The Story Behind My Latest Collection

'A Scent of a Flower We Have Not Found'

    The first half of 2025 found me painting voraciously in preparation for a Summer solo art exhibit at The Gilded Pear Art Gallery, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I went into the series not having any idea for a particular theme, just keepeing a notepad beside my easle to jot down ideas as they came to mind. I started with the first painting, and knew that I wanted to carry at least one flower element from the first painting into the second, and from the second, one into the third, so on, in order to have continuity. But I needed a theme, and a title for the show. My notepad began to fill up with words and ideas that floated in and out of my mind as I painted.This is typical of my process. And over the next few months a theme began to develop and the collection, "Sehnsucht", came to be.

'Beauty is a Messenger'

Much of my work is created out of an overflow of the thoughts churning in my mind as  I stand before the easel with brush in hand.  Musical lyrics, prayers, and books that I am reading all find their way into every brushstroke on the canvas. Those thoughts are just as much a part of a piece as the paint itself, and therefore, often find their place as titles of my paintings.

“Sehnsucht” ( zeen- zookt) is a series of paintings born out of spending time in the writings of one of my favorite authors, CS Lewis. Lewis explored the idea of humankind’s spiritual hunger and a shared experience described as, “sehnsucht”, a German word used by many poets and writers of the Romantic era to describe a profound, yet fleeting longing for something we can’t explain, but know that it is beyond anything we will find in this world.

'I Glimpse Your Glory Out of the Corner of My Eye'

    In Lewis’  thinking, we many times have these ‘glimpses of glory”  when we experience beauty  through art, music, and nature.   These become messengers to remind us of the greater purpose we were created for. He would say that this is what we mean when feel art “speaking to our souls”.   Lewis saw art, music, nature, as often transcendent, pointing to something beyond itself -messengers of the Creator of all things beautiful.

  “These ( the beauty of art, music, nature) are a scent of a flower we have not yet found, the echo of a tune we have not yet heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. “ - CS Lewis.

Here are a few of the pieces from this nine piece collection. Much of what I wrote down on that original notepad, became the names for the artwork. And of course, I had to include with the work, written on the back of each canvas, notes I had been taking along this creative journey.