“That clock you hear is the sound of your own heart. Sink your teeth into this life, and don’t get let go.”

What is the greatest lesson a woman should learn? that since day one. she has already had everything she needs within herself. it’s the world that convinced her she did not.
-rupi kaur

Again and Again

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke

welcome…

to my photography, painting, poetry and musings.

my intention is to honor the artist that I am and to give thanks and praise to the things that matter to me.
…to help me to stay deeply rooted in who I truly am and not to what I have been or will be to anyone else, then, now or ever.

It took me a lifetime to get here and it is hard to remember sometimes that I are more than the sum total of the things that have happened to me or just the many roles that I play.

It is rare that we humans focus on what is true on the road to seeking truth. I am guilty of this a lot.

behold, yet do not hold on.

witness, yet do not identify.

…beauty, love, playfulness, self expression, creativity and passion…these are my truest realms, my most essential self.
what calls you?

the theme…

what calls me… is my eternal and enduring captivation with the magic that is the natural world and the gratitude I feel for it.
what calls me… is my lifelong personal practice to be an ally and advocate for the natural world, to engage with beauty everywhere, to take the time to appreciate the magic of the earth with a playful heart and the curiosity of a child.
what calls me… is my irrepressible need to create art as a way to rail agains the dark night of existential insignificance and a giant fuck you to death.
My hands will disintegrate yet live eternally in a handprint on a cave wall. This is my digital cave wall, this is my handprint.
what calls me… is a passion project of personal evolution, a sacred space, a shrine, a testament to eternal change, regeneration and hard won self love.

the art…

All the paintings are watercolor on watercolor paper, many with black pen or graphite added afterward. Some of these paintings were made in a book my daughter gifted to me, a portable treasure that I took across California and the desert southwest in 2021. None of the paintings have been professionally shot or edited for this site on purpose. When I leave them alone I feel more connected to the experience, to the actual day and the place.
All photographs were shot on my Samsung Galaxy S9 and are completely unedited, neither cropped nor filtered, except for the self portraits which are all purposely highly stylized. Other shots of me here are contributed by friends and they edited them.
I have purposely obscured my face and name in order that you might be free to see yourself reflected in the work and as a reminder of the ephemeral nature of our corporal existence juxtaposed to the enduring power of art.

It was the book Arts and Letters that I found in the thrift store when I was a young fine arts major as a freshman in college that introduced me to the great American painter Georgia O’Keefe. I fell madly in love. My copy became dogeared and tattered from pouring over by the time I shared it with my daughter many years later.

This woman left the world to paint in the desert.

I was mesmerized.

I was captivated.

My style of painting, largely influenced by the Impressionists until that point took on a new flavor and a new sensual simplicity. I painted only flowers and simple objects for years after that; focusing on color and design above all else.

In the mid 90’s, once I was a married mother and teaching full time, I started traveling alone to the desert for the week of spring break for respite, rest and self reflection and this was the only time I had a chance to paint for many years. I often called upon Georgia’s spirit in those days, as I was selfishly stealing away a chance to spend hours staring at and studying rocks, mountains and sky.

The staggeringly unapologetic nature of her work and her fight to be respected as an American painter spoke to the unfolding feminist and artist in me. The story of her finally leaving New York, leaving Stieglitz and moving for good to New Mexico was a powerful balm and inspiration to me even years later when I too, left my husband. She modeled independence, strength and power in a world that wants to deny women have a right to any of those things.

She showed me a way forward and a way home.

april 2019 | indian springs | joshua tree, ca

“Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.”

-Brene Brown

“My focus has always been on the work - that work being critical thinking and writing. I am always doing that. That's where I am, wherever I am. Critical thinking and writing as my heartbeat.”

- bell hooks

my kitchen 2020 | blue earthenware | a favorite

Hydrothermal features are habitats for microscopic organisms called thermophiles.

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

– Rachel Carson

Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand.

~Maya Angelou

'I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers'

— Claude Monet

'I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers' ~ Claude Monet

I learned to meditate through moving my body outside.

