There is a meadow near my house that I visit often, usually a couple times a week. I have started to refer to it as “My Meadow” even though I know it does not belong to me, but rather, I belong to it.  It is my favorite spot, maybe in the entire world. When I first visited a few years ago it felt like an exciting discovery, a good place to take Tulip  for a walk. But  through the seasons, through the many days visiting, it has grown to feel like home. In many ways it is so familiar, and still different every time I visit. They say you never step in the same river twice, and that holds true for the meadow. Every day I visit, a new batch of flowers have bloomed, I hear a new bird sing, the sun sits a little differently in the sky. And it does not matter how many times I walk the same route, I will never tire of my meadow. 

In the meadow I watch the seasons change, watch the meadow fill with snow, watch the snow melt and create a soggy ground that squishes beneath my feet. I watch the grass grow, then the flowers, first the mule's ears bloom, then the lupine, and then the paint brush almost neon in its orange hue. Right now the meadow is filled with these tiny white flowers. 

The light filters through the trees revealing sun spots that illuminate new plants, new spaces depending on the time of day I visit. It is a space that holds me like I have never been held before. I often speak to the meadow, to the trees, to the flowers and grasses, telling them how much I love them, and I hear them tell me they love me back. And as I walk down the trail my mind repeats “This is so good,  this is so good, this is so good” over and over again. I have cried many tears of joy in this meadow, many tears of sadness, many tears of awe. I often write poems about this meadow, create art inspired by its beauty. “Blanket of Dew” is such an artwork. Inspired by the way that the meadow holds light, and the way it holds me. Like a quilt of color it offers comfort and warmth, even in the winter. Its open sky allows the sun to shine down on me. The meadow I am sure was once full of trees, burned years ago in a fire. It's a symbol of resilience, of transformation, of the creation that inevitably sprouts from destruction. 

Watercolor and Handmade Paper

16” × 20”

“But You Have Wings” was created by collaging a collection of “Studies” which are quick experimental pieces that I create as a way to exercise creative freedom and explore different mediums and subject matter. Working in this quick dynamic way allows me to break free of my routine and discover new intuitive ways of working. I then took these pieces and collaged them together to create a “whole” and allow these varied moments to inform each other in new and exciting ways. This is both a new and old way of working for me, as collage has consistently been a method I find myself revisiting again and again, often unintentionally. I am starting to understand that it is one of my most natural ways of working and can track this creative method back to my childhood. Although collage has been present in past pieces,  “But You Have Wings” signifies a new path in my artistic journey that I am excited to explore. During my process of creating the initial studies I wrote many poems on the backs of these miniature artworks, knowing that they would be covered up in the collage process, I created a book from paper I made and rewrote them, in the poem book to accompany the finished piece.

18” × 24”

Mixed Media

Ceramic

Wheel thrown vase handpainted with a woman with a moon head and floral decorations.

10×6 inches