On this day, the first of a long holiday weekend designated for giving thanks, I find myself spending time at my easel thinking, painting and praying. My thoughts are all over the place, and prompting emotions that range from a gentle low sigh to fleeting angry criticisms.

I am exhausted, anxious, and drained and wish I could just stay home every day and pretend that there is nothing wrong in the world. Denial has a great appeal. I am also hopeful, encouraged and unwaveringly optimistic that these challenges will pass and leave us feeling relieved and ready to renew our best lives. I also realize I am impatient.

The last nine months have been hard for everyone, all around the world. The pandemic is sickening and killing rampantly. Jobs and livelihoods are broadly effected. The economy is uncertain and the people are divided by politics. Families are threatened with hunger and displacement and when people are frightened and feel threatened, fear can often manifest in redirected anger. We want to blame someone, anyone, and declare an end to all of this.

Now is actually the hardest time since this began. We are tired and we want life to return to normal. It is getting colder and darker and the holidays leave us feeling desperate to be with friends and family. Instead if giving up and lashing out in anger, let us close our eyes and take a moment to find positive things to focus on. It’s hard but we need to be determined to count our blessings, not just today but again tomorrow, and again the next day.

I am grateful. I am grateful for enough. Enough food, heat and shelter. Enough work, structure and networking. I am grateful for the extra blessings of entertainment, hobbies, and toys to help pass the time and distract me from hardship.

Most of all I am grateful for love. Love between friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Love between spouses and partners, parents and children, siblings and extended family. Love between strangers who understand how vital repairing this God directed connection truly is, for all of us.

This is a hard time but it can be easier when we stop the escalation of negativity and count our blessings instead. Determnation to focus on the good things in your life is how you can regain control over your reaction to what you cannot control.

Seek peace. Share love. Build a grateful heart.

This painting is a 10″ x 20″ oil on canvas called, A Grateful Heart.

It is already the 31st of October, Halloween, Samhain, and the threshold of the Winter season. My goodness how this year has flown. Now adding to the day, we find meteorologists telling us about changes in weather, clocks that need to be changed, and we look to observe the 2nd full moon of the month on this day, making it a Blue Moon. Fascinating.

It doesn’t matter whether these days or occurrences are of scientific interest to you, or religious significance to you, or purely observational delight, what is notable is that it should exemplify the fact that every day we have something to look for to celebrate! Every day we can find something worthy to evaluate, interpret, embrace, celebrate, or just observe wide eyed.

Last evening my husband and I sat down to our supper and my phone made that distinctive ‘ding’ that phones do in this era, alerting me that I have a text. Trained in the currently Pavlovian way, I grabbed at the phone to see who had something important to tell me. It was, in fact, a dear friend in another state saying “Oh Kelly, if you can, go look at the moon.” I jumped up and said “Oh my” and ran for the back door. In true comedic fashion, my husband set down his plate of food too, not knowing what was going on but being supportive (or concerned in hindsight) and ran after me. I raced into our backyard and tried to look East. In a city, moonrise may be something that happens just as a sliver between 2 houses so we ran from North to South in our yard trying to find that sliver of sky between urban dwellings. “There she is” I shouted. He now understood. I got to see the moon rise back there among the houses, thanks to my friend in another state.

Now to some it may sound like I’ve lost my mind. I would have to chuckle at how it must have looked from a drone view. But in fact I must say I couldn’t be more thrilled at that text. More than the fact that I jumped up and reacted and saw the moon, it was the whole of the aggregated scenario. It was a tapestry of loving threads.

My friend was thinking of me with love in her heart for her artist friend and said, you must go share this beauty … to touch my heart. My husband, in his loving support of me as an eccentric, ran with me into the night …to touch my heart. The moon shone down on us from God himself …to touch my heart. That assemblidge of threads, my friends, is what we must not forget, ever. We must not let that love, each personal loving thread that reaches out to touch our heart, be affected by the hate and fear and noise around us right now.

