those who wait

(9x12)

I visited with my dear friends Lisa and Mike this weekend: there's no one like the friends who love you and who you love for getting you back to yourself.
I haven't painted, except for a little very unsatisfying mushing about, for nearly three months, but Mike insisted we paint. So this morning we set up this little still life, clementines and a ceramic pitcher with a gorgeous coppery glaze and a wonderful shape.
Mike's limited-palette painting, below, has imbued the objects with a beautiful humility and earthy sensuality that makes me think of Chinese brush painting.

(9x12)

Fortuitously, the day before I went on my visit, Rhonda kindly sent me a great link, which really helped me think about what was keeping me from painting and how to get back to it: http://clicks.robertgenn.com/fighting-blues.php#113. Thank you again, Rhonda!

Continuities
by Walt Whitman

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.