I want to live here…

I danced this. I’ve been letting my body tell me where to put lines, and how to compose by doing silent freeform dancing in the studio. Being me, and the studio being pretty crowded, the dancing is more hands and arms than feet and legs, but it is allowing shapes and forms to come to me. This piece was laid out with ball-point while dancing about. I would dance for a few seconds, feel a line, and then I would move to the easel and place it. It quickly emerged as this piece (line drawing further below) and I finished the pastel work in two long sessions same day.

I had not done a really spontaneous piece like this in a while, so this felt good, like letting go.

24 x 18 inches, pastel on kraft paper.

On our mountain vacations I am stirred up by the way the landscape is stacked up, the way it unfolds in layers of vistas, and that “paradise is just over there” feeling when you see a perfect spread from a distance. This captures some of that for me.

This has FAR fewer extraneous pen lines than usual - the piece seemed almost to draw itself.