Last night when that text came and we did our observations of the moon it turned our path from grey tensions of the week back to the path of dreaming a little more, laughing a little more, and celebrating a little more – even causing us to jump in our car and sneaking off to the grocery store for a 1/2 gallon of ice cream to celebrate this wonderful milestone day of love.

Take this moment and stop, run into your hearts’ yard to see the moon, so that the tensions and dissensions of our world have less ability to make us forget how vitally important those threads of love among friends, spouse, or family can, and must, be.

As we ran out to the car on the curb last night for the mission of ice cream, I turned back and looked lovingly at my house to see the Blue Moon, that lovely full moon, rising up over my housetop. This morning when I woke up well rested and happy, I decided that memory image of my house full of love and confidence and optimism with a full moon rising and the warm lights betraying how beautiful it was, should be captured it my next painting.

This, the next painting, is an 8″ by 10″ oil on canvas board called, “Blue Moon”.

Just to be clear, this post is not referring to the accidental or arson fire that can devastate people or property, but only on the personal or utility fire.

There is definitely something mesmerizing about a fire. We watch the colorfully dancing flames, the glowing coals, and the golden shadow-light. We breath in the wafting smoky smell and lean into its radiating warmth and find the entire experience absolutely entrancing. Esthetically it connects with us in a visceral way but it may also have a root in primal comfort.

I doubt that there are many of us who doesn’t love the fire in the fireplace, or the outdoor campfire. We celebrate homecoming events with a fall bonfire. We have get-togethers in early Spring as soon as snow backs off to grab our sweatshirts and meet at a fire. We celebrate friendships or events or seasons or life itself, together around the fire. Fall sports events call for tailgating where little portable fires grill up our sacrificial brats or burgers. Family home gatherings often include a fire that may or may not have hot dogs on sticks or some-mores. For many it is the unifying piece of evening gatherings wherever we live. There’s even a huge industry built on having fire pits that you can purchase and put on your backyard deck or patio to entertain. The urban joke is, of course, that you better have some old marshmallows laying there in case the fire monitoring folk check to find out why you have live fire in the city.

The bottom line is there something about that fire that allows us to relax beyond warming our body or cooking our food and possibly connect to a greater spiritual network. Our relationship with fire exemplifies our ability to go deeper into a relaxed state of mild hypnosis, often prompting our own introspection. We find ourselves wandering in our minds, reminiscing, and thinking about good times with fine fellowship. We identify our personal perspectives and our place in a greater whole. We warmly recall people that we have loved dearly but may not be able to be with us and they feel more present. We often take these times to relate stories, sing songs, and share innermost ponderings. As a living history participant who camps a great deal I know that I have missed this evening ritual of comradery most keenly. It is truly amazing to see an entire reenacting encampment at night with candle lanterns and campfires illuminating acres of canvas homes and walk from fire to fire to feel the palpable fireside community.

There is a comfort knowing that food was cooked over fire. There is a comfort in the knowledge that we will be warm and sustained for another night. There is a comfort in knowing that this fire before us at this moment connects us with generations, over decades, and to all others in humankind, in all other countries, in all other scenarios. From the earliest settings of worship and in all faiths, a connective thread of fire can be found, although often now quietly present in candlelight only.

We may not have an active fireplace anymore, certainly not one that we consistently cook our food on, but we still seek the warmth and emotional benefits of a fire. Take a moment and sit by a fire … and dream.

This painting is inspired by fire watchers everywhere and is a 16″ x 20″ oil on canvas called, “Fire dreaming”.

Continuing in my theme of exploring the beauty that is around us in the Midwest, I decided to look at the photos I had taken on my recent drive and saw another one that struck me. There is just something beautiful about the wonderful farms nestled among the rolling hills in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Barns, silos and pastures with cattle or horses lingering among greens and yellows that lift a spirit just to see.

This farm was situated in an unusually flat valley with a long horizon line and a subtle prospect of a still and reflective creek, yet easily standing with the grace of a midwestern farm. In this case I loved that long blue sky and the string of farm buildings. It was sunny and bright with a clarity of midday and the surprising colors of maturing crops.

