Most of the work these past few months has been dealing with subjects from either right out my door or from a short visit to a lovely Island off of Cape Cod called Naushon. The last 30 years have really led to these paintings . Maybe that is how it always is but somehow it feels more true to me now than it ever has. My life here has been that of a hermit with most days not even leaving the hollow. After meditation in the early a.m. as it gets light the painting starts. Usually I know the night before what it will
be for the next day. There are a couple of hours painting work before another short meditation. The workday is then set and I keep going back to it through out the day. A cup of coffee comes next while checking emails and if I dare, a look at the news on the computer. The morning meal is usually pretty big. Looking more like what one might call dinner. By evening the painting is either complete or to a stage of incubation and to wait for drying time. The next day is almost always a different painting so that on returning to something it is always fresh. Each day of work feels totally new and each painting is painted as if it might be the very last one with every days work preparing for the next. I rarely listen to music while I work other than chanting that is part of my meditation practice. There is a quite here that demands to be listened to. That is why most music is so abrasive in this space. I did not always appreciate this but it has become increasingly clear to me that I am indeed blessed to have this old church as my home and place of work. My prayer is for each painting to have a little bit of this feeling in them because this I believe is what the world needs.September 26, 2009
In 1985 I saw a moody landscape entitled " Gray , Lowery Day
" by George Inness in New York and it resonated with something
inside of me . This year was a very rainy summer in Connecticut and out of it came a series of green paintings , the subject taken from the stream behind Cornubia . Mostly without sun these paintings use green not so much with the full strength through out but where it is toned down and only brought up to full strength as a kind of swell. They are more a suggestion of the day than the actual visual truth. This of course is seen at its best in the later work of Inness.
August 13, 2009
The painting called "Full Autumn" shows the direction the work has been evolving. Not so much a literal interpretation of nature as a feeling that the landscape evokes. It is a calm that is better produced by the elimination of topographical detail. The mind has less to do and the feeling predominates. This is not at all a new thing but it is something that I am understanding on a deeper level as time goes on. It is a presents that exists in the paintings that I have been moved by as long as I remember though not always able to put a finger on and maybe it is by not putting a finger on, that is the key.
August 11, 2009
Painting and meditation are really one in the same. Meditation is about being totally aware and awake in the present moment. It is about observing what is happening right now. The word often used is "mindfulness" and it does not happen in the past or the future . 
This is something I have been experiencing for a long time in my work even though not labeling it as meditation . In formal meditation practice one focuses solely on what is happening in the body and the
mind. In Buddhist vernacular it is also called Vipassana or insight meditation. Ultimately being mindful is carried throughout ones
life, whether sitting, standing walking or
lying down.
The painting for me has been going on for over 35 years, in pretty much an unbroken chain. Over that time it has become as natural as eating or weeding the garden.
Staying in mindfulness and observing the process as it unfolds produces a calm and ultimately an insight into the nature of things. The formal meditation practice adds to awareness in the painting an the painting practice adds to awareness in the meditation. In truth they are not separate.
August 9, 2009
It has been a very productive summer here and I am eating well from the garden ! Not as many visitors this year and sales have been down but the work flow is high and many amazing things have been happening !
The meditation has grown consistently with the Thailand and Dhamma connection . Wow, I have even found a very good teacher here in Connecticut named Achaan Da and he is from the very part of Thailand that has been my second home these past few years . My day moves from meditation to gardening to painting these days for the most part in a fluid way .
As for the painting , it has been going back and forth from the seasonal Connecticut work to the Thai subjects with fishing fishing boats, lotus ponds, monks and rice farmers ...........
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