The Fragments Collection

The year I turned 22, I traveled to Italy with my favorite college professor and a group of students barely beyond our adolescence. I learned about this trip during freshman year and saved my entire college career to get to go on this adventure. It was an experience of a lifetime and in retrospect those weeks profoundly changed my worldview and my path.

 In Italy, we were college kids enjoying the good life. We tasted wine, and ordered cappuccinos—first timidly and then with ridiculously exaggerated accents. We painted watercolor paintings in little cafes while nibbling the best pastries. After marveling at Tuscan hillsides, we all took turns sharing a hair dryer when we needed to look good because of those strange European electrical plugs and our lack of adaptors. We walked miles and miles in Rome with terribly inappropriate footwear (maybe that was just me) and marveled at the architectural beauty and history of the place.  When we were leaving the palace of the Medici, in Florence, our group stopped to use the restroom. In the stall, I found a poem scrawled on the back of the door with a Sharpie, and I thought, “My God, even the graffiti in this place is magnificent.”  Who does that—who writes poetry on a bathroom stall? (Probably another privileged idealistic American college student, but that’s beside the point.)

 Regardless, I felt complete delight at this little discovery and tucked it away in my mind for safekeeping. My encounter in a rather unglamorous part of Florence felt like a gift from the universe. The words spoke to me. If I never had anything else good happen in my life, I would always have Italy. There, I had found the joy of wanderlust, the gift of awe and the perspective of how tiny my life was in the history of humankind— and that was “plenty enough,” as we like to say here in the south. I didn’t have any context to the poem or know the  author’s name for years, but later I ran across the words again and learned a little more about Late Fragment by Raymond Carver. It was his final poem in his final published collection titled, A New Path to the Waterfall. He wrote it when he was dying of cancer.

Late Fragment

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

~Raymond Carver

To me, Carver was simply saying - I lived. I was loved. It was grand. It was enough. It’s pure unadulterated affirmation of life’s goodness in the highest sense of anything. Ironically, I can’t think of a more perfect poem to scrawl across the bathroom stall just to elegantly and defiantly declare that in spite of it all, “I was here.”

 This year I’ve been thinking about what I want most out of life. Maybe that’s something that happens to everyone when they turn 40. Maybe it’s just me. What is it that I want to do with the precious time that I have left in this beautiful place? Personally, I want to spend it traveling and making memories with my family. I also want to use my painting practice to savor the good- the gorgeous, breathtaking, awe-inspiring moments that make me feel alive… It’s my own way of saying “I was here. It was perfect and plenty. I could not ask for more.”

This collection of paintings features beautiful vistas from our family travels on the East Coast. The Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and Virginia are present, though you’ll have to guess which is which. Everyone loves a good bit of mystery now and then.  This is the Fragments collection inspired by Raymond Carver’s poem, Late Fragment.  Our family meanderings are also about finding new paths to the waterfalls… The joy is always in the journey. 

 Painters and poets are kindred spirits.  A poem captures a moment or a thought with words. A painting does the same thing, but using the language of color and mark making.  I’ve titled these new works with poetry fragments from some of my other favorite authors. Mary Oliver and Robert Frost are featured strongly. I know they’re kindred spirits of mine when I read their words and they speak truth to my own story. When someone shows you who they truly are, believe them.  If these speak to you too, welcome home, friend. Let’s savor this life together. I’ll see you out there with a smile, and a nod of solidarity.

The Fragments Collection will release November 9th at 10 a.m. to Studio Insiders and at 12 to the public. To join my Studio Insiders and be the first to see and shop the new works click here. If you’re already on my email list, you are all set and I’ll send you information for how to shop the collection on the week of the release.

P.S. Many of the gorgeous photos above were taken by my brilliant photographer friend, Eugenia Ramey. She uses vintage equipment to create dreamy, timeless effects and heirloom photos. She joined us for a mother daughter afternoon this summer and captured a silly but fun hot-chocolate tea-party that Georgia and I had in the backyard. Check out more of her nostalgic N.C. photography here and book a session for your children and grandchildren to make your own heirloom memories!

*availability and pricing are subject to change without notice. This collection is a work in progress.