Returning to the Still Life: A Studio Reflection

Lately, I’ve found myself returning to a time-honored tradition in painting: the still life. These quiet compositions—humble, unmoving, ever available—are both easy and challenging. They are always close at hand, requiring no travel, no scheduling, no permission. Just light, form, and attention.

Unlike portrait painting the subject does not move. Light can be controlled. The limitation is that when using food, such as fish, fruit, or vegetables . . . time is against the artist due to spoiling. Same with flowers.

Three small oil paintings emerged recently from our studio, Dos Venados, from this renewed practice—each one a meditation on color, composition, and presence.

The first, Riñon Tomato, Vase & Rose, bursts with energy. A thick yellow rose blossoms from a small blue vase, flanked by two crimson riñon tomatoes—plump and wrinkled like elder hearts. The brushwork swirls with vitality, capturing the tension between delicacy and ripeness. The glass reflects a world within a world.

The second, Mamey and Rose, is quieter, more intimate. A rose, deep pink and velvety, rests beside an open mamey fruit. The earthen pod is shaped like an offering bowl, its curve embracing shadow and light. The rose leans in, almost whispering—a conversation between softness and sustenance.

The third, Tilapia with Lemons, is a nod to classical still life in the tradition of fishmongers and feasts. The silvery tilapia, slick and glistening, lies across a dark plate, accompanied by two whole lemons and one sliced open, its pulp like a sunburst. The turquoise background shimmers with broken strokes, suggesting both water and tablecloth, abstraction and realism.

Each painting, though small in scale, affirms something enduring: the joy of close observation, the dance of brush against canvas, the timeless appeal of the ordinary made luminous. Still lifes remind me that mastery isn’t always about grandeur—it’s about presence. And paint still has the power to stop time.

Here are a few other previous posts about Still Life painting processes:   Still Life 

Art Mirrors Life

Art mirrors life, and, in the words of the great British sculptor Henry Moore, “enlarges existence into something more significant than everyday life, giving some importance to it, a monumentality and grandeur.”

I love being in the company of artists, and these days I have been blessed spending time with an artist friend from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who is visiting Santa Fe. Sarah and I have spent hours together going to galleries, discussing philosophy, writing poetry, painting and drawing, and last night attending a world premiere of an opera, called Life Is A Dream, by Lewis Spratlan at The Santa Fe Opera.
Sarah is a painter, so I invited her to work with me in my studio. We decided to make a still life painting. First we needed objects to paint. I suggested a pretty green vase and an arrangement of fruit. The vase was already in my studio and I cut some flowers from my yard to go in it. Next we went together to a grocery store to select vegetables or fruit. I am always interested in green or red peppers because they can grow in fantastic shapes and have bright, pure color. Eggplant is dazzling to look at for its burnished purple hues. At last we settled on apples and cherries.

In the studio, we arranged the objects. I enjoyed how easily Sarah and I came to a quick and deft solution to a pleasing arrangement—it only took minutes and without fuss. I lent her supplies and an easel, turned on music, and then we began. Our efforts took two days and we had great fun together amidst laughter and tears.

The painting process has correlation to life and meaning, so here is the story: The beginning is concept, to get a mental picture of something, even vague, that is the intention to pursue. Once I had created my intention, I made the still life arrangement that would be my inspiration to work from. I knew that I wanted to honor the objects with a realistic portrayal, and not something abstract. Standing a few feet away from the tableau, I thought of the proportions and carefully made a drawing. The foundation of art is important, because everything that happens afterward is affected. After I was satisfied with the foundation, I began laying in the oil color, using my palette knife to apply the paint directly. Most artists paint with brushes and only use the palette knife to mix paints, but I have developed a technique using the palette knife. It is very pleasurable to gaze at pure oil colors on a palette, and then mix them to get more colors. It is an art in itself and some artists, such as Pierre Bonnard, Claude Monet, and Mark Rothko, are known for their great sense of color, while other artists, like Michelangelo, Paul Cezanne, and Andrew Wyeth, are famous for being superb draftsmen.
The trick in painting is to create a visual symphony that uses just the right structure, tonality and timbre to produce the greatest effect. Of course colors affect our emotions, so the artist uses color to great affect. The important thing is clarity, so that the original inspiration speaks eloquently. So much can go wrong. Colors can become muddied, the drawing might be bad, proportions look awkward . . .  in short it takes great practice and a good helping of talent to accomplish art. Only a few make it to the professional level.

