Contemporary Collection

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Midnight from the Porch Swing

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It had been a particularly hectic few months with big projects, sparking deadlines and huge responsibilities to get everything ‘right,’ in the swirl of life’s chaos… I had a moment late one night to sit down, deplete in exhaustion, on our porch swing and look out into the night…The scene before me was serenely beautiful and still and I felt enveloped with the loveliness of peace that comes not from without, but from God within, melding with the stillness of the moonlight. I held that scene and it’s ambience in my mind, waiting until the chaos of the present passed and I could escape down into my studio to transfer that mental treasure to my canvas.

I feel an intimacy with God as he molds my life to Him, yet, it is always such a surprise when my will and God’s will for me, collide! As was this experience, the painting in my head was lovely, soft and gently beautiful, but what God brought forth through His brush held in my hands, was entirely different… I was actually shocked! I often am when my presumptions clash with my Lord’s will and His speaking into my spirit. When I think we’re going in one direction, He takes me in exactly the opposite and the result is always deeper. Such was the journey with this painting. In contrast to my perspective of soft and gentle, He presented me with a mirror of definite, bold surety; and a commission forward…

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Red Top Mountain Sentry

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Aged, weathered, gnarly… yet,… standing strong with grace and style…my birthday is next week.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 SOLD

Turbulence

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There is such abstract, passionate beauty in the sky. A clear sky, still and silent, with its perfect value scale of blue is certainly beautiful in its serenity, but I am partial to the tumultuous drama of turbulent skies. The battle is on between the elements; between good and evil. As dark and turbulent as life gets, God is always there, bringing His light into our darkness.

Size: 36 in. × 48 in. (3 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

Vine Maples in Bloom

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The ubiquitous vine maple… in spring and summer, a common ‘filler’ of the forest’s under-story, green and leafy, unremarkable… but, in early August a faint reddish tinge appears on a few leaves… a hint, a harbinger, a metaphor of transformation from common to magnificent.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Gratuitous Beauty

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It is fall in my mountains and I am surrounded by the gratuitous beauty of God’s pallet. I went down to my studio to capture the season, squeezed out my colors… When I stepped back hours later, I was stunned to see the beauty God had given me the honor to be a part of. I wandered around the house for the next few hours in awe.

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Living Water

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Illogical insecurities, fear of failure; the resulting and perpetuating procrastination plagued me. I prayed for God’s inspiration and equipping of the creative gift He had blessed me with. I knew in my head that my fears were lies but my heart was unconvinced. I walked with determination into the studio to face and conquer my fears and I saw this painting on the blank canvas standing on the easel. Hurriedly, I squeezed out an array of color, grabbed a big brush and disappeared into a flurry of action. Spent, cheeks flushed with effort, I couldn’t look at the result. Somehow the experience and this moment felt sacred; I turned off the light and walked away. In the morning, I returned to my studio, turned on the light and stood there; it was exactly what I had envisioned.

Un-revealed to me until much, much later were the angels hidden in the brushstrokes.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Elim

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The Bible is about struggles and salvation; pain and joy; want and plenty, and a fickle people God loves. In Exodus, the people receive a great miracle of salvation when God parts the Red Sea to save them from their enemy. The Israelites forget about God’s provision and after only three days they whine and complain and want to stop, not where God wants them to stop but where the water is not fit to drink. God, in his great mercy, shepherds them to the perfect destination He has prepared in advance, the oasis of Elim. Elim is a place with more bounty than they can hope or imagine…12 springs and 70 palm trees. God took me out of my Egypt and gave me back my painting; my journey through the ‘Red Sea’ was exemplified in the completion of several beautiful pieces of art. Like the Israelites, I lost sight of His perfect provision, I painted a piece that discouraged me and I fell into the trap of self reliance; I took my faith off of His perfect plan and embraced hopelessness. Elim is the result of God’s shepherding me back into His plan, His oasis. He carried me through yet another trial and set me on the rock of His assurance.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Tranquility

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One thinks of a forest and its rivers and streams as being a limited palette of green and brown, but I see so much more. Brown is too mundane for my forests. To me, God has graced us with a buffet of color to ingest and savor. The fluorescents of fall: pulsating yellow lichens clinging to pine boughs, hot pink needles underneath; the white bark of the Aspen against the crimson and scarlet of fall’s vine maples variegated with deep magenta and purples; the mauves of winter. Come spring and summer the colors of new life burst forth: brilliant vivid lime greens, emeralds and cadmiums anchored by the cools of phthalo green, turquoise deep and the almost black of dioxazine purple in the deepest recesses of the forest’s depth.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

All is Well

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There is an awesome moment of peace as the moon crests the trees silhouetting the foreground, and the glory of its radiance overtakes the day. It is as if our Creator is saying, “I am here, I love you, all is well; I have a purpose and a plan for you, and it is good.”

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

…Forest for the Trees

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Can you see the forest for the trees? Sometimes you just get a glimpse; trust, and seek through.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Impending

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No fear of the heavy clouds, hope is the future.

