Reciprocity
Monotype with handwork
26 x 19
2022

"If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

I initially made this monotype emphasizing the verticality of four redwood trunks. Almost to the day, five years later I pulled the print out of the portfolio and began to draw in the people who were bathing in the green light of the forest. So often it takes me a while to finish a print because I need to grow down into it, to understand what the it is saying. Even when we feel alone, there are many friends standing near us, some in human form, some much older than us, whose ways of communicating we are yearning to hear with curiosity and respect.

Story Ladder - 3
Monotype
26 x 19
2016

I have made a series of tree monprints I called “story ladders” which emphasize the way we, like trees, are reaching up and reaching down, to find the stories that speak of time and ancestors. We share limbs, arms and trunks with trees. The dendrites of nerve cells and the bronchiole of our lungs are named for their resemblance to the branches of tress, that extend in finer and finer lines from the central trunk, the main axis. Can you sense that your own spine is like a tree trunk, a ladder connecting ground and sky, heaven and earth? At times we look like moving trees, reaching arms from our trunks to the moon and the stars, gathering nourishment from the ground under our feet, our energetic roots.

Forest Friends
Monotype
30 x 22
2017

One of my favorite definitions of poetry says that poetry multiplies the meanings. 

I feel that way about making monotypes. The word printmaking implies multiples; with monotypes or painterly prints each piece is one of a kind. Making monotypes has been a wonderful way to work with my tribe of characters and landscapes. I spend a while adding and subtracting lines, shapes, and colors. The image keeps changing. A pilgrim’s arm stretches out, the wind rustles through the trees. It is often a gloriously spontaneous way to work. I am drawing from imagination and memory, looking back at art I have been making recently and glimpsing and growing into new work. Over the years, many images of trees, alone and in communities, sometimes there are people with them. In one of my favorite dreams I am back a redwood forest with friends. There are mirrors on the trees and in the ferns. I can’t tell how large the forest is. And the forest is singing. We are singing.
I can’t tell where this music come from. Even as we stand still together, trees and dreamers, under our feet the roots are dancing.