After I survived my formal education, I went on to many years of art school in the form of a BFA and an MA. What I learned from my art school years, was that ART was a verb, not a NOUN. It is something that runs like a thread through your life – sometimes a tangled…More

It’s the end of summer and I can already feel it in the morning air. Mostly I sense it in my head. The change of seasons tends to throw me off my usually steady countenance. Pretending it doesn’t just makes it worse for me as I look for ways to avoid the rocky , unsteady way…More

We all have them. I had a string of a few in a row. Nothing bad happened, yet I was feeling bad. Crying bad. Could not ignore it and could not get out of the way of it. Felt profoundly bad about the world and all it’s ills and evils. Bad about how it just…More

There seem to be plenty of articles lately on retaining your memory. As we depend more and more on smartphones to keep all our important information at our fingertips, we rely less and less on our memory. Gosh, I used to have over a dozen telephone numbers as well as addresses (zip codes too) memorized…More

There is much to admire in the writings of Henry David Thoureau’s , WALDEN. Of late I have been carrying around a tiny volume of the book and diving in and out of it. I was prompted to read it after thinking about last weeks’ post on tiny houses. There is a fascinating excerpt in the…More

  It‘s hard to know when to stop. There is a movement afoot to lighten our loads. I think we are beginning to be overwhelmed by the burden of our possessions. It’s natural for this to happen when you get older , as with my generation, but I think the young are seeing it too….More

Old abandoned houses along the vast stretches of our state highways are just beautiful to me. I now have a series of photographs that I’m adapting to oils, drawings, watercolors and mixed media, with the intention of a body of work for a show. Most of the time I am pretty sure of what I…More

Getting out of your own way in life is no easy task. I’ve had lists of things that I wanted to do, achieve, see, make etc. And I’ve had lists of thing I swore I would NEVER do. Never say never. Next year I am crossing some oceans to do something I swore I would…More

Facebook is awash in photos of summer vacationers in a seemingly fiendish pitch to show how far flung and incredible their vacation excursions are. Take heart those of you who keep your travels close to home… for joy and adventure can be found in the most mundane of trips. That fellow down the block who…More

Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me ? When Father’s Day comes around, even though my dear father is no longer with us, I will peruse the Father’s Day cards thinking about him, missing him and contemplating which one I would have given him. Is it just me? My dad was…More

LIFE if it’s not fun, then you’re doing it wrong (photo by Catherine Massaro)

” Oh, I wish I could draw.  I can’t even draw a straight line.” This is the most common thing people remark when they ask what I do. I have heard it countless times. I want to tell them that there is no magic, just a certain passion, a calling perhaps. There is rarely a…More

My year of a ‘studio without walls‘ is going very well. Of course the beautiful weather contributes to working on anything outside, but that has not kept me from sketching and drawing on location whether it be camping or nightclubs. I laughed when I recently read an article where the author posed the question, “In…More

Where I grew up , in upstate New York, if you were lucky enough to be a Girl Scout, you went to Girl Scout Camp Thunderbird for two weeks if you had sold enough cookies to qualify. I loved, loved, loved Girl Scout camp. It was two weeks of heaven. I never got homesick, and…More

Sometimes, just before you fall asleep, there is that moment where dark thoughts and scary scenarios creep into your head space. When you stop being busy with the noise and nonsense of the day, realities confront you and demand some attention. Where do you go to find comfort in this scary world? I contemplated this…More