These past few weeks, COVID-19’s shadow again knocked me off balance. Too much news. Too many worries.

I painted in tiny bursts, but working together with friends on Sundays was the life raft, the one reliable focus. The rest of the time I felt scattered by my daughter’s return with long-haul symptoms. Airlines, doctors, insurance, research, interspersed with reading (The Broken Earth, NK Jeminsin) and lots of jigsaw puzzles.

Finally last week a class assignment got my attention. The lecture was on geometry in abstract art. The challenge: look at an artist’s work, then try your own subject in their style. This resonated: I have been wrestling for sometime with the beauty of trees, and this seemed like a new path in. Here are the results. So far. I drifted from the brief, but still covered new ground. Green shade and shafts of light outside my city window.

The third attempt came after the group crit. Seeing other people’s solutions - some so far more advanced than mine - was a gift. Such a different feeling, when you let go of image, and instead mass blocks of color. I don’t know where this is taking me. The point is to stretch. You need to stretch, to extend your reach. It feels good.

“The very impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.” - Annie Dillard

Another good feeling this week: receiving generosity. Artist Susan Gaylord saw my frustration on-line about my daughter’s condition. She wrote to me: “I’d like to do something.” Out of the blue. She created an for my girl an original calligraphy, using a quote we picked out. What a gift, the more so for being unexpected.

I have been having fun this morning, setting the words to different backgrounds - galaxies, flowers, art. But maybe the work stands best on it’s own: