Dare 2 Feel

My entire childhood, during school, I was secretly studying people visually, how they looked, how they moved, how light and shadow defined their features, what the space around them looked like. I pretended to go along with the teacher’s agenda, but the visual rapture of the human figure was where I beamed my true focus [...]

Automatic drawing, drawing in a trance-like stream 0f consciousness, is fun and surprising. My sketchbooks are full of such drawing meditations. You don’t know who will come visit you on the paper.  I go with the feeling, the flow of the ink. Then I get to know these drawn characters, and myself, a little better.
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At the start of summer, I was at Compo Beach and saw a nice elderly gentleman reading a book. His hat was floppy (I liked that about him). H got up and ran into the water for a dip, and sat back down to read. I wondered then who he was and imagined he was [...]

This is a study of a child rider, one of the many I made before writing and illustrating A BLUE RIBBON FOR SUGAR. There is nothing more wonderful than studying the movements and linear grace of children, but drawing horses in motion is just as hypnotizing.  I probably love no other occupation as much as [...]

Today is my dad’s birthday, and it is also Bastille Day in France.  I never considered my dad’s birthday in anyway very connected to Bastille Day until I got older and was eating at a French restaurant with my future-husband in the Meat Packing district of NYC . I called my dad from a pay [...]

I did this art piece recently for a travel site called Farewell Travels, www.farewelltravels.com. It is an excellent site and I was honored to do this piece. I keep thinking that traveling is often the best thing for the spirit. You get a new perspective, you swim in new energy and new sights, you realize [...]

She uses her magical prowess, all her wiles (her intelligence and beauty) to weaken and seduce the Hero.  The Temptress Archetype is willing to manipulate anyone and anything in order to get what she wants. (Think of Fata Morgana, also known as Morgan Le Fay, and King Arthur).  She has her target, perhaps he is [...]

I love drawing around town. People are beautiful in their places, mostly without being aware of it. The light at Compo Beach in summer in particular is to me one of the most unexpected surprises (where you live usually does not carry that kind of mystique, but The Sound at Compo is especially pink on [...]

The fun thing about keeping a sketchbook, is I get to create a cast of characters as extensions of my own thoughts, wishes and worries. In fact, those people can dramatically play out the worries for me. This fine lady has a moment on the balcony. Maybe her balcony looks out over the waters of [...]

I dreamed of an old friend I have not seen in years. In this dream, many times we gestured with our hands, reaching and connecting with hands. It was subtle and caring. The slightest movement of the hand says so much. Watching hands, I’d say that human hands are probably the most beautiful of all [...]