As I worked on my still life, I became frustrated with the background, so at one point, scraped it out and tried something new. This is an important lesson: if something is not going well, even if you have invested in it, be prepared to change course to get to something better. When I destroyed the dark background I had painted and began laying in lighter tones, the whole painting seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and speak to me, saying, this is better and now I am happy. And this is what art is about—adaptability, creative pursuit and change.

Any great work of art... revives and re-adapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.  ~Leonard Bernstein, What Makes Opera Grand?

Feeling The Rapture

I have been an artist for thirty years now. It has been my work, and I have not had to take other jobs to support myself. Thousands of my paintings are in homes across the land. Even now, I think of this and almost have to pinch myself to see if I am not dreaming. 

Steven, painting a still-life

When I paint and show the work, I am sharing what I love, and the product. Lately, I have been giving lessons in painting. While teaching, I am sharing what I love and my knowledge of the practice.

Whether painting or teaching, I say a prayer beforehand for the highest outcome. 

Today I taught. We gathered at the beautiful estate of one of the students and finished work from a previous session, making a still-life painting of a vase with sunflowers on a table with fruit. We worked outside on a covered patio. During earlier classes we made landscape paintings using only a palette knife to apply the oil colors to a panel. This time, I wanted to teach something different. We first drew a sketch and made an underpainting of our subject, then this week we finished by applying color—all with brushes.

All of us, being creative.

Only one student has had instruction before my class. All of us are over sixty years old and so I am heartened that my students are willing to learn and try something new and difficult. Everyone made beautiful work and felt a thrill in doing so. Each person's painting revealed their uniqueness and special way of seeing and experiencing the world.

Working in sync.

After class, someone shared a quote that he had recently read: “People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” - Joseph Campbell (American, March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987)

Part of feeling the rapture is being in the activity of pure creation while in the world of nature.

Long Love Letter

Steven's writing

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
—Jean Cocteau (French: 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963)

My oldest daughter Naomi began a diary when she was only nine years old—and kept writing until she died at the age of nineteen. As her father, I did not know she was being so attentive about the intimate details of her life until she was seventeen. She kept her journals private.

After she passed away, her personal writings were indeed like receiving a long letter from her.

I wrote during my youth as well—but not so early in life. My first diary began when I wrote on my seventeenth birthday. I would use the little cloth-bound book as a record; “So that the sentimentalist I think I might be in the future can look back and remember the person he once was and the changes he went through.”

Naomi's writings

Naomi, at age nine was simply taking delight in life and honoring it by writing her observances, dreams, thoughts and feelings. Her first entries are full of incorrectly spelled words—she was terrible at spelling until almost high school. She would try and get her notions down on paper and guess at word spelling. For instance she wrote when 12: “We were playing with the new puppy, (we are thinking of naming her Soffy or Sophia). We were playing tug-of-war and then Sarah put the tug-of-war thing in her mouth and so I grabid it and both of us tuged a wile and Sarah’s tooth ended up gone! I feel really bad about it and stuff!
Just a minute ago I found her tooth!
She lost and I found it!”

After my teen years I stopped keeping a diary. Instead I kept a dream journal. It filled quickly and then tapered off when I did not remember them often. Then, as my life as a visual artist came to the fore, I married, had children and gave up writing.

Naomi fell ill with cancer at age seventeen, and I began keeping a record of her struggle. I wanted to write about her success in beating her disease. I kept writing until her death, determined to tell her story of courage, grace and spirit. It became the story of her soul and how she transitioned into a magnificent spiritual being. The writing took three years and produced, A Heart Traced In Sand, Reflections on a Daughter’s Struggle For Life.

