Tribute my sister's first born son

This is dedicated to my sister's first born son who died last Sunday morning.

1. Beyond Dreaming

My open heart sleeps
Eyes over your so still form
I see my flowing


2. The Dream

Dreamed a blue Jay lay
Upon curling leaves of brown
Feathers iridescent last May
Now this dreamy blue, just lay
Alchemized into ether today
Sentinel-Jays circled down
Dreamed a golden you did lay
Upon curling leaves of brown

3. Nightmare: The heart is a many chambered muscle

The heart is a muscle
with a needle's pierce
the tissue contracts

One bite into a heart shaped apple
ripped open your infected gums
red to crimson strep spread

Today you lay on a gurney
awaiting your second go ‘under the knife’
family energies circle

Guttered candle wicks upright
we imagine white light, holding
your body as the gift we know it to be

4. My Sister Wakes

When you fade away
My first born son, I will dress
You in memories

Fall, a murder of ducks

camouflaged hunters sat, poised
my canoe rotated
china blue sky spun
wood ducks flushed
boom boom boom
I grabbed my throat
a scream escaped
my partner blocked his ears
we spun violently
red, yellow and brown leaves
moved upon the waters surface
away in concentric circles
as the wild birds fell

once upon a time when I was a very little girl

I just wonder who owns the shadow...

Great Joy

This last sunday was Ric's memorial.
I looked forward to the community gathering and sharing but dreaded it's passing. Like holding a fresh picked Indian Paintbrush flower that within two seconds of pinching off the hairy stem all the life escapes it's vibrant body. A special something that inhabited the lovely wild thing, that is never to return as that flower again.
So we sat in a hot room; listened to music, cried, laughed, and spoke of a man who never criticized anyone or their art. Who accepted his diagnosis of a cruel and virulent cancer as a gift. Who for the last eight years of his life opened his heart in a gentle and kind way to all who came to him. Even at Sloan-Kettering during his stem cell agony when he could barely pull himself off the bed, he sat up and listened to a young woman visitor who was in great mental pain. He was a Buddhist.
Ric was often scruffy with food and paint on his large t-shirts and jeans. And his hair! A young artist described how his hair resembled a burdock thistle. It was soft brown straight hair that moved in the slightest breeze. He would push the wispy strands away from his face while he concentrated.
He was a collector of ideas, words, images and people he would embrace then release. When he spoke- it was a often gathering of strange and surprising images that slowly escaped his mind and lay like marvelous exotic seeds before his students.

On Sunday's he would sit in a local cafe with all the newspapers on his table open waiting for people to come and discuss anything and everything. Many came. He was open to the unknown...
His death a was peaceful passing from conscious to the unknown, he was a man who was comfortable within himself. He was a teacher who opened doors that seemed locked. He unlocked my creativity when I was sure it was gone. All the paintings I have posted on this site have been inspired by his great joy.

Oregon the green and fair

My image captured during a blissed out moment in Oregon.

poem about to be published

Otter Lake Clan
(A Community in Forest County, Wisconsin)

We Indians gathered
the scent of sweet grass spiked
as women weaved baskets

my, mixed breed, great-grandmother laughed heartily
as a hand carved pipe, filled with pungent tobacco, passed around
to Lumber barons, white people

My, white, Grandpa was such a flirt
he pinched flesh
so many born without his name

red onion dyed threads attached to the baskets
as the umbilical cord twists, giving life
too many adopted

my mother was born, out of the mystery of these unions
many whispered how she had high cheek bones
We are one, weaved into the tight sweet-grass baskets

boyz in RED

Invisible Notes

I have a ghost who lives in the hall
he likes to tease me with noises
late at night scratching on the wall
invisible notes he pens in the hall
his antics are quite a pall
while my peace he busily destroys
I have a ghost who won’t leave the hall
he continues to tease me with noises

1979

Photo take of me while I was in art school.

Now

today

The Keening Reel

As we were driving to our vacation on Plum Island, in the flooding rains on May 13th, a rich voiced baritone was singing Irish ballads on the radio station WGBH Celtic Sojourn. We passed a serious accident where a black car had rolled into the median strip and was laying on it's side. Everyone was quite shaken and we were snailing along highway 495. The traffic looked like a big wet slug. A state cop had just arrived and was on his tip toes peeking into the drivers side window. I was praying, keening and brimming full of Irish music love. Then on our way back from our weeks vacation we had three hours of Irish music to bring us home. The music took us up and down. Between weeping and laughing, out of joy, I was notably moved.
I think that's when this story began to take is ghostly form:

