I made these for a very nice neighbor. I’d never painted on metal before, so I got to experiment with some primer and sealing sprays. But the paint is just acrylics.
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Acrylic on matte board. We used to do this color exercise in painting class in college. I had some leftover paint one evening, so I decided to play with the colors…
September 30, 2011. Oil on paper. I started painting as soon as I got home from work and kept it up until I could barely see what I was doing. I sat in my front yard near some browning purple flowers, and invented the background landscape. I started with a layer of quinacridone violet – [...]
Highway home from Cape Cod. July 4, 2011. Once I thought of a great idea for a website. You take pictures of clouds — all kinds of clouds — big stormy dark ones, small puffy ones, weird-shaped ones that you’d never believe were real unless you saw them. Then you let people draw what they [...]
The following story is taken directly from a dream I had last night…Sorry for the random hippopotamus, but that part of the dream was funny enough that I had to find a way to leave it in! The dome looked homey enough. Plenty of floor space, furniture that looked brand new and but not too [...]
Photo by Tommy Wong, Wikimedia Commons It was a sunny day speckled with clouds and caressed with gentle breezes; the perfect day for swimming and diving and chasing seagulls. One big gray one tried to eat Anu’s egg salad and pickle sandwich, but she shouted at him with her biggest voice, holding her sand shovel [...]
Sculpture in Göttingen, Germany. Image courtesy of Daniel Schwen and Wikimedia Commons. The world is coming unwrapped. Blue sneaks in through the cracks, bringing wisps of wind and tick-tocks of rain. Sometimes it seems I am the only one who loves the edges. The rest ignore the bars, and some wish they always stayed closed, [...]
April 8, 2011 Free Fall Friday Prompt from Kathy Temean & Betsy Devany Tee-hee. I love to see mischief afoot… it sends quivers to my wingtips and tingles to my twelve toes. All pixies love trouble, and we especially love trouble when it happens to our people. My people are Mr. Weintrub and his roly-poly [...]
Deep in a cave of ice and stone, the dragon slept. Her name was Intet, and from head to tail she had once stretched the length of a small city. Her open mouth had swallowed herds of antelope whole and engulfed forests in flame. But now she slumbered, unaware of the tap, tap, tap echoing [...]
Photo by Axel Rouvin, Wikimedia Commons The whole time we’ve been walking, we followed the Long River. Today, we turned south, away from the water, walking until we could no longer hear the rushing water. It is night now, and I can’t sleep without that familiar sound. Rolph is fast asleep next to me, his [...]
Radar Rockefeller hunched over his game pad, skinny fingers flicking across the screen about as gracefully as spiders trying to ice skate. If he could just get past the poison spikes and make the jump over the lava and… Dum-dummm went the music and the screen dripped with red globs. “I died!” He flopped backward [...]
By Eugene0126jp [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons Ms. Tan paused at the end of the hallway. “The dog can’t come with us.” “Zeus goes everywhere with me. He doesn’t go, I don’t go.” Radar squinted his eyes and crinkled his nose up, ready for a fight. No one ever talked to him [...]
November 19, 2010 Free Fall Friday Prompt from Kathy Temean & Betsy Devany At the top of the attic, hanging from the rafters out of the reach of the wintery wind, the token waits for me. It’s just a few plastic alphabet beads, cheap ones picked out of the bin at the dollar store, arranged [...]
Ink and Acrylic on paper. November 19, 2010. I never order caffeinated coffee, and I don’t drink decaf that often, either. But at least once or twice a year, I order a cup of decaf, and Dunkin Donuts gets my order wrong. The caffeine feels so terrible that I then avoid coffee for months. On [...]
Fall 2006. Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan Part 1: Glass For Seeing Part 2: Where the Peaks Meet Sky Part 3: Circle of Seven Part 4: Homefamily Part 5: Tinderdeer Part 6: The Water-Voice Part 7 Enid walks back to where I’m dragging my feet in the dirt. “Boys will be boys.” She smiles and holds out [...]
October 29, 2010 Free Fall Friday Prompt from Kathy Temean & Betsy Devany The crunch of the leaves sounds like small bones breaking. I wince, sliding my feet carefully from one sidewalk square to the next, avoiding the leaves. They are so fragile, so ghostly. Unreal. “Are you lost, little girl?” A grown-up voice attached [...]
