One of my favorite books is about an artist. The book describes her work in terms that set my imagination on fire – a checkerboard sky, chunky fat cows with filigree gold wings, butterflies with toothy grins, sunflowers with eyes, and round smiling mermaids. I could see these things so clearly in my mind’s eye, I wanted to make them happen in fabric. So I tried.

I realized fairly quickly that I am not the kind of artist who can make winged cows or even mermaids. However, my younger kid has been working on a sailboat in Penobscot Bay since April, and I wanted some ocean, so I started veering away from the described work into something I felt more comfortable portraying. So I made a schooner, some seals, a humpback whale; all things we’d seen when we sailed with her for a week, and things I know the shapes of.

I am pleased with pieces of both the daytime and nighttime pieces, but I’m not at all certain how successful they are all together. I think I might try one or two more, but then I need to try it again working in my usual way, and see if anything is clearer coming back to it fresh.

The excellent title was from a studio neighbor who put their finger on what I was trying to do while I was just babbling about checkerboard skies!