These early artwork pieces from 2020/2021 became the first steps in my developing art practice. These pieces became the foundation for the themes I’m exploring today: spirit through art, creativity, identity, and transformation.
Looking back, I can see how curiosity, play, and questions about who we are and how we change began to take shape in this work. Those themes continue to guide me, both in the studio and in how I think about art’s role in my life.
“Serious play is the essence of creativity.”
— Paula Scher · TED-2008
I appreciate how play and spirit come together in these early pieces. You can see other works from that period in the gallery section.
“It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly, as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes ‘art’ in time.”
— Alfred Stieglitz
My desk — where all the threads seem to meet.
My art runs like a cable through all parts of my life, informing each piece of my ecosystem and holding the whole together. Whether it’s in the studio, in Second Life, with my family, or within my Quaker community, each part of my world informs the others.
The priority of these elements shifts day by day, even moment by moment — sometimes family (my refuge), and other times the other parts of my life take the lead. But it’s all part of my ecosystem.
Today, when I came home. I looked down at my desk — scattered with sketches, notes, and bits of color — I saw how true that is. Every part of my life leaves a mark here, fragile yet real: my ephemeral traces reveal my thoughts and making.
“History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable, it happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.” — Marsha P. Johnson
After four years of building a body of work, I’ve reached a turning point.
When I retired, I promised myself to return to the questions that began with my thesis — shadow, symbol, communication, reality, presence, and absence.
This painting marks that return. Its forms begin with light — and it is light’s rays that define an object’s appearance, translated by the eye that observes it.
Is this an image of circular tubes, or a visual echo of Marsha P. Johnson?
It moves between light and darkness, order and release — the space where renewal begins.
Sometimes celebration simply means knowing that the light is still here —
that something imagined has finally come into being.
Every artist writes his own autobiography.
~ Havelock Ellis
Putting it out there… That is what an artist does. I am realizing that more and more, I am writing my autobiography. An artist does put it all out there.
Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends) has been taking more of my time lately. I just finished the Northern Yearly Meeting eNews for July. For the past few years, I edited and produced the eNews for the yearly meeting.
For most of my writing now, I am using Grammarly. Yes, it is AI, and since I am dyslexic, it is very helpful. However, there are still mistakes, mostly because of reading errors. I get impatient and skim. I found that it is not good for proofreading. I am considering writing more about my life, but I don’t know how open I want to be.
Derwent Inktense pencils and blocks have captured my attention as a new medium, and I am playing with them in combination with other materials that I am comfortable using. Applying the Inktense color with a brush was a concern because it has been quite a while since I last used watercolor or a brush. After playing with them, have a handle on the ink, but not a tight grip. : ) My pen work over the last couple of years has been beneficial.
I think of my friends Joe Sinness and Andrea Carlson, artists who are adept with wet media and can create sharp lines and crisp edges.
I am drawing more and finding it rewarding—it allows me to center, and it is a meditative practice for me. Over the last few months, I have created three or four new pieces.
Below is a fun and quirky piece I created by playing and experimenting with Derwent Inktense pencils and my pens.
A friend, who is a Friend at the Minneapolis Friends Meeting, called me today and shared Carroll’s quote with me. What struck me about this quote is that it addresses an experience and the concept of time. I have read in several places that, according to quantum physics, time is not a linear analog; instead, it is one moment stacked on top of another, and we experience time all at once. Therefore, our planning and setting of goals is a form of remembering a time in the future. I know, deep, huh? I am not a physicist, but these concepts inspire my work as an artist.
Door05192024, Mixed Media, Pen and Digital, Hendricks 2024
