I was in a workshop this past week, with a very able instructor. It is not easy teaching abstraction well, but she was a great model and help to me. I have come home now seeing value studies everywhere and I am sure it will affect my work, already has. Value, color, line—the basics. These are the kind of fundamentals we teach in beginning art school classes, that athletes speak of, kind of “here we go again” only better this time around.

I moved past a counter and got caught by the beauty just sitting quietly waiting to be noticed. A shadow reminded me of a great phrase I’d recently read from Emily Dickinson’s poem #132 “… and shadows tremble so—“

This I am realizing is an exercise in joy! Listen to this echo from Henri Nouwen “I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim the joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways…” Joy is not denial, but rather a chance to see what’s really real. Value is found in the common made celebratory. Real things representing, hinting at, suggesting so much more.