Writing and other creative arts enhance each other and are ways of keeping open my awareness of the life I am living. For my own wellbeing, I regularly take time to walk, paint, sketch, take photographs, journal, make a collage, or simply sit in a place and enjoy being present in the world. Sometimes paintings arise out of my poems or journals, or poems arise out of a walk in which I am noticing the exquisite details of a plant or being moved by the slant of light against a rock. Sometimes I just play with line and color on a 4″ by 4″ square of watercolor paper.
The focus is not on the product, but on the process. I try not to worry about whether a painting or drawing is “good,” but to have an intention of curiosity and gratitude, investigating what paying attention on a deeper level is teaching me, and documenting the joy in every day moments. The images in the gallery are examples of art in the spirit of inquiry and presence.
The tools for deepening attention are simple: watercolors, pens and pencils and a travel journal, inexpensive acrylic paints and canvasses, cardboard, old magazines, scissors and glue stick, an iPhone or other camera, a daypack and water. And when possible, silence and solitude.