To control the fire is not to kill it, but to let passion thrive and be seen. There is a beautiful tension in all creation between letting go and forming, the pushing and pulling of color and sound and everything imaginable.
-Janet Morgan

I'm in the studio...too busy to write, too busy to talk. I wish the days wouldn't go by so fast.

When I was a student, I painted big paintings. The process was so passionate, so sexy. I would get caught up the colors and smells, painting into the night. It felt so good. I smelled like paint. I'd have paint on my hands and arms and clothes and in my hair and on my furniture and...
Duh! In real life, where mommy has to run in and change the laundry, answer the phone, watch a trick on the monkey bars from the studio window then get a band aid, move the water from the grapes to the pumpkins, and all while painting, the sexybohemianartgirllifestyle is taken down a notch... for a reason.

It was so very, very exciting to let myself be seduced by all that paint. I didn't plan on it. I was in a docile mood, painting swans, feeling in control. I thought I would just paint the rabbit then lay down the brushes and go for a swim when, Bam! I knocked over my medium and it oozed all over the table. I didn't want to waste it, it's good stuff. So I started mixing up color to use it up on the background.

It only took a second before I was painting with brushes in both hands, madly mixing colors and feeling that wonderful, intoxicated bliss. One taste and I thought...hmmm shall I change my painting style so I can do this all the time? The music was loud, the studio was hot and I had paint on the back of my knees. With every drip of paint that ran down my arm I grinned. All of my senses were turned up all the way. Everything was clearer, brighter.

...and then I looked over at littlest kitten and saw that she had paint in her hair. She also had it on her arm. It was on my phone too. Middle kitten reminded me that she was hungry and I'd been painting for a long time. The studio was really messy. I accidentally had gotten paint from the hem of my dress onto the kitchen cupboard, and so...I sobered up. Sure, it felt good, but being a mom feels even better than that.

In the studio...

I've just posted a new episode of my show in progress on She Dreamed in Verse and Rhyme. I've been very productive this week. I love all of the paintings that I'm working on.

In between working on the painting for the show, I've been finishing up a few things that galleries/people are waiting for. It's nice to have this time to focus on studio work. I love my job. I'm afraid sometimes that if left to my own devices, I'd never come out. I have a little Henry Darger in me for sure....scary but true.

Moulton Passion

Lily of the Valley- Fortune in love; poisonous yet with healing powers; a symbol of the Virgin Mary; making the right choice.


I got back to painting today. I always return to painting. I need it like a shunt to drain the moulton passion out of my head and out of my heart. I did love the flower binge, the fun of making stuff, but all of that churning and burning starts to get to be too much inside of me eventually and I always go back to painting. Drawing is close to painting but not the same somehow. Maybe one of these days coming up, I'll give drawings away to the first one to comment on this blog. The drawings usually end up in a portfolio up the the shelf and rarely are seen again.

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. James Joyce