The Space Between Us

30×40 acrylic on wood panel

Twice a week I take a long walk that starts off with a steep incline peaking with me staring at these “artist’s conks” at the corner of the forest intersection. Lucky me:)

Artist’s conks are so-named because if you incise designs on them they darken to black … a kind of natural sketchpad. The undersides of these particular ones have developed a bit of a more reddish color over the last few years, but they did start off as this eerie, stark white.

Artistically, this began as a formal study – but – I could not stop, could I? So much of what I do harks back to to an East Asian world of the 30’s and 40’s…to where my family and I picked up from in the newly opened to foreign presence Shanghai when we moved there in 1980…and then later to Belgium. Both Art Nouveau and Deco hot spots. It does pop, I will admit it, having the PNW natural against the stylized design, but I am fond of it. I’ve got several shots of this scene from different angles and might come back to it in the future on my own, or if a client would like a version of this.

How do you fill the spaces between yourself and those close to you? How do you value the differences between yourself and your family or partners, when sometimes they get so stark? What new growth can you produce from the nicks and scratches in your life, from the bumps and bruises?