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Happy New Year!  I hope you didn’t make any resolutions.  Well, I hope you didn’t make any of the usual suspects of resolutions (you know the ones). Here’s what I hope instead:

I am participating in Birdtober! There are a few Birdtober art challenges happening this month- I am participating in the one hosted by Kayla Fisk Birds. I’m really happy I stumbled on this bird art challenge. I love all the other October challenges, but it always comes back to birds for me. :)  Especially since I have another show scheduled at Seward Park Audubon in January!

This illustration has been a long time in the making-  two years in fact!  Also bears and moths are interconnected...but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

This week as I sat with my coffee, I had a revelation.

This is a big word and one might find the revelation that I had small and rather obvious, but sometimes a concept that you already know can hit differently one day and become...a revelation.

The beautiful faerie Queen peers into the ornate crib. What do you think is inside- wee fae babe...or human child? The prompt for Day One of the Faebruary Art Challenge that I'm participating in is 'Changeling'. This illustration shows a beautiful Faerie Queen looking into an ornate crib- but who is she looking at?

After arriving at the island of Staffa and climbing the steep stairs to the top of the cliffs, I was greeted by the enchanting sight of hundreds of puffins hanging out doing their puffin thing at the cliff edges. Besides being adorable- they are smaller than I expected and so colorful!- the puffins on Staffa also have a lovely way about them that inspired this illustration. I learned something important from one of their particularly fascinating traits...

I have been thinking a lot recently about my lifestyle; the choices I make in how I live and how they have changed over the years. In doing so, I have recently begun to look at these choices more carefully and through a lens of global sustainability and how my lifestyle choices affect animals in particular.

A lot of what I experienced in 2018 was hard, like a rock being tumbled in the waves and sand, over and over and over until it's smooth and shiny; but at the same time also exciting and new.  There were two things that happened in the fall that completely changed the trajectory of my art, in a way that was both surprising and which felt like coming home at last.

An interview with primatologist Melissa Ongman about her time at the Chimpanzee Conservation Center in Guinea. She now serves on the board and goes back to volunteer at the center when she can. We discuss the issues surrounding orphaned chimps and specifically about Tango, the chimp I painted in 2017. We talk about her time at the CCC, what she loved the most about her time at the center, and....what WAS that sound in the forest?!

The grasses crinkled as I sat down quietly to wait. The small animal garden at Earthfire institute was sunny but chilly, as a small group of retreat goers waited to be introduced to our animal ambassador for the afternoon- a remarkable coyote named Faerytale.

 

I felt a pinch near my eyebrow and brushed my hand past the area, thinking it was some kind of small flying insect. I was busy working on my iPhone while my kids played next to me on the school playground after school.

Pinch. Swipe.

Pinch. Swipe.

What IS that? ...

Sometimes, when a place has been with you and has shaped you for a certain length of time, you start to really feel the 'personhood' of that place. Land often affects us deeply, but I think that we don't always realize how much or how deeply. Until we lose it- and we grieve.