Artist’s statement: I feel a bit like a schizophrenic root system. Each day unfolds, a chaotic sprawl, too many off-shoots to identify a specific direction. Knee deep in the soil of life, a tangle of knots and kinks, I have no idea what is emerging above-ground. Sometimes I just can’t see where I am going.…Read more Abide Persistently
nature
You Are What I Need
I am only a dust storm, a disembodied haze, rushing through this searing day. Here, amongst these muted hues, restless, wandering, nowhere to hide, un-done. A tumble-weed reeling, all of me leaning through this desert singing of striated skies with cactus blooms straining and orange mallow urging – they hurry me on. They know what I need…Read more You Are What I Need
Holding onto the Light
Roots tuck under ebony blanket. Tree-top, reluctant to sleep, teases black sky, clouds swirling heavy, mounting high. And in the space in-between, branches cradle last light in tender arms, as if tearfully crooning, “so long…” But when creeping night looks the other way, they stealthily syphon those silver rays into secret stashes, burning bright and…Read more Holding onto the Light
The Love of God
There is a narrow deserted road, path for wild winds carrying traces of damp green growing things, tumbling around and through you. There, tossing branches flow from purple moonlit skies into a quiet rumble in the earth below your feet. It swells insistently by the moment. Air pounds with intensity, a growing living entity, until…Read more The Love of God
New limited edition giclee print – Hope Relentlessly
Artist's statement for Hope Relentlessly: There are times in life when hope must come from a place beyond what we can perceive with our physical senses, beyond our tumultuous circumstances. Then, like a sunflower turning through the day towards the light, we cling to the promise that there is more than what we can see…Read more New limited edition giclee print – Hope Relentlessly
The Sky Begins to Dance
mountains ramble into mesas, stepping down to plains, kinked succulents, anchored, release the blinding light of day, reach for pooling pink and orange settle into quiet sleepy soil while the sky begins to dance here, our silvery trail of tears, lament for heavy feet, mooring us to earth there, their finished race - flames the…Read more The Sky Begins to Dance
Risk
After two weeks of frigid winds and temperatures plummeting below zero-degrees Fahrenheit, at last the sun again extended its regal hand of mercy to Colorado. Eagerly I wheeled my bike out of hibernation into crisp, clear, tolerably cold air. Halfway through the ride, my spirit soared in wonder. I stumbled on the route not long before…Read more Risk
A Beautiful River in Uganda
As most passengers triumphantly hoisted luggage off the belt, my mom and I watched and waited. Finally with a few lonely bags circling round and round in the increasingly vacated baggage claim, we acknowledged the obvious and filtered over to the airline desk to file our claim. Undaunted, we woke the next morning to the…Read more A Beautiful River in Uganda
Longing for Home
Blue shadows fall on barren fields where once we roamed heart-to-heart. Now clouds hinge on sinister skies. Grass, tattered earth, flaps like threadbare laundry. Cold and exposed, I drift alone. A weathered fence guides me, hand-over-hand. Nothing tied down, everything shifts in ochre waves. How can I feel trapped in a place so vast? Bare…Read more Longing for Home
Why I Paint
I could feel the withering of a parched spirit. Aching to reach into the abstract, into the transcendent. To stretch with all my might and drink of the invisible. As of Sunday afternoon, it was my longest break from painting in more than a year. During the previous few weeks, the tactile world around me…Read more Why I Paint
Colleen Briggs Images & Writing 