” packet contains mysterious literal gifts: passages from sacred writings, musical score, beautiful papers, postage stamps, medallions, quotations from life’s spiritual seekers, meaningful symbols of faith and/or tiny nautral objects such as feathers, stones, and shells. They are hidden from the viewer but their mysterious presence impacts the expression in captivating ways.