Winner!

No, not a painting--this time it's a piece of short fiction. I was over at the Garden Rant blog--one of my daily reads--and, in the interest of procrastination, decided to tap out a few entries for their Flash Fiction contest. I was delighted to learn that one of them was among the winners! I'll receive a couple of gardening books as my prize. I like gardening books even more than I like art books.

Here's my 99-word story. Please note, this is a gardening theme, not an art theme. I was a gardener long before I was an artist. And yes, it's fiction. Although my ex-husband did once give me a vermicomposter...

It was one of those shy spring days, mud-spattered, chill breeze whispering a thousand deep-green promises. He met me out back, stepping carefully in his treasured Italian loafers.

I knew what he wanted. I'd seen the receipts. I knew her glossy blonde name.

“I need someone who suits my lifestyle,” he said, “someone who maybe gets a manicure once in a while.”

I clasped my dirty fingers and sighed. This man had given me a vermicomposter for our anniversary. Returning to my shovel, I was comforted. Alimony buys a lot of perennials. Italian loafers make excellent compost.

welcome . . .

Or welcome back. I'm returning to this blog after an absence of almost two years. I've revived Luminous World to celebrate the most recent, and most profound, change in my life. The following four posts, originally written as a photoessay for the online photography community Utata.org, chronicle my move to Louisiana after a lifetime in the Northeast. They read in order from top to bottom (unlike most serials in the blogosphere).

Thanks for joining me!

Welcome to USDA Zone 8

There is a big palm tree outside my front door. Not a sugar maple, not a red oak, not a gnarled old apple. A palm tree. It has three fibrous, serrated trunks and an arcing fountain of fronds that trail against the upper windows of the building next door. This is a foreign creature, citizen of a different vegetable nation. I feel I should show my passport before sitting in its rustling shade.

Beyond the palm is a fig tree. The figs don't look ripe to my New Englander's eye, but an obstreperous group of starlings seems to think they're worth an argument. I'll trust the birds; I don't know figs. Nor do I know bananas, whose lavender inflorescences thrust like rockets against the high brick walls of my courtyard. I brush past encroaching piper auritum, a black pepper cousin with strange white pipe-cleaner flowers. Its crushed leaves really do smell like root beer.

I've never seen any of these plants before. Their exotic architecture reminds me that I am very far from home. I am stunned by my good fortune. I unpack my botany texts and field guides, pour myself a sweet tea, and begin to learn this strange new botanical tongue. My passport's been stamped; I'm staying awhile. I have a big palm tree outside my front door.

the light according to palms

Everyone knows light influences mood. The grand lighting designer for this latitude must have set the mood to “euphoria,” because here I am staggering around sun-drunk and bedazzled, high as a kite on the startling light in this humble inland city. I knew it would be hotter here—and it is!--but I didn't think ten degrees of latitude would lend such intensity to the visible light. The only place I've seen this shattering white radiance is at the beach.

I've always marveled at the light near the shore, even the cold New England coast. It is so clear, so pure, so exhilarating that I want to eat it, and I know it will taste cool and tart and clean, like fine lemon sorbet. This Louisiana light is Tabasco-sauce light. It burns my bare shoulders and leaches all the color from my midday flowers, searing its way into my brain until I can hardly think.

On this flat, floodplain landscape, under this transcendent light, I feel all the time like I'm about to round a corner and find an ocean. The local paper mill adds to the illusion--its sulfurous emissions stink like a salt marsh at low tide. People here joke that it's the smell of money, but to me it truly smells like the sea. I can't shake the feeling that I'm perched on the glittering edge of a continent. This is liminal light. I am poised on the brink of wonder.

all y'all

I was given something precious recently, an unexpected boon. It's a syllable. A sugarplum of a syllable. Specifically, a syllable in my own name. Here in Louisiana, my formerly curt “Kim” sounds as if it tastes good, its lone vowel pulled like taffy into a leisurely extra beat.

As a lover of words, I am in love with these words around me. They ooze through the humid air, one eliding into another, more like songs than sentences . . . sometimes unintelligible. The vowels pause to sunbathe, and all the endings are soft. Demanding consonants are massaged into submission, oppressive prefixes and endings simply dropped. It's all about the flow, and the conversation lilts along to its own indulgent rhythm. I had to try it. It tastes like blossoms on my tongue.

In Louisiana, I am a woman called “Keee-yim.” I like her quite a lot.

tea in the garden at midnight

-->-->One teacup, blue-and-white. (One saucer. One willow ware plate.) Two chairs with baroque red curves. Three trunks of a sheltering palm tree. Four: the numerological equivalent of my new address. Five fingers of my open hand, where I trace the evolving lines of my palm. (That word palm again—I may be a bit obsessed.)
This is how I count, these days. The blessings follow one upon another, bright beads slipping off a silken thread. The drowsy heat, the ecstatic light. Exotic, erotic flowers, and trees I've never met. Crawfish and catfish and Tabasco on my tongue. Greetings sung out by strangers, who savor each elastic vowel as it lingers in the air between us.

Boundaries and borders and transitional zones are fecund places. Look to the edge of the forest, the edge of the sea. As I move through my own transitional zone, learning these new languages, counting these lightshot beads, everything, everything is illuminated. How do I merit such flamboyant gifts in the ordinary moments of my days? It begins to rain and I run to the window to see if gold coins are falling from the sky.