I didn’t seek this or plan for it or even discover it in any conscious way, I just was able to breathe one day and that one day I happened to find myself having climbed up a tree.
I was six and I had no language, just the knowing in my body.
Years passed, I returned again and again to different trees.

It has always been this way for me.
Later it was in gardening.
Later still it was in becoming an environmental educator and sharing it with my students.
Later still, it was through hiking with my children and dogs.
And later even still it came through dance.
I am grateful for the inherent wisdom of my body to reweave the stories others told about me and to reclaim myself through breath.

november 2021 | first rains

“I dream of never being called resilient again in my life. I’m exhausted by strength. I want support.
I want softness. I want ease. I want to be amongst kin.
Not patted on the back for how well I take a hit.
Or for how many.”

— zandashe l’orelia brown

These are the things that happen after you get divorced:

you loose all your friends. people judge the fuck out of you, gossip about you. you cannot breath. you are disorientated and doubt yourself. you go hungry and go without for the children to have shoes and not know how bad things are. you don’t sleep. you wonder if you will ever know peace again. you rage at injustice and feel trapped, drowning in your own anxiety and grief. you are wildly alone. wild and alone.

These are also the things that happen after you get divorced:

you make new friends. people continue to judge the fuck out of you but you learn to not care. you start to breathe. you find your center and begin to believe in yourself. you learn to live on air and possibility. your kids will have shoes and not know how bad things are. you sleep eventually. you know days of peace and possibility because you make them out of thin air, like the fucking magician you are. rage becomes action, you learn to breath through the anxiety and do a lot of dancing and therapy. you find the wild parts of you and become fast friends. you are wildly, happily alone.

Illustration of Adrienne Rich by Celina Pereira

“Now I am going to reveal to you something which is very pure, a totally white thought. It is always in my heart; it blooms at each of my steps... The Dance is love, it is only love, it alone, and that is enough... I, then, it is amorously that I dance: to poems, to music but now I would like to no longer dance to anything but the rhythm of my soul.”

― Isadora Duncan

dance saved my life

there was no one who could throw it down
there was no one who took it higher
there was no one who would last the night
giving off that kind of fire

you see

inside of me there was a rage
years of accumulated abuse
that wanted to kill me

but instead, I put it to better use

in the aftermath of the bloodbath
after all was said and done
I took all of the horrid things you said

and every other everything
that other men had ever done

and then I fucking won
the hateful game
you set for me to lose

through dance

you will never get the satisfaction of
just how dance once saved my life
but that never was the point
and holy fuck

holy F U C K

it was grand
to light up every joint

with all that hate and all that rage
that you had meant for me
yes, I took that hate and I took that rage

and alchemized it, baby

into

infinite
sexy
loving
consensual
vulnerable
cosmic
dynamic
healthy
joyful
beautiful

DANCE

courtesy of www.alyssakeysphotography.com

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

CZU Lightening Complex | looking westward toward Bonny Doon | 2020

beauty in the dying of my home and forests

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

-over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

—Mary Oliver | Wild Geese

i am mine before i am anyone else’s

Nayyirah Waheed

“Wonder is an orientation to humility: recognizing that others are as complex and infinite to themselves as we are to ourselves. Wondering about a person gives us information for how to love them. Wonder is the wellspring of love.”

-Valerie Kaur

madrone-tree-watercolor — madrone | 2020

I have always found my home in the forest and safety in the strength of trees. While I can hardly remember all but a few of the many houses I lived in growing up, I can still close my eyes and transport myself with immediacy to the woods and creeks I discovered during my formative years, still see and feel my limbs reaching, still feel the breeze on my face. Time spent alone, dreaming, climbing and exploring as a child was my escape and my refuge.

I have now lived in the same mountain community for thirty years and know the trees here well. They are my teachers and I am one of their many champions.

Endlessly fascinated by and drawn to them my entire life, their form, their textures, scents and colors..the way they each have their own song when the wind blows, the way the species express their individuality and beauty while simultaneously creating culture and community.