During her last two years Naomi wrote her observances of life and her surroundings, and was gaining wisdom: “Today I saw myself in my English class dancing with joy because I was cured. I saw myself telling people that the most important thing in life is to bask in it with all of its glory. Hardship is something that will make us stronger. I don’t know if I have complete evidence of this  but I think that in every situation there is good  in it. I feel so much wisdom and I know that I will learn more!”

Naomi wrote many affirmations, picturing how she envisioned her life. She also wrote her fears and sometimes anger. Life was becoming painful and short. Close to the end, she wrote of her pain, anxiety, and a nagging doubt that was with her. Once, she thought of somebody reading her diary after her death and was angry, writing she would rather burn her journal.
The last writing Naomi did was on a small piece of paper two nights before her death. “Dream of a blissful cruise. I don’t remember much of it. I just remember glimpses of it. I am happy.” The note was on her bedside table when she died.

Soon afterward I made my first journal entry: “It has been sixteen days since Naomi passed away. I am still sorting out the pieces of my life. At the studio; I was here yesterday and could not manage to begin painting. Here again today . . .  I will try and begin again.”

My stack of writing books

Eventually, I became single and felt Naomi’s spirit encouraging me to live life fully without fear. Since then I have been around the world twice and lived in many lands. My stack of journals is tall. I write this blog every week and have 587 posts. There is one little book that is special. It is only for my notes to God. Here is an entry from September 25, 2009: Dear God. To look in any direction is to see miracles. Above is the endless sky, and below is mother earth. On every side is mystery. Even the senses I use to perceive my world are miraculous gifts I do not fully comprehend.

Someday my end will come and I will go to be with Naomi again. My writings will be left behind. Sarah, my surviving daughter will find them and read them as a long love letter to her and life.

Blink Of An Eye

During the magical and carefree time of my early life, when I was barely seven years old, I remember one spring day playing outdoors with neighborhood kids. I thought about when I would turn eleven. It seemed so far away as to be an impossible dream to reach. Time was within the framework of moments, not years. 

Eventually I reached eleven, and now, looking back from the perspective of six decades of life, those five years it took to reach eleven seem as a blink of an eye. 

There have been many milestones that I have reached along the way from birth toward the end: first steps, first day in school, first job, high school graduation, college graduation, marriage, children, opening an art gallery, traveling around the world, artwork completed. Also painful benchmarks, such as a teenage mental breakdown, the death of my first daughter, my marriage breakups.
Miraculously and unexpectedly, I have reached another benchmark today. This is episode number five hundred of my blog.

 When I started writing My Fairy-Tale Life, I had no thought to its duration. Somewhere along the line, the posting became a discipline that I took seriously. It is now a treasure of experiences and photographs reaching back over nine years in steady weekly progression. I have written from every time zone and from thirty countries. Posts have been personal, thoughtful, whimsical, philosophical. I try and get a picture of subjects mid-week and have something done by Sunday. Sometimes I have not known what to write about. I am fortunate that besides writing, I am a painter and photographer. The visuals I include are good companions to the words.

Now, as I look forward, I wonder what the next five years might hold. The dreamy child still lives in me. Moments can be vast, but now, I have perspective, and I see years go by rapidly. In the end, I believe the perspective of childhood, that all is magical—a fairytale.

 Here are some interesting views of My Fairy-Tale Life:

http://www.my-fairytale-life.com/view/timeslide

http://www.my-fairytale-life.com/view/snapshot

http://www.my-fairytale-life.com/view/mosaic

http://www.my-fairytale-life.com/view/flipcard

Fists Against The Wall

Last weekend was the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the notorious German concentration camp in Poland where in just two years over 1 million innocent people were put to death: men, women and children. The anniversary comes and goes each year and there are memorial events at the former killing grounds that attract fewer and fewer survivors and many visitors. For some reason, this year I began reviewing more about what happened. In high school, during a period when I read dense and important world literature, I also read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, (1245 pages). It is mostly forgotten in my mind after 50 years. 

