The secret language of birds

2021
Acrylic on canvas
40” x 30” x 1.75”

Do you know why birds sing just before dawn? Scientists believe it’s to tell their mates that they made it through the night, as a way of saying, “I’m still here.” Maybe that’s why we sing, too, why we create art- as a way of saying, “I made it. I’m still here.”
- Jeff Goins

Cattle Egret has undergone one of the most rapid and wide ranging natural expansion of any bird species in the world. The naturally colonized the Americas in the early 1900's and nesting in North America for the first time in 1953.

Underneath the frozen river, the water still flows

Acrylic on canvas

2021

30" x 40" x 1.75"

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A moment when time stood still…

But underneath the frozen river, the water still flows ….

The nature of memory

2021

Oil on canvas

30” x 40” x1.75”

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“Shelter can be hard to find. A place can become our home for reasons we do not understand. We build our memories that turn into what we are, then what we were, as we look back. We live in the light that become us."

- Guy Gavriel Kay, A brightness Long Ago

My heart is like a tree with its flowers ablaze 

Night in the forest

2020

Oil on canvas

47.5" x 36" x 1.75"

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Inspired by a local scene at Loon Lake...

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"The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky."

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- William Butler Yeats

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Follow the yellow wood road

2020

Oil in canvas
40" x 30" x1.75"

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves, no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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                           - The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

Babylonstoren

2020

Oil in canvas
40" x 30" x1.75"

I was listening to a podcast of a very successful artist explaining why he prefers to work from a photo or pre-drawn sketch when he paints. He said it allows him to focus on the painting and not worry about the details since it is already planned out.

Contrary to him, I seldom know what the end result of a painting would look like and never sketch it out in its entirety, but rather enjoy the process to see where it takes me. Almost always and without fail, I reach to my roots of living in Africa ... the flora and fauna, the birds and the beautiful pattern and fabrics that is so part of the continent.

Scrolling through my phone, I discovered a photo taken while visiting South Africa. A reminder of a special moment in time spend with my loved ones.

Come forth into the light of things

2020

Oil in canvas
40" x 30" x1.75"