Blog
Posted on June 18, 2011
We link our joy to some moment for which we are waiting. And when it arrives, we link our joy to some new, unavailable moment.
Why not consider what is available?
We already know this truth, but so readily forget. It is not from some great moment in the future that our joy will spring forth. It is in this moment—with all of its difficulty, all its trials and all its unbelievable blessings and beauty—that joy exists.
It really is hard to live in the day at hand. We make progress by struggling, planning and hoping for what is not yet here. It is necessary, but not the only consideration.
Plan for the future, yes, but practice mindfulness in the moment. This is the secret to being ok, peaceful and maybe even joyful right this minute. Practice mindfulness. That simply means to purposely be aware and appreciative of everything that is here right now instead of ignoring what you have today in pursuit of what you hope to have sometime in the unknown future.
Posted on June 4, 2011
Every moment has it’s goodness…even when the times are hard.
I sit in my studio every day and hear the stories. Wherever you sit, you hear them, too. Folks are worried and filled with anxiety. None of us know what is going on or when things will begin to improve. I am no different. Yet, I must go on and you must go on and life will, most definitely, go on.
Maybe I don’t like how it is right now, but I have decided to work harder and struggle less. What do I mean by that? I will get up every day and give it all that I have. But (and this is important), I will live only in this day (when I am happy to be alive and happy to have a roof and food).
The struggle comes when you try to live in the future days.
Every moment has it’s goodness…even when the times are hard. In my life, I have survived many harsh realities. I have been lonely and lost and sad. Have you, as well? We are not alone in this, my friends, as many of us have felt the brunt of hard times in our lives. And, still, we stand.
And all of those moments, harsh as they were, also had their goodness. And that goodness helped bring us through.
You have to choose to see it, though. And you can, even on the hard, hard days.
We can choose to see what is going wrong or we can choose to deal with what is going wrong but see what is going right. And, my dear friends, there is always much that is going right if only we will choose to see it. For all of you who are worried, I send my love. For all of you who are lost, I send my love. For all of you who don’t know where to turn, I send my love…as we all do…one to the other.
Posted on May 13, 2011
Everything comes to an end. Every ending is a new beginning. If I am willing, my life is about to start anew.
I have enjoyed my years here, in Wilmington, as an artist. It has been a big and impactful time of my life. I have found my art. I have raised my children. I have made a new beginning and a new ending.
I have learned so much and written what I know to be true on my paintings. I have told my story and been heard. I have been myself and been loved. I have opened my heart and been healed.
I don’t leave here easily. How could I? Here, on this southern soil, I have poured out my heart and sent soaring my hopes and found pieces of myself I never knew existed.
Where do I go from here? I wish I had the answer to that. The only thing I know is, I go forward. I keep trying. I believe in myself and my God and hope. “Hope is the belief in things not seen.” I am believing that there is a new beginning out there for me. I just have to go and find it.
Posted on May 2, 2011
A word about Mrs. Mazursky, who is the women in all of my paintings.
Mrs. Mazursky was born in my heart the summer I was pregnant with my first child, Hunter. I was on the beach reading a book whose title I have long since forgotten. There was a character that passed away—she had a name that could have been Mazursky but I don’t really know for sure. When Mrs. Mazursky’s children (who thought she had been a wonderful mother) came home to clean out her house, they discovered some paintings she had created—paintings of mothers in their ordinary work-a-day lives. At first her children were puzzled by this discovery, but then they remembered that maybe their mother just might have said something once upon a time about painting–maybe. Mrs. Mazursky was an artist, but to her children she was just a mom. Being close to the time of the birth of my own child, my mind flooded with images of beautiful simple women at the stove and the laundry line doing the beautiful, simple, profound work that is motherhood. I never forgot these images. I still strive to paint Mrs. Mazursky just like I see her in my mind’s eye.
It wasn’t until ten years later, when my son, Hunter, and my daughter, Layne, gave me a box of paints purchased from a toy store for Mother’s Day, that I dared to dream of painting Mrs. Mazursky’s world. I never thought of myself as an artist. I made the first painting because my children insisted. “Don’t you like your gift, Mama?” I painted full time for one year before I dared try and create a Mazursky Madonna.
For me, Mrs. Mazursky is the iconographic mother. She is my mother, she is me, she is my daughter when her children arrive. Mrs. Mazursky is never too good for her job. Mrs. Mazursky is in the moment. She is aware of the beauty that has been entrusted to her. She knows the simple truth that her life is her dream of her own making. Mrs. Mazursky lives with her family and furniture right out on the sand, down by the sea, down by the edge of the world. The sea makes all things seem possible. It makes dreaming simple and life more trouble free and better too, somehow. It makes it easier for Mrs. Mazursky to never forget that while you can easily list the things going wrong on a given day, you can never stay awake long enough to list the things going right.