Amy saw that I was studying and getting emotional about what had happened. She pulled a book off of her bookshelf, a small hardback. Saying nothing, she put it on my dresser. Within a day I had begun reading Night, by Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016). "In Night," Wiesel said, "I wanted to show the end, the finality of the event. Everything came to an end—man, history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with night.” ( In the above picture, he is in the second row, seventh from left.)

Simultaneously I looked online at pictures of the holocaust and the Nazi perpetrators. Photos of mothers and children being herded off boxcars to take them to the gas chambers, of skeletal forced laborers in horrid conditions, of despicable ghettos imprisoning isolated Jewish populations before being wiped out. I found myself getting angry and researching what became of the Nazi commanders, then seeing them hanged and thinking, “It serves you right.”

A page from Naomi's journal

“Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.” 

― Primo Levi, (Italian, 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987)  Auschwitz survivor

I grew up in a non-religious household. No mention was made of God or religion. My father worked hard as a social engineer, alongside Robert Kennedy and Sergeant Shriver. HIs time was spent constructing solutions to injustice and implementing them. Once when a teen-ager and I had recently found God, he quoted Karl Marx to me: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” I took exception, noting all the good that has come from Christian charity and the spread of principles of equality and love.

At nineteen I became a Baha’i, a religion teaching the essential worth of all religions, and the unity and equality of all people. Established by Baháʼu'lláh , (Persian, November 12, 1817 – May 29, 1892) in 1863, it initially grew in Persia and parts of the Middle East, where it has faced ongoing persecution since its inception. 

A beloved Baha’i prayer by Abdul-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah includes the exhortation, “I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life, nor will I let trouble harass me .” But what if life itself is cataclysmic without hope? What if there is no pleasantness to enjoy? 

Certainly there were those in the concentration camps who had seen their loved ones marched to the gas chambers, had felt the sting of smoke in their eyes from the furnaces incinerating bodies, and lived without hope in wretched unthinkable existence. Some, like Job’s wife might have thought “Curse God and die!” They are forgiven. Wiesel himself, after surviving the death camp spoke in an interview: “Some people who read my first book, Night, they were convinced that I broke with the faith and broke with God. Not at all. I never divorced God. It is because I believed in God that I was angry at God, and still am. The tragedy of the believer, it is deeper than the tragedy of the non-believer.” (See https://onbeing.org/programs/elie-wiesel-the-tragedy-of-the-believer/ )

When my beloved daughter Naomi fell victim to cancer at seventeen, I had to watch her endure her own holocaust. Dreadful pain spread itself in her body. Doctors said she had little chance to live and she began torturous chemotherapy treatments, locked away from the world at large. Many times, during my own “dark night of the soul,” I found myself thinking, beseeching, how could a loving God allow this? Alone, I beat my fists against the wall and wailed. 

Naomi had to meet her own point of no return. Many times in fact. Did she not wonder perhaps if God had forgotten her? She once said, “I hope not to die a slow, painful death.” But that is exactly what God had in store for her. That was her fate. She fought hard for life, weeding out any semblance of negative thinking that might interfere with her healing. Yet the slow, inexorable death march toward the gas chamber continued. At one point, exhausted, she sought to take her life and be done with it. Like in the Jimi Hendrix song, Castles Made of Sand, where he sings: 

There was a young girl, whose heart was a frown,

'Cause she was crippled for life, and she couldn't speak a sound

And she wished and prayed she could stop living,

So she decided to die

She drew her wheel chair to the edge of the shore, and to her legs she smiled

"You won't hurt me no more"

But then a sight she'd never seen made her jump and say

"Look, a golden winged ship is passing my way"

And it really didn't have to stop, it just kept on going.

And so castles made of sand

Slips into the sea, eventually . . .

One fateful evening in Santa Barbara, California, Naomi swallowed pills, arrived to a lonely beach and walked into the Pacific Ocean to drown. She was saved when she saw a stranger walking and her conscience would not allow her to take her life in front of an innocent person.

