I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of boring and being bored. One definition of boring I came across described it as "the state of feeling weary because one is unoccupied." [OED] That kind of weariness is something I've rarely experienced in my adulthood....
musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
dawn chandler artist
drawing: “no good, no bad, no judgement”
Below — pages from my 2023 sketchbook. I began this on a road trip last June to the Oregon coast. In years previous when we made that trip (the last being in 2017) I didn’t draw much, if at all. Rather, I was still on [READ: addicted to] social media, so I spent more...
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...
why I’m leaving ~ tell me what else I should have done?
Tell me what else I should have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me what it is you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life? These words of Mary Oliver's have been swimming around in my mind and on my tongue of late. So much so that they've...
one tiny enormous comment
From the Goya Foods, Inc. Collection National Museum of American History, Archives Center I just returned from the grocery store, to buy a jar of tomato sauce and some rice. The grocery store was out of rice. And toilet paper. And countless other items. I've never...
santa fe september
Summer has been protracted this year. ~ sigh ~ I’m ready for the days to cool and the colors to heat up into hues of fire. Maybe sharing this painting of an earlier Santa Fe September view will entice Mother Nature to pull out her autumn colors…. (Please?) I began...
letting go of home
Wednesday, June 19, 2019 would have been my parents' 65th wedding anniversary. It's also the day that I learned my childhood home has been destroyed. My home of 42 years. My tiny bedroom with the astonishing bookshelves wrapping around two walls and concealing a...
celebrating grace ~ mysterious figure revealed ~ crane painting, vi
Perhaps it’s time now to reveal this mysterious figure who keeps appearing in these, my crane paintings. That figure is my mother. My mother, who grew up in New England, married my father, who grew up in New Jersey. They met in college and were...