• CREATION: from order or chaos?

    How do you do your best work? Do you need a certain amount of order, do you like to fly by the seat of your pants and put out the fires which spring up, or do you need all the decks to be stick and span before you get started? I belong to the goldilocks…


  • Rule of Life

    First painting of the New Year:  Sometimes you have to remember who you are and whose you are. Starting the year off right by setting my theme. Everyone needs a rule of life, even the nonbeliever, for we need a measure to test our lives against.  Are we living up to our expectations for a…


  • EPIPHANY SNOW

    The snow arrived overnight, as promised! Just enough to change the landscape of winter on the lake in Arkansas. The trees, mountain, and grey sky are just shades of black and white. Snow changes our perception of the landscape, so it is an epiphany of its own kind.  On the twelfth day of Christmas, or…


  • WORK IN PROGRESS: Landscape 

    This is on my easel right now. Last autumn on a warm and sunny day, I took an Instagram photo below of the woods near my home.  Maybe we’ll have one ofthose days   again, with no rain! The photo above is  my most recent painting. I’m letting it set overnight, to see if I need…


  • CULTURAL CHRISTIANITY & THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD

    Some folks say Merica, like they can’t stand to say the whole of our country’s name or bear the taste of it in their mouth. Others bleed red, white and blue, but they only see the America they know and love. Once they have their piece of the pie, they are afraid to let others…


  • Hope and Transformation 

    Happy to report this altar has found a home! It’s a one of a kind piece, made from found objects and items no longer found useful around my home. I found most of these items while walking around the local hospital, while others are from broken pieces of my jewelry and my mother’s old treasure…


  • What’s a measure of worth?

     If an artwork doesn’t sell, it could mean any number of reasons.    1. It’s not any good, but good is a relative term. Fauve was a pejorative term applied to the bright colors and bold forms of Matisse and Rouault, among others.  2. It’s actually bad. Here bad means unskilled. Of course, naive painters like…


  • CHRISTMAS TREE ICON

       Not everyone has an icon of a Christmas tree. I made this “holy image, worthy of reverence and honor, a window into heaven,” while appointed to a church which venerated its symbols of Christmas more than the Christ who brought the day into being. Of course, they didn’t see it this way. When they…


  • I will make changes in my life because change is the only constant. Trees burst forthwith new, tender leaves in the spring. Their full canopies shade is from the sun’s intense heat in the summer. In autumn, we enjoy their palette of colors and in winter we appreciate the stark structure of the limbs. Each…


  • IRREPRESSIBLE SLEEPINESS 

       Irrepressible  sleepiness–it comes over one at times.  My night class on World Religions at seminary with Ruben Habito began with silent breathing. Centering, he called it. Some of us called it falling asleep. A long day of work or classes, or both, with a short night of sleep before an early morning wake up…