Latest posts
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Legacy Talk
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak about Vernon to a class of Design students at Chapman University in Orange, CA. The professor, Rachelle Chuang is also an artist who showed near my mother at the Laguna Art Festival this summer. She incorporates a lot of lettering into her collage work (you can see her work…
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The First Anniversary
Thursday was tough, I’ll admit it. The 24th was a sad day, but I had some wonderful friends come over for coffee as soon as I had dropped off the kids at their schools. One brought me roses from her garden and another took a walk with me on the beach. Though most days I…
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Bone Gardens
I’ve continued to use the practice of painting as a healing balm, which has been especially helpful in these August weeks so close to the year mark of Vernon’s death ( the date is tomorrow, in fact!) You may not be able to know without being told that all of the following paintings are based…
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Remember Me
The memories continue to resurface from last year. I hope people don’t mind my sharing so many of them. I wonder if I’ll do the same next year. Maybe. Why not? I don’t want to forget. As I’ve said before, its a lot like childbirth…such a significant thing that it seems a waste to simply…
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Summer’s End (with Hamster)
On This Day in History: The kids started school last year and I went up to Costa Mesa with my packed bags, planning to stay near Vernon as long as I needed to (which turned out to be eight days.) No matter what, I was NOT going to miss his death…at least, I hoped I…
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From/For the Archives
I received a surprise email yesterday from an old student friend of Vernon’s, someone I’ve never heard from before. I’ll share some of it here to keep it in the Vernon-archives. It’s pretty funny. Dear Allison, I hope that you don’t mind me writing to you, but I recently did a google search on a…
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The Gift of the North
The Norwegian trip last month was so healing and wonderful in so many ways, but one of the surprising gifts was the effect it had on my artwork. I came back from that light-filled expanse, not wanting to lose the surreal sense of space and grandeur. I thought I’d want to use the time I…
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Secondary Loss
“Anger surfaces once you are feeling safe enough to know you will probably survive whatever comes. At first, the fact you lived through the loss is probably surprising to you. Then more feelings hit, and anger is usually at the front of the line as feelings of sadness, panic, hurt and loneliness also appear.…
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The Cloud of Witnesses
I wanted to share a painting I recently made. I’m calling it “The Cloud of Witnesses” because it looks to me like so many souls who have gone before and are gathering to cheer us, the living, on. For anyone who has lost someone special, I hope you can find my small representation of your…
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An Answer for Thought
I was talking to a nurse friend today….really just using her as a sounding board for some of the mysteries surrounding Vernon’s medical journey. Its been so easy lately for to look back and wonder where things went wrong. What if he’d been placed on another coma-medication instead of the one that damaged his kidneys?…