The Eye of the Beholder

My friend Pam, an excellent housekeeper with a penchant for perfection, hates the pots that hang in my kitchen.  My friend David, a photographer with an expert eye, thinks they're beautiful.

What's beautiful?  I like the pots.  They're beaten up, have been instruments of deliciousness and a few disasters, and are impossible to scrub back to their shiny newness. I don't hide them in a cabinet mainly because they wouldn't be so conveniently within reach.

Oh…and I don't have the cabinet space.  So I use a pot rack.

And notice the pot rack.  It's a piece of pipe from the hardware store.  It takes up very little physical space and it cost around $10.  The hooks add to the cost but not significantly.

Is this a slick and sophisticated, magazine-worthy look?  Perhaps not. But it's a comforting look.  It's honest.  There is an integrity not present in a high end design.

What do you think?

Flame Poppy

24 x 36, watercolor

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Truth No Matter What

My Mother Stephany Garfield

 2'9" by 3', oil on canvas cloth

The main thing is, writers write, artists paint or sculpt or scream into the void with the work they do, whatever it is.  If creatives don't create, if all they do is marinate, think about their creations-to-be, then what are they?

To be true to yourself and live a meaningful life, you really do have to make certain choices.  I choose to use my voice in any way I can, to say whatever it is I’m trying to say, and I don't always know what that is.  Nothing is out of bounds for the artist.  All of us speak from somewhere inside and we don't always know what we're saying, until after we said it, and often not even then.

Stephany at Winnipeg Beach

3' by 5', oil on canvas

But it's not important that we know on a conscious level.  It's important only that we say it, and then move on to the next unformed or perfectly formed thought, because art is confusing and complicated, even if it looks simple.  Art is a mirror of the soul, and I don't know what a soul really is.  Art is neither good or bad, but if it's art, it's honest.

Everything Falls Away
In life, people we love are faced with mortality in a public sort of way.  It's inevitable.  When my mother grew old, she often reminded me of a withering flower.  Every time I looked at her, I saw a flower growing older and older and older, more fragile, thinner, but no less beautiful.

She lived with me and my family for the last 19 years of her life, and little things began to go. First her hearing, which I realized when she accused me of speaking softer on purpose so that Icould more easily aggravate her.  Then her eyes, when she could no longer read the books she enjoyed.  Her sense of direction deserted her.  She began having minor car accidents.  She got lost driving home from the grocery store.  We had to separate her from her car keys. At last, when she discovered that the computer class she had signed up for was beyond her, some hope in her mind quietly folded up for good..

That one was painful for both of us.  It was the moment that I realized a corner had been turned.  It was the first really tangible proof that mortality was stalking her and would catch her one day.

The complexity of accepting mortality is universal to humans, of course.  We all know what the future holds and we approach it in our individual ways, and for most of our lives, these ways are private.

But at the end, many of us go to hospitals, where we are subjected to the loss of the rest of us, except for what's left of our used-up bodies and too often, our dignity.  When we enter a hospital for the last time, the last thing that falls away from us, is ourselves.

As I walked my mother to the car for what would turn out to be her final trip to the hospital, she must have had a sense that she wasn't coming home.  She turned to me and said, "Don't worry darling.  I'm not scared to die: it's nature."  As the significance of the generosity in this statement hit me hard enough to make my head spin, she added, "You can spend the interest. But don't spend the principal."

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In The Spirit Of Full Disclosure!

Captain Of My Soul

In the spirit of full disclosure, let me present myself as an addict.  I'm addicted to several things: interaction with others, art, and physical exertion.  I could probably include food in that group but it may not be completely true, because I don't live to eat; I eat to live. 


For the rest of it, I live to communicate, to paint, and to run. Painting is a solitary process.  I do it surrounded by the cacophony of three boys, two dogs, and a cat.  I'm a single mom, spread too thin, and hungry for beauty.

My Three Loves

Beauty is everywhere though.  My gorgeous boys of course; Brainiac, 16, and the twins Thing One and Thing Two.  They're my partners in crime and I live to cook for them and drive them all over the universe in support of their eventual self-actualization.

Henry and Toby

The dogs are Henry, a long-suffering eleven-year-old English lab, and Toby, affectionately referred to as The Urinator, a recently rescued seven-year-old miniature Dachshund. 

Morris The Healer

The cat, Morris, is a perpetually relaxed orange tabby who purrs so well that I believe he's a healer.

Lake House

Together we live in a lake-front Victorian house in an idyllic village near a large metropolitan area.  My neighbors are awesome and friendly.  The children attend public schools where the teachers are dedicated and stay in touch. There's a grocer within a half mile, a public library within a mile, and the shops and restaurants are literally across the street.  I drive a Prius because I care about the planet and because gas today costs about $3.15 a gallon.

Our house is grand central station to every boy in the neighborhood, and because the children's father is a Santa Claus dad who doesn't live locally, my children have been gifted with every electronic toy on the planet.  They get to huddle in the basement playing XBox and whatever else they have down there, and I get to escape.

My Art Studio

Let me introduce you to my studio.  When I bought this house, there was no garage.  I had a garage built in the empty lot next to my house. 

Winding Way

Because of the steep grade facing the lake, I arranged for the garage to have two stories…the main floor houses a two car garage.  Below, facing the lake, boasting French doors and some windows, is my studio.  It's unheated, uninsulated, the walls are cinder block, but it's space, and it's a work in progress.

For days when it's too cold to go in there, I paint on a table in my bedroom.  I tape a piece of paper to a table and use watercolor (mostly).  The pieces that come from this process are usually very detailed.  The process is Zen-like and meditative. So is running.  Both painting and running bring me a certain kind of peace. And although both are solitary in that you have to do them alone, they are both ways of communicating.  


Through painting, I get to use my eyes and mind to truly see, and in creating a vision on canvas or paper, I get to communicate this to a viewer, who participates through viewing.  Through running, I get to feel alive and connected to the earth beneath my feet and to my breath and the wind.  I sometimes run in packs, with others whom I know are connecting with their life force in the same way I connect with mine, and this is a form of wordless communication.

Night Koi

Golden Light Art Conversations & Gallery is a way to draw you, the viewer, into my little corner of heaven.  For a communication addict like me, this is my ultimate pleasure.