The Shell Seeker

A muddy rainy St.Patrick’s Day in my studio.

Rainy end of winter so the sparse touches of green look as if St. Patty himself
brought them over from the emerald isle and sprinkled bits along the creek outside of my studio windows.
The tree trunks are vintage vandyke brown with the sodden ground
rising up to meet the long absent drops of rain.
Gully and I are sleepy with weather.

The ocean is calm.
The yellow chair on the sunny Chilmark bluff is calling.
To sit for even a moment in that sun and sea air is to nap.
I am going to let go of all of the layers of Pennsylvania chill and take myself to that porch.
Careful to leave my muddy boots behind the garage, I melt into that chair.

I am an artist in two residences.
The studio in which I work, high up in the Pennsylvania hardwoods,
with windows on every wall to let in as much sun as the trees will give up.
The big dog Gulliver sleeping beside the easel for good company.
And the lazy Little Conewago Creek just outside providing safe haven
for the critters and carrying occasional treasures past my cabin door.
And my other home, which I create inside of each new painting.
It’s own window on the road so far traveled.
Peopled with objects found along the way and spirited home
so that I can hold and study and remember the places and humans that have touched them.

At the close of this day. Back again in the studio.
I am bundling up against the cold.
Time to head to the cabin and the fireside and Herself and make an evening of it.
I leave this painting, on that bluff, with a green plaid napkin as my nod to the calendar,
and the shell on a ribbon of silk swaying in the breeze,
now returned to it’s first home.