She went on to live another seven months before dying at home with peace in her heart. Just before, she had a dream of being on a blissful cruise. In feeble handwriting she managed to write it down on a scrap of paper.

A number of times during the ordeal I found myself down on knees praying fervently for help. I could see the innocents being herded toward the ovens, clutching their little ones and asked, “Please help.” Several times the veils parted and to my surprise I saw angels, in complete tranquility, smiling. Over in a flash, I thought, “but how could you be smiling?” 

After Naomi died, we bathed and dressed her in her bed and put a ring on her finger. It is part of the Baha’i ceremony for the deceased. The ring says: “I came forth from God, and return unto Him, detached from all save Him, holding fast to His Name, the Merciful, the Compassionate”. 

And this is my belief, that this life is a sort of veil and it is lifted when we die.

For those millions who died during the holocaust, the experience was inscrutable. 

Death reaches us all. Some are born and live but a few moments, others longer, but in eternity, this life is but a blink of the eye for everyone.

On that glad night,

in secret, for no one saw me,


nor did I look at anything,


with no other light or guide


than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me


more surely than the light of noon


to where he was awaiting me


— him I knew so well —


there in a place where no one appeared. 

Excerpt:

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, 16th Century

The Dark Night of the Soul

Life Away From The Familiar

The coast of Sicily

 “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

 “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

The experiences of life away from the familiar that comes from distant travel are not for everyone, but for me, the exciting effects of combining known elements with unknown ones is essential. I need to travel, to experience the freedom of motion that carries the possibility of expanded consciousness. Written upon the tablet of my memory are indelible streams of life that have come from living like the wind carving through space and time without inhibition, even circling the globe. I feel the fire of this passion that burned so bright and joyously unencumbered for the entire year of 2008, and is still alive with burning embers of that lovely flame—ready to leap into intensity again at the slightest opportunity. 

Masai youth, herding cattle . . . Tanzania

Camel at the Great Pyramids, Egypt

The feeling to explore new life is coming these days like an imperative. The flames that died down now long to spring forth once again. It almost hurts me to be settled. The strange apparition of a whirling dervish must challenge most peoples consciousness. Who could possibly care to live without being the occupant of a home? For most, home is where the heart is, but I also observe it is where stuff accumulates and that stuff requires guardianship. I don't care to be watching over stuff. To do so requires maintenance and expenditure. Let loose I say.

Material possessions do not hold more for me than a soft breeze and warm sunlight upon my skin, a bird song in my ears, the sight of new terrain to explore, and the incredible luxury of time, with the only requirement being that of awe and wonder.

At Ipsos, on the island of Corfu, Greece

Halong Bay, Vietnam

Come, Come, Whoever You Are

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
 

It doesn't matter.
 Ours is not a caravan of despair.
 

Come, even if you have broken your vow

 a thousand times
.

Come, yet again, come, come. 

-Jalaluddin Rumi

Expressing Inner Life

Artists are often reluctant to interpret their work when asked. A reason could be that the artwork is like a child and the artist the parent. The parent does not want to interpret the child, but rather have the child speak.

Hand of a Muse, mixed-media on panel, 20 x 16 inches (50 x 40 cm)

Furthermore, often there is great mystery in creating art—and it is not easily put into words. Accidents come into play (that are not accidents at all), and the art seems to breath and have a life of its own. Sometimes I finish a piece and when standing back to look, I catch myself saying, Wow, did I do that?

I have been making three-dimensional art recently and often, hands are included. The one shown here is new. I wanted to use a hand with forearm. It had to be situated so that it expressed itself. I had the thought that it could be dragging colors with fingertips across the white ground. To cover the arm, I had the idea to use pieces of broken mirror. 

As I broke a mirror into bits with a hammer, a piece struck me in my left eye. Ouch! Then I thought, How stupid of me. Why was I not wearing eye protection? Thankfully, I did not need to go to an emergency room and my eye was not cut. That was several days ago and it is still sore. I wonder why my left eye was injured (everything that goes wrong with me or suffers injury is on the left), and I also ask if it was fate that by breaking a mirror, which held my image, I would feel torment? Oh well, as they say, "No pain, no gain."

