the petal doesn't fall far from the stem.
something hidden about my work becomes ridiculously obvious.
“MAN-ZUH-KNEE-TUH”, my father is pointing to his knee, then to the manzanita bush so I remember its name…
A pungent purple iris filling my entire view. I tear into the petals without hesitation.
A sage green lizard (no tail!!!) scrambling over redwood chips & pumice stones.
My grandma Charline’s face gone white under her black wig, watching me skip obliviously over a sunning rattlesnake…
Huge red tulips’ dusty stamens glowing amidst the backdrop of decomposing walnuts.
Scaling the cedar tree’s low inviting branches, hiding safe in the screen of green.
The ecstasy of my first snow.
All of this under 5 years old!
This week I paused on painting one morning just to write about what I think this current collection of work is all about.
These petals that turn into waves that flow around the canvas and pull me in.
The powerful allure of gazing so closely at the more-than-human world.
The undeniable beauty in the most mundane of weeds and most cultivated of monocultures.
A small child’s fascination with the wondrous arrival of spring.
That all of my earliest memories are outside.
The mystical moments and curious alignments that catch our attention with sudden potency when we pause to notice…
Later that same day, I switched my attention from the philosophical and poetic back over to the boring backend business of being an artist.
My current boring backend project is Pinterest maintenance 🥱. After all these random years online I’m figure out how I can use this platform more skillfully, who’s linking to me there, blablabla.
Well, suddenly things got interesting when an image of my dad’s artwork caught my eye in the scroll. Clicking on it, I found my way to his still-active Flickr page.
Y’all, Murph passed away ten years ago and I had completely forgotten this page was out there.
Pulled suddenly by the tidal forces of the internet and magic, I’m scrolling down the first page and thinking:
HOLY SHIT, LISETTE. THE ROOT OF YOUR WORK IS SORT OF UHM OBVIOUS, DON’T YOU THINK??
The man spent his life with a camera around his neck, usually trained on something brief and magnificent in the natural world. I *know* this intellectually about my dad. But something about the years since his death, the fog and distortion of grief and time, gave me amnesia surrounding this ever so pertinent fact of my life.
Funny, right? We can spend all this time hoping for meaning and resonance to come calling when it’s just been there ringing, waiting for us to pick up the phone…
I’ve had a few moments of creativity since my dad’s passing where I thought…am I the one Art Directing here, or is he??
Whether “directing” me by having been my loving tutor in life, literally teaching me how to look at the world, or whether he’s currently pulling some strings from behind the veil… It’s an interesting thought either way…
And either way, it’s peaceful.
It feels really good to spend these hours pressed so closely to petals and wings.
It’s how I was raised.
And sometimes, while I’m standing at the easel and really in the flow, it’s like I can almost hear my dad over my shoulder going, “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!!”
Dad, I’ve always loved makin’ art with you.
xoxo,
All I can say is thank you for sharing this (somewhat obvious) revelation. So beautiful, so tender, and so you 🥰 looking back with this new perspective, I totally feel like I know Murph too, like he's a regular on the train, I just didn't know his name. Personally, I'd love to check out his Flickr page. This is lovely.
Incredible. Loved this reflection—seeing your Dad's photography, how he held all kinds of creatures with gentleness in his hands, how he inspired you, and the last image with you and your Dad's visionary eyes.