Mother and Daughter with Small Dog Walking 2005

In 2005 when I made this little painting my daughters were 12 and 9.  Now they are 35 and 32, grown with their own lives, the elder daughter married with a two year old son, and the younger daughter soon to be married.  The mother is walking into what seems to be a rough and rocky landscape with a bleakly overcast sky, holding the daughter's hand, the dog following close behind, as good dogs will do.  I didn't know then what was to come, what would happen to those two dearly loved daughters, only that we were going forward into the future with courage and the belief that things would work out.  What is to come is still unknown, and now, with grandchildren, it still seems the same: we will continue to go forward as a family, hoping that love and courage will take us where we need to go.

Woman with Worries 2022

So much to worry about, so little time.  Big problems like a terrible, senseless war that doesn't seem like it will ever end, bad forest fires in your back yard. A country so divided that you count your friends by the party they voted for, and you make snarly faces when you meet someone who voted for the other party.  You have a grandson in Texas, and the Uvalde shootings suddenly seem very close. The old person chute that you started sliding down not so long ago is going faster and faster, and you know you can't get off or slow it down. Friends your age and younger, have dementia.  At first you were alarmed but now it's becoming common place(this after many of your parents and your friend's parents have died with this awful disease), and you worry that you will be next. The specter of covid hangs over everything, and even though you just got it, you know you aren't really safe anymore as the variants spread like wildfire: vaxed and boosted seeming to make no difference. There seems too be no silver lining to any of the dark clouds looming on the horizon, and the lightening strikes keep getting closer and closer.

Coyote Watching 2021

If I had to use just one term to define the coyotes that live around us in our semi-rural environment here in New Mexico it would be "wary".  Like the murders of crows that startle and take off en-mass when I lift my camera to take a photograph, the coyotes are completely aware when I share their space.  It might be a casual glance to let me know they know I'm watching, or more likely, taking off at a dead run when they see that my attention is too acute. They are so very different from dogs--their close cousins--with their noisy, unaware, and blundering ways. I so love this about them--that intelligence and awareness that lets them exist in both worlds simultaneously--that which is natural and that which isn't.

Rabbit Running (with Blue Feet) 2022

We share our outdoor space with cottontail rabbits.  They are, to quote the cliche, adorable, with their large floppy ears, beautiful soft grey fur, and big, dark, liquid eyes. However, I don't think much of them. Nothing like starting out your day swerving off the road to avoid  hitting a rabbit, or worse yet, actually hitting and killing or maiming one. They are fast and can weave and dodge like nobody's business, but it doesn't help when you are being "chased" by a car, and blinded by it's headlights. I watch in fascination when I take my two small dogs for a walk, and they present themselves with no fear just a few feet away. "If I'm just still enough, they won't see me". Not smart, not when you're a prey animal and one of the two little dogs happens to be a rat terrier.  But, there they are for me to photograph, hiding, frozen in the grass (although not really being hidden), or squished on the road, eyes glazing over when I get to them, pulling my camera out to photograph their not too long dead, somewhat flattened, bodies. But perhaps in the big picture, as you are dinner to a host of other animals, and although lovely to look at, it's probably best that you're not the sharpest tack in the box.

Coyote Father & Coyote Mother (with Clouds and Rain) 2021

Coyote Father(with Clouds and Rain)

Coyote Mother(with Rain and Clouds)

I know that coyotes are in the pasture behind our house when our two small dogs begin their shrill, constant, hysterical barking, running up and down alongside the fence(on our side), hackles up, ears pricked, vicious threats hurled across the wire at the coyotes.  The coyotes trot casually along, paying the little dogs no mind(although we all know they would love to have either both or one of these small dogs as a midday snack). One day one of these coyotes stayed in the field for a very long time, mostly laying down.  She was there for the better part of the day, and I didn't know if she was ill or perhaps getting ready to have pups. I  took my camera out every hour or so and took hundreds of photographs of her across the fence, laying in the grass, or moving from place to place. Afterward, from studying the photos, I got to know her well, her face, her markings, her movements. She was the pasture, she was nature, she was part of something I existed on the outskirts of. She was a wild thing that let me into her life for the briefest bit of time.

 

 

Horse Grazing 2020