Posted on April 30, 2011
I have been working on a new series of small, multimedia domestic scenes and still lifes.
Home is on my mind these days.
Sometime in the spring or early summer, I will move away to a new, and yet unknown, home. Change brings so many emotions and for me, my emotional life rules my art life. I’m not resisting. I am accepting the transition in both of my worlds.
My home is changing and that is changing my work. I don’t necessarily want that…but change is here. It’s good and bad, clear and complicated, simple and impossible, frightening and exciting. Everything at once and all together. It is what it is.
You can view the first works of the series in The Paintings and The Collages galleries.
Posted on April 20, 2011
I believe in the better day. There are lots of reasons to refuse to believe in the better day. I know that. But, I choose to believe that all will be well…and so far, that has worked just fine for me.
I have my eyes set on the horizon and my heart filled with faith.
It is spring…the time of renewal. I believe I will be renewed. I have to. I must.
I am filling my vegetable bed with fresh organic soil and having faith it will produce. I don’t need to sit and watch it grow, just do my best to tend it and believe.
The daffodils are blooming. I saw a Robin today. My blueberry bushes are alive with buds. I can smell the new day and taste the possibilities in the air.
I believe in the better day. I just have to.
Posted on April 3, 2011
Those who follow my work, know I have a special love for Maine. I have painted many summers on Monhegan Island which is 13 miles out to sea. It is a whole different world. One summer, I stayed at Miss Rita’s house. Miss Rita is one of the oldest residents, born and raised, as they say. It was a wonderful spot in a wonderful place.
(Miss Rita’s House is the first house on the left in the painting.)
Miss Rita’s House on Monhegan.
Deborah Cavenaugh
At Miss Rita’s house, cotton batiste aprons
hang in kitchen windows.
Bleached white, starched crisp
and stitched by hand.
They find their second life
and new stories to tell
of kitchens now and then on Monhegan.
At Miss Rita’s house, watercolor paints spill
across kitchen cabinets.
Colors in every hue
wait for my hands
to create a little line
and tell a little story
of the peace and beauty that is Monhegan
At Miss Rita’s house, Bear, the cat,
sounds at the kitchen door.
Soft grey and blazing white,
he looks for a way in,
and finding my open door,
his story’s in mine now
of the home away from home that is Monhegan
At Miss Rita’s house, memories surround.
I think of her in this kitchen
ninety years and more,
hands moving in the rhythm
of a chop and stir.
She kept her home fires burning
in her life that is Monhegan.
At Miss Rita’s house, the sea rocks close.
Whales swim out the window.
Way out on this rock,
she’s made a daily life
for ninety years and more.
I, pilgrim, come for salvation
and the hope of renewal that is Monhegan
Posted on March 19, 2011
All hearts seek a song of home.
Now there are many meanings of home and as many ways to find this place we all seek. We search for where we belong and where we can be the best version of ourselves. We search for a place of love and harmony. We search for a place of acceptance and belonging. We search for a place to grow and thrive. We search for a place that sings home to our hearts. We want to find our place that represents our personal sense of home.
For some, there is the simple love of the place from which you came or the family who brought you up. For others, it’s the discovery of where you feel “right” or where your heart belongs. It’s different for all of us and the same for all of us, as well.
All hearts sing the song of home. So does mine. Soon I am off on a journey to discover my home place…once again.
I am expecting good things. I am expecting a certain harmony for my heart as it sings its sony of home.
Posted on March 1, 2011
I am powering up.
I’m choosing to put aside, for now, thinking about the things that just aren’t working. I am choosing to power up where I can make things happen. I am willing to change. I am willing to get moving. I am willing to think about myself in the world in a new way.
I am powering up and taking action where action can be taken. I am letting the things and pieces that I can’t affect go…for the moment.
Searching for the way brings the way to you. Asking for the way brings the way to you. Believing in the way opens your eyes to the door.
These are the days to make the changes that must be made and get up and power up and make whatever you can make happen, happen! I am carrying on.
Posted on February 16, 2011
When you’re ready, you will fly. That is the truth of it. You have to be ready to live the life you truly desire. You have to be strong and courageous. You must be undaunted and unafraid of the obstacles. You have to get ready…and when you are, you will fly. There’s no doubt about it!
I see life as this great and never-ending story. A chapter book! And, like any good book, the story grows and expands and surprises you when you least expect it
When I was 40, the chapter was about divorce and loss of identity and not knowing what to do next. Now, at almost 60, I am artist and writer and so many other things that I never was at 40, things I couldn’t even imagine being. Who knew? Certainly not me.
I can’t wait to turn the page and see life’s next twist. I often always like them, I must admit, but in the “one thing leads to another” part of life, if I don’t let life shut me down, well then, it can’t.
I guess what I am saying is don’t be fearful of a twist in your plot. Read on. You could fall through the rabbit hole and land on your feet!