Now that the art piece is done, I will make an attempt to interpret it:

The white rectangle ground represents purity of space. White contains all the colors. The hand represents human endeavor, and art. It is interacting with the white, bringing forth colors that plays from fingertips. 

Color is vibrant life, like the inner life of an artist. The bits of mirror reflect light and the real world. They are broken in fragments, but recreating to be part of a whole—coming together to be part of the magic artist that is expressing inner life like reflections in a mirror.

As I finished, I decided to pour white over the colors streaming from the fingertips, to soften their notes, and further the mystery of coming forth from an enveloping matrix.

One day I noticed that I could go on working my art motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me. (Georges Braque)

Perplexed At War

There are events that happen in life that have a way of embedding themselves so deeply and suddenly into the psyche that they seemingly cause time to stand still. The news is such that when it is delivered, a person stops as if frozen, then takes account of his surroundings, as if checking to see if life will pick up and start again.

On November 22, 1963, I was playing with my best friend at his house when the maid entered his bedroom and announced in a sad and incredulous voice that President John F. Kennedy had been shot to death. That was 48 years ago, and I still remember the moment like it was yesterday. Our happy play stopped and all three of us shared a bewildered silence, not particularly knowing how to carry on.

On September 11, 2001, I was in my home when a repairman came to work, and when he entered the house, announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York City. I turned on the television and the news was unfolding, with pictures of the airliners hitting the towers, played again and again. It seemed unreal, and also unreal that life could continue normally.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the attack on America that killed 3000 innocent people.

The event will never be forgotten . . . and yet life continues as it has since the beginning; toward an uncertain future.

I have traveled around the world and seen our beautiful planet in its glorious diversity and splendor. It is such pleasure to be friends with strangers and overcome outward differences. The human heart has a deep yearning toward unity. This is why I am constantly perplexed at war.

A Metaphor

Shadowman amid ruins, Andalucia, Spain

A metaphor of my life of the last few months might be a traveler who is on a journey with a close

partner and along the way, the partner decides to permanently go in a different direction alone. Suddenly the journeyman feels abandoned in a foreign land, and laments his separation. The landscape becomes tangled and even threatening. He is in a jungle of snares and brambles that cut his flesh and at night he is assailed by ghosts and mosquitos. He does not fear death, but is perplexed at being so anxious of his predicament. Meanwhile, his partner is completely vanished.

The difficulties usurp his appetite so that he does not eat. He wonders at his plight and how his life has changed so drastically. Occasionally sunlight filters through the dense coverage of brambles and vines, and he hears bird songs, but it all seems abstract and without meaning because he is ensnared by sorrow. He notices that his cuts heal, so his body is working . . .

He finds an abandoned house—the occupants left it long ago and it is in shambles. He takes shelter, but it reminds him of loss—the walls are crumbling, the roof caved in, furniture broken.

Abandoned home, Andalucia, Spain

The outer world has no charm. He turns inward to find inspiration when Spirit comes to take his hand and sit with him. He receives grace, and sees everything that has happened is really a gift to bring him to the sacred place of his true self that is beyond time and space. The terrain was all meant for him, the journey ordained to make him master of his destiny. He is shown his inner compass to his destination in the higher realm. The spirits rejoice that the soul, fearful of being lost without help, is knowing his true path and can call on higher power anytime. His troubles have led him to greater freedom and made him more powerful.

The wanderer sets out from the broken home, compass firmly in hand, and listening to spirit, feels jubilant and knows he is well with good fortune ahead. He begins receiving gifts from strangers . . . the terrain becomes unencumbered and beautiful. He finds palaces that are welcoming, and hosts who are happy to greet him. He has many tales to tell of life. A physician examines him thoroughly and announces that he is as fit as a man twenty years younger. 

