MAKER'S MARK

I’m a bit enthralled with lichen. Its color distracts me on hikes, pulling me close to run my fingers over it. It’s like an unruly artist under the cover of moonlight stole away with a handful of bright-colored chalks and wove through the drab gray forest and over piles of rocks making marks everywhere. At least that’s what I imagine. It’s what first led me to create this piece. Colors of yellow-green and ashy jade holding tightly and crusting over the rough gray bark of a tree. Somehow these two (actually three) have found home and I, like the moth, fall to their enchantment.

Yes, the moth. The nocturnal, fluttering winged wanderers. We shoo it off screen doors and wool sweaters. We find them a nuisance, leaving their white wing powders in windowsills. But it too was made with such fine intricacies. Feathery antennae sensing what we cannot see. Her wings, lacking color perhaps, are more like old fragile windowpanes, translucent enough to see the painted crusts underneath she feeds upon. This is absolutely magical. The way color and life play. The way the Maker shows His skill.

12 x 12 in
mixed media painting