Inspiration from nature and going with the flow

I really do love lichen...I collected pieces of it off of tree bark when I was a kid, it just looked sooooooo...cool.

Ruffles and lace, so fragile...beautiful...

I'm sure some people would say "eeuu, gross..." and some people would think seeing this stuff growing anywhere in abundance is a scourge and needs to be eliminated because it's not supposed to be there because it's somehow bad...to me, it's life.

This cool blue patch is on a chunk of wood in our yard...we had cut a tree down several years ago and I've created a wild flower garden around the large rotten parts that were left behind along with the stump, and I've been admiring the various forms of fungus growing there for years, and this particular piece that had been once shaped as a chair (and even used as one while it lasted) is now fostering a small pine tree that had doubled in size this year, from the death of one tree comes life, I love having this part of my garden...

This sort of thing inspires my art...this is where some of my shapes and flow comes from...

Fluid Improvisation, 2007
pencil drawing on paper, approx. 12 x 9

My pencil just rambled everywhere in this one...it's a bit chaotic and the eye really has no particular place to rest in it...which I don't mind really, I like to find my own way around sometimes anyway, I don't like it when someone approaches me with: "Can I help you?" Look, if I want your help, I'll ask for it...go away...please...let me look around and enjoy myself without the pressure...I guess that's why I was such a lousy student...I always baffled my teachers, I just preferred flailing around on my own working it out... "just let me do it!" I wanted ownership of what I did, I didn't want someone to come along and finish it for me just because I asked for help, which someone did once...they just made a mark on my picture to "show me how" and I threw it away because it was no longer mine...the proper thing to do would have been to use a clean piece of paper and showed me how on that...oy, some egos are just intolerable...




This little one came from my small daily sketchbook where I fiddle with my pencil while waiting in waiting rooms of doctor's offices or waiting for my Fred to pick me up from work...it too has that chaotic spirit to it, doing it's own thing that I love so much...