Illustrations

Six years have passed.
Today the chaos involves getting out the door on time to get to work...paying the bills...and deciding on what to have for dinner. We are no longer waiting for the "other shoe to drop".

We have settled in.

I am at heart an animator...but many years ago I stumbled upon printmaking. I love the process.
I love the richness of the black ink on white paper.
When I started to paint, I wanted to paint motion...rhythms.
That's how this first print came about...and from this print...a story.
Painting, like our lives is made up of moments...small, often anxiety filled moments, where we are required to make a choice. One moment...one choice.
All of these little moments strung together become a painting, an experience...the experience of painting a picture, of reading Laura's book...of having cancer...of having had cancer. All of these experiences strung together...are the building blocks of who we are...

In this painting, the "building blocks" coming in from the top left, are the moments..or perhaps the experiences that make up my life...coming in from the top right are the experiences that have made up Laura's life. When the two lives converge, something new is formed...a bird in flight. It is the totem of our marriage. It is called "Hope".

At some point in my life, I made peace with the chaos...
it was good training for when the storm hit.

In the moment you are told you have cancer...there is the shattering of innocence...when the weight of your own mortality comes crashing over you.

We had only been married for a year when I was diagnosed with aggressive T-cell non-hodgkins lymphoma. I could not have
found a safer refuge. In Laura's heart.