I have memories of trees. I dream of trees and I often think about how lifesaving it was for me as a child to have had access to nature, however shitty, fenced, culverted or forgotten. There I found myself, lost myself and found myself again from Massachusetts to Indiana to Oregon and states in between. I don’t remember the kids I met, but I do remember the landscape around me.

In my paintings and drawings of trees I tend to resonate on the energy and structure of the tree and its connection to the earth. What is the conversation without words revealed?

Madrone tress are kin to the Awaswas tribe (the Indigenous coastal peoples that are still here) and traditionally provided them food and medicine. The distinctively rich red and amber tones are stunning; the bark smoothly twists, reaching for the light with a weightlifter’s structure and a dancer’s graceful twirl.
They grow fearlessly in and amongst rocks, on ridges, with little water, dancing skyward toward the sun. They are beautiful, enduring and determined. They are inspiring. I named one of my sons after them.
The ways in which they thrive, move, grow, create community, and support one another is an inspiration to me.

I did not save anyone today.
I was tempted though.
I said, “Hey”
trying to sound casual to the boy that could have been, might have been any number of boys I have known.
I did not save anyone today, though perhaps the dog might have had other plans.

The dog whose tail was already saying, “HELLL-OOO!” and “I LOVE you!” and “How are you?”... face in lap anyway.

As I was walking the dog who was leading, leading, was not thinking
just was walking, walking with his heart and guts hanging out in front of his face.

I spoke to this boy and I said,“Hey, hi. I am Kristen. What is your name?”
And he spoke back to me.
He spoke from a place, from a place deep inside his very large and very beautiful and very sad, brown eyes.

“I’m Mikey.”

I just kept my mouth shut and bit my lip and held his gaze directly.
And those very large, very beautiful and very sad, brown eyes
sent their tendrils of loss and grief and addiction and despair
in my direction.

“Hungry. Tired. Homeless. Same shit, different day, ya’ know?”

Awaken the tendrils (cue screeching creature noises).

of loss.
of despair.
of addiction.

tendrils with a finger to the proverbial empathic winds
tendrils reaching toward tendrils wanting to reach back

Instead, “His name is Eddy.”
And he was petting the dog, smiling like the boy he was.

We retreat into each of our very large, very beautiful and very sad, brown eyes.
And he was petting the dog as I was not saving him, and only the dog was breathing.

The moment passed.

The boy took an audible, desperate last drag from the cigarette he was pinching
and then flicked with conviction, as he looked away from me.
As I looked away.
As the dog did not.

We stood awkwardly for a moment longer.

I did not save anyone today, though perhaps the dog had other plans.

oodles of doodles | 2018

march 2021 | doodles
The rain drums down like red ants,
each bouncing off my window.
The ants are in great pain
and they cry out as they hit
as if their little legs were only
stitched on and their heads pasted.
And oh they bring to mind the grave,
so humble, so willing to be beat upon
with its awful lettering and
the body lying underneath
without an umbrella.
Depression is boring, I think
and I would do better to make
some soup and light up the cave.
“The Fury of Rainstorms” | Jane Sexton

soon. one of us must leave. this space that binds us will evaporate. but when oceans merge we collide, twirl, and collapse onto one another. leaving no signs of where one begins and the other ends. we do this. this dance. and i fear we’ll fade faster than we came. yet here we are in this temporary love lasting longer than expected. we must give our all. not anticipate our destruction.
ready for the next collision.

adrian michael green

“Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a mother, I'll tell them: I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and what time you would get home
... I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep. I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to a drugstore and confess, 'I stole this.'
... But most of all I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.”
**Erma Bombeck**

the dog and I like rituals

at the edge of the meadow
we sit
together

we sit
quietly together
we drink
water together
we look
skyward together
we breathe
together
Henry Cowell Redwoods
november 2021

“I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”

-Anne LaMott

crossroads, autumn 2021

evolving…