Illuminara

I spent the day in a trance, drawing babies and angels. I filmed it and put this together. The world seems so strange at times, but let’s just love the new babies being born (they see more than we do) and it will all come out right.

I was searching through my stacks of sketchbooks going back many years. I saw this page, and it seemed to want to be seen today. This is the first day of school in Westport, and this fairy in the “Time for Change” bubble made me smile. My prayer and wish is that all the children [...]

We were in Fundy National Park in Canada, camping, and all wanted to see a moose. There were several places you could possibly see one in the wild. One was a deep and delicate forest which had a meandering trail close to water, leading to Lac Laverty. We set out mid-afternoon. I was enchanted by [...]

I’ve been thinking of David and Goliath. David was small and young, Goliath a hulking Philistine machine of war. When Goliath insulted David by saying the Israelites were weak and their God was, too, David’s determination to stand up to Goliath was actually a determination to believe God would go through this battle with him. [...]

It interests me how our thoughts are like holograms in our minds, or movies, just a few actions away from becoming “real”. One decision can pull the holographic idea from mid air, into your hands. It’s that decision which drives the creative outcome in a way, because unless we act on our creative drive, the [...]

Babies are no fools. They sense and see and feel exactly what is going on around them. They’re innocent, though, too, in that they are vulnerable and subject to our actions and choices. And, they’re learning how to deal with motor skills and how to handle all that sensory in-put. They’re amazing. I believe the [...]

My entire childhood, during school, I was secretly studying people visually, how they looked, how they moved, how light and shadow defined their features, what the space around them looked like. I pretended to go along with the teacher’s agenda, but the visual rapture of the human figure was where I beamed my true focus [...]

Automatic drawing, drawing in a trance-like stream 0f consciousness, is fun and surprising. My sketchbooks are full of such drawing meditations. You don’t know who will come visit you on the paper.  I go with the feeling, the flow of the ink. Then I get to know these drawn characters, and myself, a little better.

At the start of summer, I was at Compo Beach and saw a nice elderly gentleman reading a book. His hat was floppy (I liked that about him). H got up and ran into the water for a dip, and sat back down to read. I wondered then who he was and imagined he was [...]

This is a study of a child rider, one of the many I made before writing and illustrating A BLUE RIBBON FOR SUGAR. There is nothing more wonderful than studying the movements and linear grace of children, but drawing horses in motion is just as hypnotizing.  I probably love no other occupation as much as [...]