You’re looking down. To the left is the lake (no ice on it yet). You see pawprints … what are those? Not Peaches. She hasn’t wandered along the lake in the snow yet: it’s early morning, after the fresh snowfall.

It’s the bobcat! I haven’t see him. Now I know he’s still around.

Was it two summers ago, Hunter and Artemis spotted him looking in the dining room window at breakfast? And last year, I would see the paw prints and the fecal matter. Now this.

BUT maybe it’s time to do another tote for all these wild animals I share this place with – so far, the bobcat footprints, the deer who chewed on one of my garden hostas (the one already dying from too much sun) and the mink swimming along the shore. Oh, and the duck that laid it’s 9 eggs in a nest near the driveway. The heron… no bears this year because of my sore hip: I wasn’t hiking the mountains

Is it time to update this tote from years ago?

Yes, I know… it’s always dangerous to talk about art before I create it. In the process of making, it will shift and morph into its own piece. I never know ahead of time what will come.

When I started art school, my Japanese painting teacher insisted that I start with water color, painting bosc pears, layering one color on top of another, denser here, less complete there . Discovering which colors worked and which turned to mud. Water color: there’s no erasing. Start over. And over.
Years later, graduating from my MFA program, I was still exploring the same idea. I shifted material to silk. But the intrigue of color and layering held me.

I sense that that is true of so many endeavors in life. You know it, right? You find something. It feels good. You don’t always get the right flavor/look/sound/word on the first try, but that taste. That delicousness. It draws you back again and again. And leads you on. And on. Savoring those miracles that happen.

So, the dear bobcat gave me an idea. Where will I go with it? Who knows.

RIght, Peaches?

She’s ready…