Painting - Playing - Moving

I traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia recently to jump into the Creative Music Workshop world. I offered my brush, drawing & listening practices to the students and joined the faculty concert to paint while these wonderful artists played and danced around me. 

Here are some images from the big visual that emerged.

I began by drawing a long horizontal brush line and then began to move to the music with bending reaching overlapping grass lines. 

 Touching the spaces with small strokes and tentrils of marks - 

The marks became wilder, wackier as the music grew more complex. 

landscapes began to take shape . . .

the grasses became layered, deeper, with eyes peering out.

Two dancers moved near me, responding to the forms I was making and I drew their relational bodies within the network of lines. 

 Their hands were reaching , gesturing - 

The left side of the painting was a confusing collection of marks until a saxophone solo guided me to create a spine which aligned and resolved things. Zoom in . . .

On the right the grasses were surrounded and penetrated by life . .

 And the whole painting at the end - 16 feet long - a record of aliveness.

Haiku View

I have been writing haiku for the past year, often just upon waking, looking out at the same view. Yet each day the sky changes, the tree moves through the seasons, and I am different. It has become a way to find myself in the world.

I have been working with the 5 - 7 - 5 syllable form. Being held by this constraint feels right.

Gradually, as the haiku have collected in my journals, I began to see brushstrokes joining them . Here is a small collection of what is emerging.