They’ll think I’m crazy

The broken record skipping in my head’s been non-stop since I was a kid.

For decades, For decades, I’ve been holding back, not talking about what is really going on.

“They’ll think I’m crazy. I’ll loose all credibility and they won’t talk to me.”

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The broken record skipping in my head’s been non-stop since I was a kid. If I talk about those feelings, those knowings, those messages I feel coming from the garden -- they’ll think I’ve lost my mind.

If I tell you in all this global trauma, we are expanding consciousness to be aligned with nature, would you think I’m woo-woo off the deep end?

Midnight in the Garden

It’s true I’m a dreamer. Always have been, even my sons take me with a grain of salt. I’m careful what I say to them, don’t want to lose whatever credibility I still have.

What’s really going on?

I’ve been painting in the landscape for five decades, thoughout the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. From the mountains to the shores where waters rise from underground springs to fill my woodland garden pond ~ becoming brackish ~ then flowing to become Queen’s Creek, the Piankatank River, Hills Bay, the Chesapeake and the Atlantic ~ I flow too.

The largest estuary in North America flows through my art. From observational, grounded plein air paintings (visions of the outer landscape) in my early years to expressionist, flowing intuitive abstracts (visions of the inner landscape). Over fifty years, I FEEL it in my bones. Human consciousness is aligning with nature.

We’re ALL part of this. I can’t not talk about it anymore.

Why did voles devour the roots of my favorite climbing rose ~ the very same week my son cut off ties with the entire family?

I’ve got to engage with this question. I’ve got to ask for insight. I can’t leave this life without at least trying. For three years, or no perhaps it’s four. It happened just after his daughter was born, my seventh grandchild on my birthday.

I FEEL all the generations of women, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, where they’ve been and who will tell this child about us all?

I’ve been painting with this question, this quest. Can I someway please come to terms with being in the world this way?

I don’t know if I’ll get an ‘answer’ neatly wrapped up with a bow, if my brushstrokes can cause him to answer my calls.

Or perhaps it’s part of my divine contract in this life.

All I know today is that I feel light as I paint. Each precious moment I release emotions into fluid paint, then grab the charcoal and scratch through the grit ~ somehow I feel better. I feel a sigh, a sense of acceptance.

For a moment I stop holding my breath and just be.

Flourish series