Do remember, they can't cancel the Spring!

that's written in pink neon at the entrance of a gallery in Paris!

Right after I wrote my post about getting Winter out of town I found this in the New York Times—an article about a new retrospective of David Hockney’s work in Paris. Hockney wrote that message to friends at the beginning of the pandemic. I love his work; he always comes up with surprising and delightful new stuff, like a show of his landscapes I saw at the Met in 2017. It was placed right next to a show of Michelangelo’s drawings—gorgeous but intense and a little intimidating so to come upon Hockney’s burst of color and motion was like opening a big door and taking a leap into a new world.

And another thing about Mr. Hockney—he loves his dachshunds!

Because they don’t lie still for long he has placed many resting places for them around the studio and paints them in their moments of repose. Clearly, he’s a man of distinction and discernment.

You know what synchronicity is, right? Like when you learn a new word or you get interested in something new and then it pops up five times in the next day? Well, I was working on this drawing of a squirrel…

…and listening with one ear to NPR when I realized they were talking about SQUIRRELS! This was terrestrials, or RadioLab for kids which I never listen to, but there it was.

Did you know that squirrels are responsible for one out of five power outages? But they help plant trees by hiding their stores of nuts and then forgetting where to find them. They’ve caught the interest of scientists because of their way of hibernating; they go into such a deep sleep that their whole system shuts down in a way that humans would die if they tried it. And then they wake up and go about their business. So NASA is looking into a way to make people do that for when we travel to Mars, which would take seven to ten months and who wants to spend ten months in a space capsule, and how would they have enough food for the trip?

I’ve gotten some love for my writing this week. You know how I said that I was taught to steal from other artists, never borrow? Well, I got stolen from! Here’s a Poem for Spring from my dear friend, the Reverend J.Barrie Shepherd.

Pre – Palm Sunday

Wet snow fell again before breakfast
and trees, lawns, footpaths too, are clad
in their too-familiar garb of gleaming white.
Almost mid-April yet old hard-of-hearing winter
still hasn’t caught the hint –
“Lovely to see you, thanks so much for coming.
Don’t let the door hit you as you leave.”

Tomorrow children waving shredded palms
will lead the way - “Hosanna, loud Hosanna…”
- into seven days of memory, hurt and hope.
A week to banish winter, unveil a springtime
for the long centuries and beyond.
Even now the melting has begun.
Earth softens beneath a warming wind.
The hours begin to bend toward tomorrow,
listening for the children’s cry, the song,
the eager rocks beside the road.

J. Barrie Shepherd

Then Arthur passed on some kind words from another dear friend and I remembered that that friend gave me an early push into writing when I read something I had told him in the mouth of a character in his novel. I thought well, if he thought it was good maybe I should write some more.

Drawing is my first love and I’m keeping at it as you can see below but writing this blog and hearing back from my friends has brought me joy. So thank you for reading.

Now here’s my little red house in the big woods. I just started on the woodpecker and not quite sure why I’ve hesitated. Drawing birds, especially their feathers, was my early obsession. At the moment he looks angry—I’ll work on softening him a bit. I have to thank my friend, Darcy for the inspiration for this series; last summer she said to me, “I’d like to live in your drawings but you have to go bigger!”

Thanks, Darcy, I’m having a ball.