It was the jolt of bright green that pulled me out to the rain garden to investigate what turned out to be frogs’ eggs.

Who doesn't love a peony? Deborah Barlow describes it as the sine qua non of flowers and Karen Fitzgerald says that they grace a space like nothing else. This is the romantic Bunker Hill, a fickle bloomer but inspiring to consider.

A reader reads, and reads, and reads, ponders, daydreams, and pretty soon, or in a while, or directly as my grandfather would have said - by which he meant pretty soon - the reader comes to find she has something to write down.

Painting is echolocation, a method the artist (me) uses to find her place in the universe. Now that I've located myself in the time and space of Lincolnville Beach, what do I do while I'm here?

Here, there, and somewhere else - this Thursday, it's windy outside, and October promises a constant repositioning to navigate all that's happening. I'm giving a lot of thought to diversity and how exposure to languages is a good thing, and what that has to do with the rebound in honeybee populations.

It's not easy to know where to begin talking about what 2020 has been like for each of us, but here's my thought.

We were in third grade when we were introduced to the Greek and Roman gods - or was it fifth grade? Whenever it was, I was fascinated.

As Winter turns to mud season and Spring slips into the studio, I've been sifting through a metaphorical seed box, looking for what I might plant in the way of new paintings.

Do you remember to say "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" out loud, first thing, when you wake up on the first day of the month? If you do, you'll have good fortune. If you don’t, no problem. I've been saying, or forgetting to say, those magic words since I was small, and I can predict that Good Luck is on its way regardless!

January's a good time for getting outside to see who else shares the landscape around here. Can you just make out the ducks in the rain garden above? Fox and weasel rarely show themselves during the day, and coyotes never. Vocalizations are another sure sign. In a few weeks a fox will scream at night, as mating season kicks in. One morning recently, I woke up feeling that a renewal is ahead.

If Winter Solstice is mid-winter, as it surely is, then mid-November means winter has already begun. It's a time to get comfortable and reflect on the accomplishments of the past year, and to finish projects so that winter days will be freed up for reading all those books we have piled on every surface. It's time to give thanks.

Who can say what makes an artist want to turn a group of drawings into a book, particularly when those drawings were done fifteen years ago and seem to be unrelated to any of the paintings and drawings she's ever done, ever? I'll try to answer that question by going back in time to the terrifying images that came out of the Iraq War. I was horrified by what happened at Abu Ghraib. I responded with a group of drawings in walnut ink and mucilage, through which I sought to understand the human body in pain.

When I post on Instagram, I often use #contemporarylandscape to align myself with other painters of a similar mindset. When I have to explain what I meant by that, I begin with what I don't mean, or what I want to distinguish myself from. And though I paint non-objective, or non-realist paintings, I never think of my work as abstract.

“Many artists are rootless, while others travel far from their roots to find images and places and even objects that catch their eye for creation. Dudley Zopp, whose solo show 'Landscapes, Vessels and Jars' opens at Moremen Gallery this weekend, is one of the latter. Maybe it would be appropriate to say she has multiple root systems.”

My father had a friend who was heard to say that the way he knew the world is round was that every so-and-so who ever left Kentucky came back. And I’m about to prove that theory by returning to Louisville next month for an exhibition at Moremen Gallery.