Northborough, Massachusetts. October 26, 2010. I found a back way to work that sends me beneath this gorgeous bridge… I drove past each day wishing I could stop and paint, so when I walked out of the house this past Tuesday morning to discover it was actually warm out, I ran back in, grabbed my [...]
October 22, 2010. Free Fall Friday Prompt from Kathy Temean & Betsy Devany The kid with the back-bag was halfway up the stairs when I jumped right down from the tree – BAM – on his head! He turned around and around, trying to get me off. But I am a very clever monkey. “Clever, [...]
Montreal, Canada. Summer 2010. Photo taken by Suzanne Hulick Want to know the crappiest summer job ever? Not pizza delivery boy. Not lawn mowing. Not even burger flipping. Been there, done that. Here it is: Amusement park custodian. One: you’re a custodian. A garbage man. The kid everyone feels sorry for and wonders, is he [...]
August 2010. The Rosette nebula in the Constellation Monoceros (unicorn). Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA The magic gathered in swirling pink and green clouds, twisting into deep passages in Una’s mind. Any other unicorn would see her standing in a maelstrom of colors and sparking, arching light. But there were no other unicorns, just a small boy, [...]
November 30, 2007. Mexico. Photo by Tomascastelazo, Wikimedia Commons. Down the street, music was playing. Not high, happy, dancing sounds like I was used to hearing when the caravans came through with food, drink, entertainment, and mysterious objects from far off lands. This song was shy one second, brave the next–dipping deep in to low, [...]
Lena River Delta, Siberia. Image courtesy of NASA and Wikimedia Commons. I wanted to post on my blog today because it is 8-9-10, and that’s cool. And then I found this photo. Who knows what sort of story could come from this? Here goes… I closed my eyes and saw only the tree. An impossible [...]
North Andover, MA. July 24, 2010. Oil on paper. This scene was inspired by real architecture in the garden of the Rolling Ridge Conference Center. Isn’t it magical?
Eastham, Cape Cod. July 5, 2010. A little boy named Will who loves to draw watched me the whole time I was working on this painting. It was blistering hot outside, and at one point I decided not to paint the broken down boat because I just needed to get out of the sun. But [...]
May 2006. Los Angeles, California. Photo by Jonathan McIntosh, Wikimedia Commons Da sent me out to buy ammunition. “Go, Rafi,” he said. “You’re the smallest. They’ll give you more for trade than me or the big boys.” There were four big boys. From Salvo the oldest who was the same size as Da down to [...]
Summer 2008. The Kitchen. I remember warmth, the wood stove black and smoke-smelling, dangerous – don’t get too close but warm the cold toes from outside. Snow, melting into rainy frost puddles from mittens, hats, gloves, scarves, clothes-pinned above my head. A gnawed pole guards the round, wooden table – some child or dog or [...]
Weston, MA. April 30, 2010. I walked almost two miles from my apartment to get to this view I’d seen driving by. I had to walk on some busy roads with no shoulders, and it was a private golf course, so I was kind of worried that I’d be thrown out. But I found an [...]
NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. Image courtesy of NASA and Wikimedia Commons. The blast shakes my beside table. The alarm clock quivers in its trap of duct tape, but doesn’t fall. A strip of velcro holds on to my book and toothbrush. After the last rocked launch dropped a dinner plate on my cat, I [...]
I have no idea where this photo came from… but I love the colors.
Trickles splash against the pier. I can taste the morning moonlight: salt, fish, and oranges. My stomach rumbles, twisting around the leftover crumbs I ate last night.
DONG!
A boat coming in to pier. Night merchants, tired and grouchy and half-drunk and not likely [...]
Photos from a 7 am walk around my neighborhood last weekend…
Newton, MA. March 20, 2010.
It’s the first painting outside of the year! There weren’t really any crocuses below the forsythia bushes, but I wish there were…
Photo courtesy of Mihael Simonič, Wikimedia Commons
Inside the flower, a light burned, like a miniature sun captured in the heart of spring. It was the first flower in Patrick’s yard. He’d been watching all the green shoots since they first pushed their heads up through the grey dirt. Impatient as any eight year old should [...]