The traveler is thankful and gives praise to the Creator and spirit for always being with him. He knows he would still be lost if not for the compass and power that comes from invisible guides and allies. He prays never to forget his true life and destiny in Spirit.

My living room. (The big painting sold recently.)

Gardens, Kashmir, India

The Ever-Shifting Dance of Creation

As previously mentioned, focus has returned to words. Combing through decades of writing, essays are taking shape drawn from years of travel and introspection. A foundation is forming, and at its core, the year 2008.

A year of surrender. A year of dissolving into the matrix of life. Traveling the world with no fixed plan, disappearing into The Dream. That journey reshaped everything—perception, identity, the sense of what is possible. Now, its echoes call to be gathered into writing, to be shared.

Perhaps, someday, they will find their way into a book, titled, The Weight of Air. A collection of journeys—both outward and inward—woven together with the same thread that has always guided me: surrender, discovery, and the dissolution of boundaries. But for now, the task has begun; offering through words and images, glimpses into worlds both spiritual and sensual, taking flight between wakefulness and dreaming.  

The first chapter is called, The Moment I Chose to Vanish. An excerpt: 

Into the Matrix

Preparing to give myself into the unknown, my thoughts were becoming doorways; portals into experience. The physical world, I understood, was where the true value of my visions would be revealed. A recurring desire took hold of me: I wanted to disappear into the matrix of the earth. Not to carry anything with me, but to become fluid and free. 

What did this mean? To disappear—to vanish from being seen as a separate, formed being and dissolve into oneness with life. Life, the vast, interwoven fabric where everything is connected—people, events, places, emotions, and time. I desired to be in this matrix, surrendering to the flow, allowing experiences to inspire and shape me rather than trying to control them. Children remained close to it, still forming in its embrace, unshaped by the boundaries that adults constructed. 

Looking back now, I see I stood on the threshold of an exploration—one that would take me beyond those boundaries, into a vast unknown. I had been preparing to strip away the artificial walls that society had built around life, to step into something raw and unfiltered.  

The Fast

This is the last day of my annual period of fasting. The discipline requires that I give up food and water between sunrise and sunset from March 2-20. It is a requirement of Bahai’s, with exclusion allowed for sick people, travelers of long distances, nursing mothers, those under 15 or over 70 years of age. I have followed the prescription for decades, and always been true, except once—the year my dear Naomi died and then, the most precious of my life had gone away and I did not have strength.

Fasting has been practiced for thousands of years, and is especially common as a spiritual exercise in many religions. Scientific studies have shown that there are also physical benefits that include reducing risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Fasting also promotes weight loss, reduces immune disorders, and slows the aging process—increasing life span. It will produce favorable change in cholesterol.

Each year, as the time of fasting approaches, I begin to eagerly anticipate it. I am happy, and also feel slight trepidation, knowing I will be tested. I wake before dawn and eat . . . my body still drowsy and not ready for food—so I must assert command to change for the sake of devotion. As the day progresses I experience weakness and loss of concentration, and this is because of lack of glucose and protein. Tasks become more difficult and I realize I am multi-tasking because I am simultaneously active with my affairs and also fasting. I get moody and perhaps even cranky as time goes on, and must adopt a sense of equanimity, a virtue useful to all rational thought. When my hunger and thirst press upon me and I know how easy it is to eat or drink and relieve my suffering, instead, I practice will power and patience. Nineteen days is a hefty duration and this deepens all the positive lessons.

These are some of the virtues found in fasting: patience, moderation, temperance, fortitude, will power, devotion, ability to sacrifice, forbearance, bravery, commitment, creativity, detachment, discretion, enthusiasm, flexibility, love, grace, tolerance, honor, integrity, loyalty, perseverance, resourcefulness, simplicity, sincerity, trust. Add to the spiritual virtues the physical benefits of better health and longer life and we can see why fasting is an ancient and common global practice.
Here is a wonderful and in-depth article on fasting: The Ultimate Guide to Intermittent Fasting

Two Doves

 

We all knew it was a message of love coming from heaven above. A once in a lifetime display never to be seen again. It’s been nineteen years since it happened but is still mentioned and makes me think how SPIRIT can use all creation to communicate to humans. Moreover, beings in the next world can give us physical signs that write indelible language upon our souls.

