Badlands, SD
This piece was a pleasure to create- sitting out under the huge blue South Dakota sun. Tim and the kids went to climb down into the Badlands and I sat with my back to them and my face to the sky. I take particular pleasure in closely observing and then trying to capture something beautiful. This piece isn't much to look at now but the process I went through observing that endless sky- that was healing.
Then I turned around and faced the Badlands and drew them for like an hour with colored pencils. I took a section of rock and tried to capture the intricacy of the strata- the colors, the texture differences, the thickness of the layers and how they matched up. Again, not much to look at now- it's rather pale and I didn't even try to get a photo. But the process of sitting on the rock with the sun baking my back while trying to appreciate a small slice of rock face out of a huge panorama- very healing.
Sometimes art slows me down, brings me into the play of light and color and texture, gives me an excuse to sit on the rocks in the breeze and really look. This is one of the ways art embodies me, an antidote for my tendency to disembody.