Collaborative Paintings
Collaboration for us means absolute mutuality: equally sharing ideas and aesthetic decisions, skills, techniques, experiences and perspectives. All the while we happily work side-by-side on the same canvas at the same time. Our conversations generate in-the-moment critiques and more expansive concepts. Our intention is to create paintings that are more than just beautiful. We ask the viewer to find the deeper layers of meaning regarding the ongoing threats to our planet.
LRcollaborate.com
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE PERMANENT COLLECTION
Inspired by our own passions for reading, we explored the infinite world of words and books as metaphors for larger concepts.
Our friendship and compatible talents led us to experiment with painting together. This painting began our collaboration which continues today.
“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
BOOK SERIES
PROLOGUE
36” X 36”
acrylic on canvas
LEONARDO DA VINCI
BOOK SERIES
EPILOGUE
36” X 36”
acrylic on canvas, collage
“The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.”
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI
“Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.”
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of lovely things and your heart will fly on wings, forever in Never Never Land!”
BOOK SERIES
IMAGINATION
36” X 36”
acrylic on canvas, book covers, pages and mixed media
CAROLYN LEIGH
“Imagination helps make knowledge applicable in solving problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process.”
KIDDLE ENCYCLOPEDIA
Look and See
MARY OLIVERThis morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused. The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was laughing.
This afternoon a gull sailing over our house was casually scratching its stomach of white feathers with one pink foot as it flew.
Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we only look, and see.
“An average of 4 billion birds move south from Canada into the U.S. At the same time, another 4.7 billion birds leave the U.S. over the southern border, heading to the tropics.”
ADRIAAN DOKTER, CORNELL LAB
BOOK SERIES
COASTAL MIGRATION (D etail ) 48” X 78”
acrylic on canvas, books, pages and ribbons
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
“There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent threat of a changing climate.”
BARACK OBAMABOOK SERIES FACTS
42” Round acrylic on canvas, book cover, and maps
ISAAC ASIMOV
Our constant refrain while creating all our paintings, is: ‘What are we trying to say in this series?’ And once we articulate that intent, ‘How can we express that?’ ‘What elements can we add that get us closer, metaphorically, to that goal?’
Our inspiration for this series came from gratitude for the generosity of nature and what it has to teach us. We remind each other while we paint that those lessons surround us if we keep our eyes and hearts open.
“Giving and receiving are different aspects of the flow of energy in the universe. In our willingness to give that which we seek, we keep the abundance of the universe circulating in our lives.”
DEEPAK CHOPRAacrylic on canvas, books and mixed media
“The lotus has long been regarded as sacred by many of the world’s religions where it is held to be a symbol of the Universe. Rooted in the mud, the lotus rises to blossom clean and bright, symbolizing purity and resurrection. It is often compared to the enlightened being who emerges undefiled from the chaos and confusion of the world.”
BLUE LOTUS CHAI“The ancient rhythms of the earth have insinuated themselves into the rhythms of the human heart. The earth is not outside us; it is within: the clay from where the tree of the body grows.”
JOHN36” X 36”
acrylic on canvas, books and lotus seed pods
O’DONOHUE, BEAUTY: THE INVISIBLE EMBRACE
“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement... get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELABUNDANCE SERIES
FALL 36” X 36”
acrylic on canvas, twigs, seed pods, cicada wings, wasp paper, book cover and book pages
“The life cycle of cicadas is a mystery to entomologists. Their 17 year life span makes them the longest lived insect known.”
CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN
“Don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.”
RUMI
“How busy is the world below our feet?
More organisms live in the soil than live above ground. Even just a handful of soil contains millions of living things.”
ABUNDANCE SERIES
WINTER I
36” X 36”
acrylic on canvas, twigs, seeds, seed pods, acorns, sweet gum, pebbles, leaves, book cover and pages
Winter Heart
KERRY HARDIEWinter again, and I’m glad that the seasons keep coming around and around.
I am glad that the heart, too, is seasonal, that it loses its leaves in November, holds trembling hands to the sky; that it freezes and thaws and freezes, running with water in autumn, singing with birds in the spring.
It is ready again now for darkness and a night-sky splintered with stars, for winds, withering its stony ramparts for fire in the halls within.
ABUNDANCE SERIES
WINTER II
36” X 36”
acrylic on canvas, book cover and collage pages
“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”
WILLIAM BLAKE
“The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.”
MARY OLIVER“Coral is an animal, with plant-like cells living inside of it and warming waters due to climate change are putting immense stress on our vulnerable coral populations.”
X 36”
acrylic on canvas, coral, sea fan, books and pages
DR. ROSS CUNNING