Size: 48 in. × 48 in. (4 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $5,200 Purchase

Backsplash

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Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Dawn’s Chill Precedes the Day

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When I wake up in the morning and look out my window, there is that brief moment of exchange between the night and the day to come. Just before dawn’s light warms up the night’s palette, the latent chill creates a haze of form as the cools turn to warms and light overtakes dark.

Size: 48 in. × 36 in. (4 ft. x 3 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

Peace in the Glen

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I started this painting with four lines kept straight by my T-square hanging off the top of my canvas. Beginning at the farthest reaches of the background, without any agenda toward where my squiggles would lead, I painted forward as rocks took form and a lovely ambience grew. As I let the forest grow into the painting, cool recesses and glints of light filtered through the canopy… it’s a beautiful painting, I think I’d like to go there!

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Sunrise at the Corner

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It was a beautiful morning, the air had that cold back to it; winter was near. It had been a few months of frenetic busy-ness as a myriad of domestic projects consumed my attention. I needed to paint, to pivot, in today’s vernacular to re-boot. As I walked out with my dogs, I asked God to center me in Him, to fill me, to calm me, to inspire me. As I turned the corner, I was awed by the starkness of the beauty before me. The vivid colors of the morning sky overwhelmed the trees into silhouettes and the contrast between dark and light, cool and warm, active and passive, answered my prayer as I pulled an old envelope from my pocket to capture the moment.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Off the Deck

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In the Santa Cruz Mountains, perched above Bean Creek, in a gap of the surrounding Redwood forest, is our family cabin. Built in 1906, ‘The Deck’ is where the action is. 15 beds with their madras bedspreads color The Deck. The bold sleep outside in all weather, year round, the faint sleep inside. On summer afternoons the 15 madras bedspreads radiate the 105 degree heat in contrast to the cool 65 degree sanctuary within the cabin. Squirrels play in the forest under-story of Bay Laurel and Tan Bark Oak, jumping on the deck’s railing to chase each other into the trees to the north. The heated fragrance of Redwood, Bay and Oak is the invisible primer of this canvas of family and community. The white noise of Bean Creek in the cool of the canyon below, the Canyon Wren trilling from the heights of the forest canopy above; happy voices that float up the canyon from the swimmers in the pool nearby; games of darts and cards, long meals of conversation at the picnic tables under the umbrellas, these are the brush strokes of generations. Family, love, serenity, safety…

Size: 48 in. × 48 in. (4 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $5,200 Purchase

Summer Brilliance I and II ; diptych

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The abstracts of power and survival are twined in purpose as water rushes over and around obstacles in its path… a strong metaphor for the journey of our lives. Life is a river of choices as we come against the boulders of decision. What will we choose? Will we go over or around, or be stuck in an eddy and drown? The eddys of life are where God, in His compassion and mercy, reaches down and grabs us from our death. He breathes His saving breath into our soul, lets us gain strength in the quite of a shallow pool, and then sets us off once again to bump over and around the boulders along our way.

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) each • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $11,000 includes I and II; separately $6,500 each Purchase

Killarney Glen

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This is a charming little oasis, tucked and hidden between the city core and its near-by neighborhoods.

Size: 48 in. × 36 in. (4 ft. x 3 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

The Grove

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Hiking outside Jasper, Canada, last summer inspired this painting. The Quaking Aspen, the largest of living organisms is a metaphor of generational family. Above ground it appears as individuals, yet underneath, at its roots, it is connected- one to another, giving it the strength of community and family.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Dirge

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I revel in the richness of my California heritage. This painting is inspired by the strength and longevity of the mighty California Live Oak. It is the funeral song of my husband’s family. This oak exemplifies the strength of legacy and its roots that run deep because they are anchored in love.

Size: 36 in. × 48 in. (3 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

Shadowbrook

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No agenda in this painting. The worn slippers and comfort food in color and theme…a palette of favorites, enveloping forests, tumbling rivers… respite.

Size: 48 in. × 48 in. (4 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $5,200 Purchase

Brookside

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I find that many of my paintings speak to me metaphorically. The orange branch at the top of this painting seems visually insignificant yet it anchors the piece and gives it depth. Many of life’s pivot points masquerade at the time as an insignificant and benign choice but in reality set in motion a cascade of life deepening events. The choice is ours as to what is produced in the process.

Size: 48 in. × 36 in. (4 ft. x 3 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

Standing Together

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Aspen. Families. Connected by deep roots that run generation to generation.

Size: 36 in. × 48 in. (3 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

And, go straight on…

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I live in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and am filled with inspiration as I wander its forests. Our lives are journeys crafted uniquely for us by our Creator. Do we take the road to the left or to the right, or do we follow Him and ‘Go Straight On’?