Someone recently read my memoir of my daughter Naomi called, A Heart Traced In Sand, Reflections On A Daughter’s Struggle For Life, and he mentioned the event. The story concludes the book. It demonstrates how life is interwoven through many realms; visible and invisible.

Naomi died of cancer in 1999 at age nineteen after a heroic battle to stay in the world she loved. One year later a group of devoted friends gathered at our home to remember her life. A woman who had been Naomi’s teacher brought materials to make a cord that we all could hold. Small pouches holding sacred objects like rose petals and each person’s note to Naomi were tied to the cord. We all went outside to a lawn and garden then stood together in a circle holding the cord and our prayer bags. One by one we read our remembrance and prayer. The sky had been cloudy and now it rained lightly in a mist. This was unusual because we had been in a drought. A dazzling rainbow appeared beside us. When the last person had read, we all stood together in unity. Suddenly two doves appeared directly above our circle, hovered for a second then dove spiraling downward so closely that their wings almost touched. Down they flew with rapidly beating wings and in perfect precision flew upward again, only to spiral down in place and rise again. The beating wings and precision of their spirals was joyous. It was apparent they came to bring a message of love to us. Then they flew away. One young person burst out, exclaiming, “I hope she keeps sending us messages like that, letting us know everything is okay!”

The Idea Has Disappeared

When I opened the door to my studio today and looked at my painting on the easel, I knew I was not done. It is hard to say when a piece of artwork is done, and there is a danger in overworking something. Winston Churchill said, "When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone."

The famous French painter, Georges Braque said, "The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared."

I think I am done with this still-life. The cherries are shriveled and I have eaten an apple.

Brushstrokes and Shutter Clicks

A journey of experimentation in painting and photography becomes a dance between colors and shadows, brushstrokes and shutter clicks. 

In the realm of my photography, each new technique is a portal to uncharted territories promising a visual adventure that transcends the familiar.  A click of the camera becomes a brushstroke on the canvas of my visual narrative, weaving together my unique story.

Mastering new lighting situations, experimenting with unconventional angles, intentionally blurring images with hand movement, creating double images in the camera or delving into the world of photoshop, the process of discovery is my constant companion.

Joy lies in the unpredictability of the outcome, the serendipitous moments when a blend of techniques gives rise to a photograph that echoes the essence of my artistic soul. It's about pushing boundaries, embracing the unknown, and allowing creativity to flourish. 

As a painter and photographer, the synergy between the two crafts fuels a perpetual cycle of inspiration. For years I have experimented as painter and photographer, using my talents to bring artistry to images I make on canvas and with a camera. Decades of dedication to both disciplines only serve to enhance the thrill of creative adventure. The well of creativity seems deep, and does not diminish. 

And now I am jumping into the world of artificial intelligence, or AI. I have only just begun, but immediately find the results astonishing. I understand computer work is all only numbers and code and will not replace what I accomplish by hand. Yet, as I say this, I am cognizant that I have only been using digital cameras now for about twenty years. When a picture is taken and recorded on a chip, it is all numbers.  Then it can be read by computers which translate information into actual images that can be printed. 

AI creation with touch-up editing in photoshop

Ultimately, my thrill of discovery in photography is a celebration of my artistic spirit's boundless curiosity. It's the joy of finding beauty in unexpected places, capturing fleeting moments that resonate with emotion, and continuously evolving my artistic journey. The same is true of my ever evolving artwork in paints. Since moving to Mexico my subject matter has changed dramatically⏤from exuberant landscapes, I have gone to gritty spectral images of skeletons. Though now I have gone back to still life and portraits. But it can change at any time. I am not so much painting for the public anymore It is for my soul. 

"Victory of War" oil on linen

AI creation with touch-up editing in photoshop

Excitement of discovery is my lifelong companion.