Collaboration #1, a collaborative flash series with Colleen Davick

Landscape No. 3, Cash Entry Mines, New Mexico

After spending 18 months in New Mexico, Marsden Hartley returned to New York in 1919, but he continued to paint the Southwest from memory. My friend Colleen is flying today from New Mexico back to Chicago. She is an artist of the cellphone camera. In 2011 I spent a week in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico at Starry Night Artist Retreat. I returned home to continue to create from memory. Leaving one place for another doesn’t erase our longing, our desire to connect to a landscape, the people we love and miss. True art speaks to our emotions, to the sublime within us.

Today it is 1 below with windchill—I reach back in my memories to the night I rode my bike down dark T or C streets to a hot spa. I eased my tired body into the natural pool and soaked in the minerals letting go of stress and self-doubt. For a little while.

We all wish to return to some place safe.

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/65937/landscape-no-3-cash-entry-mines-new-mexico