I moved out of my studio in 2004 -after 20 years -and into the studio over the garage at home (not easy for my mother to give up her place!!! She couldn't climb the stairs! It was her idea! But she looked at me -incredulously -as we packed up her hundreds of prints with interleaving sheaves in archival boxes -put away her paintings -and she was losing her mountain. 'Don't Take my Mountain Away' was one of her last paintings. . . . a large horse's head looking longingly at a mountain high up! (She would ask on occasion if she might go up to the studio to work . . . . and contended herself with new work in the dining room -the view out the window, there -but no longer able to contemplate her years of engagement in HER studio (As I See It). She lost track of what she had done, eventually . . . Although, she could see the archive in process on her ipad: Archive

And, I was confronted with my own very large accumulation of works (half of which I destroyed despite the fact that what I made of something was really what counted, to me -but some efforts had to be prioritized out of the picture), and there were the books, magazines, and lots of three dimensional consequences of materials - paint from the pallet and wood blocks from my father's carving endeavors (which I painted as the conjunctions, adjectives, subjects and nouns in visual narrative and in the endeavor to construct in another dimension -constructions. The conjunctions and constructions and piles of books and the drawings, as well, became the subject of a project with interest in random relationships, new colors --the drawn and the painterly --thus 10-12 new paintings. I painted what I saw piled on the work table and book cases.

At the same time, I was outdoors! And, I was determined to make the move out of my old studio into certain new work and had started to do a routine of drawings outside -going here and there around town with Glen Isla (my setter) . . . . And, as the temperatures dropped that winter I brought in fresh produce from local farms and promises of spring in the small branches with buds from shrubs and trees.

All of the colors and shapes from direct observation inside and outside the studio were a great nourishment to what had become all tone and value and abstraction in my old studio -over time -and as I juggled to define my new working space.

However - the paintings (some as shown above --mostly of the books and painted constructions) ended up more enamored of tone and values than the seduction of the colors and the substance of the materials. And I contrasted deep tone with direct light.