Celebrating Moons, Night, Winter & Renewal

The world is emerging from our long night of sequester.
At this time, the moon is a comforting reminder that light and life return.

”And this too shall pass.”
- an inscription on a Persian King’s ring from the 12th Century

This is me in my new Long Island City studio with recent Labyrinth Knots.
These minimalist paintings are meditative spaces for comfort & reflection.

Moon Reflected in Water
24” x 24” x 1.5” (SOLD)
acrylic on canvas

Like a pad of butter, the moon melts into the surface of this calypso blue pool of color. This one-line drawing drapes loosely into a cube shape as a playful jungle gym for the eyes. It was titled by this quote:

“Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.”
- Dōgen (Japan, 1200-1253)

Our ancestors had a very different relation to the moon.
Waxing & waning, the moon was their calendar.

Pearl Moon
13” x 13” framed
acrylic on wood
SOLD

The Moon a pearl of light
Mother & Child, Ancestors
meditating on eternal impermanence.

“Let the waters settle
and you will see the moon and the stars
mirrored in your own being.”
-Rumi (Persia, 1207-1273)

Smiling Moon Heart
13” x 13” framed
acrylic on wood
SOLD

This heart incidentally smiled at me
a sliver of silver moon
shining obliquely
its Cheshire grinned crescent.

Bird Moon
13” x 13” framed
acrylic on wood
SOLD

Playfully swooping through space,
like a moon seen during the day
with birds singing in the trees at dawn.

“The whole moon and the entire sky
are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.”
- Dōgen (Japan, 1200-1253)

Hijo de la Luna
13” x 13” framed
acrylic on wood
SOLD

“Child of the Moon”
From a song/fable, picturing
the crescent moon as a cradle
comforting a crying child.

In Japan, they have terraces for ‘moon viewing,’
a poetic reminder to slow down.

Four Directions Moon
20” x 20”
acrylic on canvas
SOLD

Centered on gravity,
the four directions
map our Earthly plane
into a mandala cross.

“The ‘squaring of the circle’ could be called the archetype of wholeness.” - CG Jung

“It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the center, to individuation. ” - CG Jung Memories, Dreams and Reflections

Waxing Moon
20” x 20” x .75”
acrylic on canvas

A rock transformed into a pearl,
how dark would our nights be without the moon?
Gliding elegantly through the sky,
reflecting on the moon, is the sun.

New Moon
13” x 13” framed
acrylic on wood
SOLD

In this, our generation’s Winter of discontent,
we take comfort in the phases of the moon.

‘The lovers of God never run out of patience,
for they know that time is needed
for the crescent moon to become full.” - Rumi

Sailing Moon
24” x 24” x 1.5”
acrylic on canvas
SOLD

Like sailboats rocking in a harbor
or a lotus about to bloom,
the man in the moon is whispering.

I draw in my mind as a meditation to fall asleep and this form came to me.

From the Dreamscape series:

Harvesting Moonlight
watercolor
11” x 15”
2013

Moonlighting: a side-hustle or night job.
The upper-left Moon is funneling light to the future right.
 Torquing figures rise from lower left making dreams realities.
Sitting calmly lower right is a golden bird resting in a job well done.

”The moon's an arrant thief … her pale fire she snatches from the sun.” - Shakespeare

Note to self:
“… If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
- Henry David Thoreau - Walden