Saturday evening saw a quick trip to the grocery store and a collaborative dinner effort between Dan and me to make homemade pizzas (him) and frozen butternut squash ravioli (me). Clearly it was not a fair trade. But we had a lovely time shooting the breeze in the kitchen all evening, and his pesto pizza was beyond.

After finally finding a rhythm in my painting that spoke to me (it only took 5 days and to the near end of my residency), it was time to pull everything I'd been working on together.

To recap, I'd initially started the week wanting to mute out formal landscape paintings to create soft abstracts. I went down that path and wasn't in love with what I was producing, so I turned to my back up project: penning (or painting) short words or phrases that kept bubbling up for me in moments of annoyance ~ with people, situations and really the overall feeling of society at this moment in history.

This got me thinking about all the ways in which we are angry right now, but in particular this week, the degradation and disregard for science and the environment which is clearly being trumpeted from the top down. Really, what the hell? It's truly beyond comprehension for me and so many others that the importance of nature and science is paramount to the rest of our lives.

I've always felt a deep connection with the outdoors growing up in the woods. I've never been one for camping but just being outside is enough to make me feel bright and shiny and happy.

So as I started to look at the body of work I'd created over the past week, I saw some commonality amongst the chaos. While yes, this has been a time of transition for me and for all of us, we must consider what our message is and how we communicate that effectively.

What truly cuts more to the heart of it is an underlying angst about the ideas and policies that have seemingly been foisted upon us without our consent.

As I wrap it all together, I see this body of work that I've created this week as a statement of the FRUSTRATION I'm feeling and witnessing around me. Frustration at the slow (or maybe rapid?) destruction of the environment and the words and phrases that bounce around my head in annoyance.

Does that all make sense? Well one would see...