The Keening Reel
“I can put the image on your arm.”
“No. I want them nestled between my breasts,” Maighread insisted. It was about the dead. She was always a little in love with death.
A sharp pin is not so different from a razor and a cutting hunger.
“Why do you want the image of a woman kissing a skull,” he asked.
“Shut up,” she bemoaned.
The picture wrinkled in her clutched hand. She had promised herself she would endure the physical pain and no longer the psychological. Transferred from her heart to her skin, she would wear the agony on the outside now.
“No longer haunted by you!” she whispered under her breath, “everyone will be able to see what you look like and wonder. Then you’re on the skin of their eyes and crawling into their minds. You will no longer have power over me.”
As the inked pin danced over her milky skin the transference began. She could feel a blue sadness and old ache deep inside for her sister dear on the day they had slipped her young body into the waters off the lurching ship. Into your bony arms and held by your greedy lipless kiss she had been commenced. Many a night in the fluidity of dreams she could see them both stepping across the water’s surface only to have the Gulf of St. Lawrence yawn open and swallow her flushed feverish body. As if the dance had worn her sister out and your embracing bones did take her down to rest in your bed of sand.

2006

robyn1981

Warm colors over a cool ocean

Ocean 2

Ocean blue

Ocean 2006

I am sky

I am

I AM

I am water-wet
you are clouds-air & we meet
summer whips us up

Ric's Blood

Every-time I rub my finger into a blood red color and smear it on paper, I think of you, my teacher and muse.
Yup, you're sick. Heck you died twice this winter. The last time you died your kidney's stopped functioning and now it's all down to blood.
Nothing can take the impurities out of your body except dialysis. You jokingly said last week, "I'm hanging on by a thread..."
That thread is a thin red line.
My painting is dedicated to you and your hope.
I pray you can keep these red lines running as long as you want.

Copper Phosphate Lake

One of my most current paintings.
God, sometimes I am blissed out by this work

23 years old

1967

Cozy fireplace

My living-room reflects a mood of cozy warmth inside. Upon this mantle I place my sacred objects for healing. Currently I have Ric Campman's photo leaning on a bust of Buddha. Ric is my art teacher & mentor at the River Gallery School. This spring he died twice.

I celebrate Ric's will to live & thrive.

water, did someone mention water?

this one's a big mother....

and then....

Rapture

these paintings usually appear in a series of three.
oils, wax on paper

Obscure Reflection

this is an early painting.

detail of previous painting

Oils & wax on paper

2005 Painting

Oil & wax on paper

Sequence Painting

Oil & wax on paper

Ode to the beaver @ Dismal Swamp

Ode to the beaver @ Dismal Swamp

We go to the dismal swamp to unwind and refresh our spirits.
We get out our red wine, bird books, field chairs and sit. The most exercise we get is swatting away black flies and mosquitoes. The swamp does the rest as it unveils to us a life that is in harmony.
We sit back sip on our wine and watch. My furrowed brow unfurrows, my body relaxes, my spirit soars as the beaver moves around his world.
Off to the right is his house and a fine house it is. He is king of this pond. He never flips his tail at us like so many beavers do when we are in the river canoeing.

He is secure that we will not harm him.

On the heels of our hard winter the beaver's pond is over flowing. He quickly builds a new wall to the dam. He is the most industrious I have ever seen.

A few days later we returned and the water looked lower. We were confused. We saw a muskrat swimming in the water. We sipped our wine and swatted at black flies and watched.
After spending an hour we went home.

The next day we packed up and drove back to the swamp. It was a sunny calm day. We arrived and noticed that the water was down a good two feet from the peak fullness we had seen. We observed that the dam had been breached. My husband said that the beaver would never stand for that and would have patched it up immediately. I walked around and came to the original beaver dam site. I looked for signs of the beaver. I spotted two tufts of hair. I picked up one clump and walked back to my husband. Our beaver had survived a terrible winter and now with the blush of spring we had to mourn his loss.
His death!
I was shocked and hung my head as the tears poured out of my swollen eyes. I cried all the way home and into the night. I imagined the beaver: trapped and killed, shot, ripped apart by dogs, put in a box and carted away. He was at the peak of his game, I was loving that brown wet body. His big nose at the edge of the water as he moved with purpose and grace. It was so clear he was getting ready to have a real home with a Mrs. beaver and babies. Maybe there were babies already in the house waiting to be fed. I wept as we left and said I would never go back. But all night I was there at the waters edge mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I was trying to hold the beavers spirit. I couldn’t feel him anywhere. Like he had just disappeared.

Gone forever.

I had taken him for granted. I had expected him to live on for years. I had contemplated buying the land to preserve this lovely pond and all that it contained. It wasn’t the killer winter that got him but amid: the apple blossoms, yellow green grass, the buzz of the dragonflies, the startling plunge of the king bird, the celestial song of the toads and frogs a human hand took all this and crushed it.

It’s hard to break up a beaver dam. They build them so strong. But these humans did it with a pick, a shovel, or a chain saw. They leaked away the life-blood of the pond. The tiny fish were jumping and skittering across the water that was quickly becoming mud. I couldn’t go today. I am sure the hot sun is baking the banks and will quickly erase years of life.

I will not go back.

We will be ghosts sitting on the bank sipping our wine and watching an apparition of the beaver as it bustles around this tiny spirit pond.