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Magnolias in March, beauty unfolding…

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I tell my students never to erase. Mistakes are the seeds of genius. It had been a long winter with heavy late snows, it was dreary and I was creatively weary. I needed to paint, I wanted to paint. The rivers and forests were still shuttered in snow, and I wanted to burst forth into spring; to paint color, life, and beauty! I asked God to give me something beautiful and dramatic. Magnolias! Their simple, yet, sensuous forms are an old favorite of mine. I threw up some lines and started an aqueous background. I never erase; but, I erased and erased, over and over, nothing seemed right, every new ’fix’ and adjustment was more egregious than the fix before. So, I erased, scrubbing off paint with my paper towels, trying something else and scrubbing again, considering… and scrubbing off, layering more on top and repainting into what I had just laid down, over and over, as I became increasingly tense. Finally, I stood back and saw that the buildup of one ‘wrong’ line over another had created a rich beauty of subtly and depth. Our lives are like this- a wrong turn, a wrong choice, pivot, new direction… rework, restore, redeem, as God takes our ‘wrong strokes’ and creates a richness of redemptive experience, beautiful and dramatic!

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 SOLD

Verdurous

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Verdant spring. A veritable smorgasbord of greens…

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Swiftwater

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This was an easy, happy painting; the play between cool and warm was my interest. I discovered with this painting that I have an innate propensity to ‘stop’ or ‘shut’ my paintings in. The blue rock is visually dramatic at first but immediately fades as one’s brain relegates it into insignificance for the more interesting body of the painting.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Creekside

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The integrated swirls of unexpected colors in this painting make it one of my favorites!

Size: 48 in. × 36 in. (4 ft. x 3 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

An Evening in Autumn

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I‘ve carried this image in my mind for months. Putting on my shoes for an evening jog I wanted to embrace God’s glory in the stark contrasts of fall.

Size: 48 in. × 48 in. (4 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $5,200 Purchase

Redemption

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Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Splash

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Each of my paintings is a miracle. I am continually convicted of the magnitude of both my insignificance, and yet, at the same time, significance in this life. And, I am humbled by the honor and blessing bestowed upon me to be a part of such beauty.

Size: 48 in. × 36 in. (4 ft. x 3 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

Hot Clash

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I revel in the richness of my California heritage. The terrific heat of a California summer afternoon radiating and roiling over and through the oak woodland is a foundation of my soul. I grew up with views of grassy, oak-studded hills verdant in spring, shimmering with California’s gold in summer. Even the shade of the mighty California Live Oak could not abate the redness of that heat.

Size: 36 in. × 48 in. (3 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,200 Purchase

Passages

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Dried-out, dehydrated… beauty and life suspended in time. I stopped, mid-grab, struck by the dramatic elegance in the spent life of my tulips that had so beautifully brought Easter’s Spring verve and color to my table. Someone told me that cut tulips continue to grow after they are put in water. For 10 days mine grew, flourished and became a completed, and surprising, metaphor for us women as we age. The pert uprightness of youth’s perfection- fresh, eager, bright of color, enthusiastic for a life yet to be lived. The full-blown middle years- dynamic, active and fun, pure colors; a time to acquire amidst the tumult of growing kids and careers building toward the ‘future.’ The flower straightens into the elegant age of accrued experience, satisfied contentment and gratification in the journey traveled thus far; still looking forward… yet, bending toward the light, ever so slightly at first, as the fulcrum of life is now full of memories already made and tightening in on the time left to make them. As the petals twist, dry, and wither, on close examination the tulip is at its most beautiful- colors so deep, rich and unique they defy an artist’s replication, petals of delicately transparent gossamer bowing into the full bend of age. Grown children, grandchildren, many years lived- joy and pain, life and death, hope in what we cannot see. Even now, as a petal drops, its elegance carries the transcendence of experience and wisdom, and a life well lived and loved.

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Memories

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This is a place of my youth. A cool respite from the summer heat; happy water fights between warring boats and maybe the excitement of capsizing, are joy filled excuses to enjoy the cool of the river. However, sometimes, just rowing into the deep shade of the overhanging Tanbark oaks and reading a book in solitude is the necessity of the day.

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Back Again

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I had painted the background apples when in 1996, after much internal argument, I relented to God’s call on me to home-school my three children. I packed up my brushes and paints not knowing when, or if, I would take them out again. Fifteen years later, when all thought of painting had been scrubbed from my dreams, God called me back to where I left off. As confirmation of this resurrected dream, I completed the foreground as testimony that the rent was bound and I was ‘Back, again!’

Size: 36 in. × 36 in. (3 ft. x 3 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $3,000 Purchase

Transition, the road taken…

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This is my ‘pivot painting’ bridging my contemporary painting with my abstract, as I struggled to leave the ‘form’ of my mind/life and embrace the free flow of God’s energy and glory.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Winter Solstice

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Even though it’s not particularly safe… cougars, bears, wolves, coyotes… I love to jog at night when the dark is lifted only by moonlight and the occasional streetlight reflecting off the snow; when all sound is absorbed, and my world feels tucked in and solemnly tranquil and still.

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Winter, 4:15

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Winter 4:15 pm, cold, indecisive…

Size: 48 in. × 48 in. (4 ft. x 4 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $5,500 SOLD

Winter Trees

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Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Impressions: Winter

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Size: 36 in. × 36 in. (3 ft. x 3 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $3,200 Purchase

English Roses

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I have spent a lot of time in England and love their beautiful gardens!

Size: 48 in. × 36 in. (4 ft. x 3 ft.) • Materials: Acrylic on Canvas • Cost: $4,800 Purchase

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