I do not trek. I just walk. I have been told that I maintain an excellent pace when I walk,  but still that is certainly not trekking. Trekking implies a laborious journey made on foot, a migration, a long hard walk. Nor have I traveled to super dangerous places. But one year, the two people I love most were gone at the very same time to politically unsettled, exotic places at opposite ends of the earth, totally out of my touch for weeks and weeks. One was trekking and one was working in a highly charged zone packing a gun for protection. I was more than bereft ,I was beside myself. I was left to my own devices for inventing coping rituals and this is one of the paintings that happened to me….because paintings happen to me. I don’t think I actually have much to say about when and where they will happen, or what they will say, since I am simply a vehicle.  Long ago I offered up my heart, mind, soul and my arms to the painting gods. I’m a dedicated volunteer.

This painting is primitive. It is bold and confident; more bold and confident than I thought I was at the time. I would not call it a happy little painting nor would I call it unhappy. It is just what it is – it speaks with the force and fierce protection of a mother bear. It resembles a flag – perhaps I meant it to be a flag of bravery (not my own) – and I hid the words YEMEN and NEPAL in the composition, a secret known only to me until just now as I announce it to the world.