“Mall Girls”  journal page.  Gouache, pencil.

I can manage for a while without making these lines – my own kind of ‘ley line’ on a paper’s surface, but there always arrives that surprising moment when I am compelled to put pencil and pigment to paper once again,  the outcome isn’t important, it is the process that lifts me up and past until only the compulsion to see my own true written language exists.

“Helen Sat On A Red Blanket As Evening Fell”  Gouache, pencil, waxed paper.

I thought I had discovered something new when I decided to glue this painted piece of waxed paper over ‘Helen.’  I use waxed paper a lot.  Between pages, under my favorite page pressing tool (a pan of rocks) and I accidentally found that you can crumple it up and paint on it and it looks neat.  Apparently this is something that others are already doing!  to give their paintings an aged look, or just to add something to a collage.

‘Nudes with Hands and No Feet”  Gouache, pencil

Journal 2011 Cover. 

This journal is a bound watercolor paper book I bought two years ago when my daughter lived in Billings from a fun place called “Hobby Lobby!”  I painted  the cover with gesso and glued the painted figure from a previous page.  The lower case alphabet stamp to the left of the figure I made by gluing down very small rubber alphabet stamps to a block of wood.  I glued them randomly because I was thinking about symbols and language and I didn’t want a conventional  alphabet.

My grandson has been keeping me busy visiting from his new home in Denver!  Who cares about making art when you have this wonderful little boy to play with!