Today I'm painting stone piles in the Fall Five River Scroll. I've been painting these since 9/11.

Here's a photo I moved into my studio a while back. I snapped it at a Buddhist monastery in the mountains of South Korea over a decade ago. People build the little pilings outside temples to honor their departed ancestors. That's what I was told anyway.

When I'm too jazzed to sit in meditation painting the balanced piles grounds and re-balances me, and those who view the work say it's true for them as well.

I read this the other day: "The zeit is geisty!" Apparently it's from Jean Huston.

Sure seems so these days!

Here's a few details of the two newest works on the easel: a jelly diptych on aluminum flashing and the Fall River Scroll Five.

I've been pondering the term easel painting. I consider myself an easel painter even though I sometimes place the work on walls and floors as I paint. And I use a large inkjet printer and my iPhone. I suppose I'm pondering this because I see more pure digital work. Which is okay but it's not painting.

I prefer to see the hand of the artist and not solely a software program. This is all part of the larger what is art dialogue, which quite frankly, bores me. Anyway I like the messiness of wet paint and brushes AND the digital stuff. It's the paint that makes it tangible and real for me.

Here's a few details of what I'm working on these days. Click on any image and to link to the work.

When I flipped Jelly Scribble nine I loved the effect of it reversed. This only works, apparently, when I "frost" the painted side and leave the other side untouched. I "frost" using 60 and 150 grit sandpaper. So, yup, it's signed on both sides!

Jelly Scribble 9 fini! It's led me to another level. This is a mini idea of an enormous Lexan panel. Now to play with some light panels behind the jellies and onto more flashing. But first a return to the Fall River Scrolls. It all merges, meshes, morphs . . .

I've been playing, yes still I'm playing, with some jelly video's taken on my iPhone at the New England Aquarium's Jelly exhibit. I can sit and watch the jellies swim all day and never tire of it. Something in their movement reaches a place inside me that I've barely known. Or maybe is just awakening.

At left is a detail from  Jelly Scribble number 9.

I've been trying to mesh the heart sutra with the jellies.
At left is a detail from Jelly Scribble Ten (heart sutra).

It seems the jelly scribbles, or perhaps the jellies themselves, have their own energy! Here's seven and eight . . .

At left the latest jelly scribble, number 5. It's a combination of egg tempera over one of my digital photos printed using ultrachrome ink on Lexan.

I'm loving the Lexan. I've learned that the manufacturer's headquarters is in nearby Pittsfield. Who knew we still made stuff?

I'm also enjoying merging an ancient technique that requires discipline and skill of the artist's hand and eye with the immediacy of digital images with an industriall material like Lexan.

I think, as we face challenges and recreate our world, we'll need to blend new innovative technologies with ancient techniques and with our skill of heart and hand.

Above is an image of a Lexan lighted sign. It's pretty tough stuff. It's what the astronaut's bubble helmets are made from. What's funny is I intended to use plexiglass but when my local glass supplier, Jeff, went to pick it up for me the distributor offered him Lexan at the same price. Now that's a gift since Lexan is normally three times the cost of plexiglass! I accept these gifts with sincere gratitude.

And here, at left, is Jelly Scribble Six. A fusion of egg tempera over one of my ice photos printed using ultrachrome ink on sugarcane paper.

I've loved exploiting the traditional materials of pigment and paper. There's something about the feel of both in my hands that connects me to the ancients.

I am definitely on a jelly roll!

Jelly scribble number five emerges!

Yesterday I pulled out and adjusted 42 of the ice images.
While the jelly scribbles are evolving I'm working "behind the scenes"
on the ice aspect. Soon I expect the tracings of the Ice Jellies to
come into focus.

Loving the play!

I'm learning more every day that I paint using these daylight flourescent pigments! At day's end in the oblique light they simply glow! It is quite amazing to see. I'm also playing with the shadows created when the lexan is lifted away from the white paper behind. Every day something new emerges.

I am reminded of the last lines from Mary Oliver's poem "The Ponds:"

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled-
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing-
that the light is everything---that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.