The Broken Crayon Collection

As someone who’s interior life is often loud and distracting, I admire the keen situational awareness and patience of birds. Birds don’t bumble through life. Although we often equate birds with freedom, they are wary and calculating, disciplined and persistent. Perhaps these are important traits for being free.

I often wonder what it would be like to be a tree. Once when I was doing a walking meditation near the base of Kachina Woman in Sedona, I was struck by a singular thought: trees have to be brave. They can sense when storms, blight, and fire are coming, and can even communicate and warn other trees by releasing pheromones in the air and electrical impulses underground through mycorrhizal networks. What they can’t do is run and hide. They must withstand whatever comes their way. It made me weep. I doubt I’m brave enough to be a tree.

Sometimes I see the world too narrowly. If I can remember to zoom out and see the bigger picture, what once appeared to be a significant barrier, may in fact be manageable, maybe even ridiculous.

A dear friend of mine climbed Kilimandjaro a while back and recently made it to Everest’s Base Camp 1. She’s one of the most amazing people I know. There’s no one I’d rather jam up an Amsterdam canal with than Alicia Sanchez — and yes, I know what that sounds like, but I stand by it. This painting was effortless for me, just like our friendship.

The last time I went to Provincetown my friends Allen and Rick were getting married. I made the wedding cake. It was three tiered, made entirely from Jello, and topped with a strobe light pope mobile I’d recently brought home from Rome. After the wedding, Allen dared me to swim in the ocean fully clothed. It was a no brainer.

You know that moment when newts and snakes of all kinds come spilling out of your mouth, when you’ve said that mean thing you never intended to say. Well, this picture isn’t that. It looks like that, but it isn’t that. My therapist had a field day with this one and wanted to use it as the cover of a book she was writing on the damaged relationships some men have with their mothers. Someone who actually knows how to sell books stopped her. The original painting is still in her office.

When I titled this I was thinking about two things. 1. The family pictures on my parent’s den wall. 2. Monty Hall’s 1970s game show Let’s Make a Deal. The best part about that show was the contestants’ costumers. The second best was watching someone keep their composure after they picked one of the three doors they were offered, hoping to win their dream washer/dryer combo, only to leave with a wheel barrel full of donkey kibble. Obviously, I went with the first but if you haven’t watched the original Let’s Make a Deal with Monty Hall, well, you haven’t really lived.

This piece, which became the prototype for the Tree of Tears Series, started as a test panel for me to demonstrate to a family member how to paint with wax. After the lesson, I fired off all of the wax, letting it drip down and off the panel. What remained was the streaked paint pattern you see at the bottom. The imagery evoked a story of death and rebirth, and I knew it could be a special piece.

I paint by heating up wax, moving it around on a wood panel with a blow torch and irons, then letting it cool once I’m satisfied with the results.

But with this painting, before I began to work the hot wax, it pooled into a shape that I immediately realized captured what as a child I imagined a soul looked like. It was a startling and happy moment. I felt deeply connected to my past self and to the universe.

There are times in life when I feel as though I can’t move, when I’m frozen and the ability to think, to choose, to do anything at all is gone. When the gravity of the situation is beyond what I can bear, it’s okay to rest. I know that eventually, I will rise and continue on my journey.

Everything has a beginning. An idea, a love, a life. The womb of the universe nurtures the essential elements of its child and brings it forth in its own time. Waiting is torture, but inevitable.

Bryn Mawr Avenue, where I spent my summers as a child, was the most northernly street in its county. As such, its beach, steps from my front door, had a storm fence demarcating the border of two counties. Along that storm fence protective sea grass grew and detritus would gather in the winter. Sometimes while I sat at the top of the beach, no one else could be seen. I was alone with my thoughts. I tried to capture that sense of solitude in this painting.

Without fully considering the risks of taking a blow torch to oil paint, I did just that. The wax and oil paint produced a layered effect that I love. That said, I shan’t do it again.

This piece emerged a short while after my dear cousin’s son died unexpectedly. This beautiful young man loved the woods. I had been studying how trees communicate with each other, their lifecycles, and the generosity they show, especially toward their relatives. Trees are unhappy alone. So are we.

Here is another lesson in what NOT to do with blow torches. Without fully considering the risks of taking fire to hand made paper embedded in wax, I lit the sucker up. I shan’t be doing that again. But the resulting textured meadow is quite cool. Notice the burnt corners.

I love the upward movement in this piece and its high horizon. It reminds me of being a child and walking up a nearby hill. It was so high and took so much effort to crest. When I returned years later, it only took a few strides to reach the top.

The otherworldliness of this piece pleases me. Some sort of creature, just tooling around on some moon, chomping at space, as if it were a meal. I think there’s an addiction metaphor here, but that’s a story for another time.

As my grandchildren began arriving, I thought much more about the relationship I had with my grandparents, and who I hoped to be for my grandchildren. I didn’t consciously set out to create a piece highlighting the sacred space between mothers and their mothers, but I think this piece reflects that. I’m eternally grateful to Dave, Allison, Kate, and Ryan for sharing their children with me.

