I've started re-reading Faulkner's "The Hamlet." Faulkner has a way of bringing you right into the moment, re-awakening you to a time when people paid attention to one another's subtle ways of speaking or expressing themselves through body movements or expressions on their faces. This brought me to thinking about how things have changed so much as all over the world people are glued to their electronic devices where their interactions are revealed (like here on this blog) via a screen without the accompanying physicality of the material world. As I am working through composing paintings from early memories, those memories are imbued with sounds, smells, air, water, being. I can always remember things when they are attached to the physical world, but find that without that connection to the physical world, the memories of experience disappear.

This painting, "Under the Forsythia," is from a memory (assisted by looking at a photo of forsythias), where I spent some of my childhood seeking sanctuary. I spent many hours under various trees and bushes seeking out their protective and encompassing bodies.