To view this post with its intended layout flow, view it on the website via your browser. What amuses me about my little travel art kit quandary mentioned previously is that it was nearly identical to the quandary that kept me awake for nights on end a year ago....
musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
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have art, will travel
Wrapped in a wool blanket, I take a sip of warming tea. I look out the window and take a deep, satisfied breath as I study a tangle of black branches etched against a frosty golden sky. The falling snow is so fine I can barely make out the individual flakes sifting...
how to teach your passion?
What are you passionate about? How would you teach your passion? How would you share it with others? Light a spark in someone else, so that they might get a glimmer of excitement about it? This is exactly the challenge that came my way a year ago, and changed...

walking away from social media ~ one year later
What was getting to me was the sense that I was being manipulated, that someone else was controlling my attention. I’d login with seeming innocent intentions — to see what friends were up to, or if anyone appreciated what I’d shared — and plan to spend just a couple...
spring & the hardest color to paint
As a young art student I often heard that one color is especially hard to paint . Care to guess which one? For the untrained eye it can be intimidating to look out to a verdant landscape and figure out now how to differentiate and mix green. Maybe that’s why a comment...
new mexico sky musings ~ a new release
There was a time a long time ago when I considered signing my name on my paintings with my initials, because a landscape painter named “Dawn” seemed a little too sweet, maybe even cliche´. I’m glad I got over that. According to my mother, it was my father who...
autumn across america
Late afternoon fence line, Brush Creek Ranch, Wyoming. Photo by Dawn Chandler When I was a teenager there were two places at home where I liked to do my homework. If I really needed to concentrate — say when writing a paper — I would work at my little desk in my tiny...
cutting a [creative] path to those deep woods
At this point in my Vermont sojourn, my Long Trail journal starts to ricochet. My next entry is five days after I limped off the trail in Manchester, uncertain of my future; I then time-travel and describe the past. My diary continues this way for the duration. Alas,...

prayer wrapped in my father’s red bandana
14 September 2015 — Day 6Solo backpacking the length of Vermont on the Long Trail So early the next morning I set off — first out of camp. My knee tied with Dad's red bandanna. After thirty or forty minutes or so, Flagman caught up with me. "How's the knee feeling?...

uhh-oh my knee, ‘come to jesus’ & a clash of egos
13 September 2015 — Day 5Solo backpacking the length of Vermont on the Long Trail May that remain the most miserable night of my camping life. Because the TarpTent SUCKS in a 12-HOUR VERMONT RAIN. Because the rain comes down, hits the ground and bounces up and hits...