Twelve and a half. I like to say that was when I peaked as a human. I was doing well in school, had a posse of great friends, was the captain of my school basketball team, and was having a blast ice skating competitively. I knew who I was and liked myself. This imagery captures the joy and swagger I felt back then. What followed soon after would for years test the limits of my endurance and will to live. Fortunately, I survived.

The Soul Series, more than any other in The Broken Crayon Collection, invites you to define the meaning of a piece.

People see widely differing things in them. Some see elements of nature. I see the transitions between colors here as a representation of the soul’s progression through its many phases of growth, within one lifetime and across many. Some transitions are choppy and messy, others sharp and clean, still others, imperceptible.

The Soul Series, more than any other in The Broken Crayon Collection, invites you to define the meaning of a piece.

People see widely differing things in them. Some see elements of nature. I see the transitions between colors here as a representation of the soul’s progression through its many phases of growth, within one lifetime and across many. Some transitions are choppy and messy, others sharp and clean, still others, imperceptible.

The Soul Series, more than any other in The Broken Crayon Collection, invites you to define the meaning of a piece.

People see widely differing things in them. Some see elements of nature. I see the transitions between colors here as a representation of the soul’s progression through its many phases of growth, within one lifetime and across many. Some transitions are choppy and messy, others sharp and clean, still others, imperceptible.

The Soul Series, more than any other in The Broken Crayon Collection, invites you to define the meaning of a piece.

People see widely differing things in them. Some see elements of nature. I see the transitions between colors here as a representation of the soul’s progression through its many phases of growth, within one lifetime and across many. Some transitions are choppy and messy, others sharp and clean, still others, imperceptible.

The imagery in this painting intrigues me and might be seen as an ova being released from an ovary. The feathered edge between the light and dark masses are a beautiful example of the delicate transitions that emerge when the wax’s thickness, temperature, and rate of cooling are just right.

I renovated an old garage into a studio a while ago and found a family of birds living in an eave. I felt bad about disrupting their home, but they flew off as the construction commenced. I heard them recently, back in the same eave, safely protected from the elements. I’m going to build a bird house for them this time.

The zany face on this dog came about unintentionally. The starting point for this piece was an exploration of how the black wax would bloom against a white wax background. What resulted was the entire head minus the right eye and body, which I then added. I’ve been tempted many times to add a red bow tie, but to date have resisted. I worry the other dogs will laugh at him.

Like Dream Dog, this piece started as a technical exploration of the blooming process. I can’t remember how I did the head once the body emerged. I often fail to recall how I create something, as if my head went out for a hoagie while the rest of me worked. Anyway, she looks quite comfy.

This piece uses a technique of melting and cooling wax on paper, then cutting and transferring the pieces to a wet wax base. The asymmetrical arms and the darting eyes make it feel both broken and aware.

Rosie was a cartoon robot maid on The Jetsons, a space age cartoon from the 1960s. I would often color in front of the tv while watching cartoons like The Jetsons and shows like Lost in Space. I have a vague memory of one of the nuns at my school rolling a television into my classroom for us all to watch an Apollo lift off. Those were fun times.

Kate and Allison provided the first homes for my four grandchildren. These homes were rich, warm, sacred spaces, where their children grew, where they practiced sucking, hiccupping, and moving their limbs, where they heard music and opened their eyes for the first time. Perhaps this painting captures what they might have seen.

The two scarved figures that emerged from this painting session were completely unintentional. I was working quickly with a flat iron and blue and white wax. It took only a minute or so. Sometimes the less I do, the more movement the painting has.

Weather forming over the ocean can be quite spectacular.

Late one afternoon when I was about 15 some friends and I were sitting on the beach and saw a large bank of clouds appear on the ocean’s horizon. Over the next 15 minutes, these clouds rolled in and the sea rolled out. We were transfixed as the tide when from high to low so quickly. Then a hard driving rain came and we all ran home. Although Bryn Mawr Avenue is the highest point on the barrier island we were on, the waves were soon washing into the street.

Often my first attempt at developing a picture fails. I then fire off all the wax and start again. In this instance though, the pigment stain left behind an interesting ghost image. Sometimes the remnants of a life event can never fully be erased. The question is, do I see it as a stain or a thing of beauty?

Horizons are tricksters. They appear stationary, but recede the moment we move toward them. They belie the curvature of the Earth and hide depending on the weather. Yet we find them grounding and a source of comfort.

My family owned a seasonal business at the Jersey Shore so I spent every summer there. For me, this painting evokes worn and chipping paint, eroding under the elements of water, salt, and a harsh sun. It reminds me of pushing up lifeguard stands with my cousins so we could climb atop and jump down, walking the keel of an upside down lifeboat from bow to stern without falling off, and flying kites as the sun hung low over the bay.

This is one of the first pieces I created for the Broken Crayon Collection. It, more than any other, reminds me of coloring as a child, which was a favorite activity of mine, especially as twilight rose and my limbs warmed after a day playing in the snow with my sister, Susan. The orange mittens here remind me of those times.

Lightfoot is a good example of the realistic pieces of encaustic work that I’ve done. Unlike my other encaustic pieces, my pet portraits use highly controlled brush strokes and I intentionally corral the free flowing characteristics of hot wax. I will always accept commissions for this sort of work, especially for pets!