I respectfully ask you to celebrate each day and look for the beauty that is so abundant all around you. I am glad I could share these two midwestern landscapes this weekend.

This painting is a 20″ by 10″ oil on canvas called, “Creekside Farm”.

There is something really beautiful in all of the landscapes from every part of this country. It is easy to be awestruck by glorious mountain ranges, huge canyons, or amazing seascapes. We take pictures of saturated sunrise or sunsets over our favorite spots be it hillside, lake or ocean. We marvel at the color and the light and the majesty of rock and field and at the emensity of prairie and desert and timbered ranges. I am awed and humbled with every single view.

Equal to the awe born of the grander aspects of the land are the inspirations found in the beautiful details. Each blooming flower and perching bird, flashing all of the colored plumage that God has chosen to cloak them with, stand as testament to His attention to detail. I hope we do notice that colored stone, the dropped feather, and the blossom that emerges sometimes overnight. We are right to celebrate those amazing details.

As long as painters have selected worthy images to paint, or photographers seek something notable to photograph, we have celebrated the wonder of the beauty around us. The painting I started yesterday after our morning drive is just a subtle reminder that the postcard miracle shots are just the tip of the iceberg of the incredible beauty that surrounds us disguised in the subtle midground every day, every where.

Each time we go for a drive I take the opportunity to take a few pictures with the eye on the beautiful rolling hills of the Midwest. Here, in late summer, I see treelines that rest relatively unimpressive between the new Spring greens and the Fall blaze of colors that are coming soon. Now is when prairie flowers are often confined to mowed edges and we don’t redily see the dusty weed banks steadfastly attending the shade of the majestic country trees as the grand gardens they truly are.

I heartily encourage you to hop in your car and go for a quick drive in the country. Don’t think about the highway and of the 30 minutes down the road that you need to go to find a park or some other pre-established destination with entertainment. I mean make a loop on a gravel road. Slow down. Take a second look at how blue that sky is, how amazing the shadows are across that road, how the light is playing among the treelines, and look at the amazing prairie flowers along the mowed ditches. Celebrate the beauty of the details. It will help you start to see all of those subtle, beautiful details in your life that get lost in the planned trip.

I have really enjoyed my weekend so far. I hope you’re enjoying yours, as well. Today’s painting is a 16″ by 20″ oil on canvas called, “The Road Less Traveled”.

Interesting day today. As I’ve continued to think about some of what I talked about yesterday with regards to allowing myself some grace, I was made very aware of another important component to help correct my unfruitful patterns – the kind word from someone else.

I mentioned yesterday that the facilitator, in essence, gave me permission to paint. I know that’s a little bit of a simplification but I started to think back on when I have been able to be more productive in the last week, or month, or several months and began to see a subtle correlation. My productivity, and my emotional fortitude, is tied to when someone says something kind to me. Being validated by a gentle word is so powerful.

A couple of weeks ago I got a lovely email from a friend and haven’t answered him yet. His email lifted me, but I felt I needed to finish my tasks before I could do that, but by not answering him right away the guilt started to drain me. I also got a text last week from another friend who said some very kind things to me about my writing. Again, I had not answered him either and sank lower because of it. Being frozen through a negative emotion like guilt is cyclically destructive.

This morning I got a text from someone who wanted to comment on that posting yesterday and chose to do it in private. The person told me that what I had said struck home, and touched them… compelling them to write me and tell me that they appreciated it. I realized I needed to answer immediately and did. It felt good and it allowed me to accept the compliment and to acknowledge that I had spent time yesterday doing something I wanted to do and it was OK. I then wrote back to one of the texts from last week and I felt empowered and calmer. Finally, I got another email from someone I had written to asking for a professional opinion and his response was genuine and kind. This was powerful.

This series of small events might not appear to be important enough to talk so extensively about here, but in fact the ‘ah ha moment’ of the cumulative affect of accepting their kindness and responding was allowing me to place them and their affect on me in the appropriate place of importance. I was accepting the gifts.

