Reflections

You could say I wasn't having a good day. Without going into detail, I had messed things up, and was suffering the consequences. Feeling very anxious and "out of sorts", I headed down to the creek with my camera. Looking around, I saw the same landscape I had photographed a thousand times before. Nothing new or interesting immediately presented itself, and I wondered why I had even bothered to walk down the steep hill from the cabins above. It was hot, and about as humid as a steam bath. I stood for several minutes, watching my dogs swim across the creek and run around the edge of the island.

 At some point, I noticed the sound of the moving water, and started to relax a bit. The more I listened and looked, the better I felt, the presence of the creek beginning to soothe me as it always had. Nothing to take pictures of, I thought, but at least I can sit here and meditate. Suddenly the appearance of one of the dogs on the other side of the creek drew my attention, and as I gazed across the water, I was suddenly struck by the bright, almost neon green color of reflected vegetation on the water's surface.

It rippled and shone, in dazzling patterns, lines, and swirls as the reflections were animated by the movement of the water and the changing light. Mesmerized by the dance of light across the surface of the creek, I turned on the camera and began to focus on what looked to me like a magical, ever-changing abstract painting.

The patterns of shapes and lines were most dramatic where the creek rushed around a large rock. The closer I looked, the more I saw it not as water, but as shapes and colors.

The effect was hypnotic. In some ways, when I zoomed in closely, it didn't look real.

These photos are strait out of camera, and haven't been altered in any way.

Each image drew me further and further in, until I lost myself completely in the colored shapes and lines.

Water, light, and color can do some pretty amazing things together.

Things that we often take for granted, or don't even notice.

Further down the creek, I noticed this.

I'm glad I noticed. In the words of Mary Oliver:

                                             
Let me keep my mind on what
matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and
learning to be
astonished.

Weekly Quick Collage: Let Me Know

I have to confess that this collage was not all that "quick." Originally, it was done rather quickly, but I decided I wasn't satisfied with it, so I continued to work on it, adding more layers until the part that said "Let me know" was covered up. This in keeping with my resolution to push myself farther, to experiment and learn new things about making art. More and more, I'm employing my "throw away your first five (or ten) ideas" strategy, and beginning to break new ground, as they say.

Let Me Know

mixed media collage, 5 x 7 inches 

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.         -Picasso





What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.         -Crowfoot





Let me keep my mind on what
matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and
learning to be
astonished.
- Mary Oliver

Weekly Quick Collage: Golden Day

Golden Day

collage, 4 x 6 inches

“I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.”
― Mary Oliver



“I do not live happily or comfortably
With the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all about computers,
The news is all about bombs and blood.
This morning, in the fresh field,
I came upon a hidden nest.
It held four warm, speckled eggs.
I touched them.
Then went away softly,
Having felt something more wonderful
Than all the electricity of New York City.”
― Mary Oliver; Evidence: Poems

Weekly Quick Collage: Persimmon

Persimmon

My quick collages are what you might call collage "sketches", usually made in a short amount of time from things I find laying around in my scrap piles. I find them to be fun as well as a great 'loosening up' exercise.

Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

~ Mary Oliver ~