Maria has become something of a fashion role model, I gather from my e-mail and hers. People love the individualistic way in which she dresses and so do I. Maria is an artist, she has never given a single thought to how she looks, she owns nothing that did not come from a thrift shop or a yard sale. She does not dress like most people who live on farms, I have always loved her individualism and sense of style, that is what it is to be an artist I think. She is just not interested in what most people do or wear.

My favorite pasture outfit is the wedding dress. Even Maria hasn’t figured out how to be artistic in a manure-filled pasture, so she has dirty second hand combat boots. Then the wedding dress, my favorite farm chore outfit. I don’t know too many women on farms who wear their wedding dress to do farm chores. When there are bugs, she either wears a hoodie or a hood fashioned out of a T-shirt or undershirt. I thought it added the perfect touch to her morning walk with Chloe out into the back pasture.

Most people live by what they think is expected of them, what they are told they need, what they think will make them secure, what other people tell them they should  do. Maria and I try not to live that way. Maria’s art is internal, not external, she has a powerful inner self which is always emerging and making itself seen and felt.

We joke about our contrasting fashion styles, she is so eclectic. I wear the same thing just about every day of my life: a chambray shirt, jeans, suspenders. That’s about it really, I buy new jeans and shirts every year or so, and so wool socks I wear year round. My artistry, such as it is, comes out through my fingers and my camera. It is, I think, external, rather than internal.

I think in words, Maria thinks in colors and visual images. Looking across the pasture I was struck by this image of the artist and the pony, the pony grazing, the artist in her wedding dress, just as home in the pasture and the woods as she is in her studio.