For a second day I found myself relaxing and being at ease with giving my body and spirit what it needed, despite what my incomplete task lists looked like. Once again I went to the board and painted.

Today’s painting is an 11″ x 14″ oil on canvas called, “Peace of Mind”.

I had to go to a doctor recently. The why of it doesn’t matter so much as some of the questions that I was asked while I was there. I don’t recall ever having a health care professional ask me questions about my emotional well being as much as they did that day. I was asked if I was feeling OK. I was asked if I was experiencing heightened anxiety. I was asked if I had any feelings of despondency or hopelessness.

I know logically that these questions are now part of the patient interview because of the quarantines for Covid19 and how it is affecting people’s mental state. I must admit that I found it rather reassuring. I felt completely listened to, and cared for in a way that I don’t often feel when speaking to someone other than my husband.

I answered candidly and perhaps even a bit flippantly. Afterwards, I also found it left me somewhat unsettled because it made me do another level of self evaluation. How am I feeling? How am I dealing with heightened anxiety? Have I been feeling despondent or stretched thin? It made me uneasy because I realized I am actually struggling with these things.

I had jokingly said that I turn to my painting to help me with anxiety, and that is partially true. In fact, painting does help me sometimes but when I am feeling at my worst I can’t seem to paint at all. I feel frozen, and the panic escalates. Looking at me, however, you wouldn’t know I am struggling.

Just like when someone has an underlying illness that others don’t know about, emotional illness can also be very invisible. A person can seem calm and solid with a smiling face and yet be consumed with pain. We make misasumptions every single day of our lives. We look at the faces around us and make assumptions of their state of affairs based on the appearance they present. We assume they are happy, calm, confident, well, or any one of a hundred other human conditions based on the mask of that face. Inside, however, the person may be suffering undescribable pain for any number of reasons.

We must never make those assumptions. We need to ask, and we need to listen to the responses. As you look around at the people you encounter every day, remember any of them could truly be the face of someone in pain.

This painting is a 5″ x 7″ study, oil on canvas board titled, “Pain”.

Sometimes we make the most noise when we are crying for quiet. In fact, we make so much noise seeking quiet that we can’t hear it… or should I say, recognize it.

These are such usual times that we’re living in right now. I know how I feel and it is hard. I am confused, and tense, and fearful of illness, and so wishing that I had my routines back. Routines are comforting. I can’t help but wonder if other people aren’t feeling the same way? It seems like it.

I pride myself in being someone who is pretty fairly organized, logical, and methodical to a fault. I look for things to help me be calmer and quieter to avoid being tense and grumpy towards the people around me because I know that neither they nor I are truly upset with each other, but instead are upset with our lack of control in our lives.

Today I thought alot about my father and remembered I used to have conversations with him about quiet. He would talk about being able to listen to the guidance that comes from your inner voice, or from God’s still small voice. He used to say, “you can’t hear good direction when you’re making too much noise. Try thinking about a shore and listening to the slow pattern of the waves”. These days I look for that calming of the waves by walking in the woods, going some place that has a serenity to it, or doing an activity that is slow paced. Whether it’s a place outdoors, or my back porch, or a place in my house that allows me to do some introspective thinking, I have to make that effort to seek it out.

When I sit at my easel and I paint, that is one of those places where I can think. In thinking, once you’re past the superficial and immediate, you begin to follow a deeper path. Introspective thinking is when you start being truly objective and even critical of all of your thoughts and emotions, and how they are dictating your outward actions. Here you can identify and calm those that you don’t want controlling you. Think about statements you make, attitudes you have, tensions that are running astray for you. As I calm those core parts of myself at the easel, my painting is an access to spiritual thought, and prayer.

The painting that I’ve been working on for the last 2 days has been purely an exercise in centering. It is a marriage of the loose style I admire in the plein-aire artists and the illustrative style that calms me. Most importantly, it was my tool for self reflection.

My thanks to a friend who gave me permission to use her likeness. I hope you enjoy this 16″ x 20″ oil on canvas. “Spring blossoms”