November Harvest, oil on canvas

In November 2003, an artist friend came to my studio, where each of us painted the same subject: two squashes and a pomegranate in a basket. My efforts resulted in this still life, whose rich but somber background colors, earth tones in the butternut squash and basket, and bright yellow squash convey the middle autumn’s intense beauty as well as the melancholy it brings when colors fade and plants begin to wither to brown. Touches of red and orange on both squashes help unify the painting by echoing the red background, and the pomegranate provides a focal point both by its position and by combining the background’s blue and red along with touches of yellow from the squash next to it.

December Afternoon, oil on canvas

In December 2005, an artist friend invited me over for one of our periodic oil painting dates. After devouring the hearty, multi-course lunch he had prepared, we donned boots and scarves and coats and hats and gloves set out for a mid-afternoon walk in the fresh, deep snow. We made our way along city streets to Wicker Park on Chicago’s North Side; once inside the park, the sight of trees along the western border halted our steps and filled us with wonder. Weak yet strangely bright sunlight filtered through the bare branches and illuminated the virgin snow below in patches of yellow and white that contrasted with shadows from the trees that appeared blue and purple in the fading light. This painting expresses my feelings in those moments of seeing, with yellow at the lower left representing sunlight, white and silvery gray in the middle evoking snow, and deep blue and purple at the edges indicating shadows and the soul sadness that comes with the approaching darkness every afternoon and especially in December, when northern hemisphere days are shortest. A holly branch to the upper left and a pine bough to the bottom right provide additional clues to the painting’s December origin.

Red Dove in Silvery Sky, oil on canvas

In the mid-2000s, doves figured prominently in my art, inspired by countless mourning doves seen on walks in my neighborhood and by hearing these birds’ melancholy, soulful call. During this period, an artist friend joined me for lunch one day, followed by a walk, meditation, and an oil painting session that produced this dove. Unlike traditional dove depictions that show gentle white birds against dark backgrounds, this painting uses intense colors, forceful brushwork, heavy texture, and a pale background highlighted with silver paint as a reminder that peace comes only through effort and that the work of the Spirit must be taken up year ‘round—not just at Christmas. As the mystic, writer, and theologian Howard Thurman wrote, “When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flock, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among brothers, to make music in the heart.”

Edgar Allan Poe, oil on canvas

In August 2002, my growing desire to expand beyond watercolor by delving into oil painting was fulfilled when an artist friend invited me to his studio. In that first of many painting sessions together, each of us produced an oil portrait of an American literary figure: poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) for my friend and poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) for me. The 19th of this month marks the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth. This portrait reflects Poe’s preoccupation with death and the macabre (in poems such as Annabel Lee and The Raven and stories such as The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Pit and the Pendulum) by showing him in a stark white shirt and somber black coat against an almost blood red background. Poe’s jet black moustache and eyebrows add to this effect, as does the pinkish red underpainting that peeks through in patches in his shirt and around his eyes and hairline.

Green Frog, watercolor

In 1997, frogs took the spotlight for a time: besides stories in numerous media citing alarming increases in frog deformities caused by toxins and other environmental stresses, posters and other promotional items appeared throughout Chicago announcing a local museum’s show of live frogs. These sources inspired me to create several watercolors featuring colorful frogs. Painted on standard watercolor paper whose front side had been treated with gesso, this small piece demonstrates how different surfaces can affect a painting’s look. Standard watercolor paper has a matte finish, and its cotton fibers easily absorb paint and water; after drying, colors typically look softer and duller than when they were applied. A primer like gesso (which takes its name from an Italian word meaning chalk, gypsum, or plaster) seals the paper’s surface and gives it a rougher texture; paint brushed onto such a surface pools and blends instead of sinking into the fibers. Once dry, the paint yields more intense colors, a somewhat jewel-like shine, and interesting effects where different colors meet and merge. Green Frog showcases these qualities through the frog’s opaque right eye and left front foot and combined colors on its belly and back legs. Except for a few jet black areas, the intense color remains transparent, allowing the paper’s rough surface to complement the image by contributing dramatic texture.

Spring Trees, oil on canvas

Like many of my oils, this piece came about during a painting date with an artist friend. He had taken some photos during a recent trip to the country, and after our usual lunch, walk, and meditation, each of us selected one of the photos to use as inspiration for a painting. My efforts that day produced this rendering of trees just beginning to come back to life in spring. Pale green and yellow in the foreground and white touches in the trees that hint at both leaves and blossoms set the scene in spring’s early, delicate days. Slim tree trunks look back to winter in their bareness but suggest spring’s sudden burst of life with their undulating—almost nervous—lines. White paint blended into the background and in parts of the yellow-green grass unifies the painting by echoing the white in the trees; it also softens and cools the image while capturing the feeling of an overcast, misty day.

Sun Through Spring Blossoms, oil on canvas

This small oil painting came to life in yet another painting date with a friend. After lunch, we took a walk in one of the parks near my house, where we observed the sun high in the western sky through a canopy of pale green leaves. That vision inspired me to create a palette filled with pastel colors and plenty of white to render a view of the sun and sky as seen while looking upward through flowering trees filled with blossoms and light green leaves. The sun’s intense color contrasts with the rest of the painting’s pale hues, and thick strokes of yellow and white to the upper left and in the center provide a shimmering effect of light and heat. Peppermint pink blossoms applied with five playful petals each and mint candy leaves created with green paint toned down dramatically with white suggest whimsy and childlike wonder at nature’s springtime beauty.

