Solstice is my reset

A chance to breathe

Reset. This painting had tons of texture but was going nowhere, so I painted over it with light purple and now I’ll start building it up again. Here it is in monochrome.

TGIS. I look forward to both solstices each year. For me, it’s a time to pause and reflect on where I’ve been the past 6 months and where I want to focus for the next six. I love the daylight, but these days I don’t enjoy the heat that comes with it the way I used to. I’m happy to see the days get shorter and watch the subtle changes as the season winds down. I’m always ahead of the human calendar on these things. Once the sun starts moving south again, I’m thinking about autumn.

At high altitudes in Colorado, you can start to see the changes as early as the third week of July. The raspberries ripen, a few of the higher aspen trees start to turn slightly pale yellow, and the air gets cooler in the evenings a little earlier. I’m talking above 8000 feet, not down here in the “flatlands” at 5000 feet.

Until I stopped running ultras, the Across the Years race in Phoenix was my reset. I would run either the 48 hour or 24 hour race, but I preferred the 48…a longer time to hang out with my friends and my running tribe.

My old Winter Solstice routine. Running from December 30 to January 1, with many longtime running friends, running in circles for two days, stopping at midnight on the 31st for champagne and doing a lap together, and 2019-2020 was the last year I ran, when I received my 1000 mile jacket, the reward for having covered one thousand miles at that race over the years. I used to visit my dad and stepmom, and my dad passed later in 2020. I think he was dressed as Fr. Guido Sarducci in that picture, while I recovered from the race at their house in Scottsdale.

Now my routine has changed. Since COVID, my friend Keith and I do a summer solstice-ish celebration together in Crested Butte. It’s important to be in a place and among people you feel good about. That happens next week, and I can’t wait. I think about what I’m thankful for, and what I want to move toward by the next solstice. I am thankful for the life we have here, and that I have a partner who is willing to weather the corporate bullshit and keep working so I can keep my mental shit together and make art. so we can make ends meet and have health insurance. Dennis is willing to work a job that is easy now, but uninspiring. He is surrounded by, and supervised by unmotivated people who don’t care. Even though we live in a country that steals from us to support billionaires, we have been able to somehow stitch things together, barring any major mishaps. First world problems in a heading-toward-third-world-country.

Since winter solstice I have continued to grow in my art skills and have been fortunate to have taken two great workshops in that time. I have mostly recovered from a nasty case of sciatica and gotten back into more running and hitting the trails. I enjoy the company of my girls, the Wranglas, every day, and even though they pull me and act crazy sometimes, I love everything about them. Barky McBarkface and the little red devil. And I am still writing, running, getting outdoors every day, and making art. I have made some great new artist friends both here and far away. I still have my running friends here. I have my garden and backyard studio, and live in a great neighborhood with nice people.

As the sun moves south again, I look forward to making more art and expanding into new territory- teaching the basics of creative expression through art making in a therapeutic way, because that is what everyone needs more than ever these days. I want to continue improving my work and figuring out a way to get out of town and clear my head before winter. I need an ocean fix, so that could be involved.

Switching gears, there are so many great Substack writers out there. I write mine because writing is like breathing to me. I would say it’s still more like breathing than making art is, though it is an art in itself. I have always needed to express myself outwardly, it can be therapeutic and I enjoy the interaction with readers. Please don’t be shy about commenting here.

These days some of my favorite Substacks have been those of

Beth L. Gainer

,

Nancy Stordahl

,

Walter Rhein

, and

Stephanie Raffelock

. If you haven’t checked them out, I encourage you to. Their work and words speak to me, personally. Your preferences might be different, but I recommend all of them. I also like

Jennifer Rubin

now of the Contrarian (formerly of the Washington Post) and

Katie Phang

and

Joyce Vance

and

Heather Cox Richardson

for political, legal, historical, and social commentary.

Recently Beth wrote a piece about art snobbery, which is out there and a real thing that artists contend with. I have encountered very little of that so far, but I haven’t been outside of my bubble of Colorado or tried to approach shows or galleries out there. I’m not afraid to try and be rejected, though. This year I have put myself out there more and been rejected more, but that’s okay, my art has not yet moved to a higher level. I’m still struggling to put everything I’ve learned into practice and that takes time, years. I look forward to having time to engage in that process.

Walter posts multiple times daily, and covers topics related to creativity and specifically writing, mental health and trauma, the world we live in and must navigate daily, and includes his perspective from having grown up in the Midwest. I enjoy his insights. He’s a lot younger than me and it’s refreshing to hear what he has to say, including his experience of this country and other countries.

Nancy is an author of several books on different aspects of cancer- from her own personal and family’s experience, and she is unapologetic and isn’t afraid to state the truth of how things are. She writes thought provoking posts with prompts to encourage the reader to dive deeper into their own lives.

Stephanie writes from the perspective of a creative life along with the experience of aging. She writes amazing poetry (recently she wrote a poem called Pivot which for me was like having a soul reader implanted inside me) and she is one of my most recent Substack discoveries that I am really enjoying.

Finally, a brief word about art. I think these two pieces of my series are finished. I will be working on the others soon. I might still lighten the light blue areas in the first one. At some point I will post comparison photos but here are just those two for now.

Girl Clown, and Piñata. Both 12 x 12 acrylic/mixed media on wood panel.

Stay cool out there, it’s getting hot, but the days are getting shorter after today!