Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time, wrote Thomas Merton, a monk, author and artist. Art is grounding, it is, to me, the most personal expression of identity. My photography helped carry me through some of my darkest days, and I am not ever sure why. I think it has to do with  grounding me, in seeking to capture the light and images and color of the world around me, I somehow came to see the world anew, came to find myself.

I came to see  myself more clearly, as well as the world, and in seeking to capture the color and light and beauty all around me, I found it in myself, I put a bright light on the darkness inside of me, I shed the anger and the fear, or much of it. I became a seeker of light, thus could no longer live in darkness.

Every day, I am moved to discover the beauty and shapes and feelings around me. This afternoon, my eye was drawn – this is something new – to the clothesline, to the colors and shapes, and what is art, I thought, but that, or one person’s vision and expression of that. So I decided this clothesline was the art I find around me, my own expression, my own painting, on the line was my own life. And Maria’s.

I don’t need paint and a canvas or a museum curator to see the art under my nose.