Pink Roses in Green Vase, oil on canvas

In June 2003, an artist friend invited me to his studio for a painting date. Before my arrival, he had gone for a walk in his neighborhood and, in an alley, had come upon a climbing rose bush in perfect bloom. He picked several of its pink flowers and put them in a green vase, and that afternoon each of us painted that vase of intoxicatingly fragrant roses. My version highlighted the roses through heavy, highly textured paint application in several shades of pink and red. Yellow strokes blended into the vase hint at the roses’ stems while suggesting the midafternoon sunshine that filtered through the green glass while we painted that day. Touches of pink in the lavender background as well as thick strokes of light pink on the back of the table, of green to the right of the vase, and of darker pink in the foreground help harmonize and unify the piece because they repeat the colors in the flowers and the vase.

Cow in Summer Landscape, oil on canvas

In August 2004, an artist friend came to my studio for a painting date. Our mutual interest in organic food and our love of ayurveda (the health system of ancient India that has been revived in recent decades and has spread to the West), combined with that day’s intense sunshine, inspired us to paint cows. Ayurveda reveres the gentle cow, who so generously feeds humanity with her abundant milk and with the fresh cheese, butter, and ghee (clarified butter) made from milk; ayurveda especially prizes dairy foods in summer because of their cooling effect on the body. My friend decided to paint a mama cow with tiny baby beside her, while my efforts produced this quiet summer landscape featuring a cow grazing in the foreground. The clear sky, horizontal ribbon of desert-like light brown earth in the background, and strokes of yellow at the meeting of earth and sky and within the grass indicate the time of year as the height of summer. As with ayurveda, which recommends countering extremes of any kind with foods, herbs, or activities to restore balance, this painting balances the summer heat with a landscape made up mostly of deep, cool green and featuring a calm, dark colored cow. Together, these visual details signal the importance of slowing down and savoring nature to cope with summertime heat.

Moonrise Over Lake Michigan II, oil on canvas

One night in 2007, while heading south on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, a glance to the east gave me a breathtaking view of the full Moon rising over the dark waters of Lake Michigan. That vision has haunted me since and inspired me to capture my emotional response to it in both watercolor and oil.

August Bouquet, oil on canvas

On the first day of August 2003, an artist friend joined me at my studio for a painting session. After lunch, we took a walk along the railroad tracks near my house, where we found many wildflowers growing. We picked several, along with some interesting leaves, and back at my house we arranged them in a vase so we could each paint a personal interpretation of the flowers. My efforts that afternoon resulted in this still life, which uses heavy impasto for the blossoms to evoke their strong textures; smooth surfaces for the background and for the cloth arranged beneath the vase contrast with the flowers’ thick paint. Deep green leaves at the base of the arrangement and the green bottoms and white tops of Queen Anne’s lace contribute cool tones to offset the warmth coming from the mostly ochre background and the black-eyed Susans’ cheery orange-yellow petals.

Deer’s Head, Side View, watercolor and pen and ink

This watercolor dates to 1998, during a period in which my art focused heavily on skulls, bones, X rays, and other somewhat macabre subject matter. It depicts a small deer’s skull that came into my possession during a “white elephant” Christmas gift exchange in December 1997. Fine, flowing lines of black ink applied with a pen sharply highlight details throughout the skull, such as the horns’ edges and their bases. In other areas, especially the teeth at the skull’s bottom center and part of the horns’ edges, the black ink has run into wet patches of paint and blended with the color to create a fuzzy look; washy strokes of white paint in a few areas also help soften the look and convey the feeling of bone. A rich orange wash across the background warms up the entire painting while complementing the skull’s earthy tones of yellow ochre, raw and burnt sienna, and raw and burnt umber. Although created during cold weather, this painting’s subject matter and colors evoke summer’s heat and the desert’s harsh, bone-bleaching sun.

Early September Still Life, oil on canvas

On the first Friday in September 2003, an artist friend came to my house for a painting date. After lunch, she joined me on a walk along the railroad tracks that run through the neighborhood and just beyond my house. There, despite the dry ground and the day’s heat, we found numerous wildflowers in full bloom and ornamental grasses growing near the tracks. We picked morning glories, Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susans, and different types of leaves and grass; at my house, we arranged several of our pickings into this bouquet and then set it up in my studio to paint. This oil painting resulted from my efforts that afternoon. The mix of lavender and white in the background, the tablecloth, and many of the flowers hints at the cooling that autumn would bring later in the month, while one bright yellow bloom pays homage to the last of summer’s warmth. This image shows the contrast between the heavy texture used for the Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susan at the top left, the smooth strokes defining the little morning glories in the center and at the vase’s rim, and the opaque, brushy softness seen in the droopy grass stems at left, right, and top center.

Late Summer Sky, oil on canvas

This oil came out of a painting date with one of my artist friends. Inspired by the shimmering summer sky we witnessed while on our walk after lunch, it mingles strokes of pink, crimson, yellow, and blue with plenty of white paint to capture the image that filled my mind’s eye after we returned home. The birds entered the piece at the end, almost as an afterthought, to add to the painting’s airy quality and suggest the fluttering feeling we experienced that day from a restless yet gentle breeze. 

Glorious Sunrise, oil on canvas

One of several paintings created in 2008 especially for the mystical play Going Home, this piece came out of a painting session in May of that year. It measures 10 inches high by 30 inches wide and continues a new interest in horizontal formats that began earlier that year with Moonrise Over Lake Michigan II. Here, the Sun has just begun to creep above the horizon, bringing new light, new life, new inspiration. White wisps radiating outward into the sky’s pink and yellow patches convey sunlight’s shimmer, as do touches of copper and gold in the earthy landscape below the Sun’s crimson arc. As Going Home’s final painting, it testifies that our darkest moments always find relief in a new light of understanding. For after the darkness of the night, the Sun always rises in glory and shares its warmth and light with all creation.