1,500 miles from home and I know I should be lonely. But here in the dark is this soft, soft air, a lingering caress. I sit alone in the garden at midnight and know myself beloved.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
thank you for sharing my journey.

sensual pleasures

A recent thread on a discussion board asked about people's favorite things. As I read through the replies, my grumbly morning turned into a good day. I consider that a great service indeed!

These are just a few of mine:

-the first whiff of thawed earth in early spring
-the smell of fallen leaves in autumn
-the smell of water, especially approaching an unseen lake through trees
-the smell of laundry fresh from the sunshine
-August chorus of crickets and cicadas
-spring and summer harmony of frogs
-early morning birdsong
-the clean scent of chrysanthemum leaves
-the green scent of tomato vines
-the reflection of rippled water on a white cottage ceiling
-slight dampness of bedsheets in a beach cottage
-morning dew on bare feet
-crackle of a campfire
-woodsmoke
-the scent of snow on the wind
-joyous airport arrivals (whether I know them or not)
-freckles on my son's nose

Please share yours. I'll post them. Perhaps I'll have a weekly appreciation day. We can all use more gratitude in our lives!

apples again?

I'm drawn to working in series. I'll often have a whole series planned and sketched with reference photos.... I paint one or two and get distracted by some other subject. But then in time I find myself coming back to my neglected series and working some more. There's an interesting tidal quality to the pattern. I just sit back and watch.

I don't tend to find any deep meaning in my series. There's no symbolism, no allegory, no whatever. It's more a communion with the objects and the play of light, and the way anything takes on a kind of sacredness if you look at it long enough. An apple ceases to be just an apple and becomes a living, breathing piece of something far greater than myself. I think that's what this is about for me--breathlessly seeking, again and again, that unspoken connection with the divine.

So I'll probably paint a lot more apples.

Birthday/Anniversary

Yesterday was my birthday--which also marked an important anniversary. Last year, for my 40th birthday, my parents and son gave me an easel and some pastels. I had expressed a desire to revive a brief interest in art that, a few years previous, had led me to take a few pastel lessons. They thought that was a good idea, and gave me what I needed to get started.

I haven't looked back. I've drawn or painted nearly every day since then. This is more than a hobby--my whole life has changed! Calling myself "artist" may be the best thing that has ever happened to me. I feel so amazingly lucky to have found this calling.

Thanks for sharing it with me.

inverse-political art

This is something I wrote in response to today's Robert Genn Twice Weekly Art Letter. He was talking about geopolitical art and its importance in the art world today. As usual, I had an opinion on the topic.


I have never agreed that artists should be overtly political, in their artistic expression or in the rest of their lives. I think it's like everything else; statements are made with differing degrees of intensity. Some artists are consumed by their need to express social and political views, while others have nothing at all to say about such matters, with a world of varying expression in between.

And then there are those who create art to counter the social and political ugliness around them.

I'm one of those inverse-political artists. While my art would never be called political, it is a frank reaction to the state of the world. In order to bear it all, I have to focus on what is right and good with this world. I notice the fantastic beauty I find around me every day, in even the humblest of objects, and I seek to translate that beauty into art. My goal is to enable the viewer to transcend the madness and desperation around us. Nothing is all bad, after all.

I think Picasso was right when he said, "If everyone would paint, political re-education would be unnecessary." If everyone were to focus on the beauty and wonder of our universe in order to paint it, a lot of the ugliness would fall away. There just wouldn't be time for it all.

Finding Art

The potential for art is everywhere. It's limitless. Everywhere the light falls, there is also shadow and color, shape and texture and volume. All day long I catch glimpses of things I want to paint, moments I want to preserve. The smell of the pear and the shine of the knife as I slice it become a single sensation. If I evoke the shine of the knife, will the viewer smell the pear?

And how do I choose which glimpse to record this time? Have I painted the play of light and color on glass enough times already? Perhaps I should be regarding faces, or city streets. Or should I try to get sensations onto the canvas without any images at all to make them speak?

Sometimes there is so much richness that it's hard to paint at all.

about pastels (from www.KimDenise.com)

are dry sticks of pure, compressed pigment mixed with varying amounts of binder. They are anything but "pastel". Indeed, pastels can create some of the purest, most brilliant color effects available. Because the pigment is laid down pure and dry, not dissolved in a wet medium, every facet of every particle is available to reflect and refract the light. A soft pastel painting can have an unrivaled depth of jewel-like color. Its shimmer and glow can arrest a viewer from across the room. A sensual pursuit for artist and observer alike, experiencing soft pastel is a lot like falling in love.

SEE MY WEBSITE

on getting started....

As someone new to art, I feel it takes a special brand of outrageousness to approach the easel and presume to create. I get that butterflies-in-my-stomach sensation when I even start planning a painting; it has been known to keep me up at night. Some may say it's a lack of confidence, a fear of failure, or just a drive for perfection that loads those first moments with such paralyzing anticipation.....but I call it love. Remember falling in love? That swooning excitement that runs through the veins, making one feel almost ill? That sweet elixir that has us walking on air...but unable to so much as speak to the beloved? Oh yes, it's love. As artists, we are privileged to fall in love over and over again. Each new piece bears the potential for that glorious intoxication--and for the paralysis of its glittering expectation.

This post was published in the "clickbacks" to Robert Genn's Art Newsletter. Click here to see my illustrated letter.

[Note: I'm in the process of starting several new pieces. I'm not sleeping well. I hope to share them with you soon!]

TO SEE ALL MY ART, VISIT MY WEBSITE