OUT OF PLACE

How lost I had felt when I made these.

Two sad drawings, sketches mostly in charcoal, a few words penciled in the margins. I had not before combined writing with image in my art: visual art was visual art, and writing was writing. But suddenly, I needed to put them together.

I was journaling – line and feelings, free of self-judgment.

At the time I made them, more than two years after my daughter’s death, nothing had turned out as I thought it would. My family remained splintered, the New Day Campaign had become a burden, and I continued to grieve my daughter.

So much grief.

Then out of nowhere, these drawings. And from them, a wellspring of combined writing and drawing that would bear so much fruit, bring so much healing.

(“What you seek is seeking you.”)

Within a few months, I began a project culminating two years later with Beyond Beautiful: 1,000 Love Letters. And in summer 2019, I started a series of memoir drawings – works I wrote about not so long ago. Around the same time, another body of work: drawings incorporating passages of writing by others, their words so meaningful to me.

All this work held my hand as I navigated life changes I never could have imagined.

What I love about art is, like a prayer first offered then answered, it finds me. Through art I have learned to trust intuition and impulse; in letting go and allowing, I find my way.

Or rather, art shows me the way.

If I can just be still enough to notice.