The Thrill of Reinvention

Once again, the work has taken a turn—into a new series of colorful expressionist pieces. Throughout more than forty years of creating, I have rarely stayed in one lane. Galleries often encourage artists to find a niche and repeat what sells. I have never been comfortable with that. Landscape painting brought my greatest commercial success, yet I have continually wandered into new territories: abstraction, mixed-media, and even my HangUps series with faces suspended on clotheslines. With our move in 2019 to Oaxaca, Mexico, a group of paintings emerged from our Dos Venados studio: Memento Mori paintings of symbolic skeletons, honoring the Dia de Muertos motif.

Reinvention keeps the work alive.

This new chapter begins with pure abstraction:

Antes del Nombre, Oil on canvas, 70 x 80 cm

Fauve Mujer, Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm

I lay down color and motion without a plan, letting the paint lead. After that foundation is alive on the canvas, I look for what wants to emerge. In the first two paintings, that became luminous female portraits. I created them first using AI as a reference, then translated and transformed them in paint over the loose, expressive ground. They are larger than life, born from imagination and guided by technology, yet made human by the hand.

Sandia, Oil on canvas, 25 x 25 cm

Today, I shifted scale. Once the abstract background had dried, I set up a simple still life of a slice of watermelon on a plate. Working from a familiar, realistic subject sparked a different energy. A dialogue unfolded between the bold underpainting and the object before me. In the end, both voices found harmony: the grounded and the mysterious, the seen and the unforeseen.

The pleasure lies in not knowing exactly where the next brushstroke will lead. That is the freedom I have always trusted.

More: Steven Boone Fine Art

Also: https://stevenboone.myportfolio.com

The Weight of Air — Complete at Last

For years, friends and readers have encouraged me to bring together my writing, photography, and art into one work. At last it is done.

Back in 2008, I spent nearly a year circling the globe—painting, photographing, and writing weekly dispatches for this blog, My Fairy-Tale Life. Those notes, along with thousands of photographs, became the seed of a long-dreamed project: a travel memoir called, The Weight of Air: A Memoir of Surrender and Becoming.

After many months of focused work—learning new design tools, revisiting old journals, editing, and polishing—the book is finished. It is now available in two digital formats: a beautifully designed PDF and an interactive flipbook. An ePub edition is on the horizon.

I’m grateful to publish it under my own imprint, Twin-Flames Press, which carries a story close to my heart. After my daughter Naomi died in 1999, I would return each year to San Francisco and stay in the same hotel where we had once lived while she underwent healing sessions with a Russian psychic. This, after all mainstream and alternative efforts had failed. The first time I went back alone, the receptionist, Cecelia, recognized me. When I reached my room, I found flowers and a kind note waiting. Many on the staff had known Naomi and me. Cecelia said softly, “You two were like twin flames.” The words struck deep, capturing something essential about our bond—and so Twin-Flames became the name of my publishing company.

It was under that name that I first published A Heart Traced in Sand, Reflections on a Daughter´s Struggle for Life, about the life and passing of my daughter. That book, created in love and grief, went on to win two awards and taught me the discipline and devotion of self-publishing through InDesign—the same tool I used again to craft this new volume.

It has been years since I undertook an effort of such magnitude. Now it stands complete: a journey around the world, woven through words and images, tracing the dissolving boundaries between inner and outer life. The journey continues—through art, through story, through the invisible breath that connects everything.

You can explore or purchase The Weight of Air or A Heart Traced in Sand directly here — available by donation, with a suggested price of $18.

To take a look at the flipbook for free, click here.

Thank you to all who have followed the unfolding of this work through my weekly Substack posts. Your encouragement helped carry it to the finish line.

The Gap in My Smile

They say bridges connect what’s been separated, but sometimes they just break and leave you gaping—literally. My bridge, the dental kind, did just that a few months ago.

But let’s back up…

Years ago in Santa Fe, my perfectionist dentist retired, and I ended up in the care of a good but less inspired family dentist. During a routine exam, he spotted a small crack in an upper molar and said, “You can live with it.”

Soon after, I left on a year-long journey around the world. Halfway through, my tooth turned traitor. In Madrid, it began to ache fiercely. I didn’t know any dentists, my Spanish faltered, and I was a stranger in pain. Salvation came in the south of Spain, where a friend introduced me to a compassionate female dentist. She took one look and said the tooth had rotted. Out it came.

In Italy, I got a false tooth. It never felt right. For years, I simply lived with the gap, smiling carefully.

Seven years ago, trouble returned. Eating popcorn, a hard kernel broke a tooth next to the gap. I ended up with a bridge—two crowns and a false tooth spanning the gap. It served well until six months ago, when it broke.

Here in Oaxaca, my dentist recommended two new crowns and an implant—a permanent solution, he said, one that would last the rest of my life. Since I was leaving for the U.S., he made a temporary bridge. It fell out a month later. Because it didn’t hurt, I decided to live again with the gap—until the area grew sensitive and I began to worry about infection.

So, the dental odyssey resumed.

The new clinic is immaculate and professional. Amy had two implants done there and was very pleased. The cost, compared to U.S. prices, made me smile wider than usual:

• Implant: 25,000 pesos

• Three crowns: 30,000 pesos

• Two root canals (surprise!): 7,000 pesos

Total: 62,000 pesos, about $3,300 USD.

In the U.S., the same work would have been $12,000–$15,000.

As I lay in the chair, my jaw numbed and the instruments humming, I drifted into my memory vault—visiting the bright rooms of my past: childhood laughter, faraway travels, the faces of those I’ve loved. I realized I’ve had a very good life—even measured from a dentist’s chair.

I marveled at the teeth themselves—how remarkable they are, enduring year after year, quietly doing their work. I felt a wave of gratitude for the Creator’s design, for such intricate workmanship that has served me so well through the decades. Teeth, like life itself, endure countless pressures and changes. What matters is how gracefully we accept their aging, and how gratefully we honor the design that made them so strong.

(See my recently completed travel memoir, called The Weight of Air)