Wading into Watercolors

My creative journey has taken me on a long winding road with many unexpected side trips. It began as a child when poetry and art grabbed my spirit and burrowed in. No medium was out of reach. There were crayons, paints, chalks, colored pencils, charcoal and sketching pencils. From stick figure people to trees with a round head of leaves and rudimentary sketches of bowls of fruit I made my way in the art world of childhood. 

Poems erupted in my heart and onto paper at a staggering rate. Poor as they may have been they fed my creative soul.

Eventually, as I grew up, art seemed to slip away and I focused on writing. I journeyed from poems to short stories and onto novels and settled for many years only on writing. Then slowly my creative mind wandered down meandering paths not taken in many years.

It began with a foray into scrapbooking. I was looking for a visual way to express my creativity and happened upon a scrapbook magazine in Barnes and Noble. I bought one. Found a local scrapbook store, took a class or two and was hooked. Writing settled into the nether recesses of my brain and I created scrapbooks for each of my children along with other albums for various occasions as well as random ones. I even started selling framed scrapbook pages of new baby photos and wedding invitations.

One night at the now defunct Borders book store I discovered a magazine called Somerset Studio. Published by Stampington and Company its pages are filled with all sorts of mixed media art. I graduated to acrylic paints, stamping and stencils. Messed around with paper collage and a variety of other techniques. Where once my scrapbook supplies fit inside a shoe box sized plastic bin, my art supplies exploded to fill an entire room, including the closet!

Today, all those supplies still fill up my space and for the passed few years I have been hooked on art journaling. With its lack of rules and its use of so many different materials it is the perfect way to let myself go and just play.

But now I need a bit of focus and have gotten into watercolors. It's a difficult medium to work with as it seems to have a mind of its own on the page, but the challenge is wonderful and the process is meditative which fits in well with my need for simplicity, meditation, and writing simple Japanese poems like haiku and tanka. I will practice and practice, watch You Tube videos, take some online classes and let my skills grow as they will. For now my focus is painting abstract flowers and here is a sample of one of my first attempts.

Adding poetry to my paintings allows me to combine my two creative loves and to make this blog exactly what it claims to be, a marriage of poetry and art.

So join me on this creative journey. I have ended up where I never intended to go.

Devoted to Mary Oliver

I have been a fan of Mary Oliver's poetry for years. Her poems are detailed and heartfelt images of nature, the humbleness of being human, and a clear indication that writing poems is a form of prayer. Her newest collection, "Devotions," is a compilation of poems from nearly all of her other collections and I keep it on my reading table and dip into it each morning. The title also gave me the idea for the art journal I've been toying with creating for a while now.

I have wanted to create a journal that honors Mary Oliver and includes some of my favorite lines from her poems. I've been lately intrigued by these 6 x 6 inch disc bound journals and I think it's the perfect style for this new journal.

I will create mixed media, art journal style, layouts and incorporate lines from the poems. It is my way to highlight the lines I love and to pay tribute to the poet who inspires me to write poetry and to experience and witness nature in all its beauty and tragedy with not only open eyes, but with open heart and spirit.

Opening the Doors to Poetry

are you the one
who turns her head
when your name is called
or does a silent someone
lurk in your soul

Even before I began writing tanka my short poems contained no capital letter except for proper nouns. The only punctuation I ever use are a random comma to suggest a slight pause, or a small dash to carry the reader along into the next thought. It is simply a style I have always liked. But today I came upon a hidden and profound reason for eliminating these artifices in poetry.

I am reading "The Way of Tanka" by Naomi Beth Wakan, which is one of the best books I've read about the writing of this Japanese form of poetry. In her book she described the lack of a capital letter at the start of the poem as a way of keeping open in the reader's mind, all that has gone before.

So many find poetry to be inaccessible and I strive to make my poems easy to read and understand. There is no obtuseness about them, nor does the reader need to consult dictionaries or ancient stories or texts. There is little to interpret as I hope all I have to express is right there in the lines and words. I like this idea of lower case letters beginning the first lines of my poems. It seems to visually suggest an open doorway into my soul and into the poem. I want all my guests to enter without having to insert a key into a lock.

The fact that my poems are short also suggest easy entry and simple understanding.

The lack of punctuation also makes for an easy flow in reading. There are no harsh starts or stops so the reader glides from thought to thought. Leaving the end line with no period allows the reader to extend his poetic experience and perhaps engage his own thoughts about what I have expressed. And the poems are short and so more accessible in terms of time and thought.

I am focusing now on writing tanka as a daily discipline. Though most of my poems are short, not all of them fit into the guidelines for writing tanka and so I will work at revising old poems into the form as well as paying more attention to tanka "rules" as I create new ones.

the lost soul
opens to possibility~~
unimaginable
to those who believe
they have been found

Artist Exhibit

The Temecula Theatre Foundation is sponsoring an art exhibit at the Merc in Old Town Temecula. The exhibit will run from April 6 to April 30. Artist receptions will be held on April 6 and April 27 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. I will be present for the reception on April 27. I hope you will come out and see this special exhibit. All art work is a donation to the Temecula Theatre Foundation and funds no-cost field trips for 4,000 students.

These are the three pieces I will be exhibiting. The art work for this exhibit is no bigger than 6 inches by 6 inches. I like working in this small dimension so it was a perfect fit for me. I created mixed media work on canvases and included lines from my poems in the pieces. I hope to expand my artistic realm by finding more ways to incorporate poems with my art.

Although this is not a juried exhibit it is always an honor to share my art and poetry with the world. As a writer and artist I spend many hours alone in my room playing with paint and paper or swirling words on the page in a poetic stupor. Art and writing of course are forms of self expression as well as forms of communicating to others what lives inside our hearts and minds. A poetry reading or an art show are ways to bring what is inside me out into the world. It is a pleasure to share myself with others in these ways and to hopefully bring some peace and positivity to the world.

Please come join us at the reception, or just go and visit and see what I and other artists have created from our souls.