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How audacious is a flower, a bird, a tree in all variations! Nature is a constant reminder of the beauty, symmetry, and wholeness that our existence is part of. When we cannot find harmony in what we  humans grapple with -  at work, through relations, in life itself - to slow down enough to gaze into a plate of freshly cooked salmon and see the beauty of peach flesh so perfectly laid together in what once was a living creature swimming in a cold sea, it is simply breathtaking.  Puts all in perspective.  Yes, look at a rose....deeply....smell it, touch it, let its design perfection overtake you, just for a moment.  Watch a bird take off in flight and notice the wings flash in the light.  The examples are endless.

I want to say yes to it all, so I paint it.  It is as though the act of reflecting something of the beauty in landscapes, plants, people, animals, will impress upon me, my fellow participants in this life, how grand it all really is.  I feel it inside and I want the world to know, to remember.  Making art inspired by the beautiful in this world, and I don't mean the marketable beauty, but the simple, true beauty of nature's complexity in all its dimensions, is a testament to our purpose in existence.  We all fit together.  If we stand way, way back from the scene, like the astronauts looking from their capsule window onto the beautiful orb below, it suddenly takes our breath away and we stand in wonder at its perfection.  

When my husband died from metastatic cancer, it seemed anything but beautiful. Why would suffering be part of life's beauty? Yet, there is in the midst of death a symmetry, a natural pattern that we only understand when we are distanced from it...the falling of leaves, the wilting of flowers, the decay of grass clippings disappearing into the earth.  I remember trying to understand the invasion of cancer cells into and overtaking healthy cells in his body, and how that was some process in nature we call aberrant that challenges us to thwart its deadly attack.  I imagined the  addition of a super healthy diet, pure waters, positive prayers and thoughts as essential change agents to keep the invaders at bay.  That along with chemo.  It worked, for awhile.  Yet, after a time, it was as though his unique body accepted the dance with the inevitable.  As my Dad used to say, the Grim Reaper comes to call for all of us, and only God knows the time for that.  Well, this letting go still rattles me deep down, but I understand it if I step back and look at life, his life, as an essential design of Nature, that always has its progeny return - dust to dust - then it can be accepted.  

There is beauty in life, in nature. I appreciate the elegant silver creature whose very life fed me in all it's symmetrical peach beauty so that I could live another day.  Because we are conscious of life's transitory nature, it is even more beautiful.  It makes me unspeakably grateful, for all of it.  So I paint.  So I play with my children and grandchildren.  So I feel blessed with all my friends and acquaintances near and far, as they are life's true gifts.  So was he, in the swift 40 years we were given.  Not long before he died he titled this photo of an egret taking off in flight "Departures Can Be Beautiful."