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.
Photo courtesy of Mila Zinkova, Wikimedia Commons
Atayin pushed aside the vines, shielding her eyes from the blinding light. Sunchild, come closer, the voice whispered.
“I can’t, you’re in the middle of a lake!” she said, jerking one foot back from the sucking mud around the shore.
Come closer!
Atayin looked around, unsure of this [...]
New Boston, NH. Winter 2009.
When winter passes, I’ll fix up the barn. I’ll add in a cozy alcove, just pillows and books. And I’ll paint the walls pale yellow and gold with green curling vines and red flowers.
It will be my space.
I shiver in the thin jacket that was all I could find in the [...]
Andrei bit into the hard, tangy fruit. He chewed carefully around the pit, then spat it into the snow.
He hated cherries.
But he kept a straight face, eyes black against the frosty white wilderness, staring at the patch of pink where the cherry pit had fallen.
“Vkusnyi,” he said.
The boy giggled, just like he always did when [...]
Bailey Island, ME. June, 2009.
The man was so old, even his teeth were wrinkled. That’s what the big girls said. Evie wrinkled up her own nose as she walked up behind his rocking chair. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so old and lonely when he saw her nose. Maybe he would open his mouth and show [...]
Sherborn, MA. November, 2009.
I hear music, high and strange — the notes wandering from tone to tone without any pattern or melody. And yet it’s beautiful. My feet leave no footprints in the carpet of fall leaves as I walk toward the source.
“Where are you going, Allie?” I ask myself. “Why so far?”
I spoke softly, [...]
Hancock, NH. January, 2007.
A shadow falls across the ice. Have they found me? I don’t dare peer out from my hiding place to see the owner of the shadow, but from its tall, thin shape with pointy nubs at the shoulders I know.
The Nobles don’t tolerate disobedience. They protect the statue from rebels like me [...]
Burana Tower, Kyrgyzstan. November 2004.
“Shh, do you hear anything?” Jakan huddled close to the other boys at the top of the tower. Out in the mist, shadows gathered and drifted apart. Tilek leaned out over the edge. “It’s coming,” he said.
A low rumble vibrated through the air, barely loud enough to hear.
The boys didn’t know [...]
Greenville, ME.
“My mother always said she wanted a third daughter, but when I got pregnant after two girls, I knew she was lying. I wanted a son.”
Rufus Alexander David Anthony Richard Rockefeller squinched his eyes shut and groaned, “Mommmm!”
The woman in the long black coat across the table nodded once and gestured for her to [...]
near Montreal, Canada. November 1, 2003.
Joanna stared out the car window, nose squished against the glass. With her eyes squeezed just right, the world became lines of vibrant color: yellow, green, red, blue.
Somewhere out in that world, somewhere between the colors, was a girl who looked just like her. An identical twin.
“Hey, you’ll smudge up [...]
Bailey Island, ME. June 20, 2009.
Scar
Across the earth across
my hands
open, old, and deep
a forgotten time
once there were fresh buds bursting forth
once this wound was not a wound,
but a beginning
a birth and becoming
and now the pebbles scatter, freckles across
boulders shaken to the core
can I break through their dark solidness?
through the scar?
beneath,
where I dare not go
where the [...]
Pokrovka, Kyrgyzstan. April 23, 2006.
Hands
Hands of dough and string beans, picking onions, fisting in threat
at a descending flock of garden-munching birds
Hands at rest on a lined notebook
purchased for more than it costs for a loaf of bread
Careful penmanship forming lines of words
in a foreign alphabet — English
She asks, what is the word for something twisted, [...]
“Lead me, my eyes are closed.” Helen held out her arm to her sister. Elsa took it. This was their favorite game when they were little. See who keeps her blue-green eyes squeezed shut the longest. But you can’t be too trusting, because the one guiding will try to run you into a tree or [...]
New England Aquarium. June 7, 2007.
When the blue comes, I’m sure I’ve phased out. This is the end of the final T-987 robot. Soon my thoughts will wither into meaningless, repetitive signals. But then my sensors flicker back into life and the air presses close around me, thick and sloshy.
This isn’t death, it’s an atmosphere. [...]
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