Susan won the People's Choice Award at the Cattlemen's Western Art Show last weekend (March 30 - April 1). Read the article in the Paso Robles Press.

Patterns that resemble familiar objects are everywhere and in every size.

Here is a photo of the back side of Enceladus lit by sunlight reflected off of it's planet, Saturn. Look at the graceful tree shape created by the low sun angle on canyon (trunk) and mounds. Beautiful!

If you've been following my blog you know I love patterns. Don't you? But why? According to Wikipedia the element (pigeon, plane) in the picture, called a "motif", can have an emotional effect on us. Each pattern has a different effect. Some are calming, some upsetting. Some are really beautiful. The first thought I had upon seeing the pigeons before I knew what they were was, "it looks alive". I thought the airplanes were embroidered fabric. Great fun!

Nature repeating itself in slices of natural stone.
I find this phenomenon thrilling!

1. Marble that looks like a tree.
2. Marble that looks like dragonflies.
3. Light slate that has grooves the shape of cat's faces.
4. Colorful slate that suggests looking up at a colorful plant with flowers.
5. Blue marble that looks like ocean waves.

Spotted horses depicted in cave paintings from 25,000 years ago have always inspired questions about what color horses were back then. It was thought they were mostly dun and black. However recent DNA tests show there were genes for spotting. The cave painters were realists!

Ghosts can be found in stones, in smoke, in clouds...but in outer space? Here's one. This ghostly molecular dust cloud lives 12,000 light years away from earth in the constellation Cepheus.

I'm fascinated by the way vision can surprise us. Not everything is as we think it will be and this can be useful in art. For example, look at the center of this image. It looks as we expect. Then look away a little bit and watch it move when you are using only your peripheral vision.

Do you have the same response to the black and white image?

When I used to paint on canvas I always faced a blank white canvas. What would I paint? I always knew: a horse. I made a number of decisions and limited my style and application method to produce a pleasing outcome.

Now I stand in front of a piece of stone. Maybe I see a cliff and waterfall. I turn the stone around and it's a deer head close up. Which should I paint so that the nature of the stone remains visible and not covered with paint? It's always my choice.

The exciting thing about nature's patterns is that they feel somehow familiar. With the often hectic requirements of modern life it's healthy making to surround one's self with calming natural patterns. Caused by millenia of heat and pressure, the shapes and colors in stone remind me on some deep level that not all beauty is produced quickly.

Look at these amazing geometric patterns! They're from the beach at Bolinas, CA. In 1. the rocks absorb the incoming tide in little lines which must be fractures too small to see. It looks like tree branches. In 2. the very regular geometrical patterns in semi-translucent rock make a beautiful mosaic. In 3. a slight crevace looks like it is warmed by hot coals but is actually orange patterned stone. Don't you just love rock?

Similiar patterns occur in the universe, on earth, and looking through microscopes. I saw this beautifulphoto of galaxies NGC 6188 and NGC 6164 on NASA's Photo of the Day and immediately saw horse heads. I inhanced one so you can see what I see. Similiar patterns occur in stone.

Here is an 11,000 year old cave paintings in Somaliland, the oldest in Africa.

High quality oil paintings on canvas are held in high esteem because they last through generations. I'm sometimes asked if my paintings on stone will last. Mine are on archivally treated and sealed stone, painted with fine oil paints, sealed again and varnished. Ancient cave paintings were done with various pigments, unsealed and subject to climate variations. I wonder what folks will think of mine in 11,000 years. Hmmm. 

I recently found this beautiful piece of granite. There are many options for a painting. This shows it upside down but it could also be turned 90 degrees clockwise or counter clockwise. So many choices of subjects. What fun! It will be sandblasted, treated with acid and sealed so the paint will stick.

 Today I walked over a crosswalk line with some broken pavement and had a flash! It's a familiar feeling of beauty worth exploring so I went back to photograph it. I saw a branch and a mountain/stream scene in the line. I enhanced them to help you see what I saw as the subject matter. Finding patterns in stone is great fun and satisfying in some basic way.  I see recognizable patterns in many things and I've learned to notice and record them. I think artists, like poets, movie directors, etc. relish collecting daily observations to be used later in their art.

This is an example of the nature of recognizable patterns. The suggestion of tangled weeds (right) is a blowup of the surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa with the sun's light showing it's texture (left). Similiar patterns can be seen through microscopes. Observing this phenomenen has always amazed and inspired me.

Brushes make such a difference! With just the right spring and paint holding power a brush quickly becomes a friend. But that's the problem. They are so hard to give up that when they wear out it's tempting to "use them up". Frugal and loyal, I've painted whole pieces with brushes that have lost their spring, spread so the point has worn away and left a line of paint like a thread of toothpaste. The painting is a throw away because of it's cottage cheese surface. So this is to remind me to stock up on brushes and allow them to join the ranks of the "used up" sooner than later.