The Arrow in the Oak

02/24/2025

A little free verse from the woods. I was accompanied, as always, by my faithful Adventure Cat.

I was remembering my grandpa Les Heath this morning, and how he emphatically reminded us kids to always value our imagination. It is imagination that imbues life with meaning, or in religious language, it is the highway on which the Holy Spirit travels.

I think grandpa understood how important it was to find value in all the things life brings - he had a lot of practice navigating both joy and tragedy. And still he saw value in us kids and taught us to wonder at the stars and the trees and I am so very thankful.

02/15/2025

My studio cat is beautiful and I am working again with some consistency. Two blessings that I hold with equal weight in my heart - the habitual recognition of beauty and the habitual creation of beauty. They are blessings, and they are also skills that can be developed and applied to the benefit of your life and your work.

What have you recognized or created recently that gives you joy, comfort or pleasure?

02/13/2025

I changed my page name. Things are going to start looking a little different around here, and I'm excited to be building something new!

For a while now, my dream has been to establish a community centered on arts of all forms for the betterment of our souls and this experience we call "life". I dream of people coming together over their work, discovering the beauty inside themselves, finding the transcendent in the hearts around them, and developing wonder for the world we live in.

If this pursuit resonates with you, I invite you to read my favorite poem, The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In it, you will recognize my inspiration for the name of this page, and I hope you will also feel the spirit in which the group is to exist. We are all needful of community - a friend - someone who will help us frame our internal life so we can create a healthy, fulfilling outward expression of ourselves.

With those thoughts, I leave you this poem.

How do Longfellow's words resonate with you?

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long…

08/16/2024

How do I condense all that this painting represents in just a few words? It’s just a flower…a simple bontanical painting that I started years ago and nearly threw away when we moved to MO.

After we moved, a whole avalanche of challenges began to fall, one sn*******ng upon another. There hasn’t been one area in which we weren’t affected: health, finances, family, loneliness, and a whole house that seemed to be falling apart around us. We’ve had to defer dreams, purchases, and other gratifications so many times that I have become about as comfortable with waiting for things and living in the “messy middle” as a human can get.

That’s where this painting comes in. In the midst of so many of these challenges that kept coming so fast and hard that I felt like I would drown in them, I prayed. And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. And one day, God answered me. He said, “Kelly, do you remember the parable of the mustard seed? Well, you are like a poppy seed. Your small faith will blossom, not necessarily into something *big*, but certainly into something *beautiful*.”

Whoa. Ok, God. I trust you.

I almost threw this painting away a year and a half ago, but at the last minute I decided to just throw it into one of the last boxes we put on the truck - figured I could always decide about it later. Since it was the last box on the truck, it also happened to be the first one off and unpacked. Most of my lovely paintings still live in boxes in a closet, but this piece of “trash” was hanging out in a place of honor by the easel for months. So there is was, ready and waiting for me when God gave me the inspiration of the poppy. I finished it, I love it, and I am so moved, once again, by the beautiful mysterious ways He reveals himself to me.

This painting is called “Faith Like A Poppy Seed”, and it encapsulates all that this most recent season of struggle put me through. This is the fruit of that struggle: beauty. And thankfully, He’s not even close to done with me yet.

Faith Like A Poppy Seed,
mixed media on corrugated cardboard 🌺

12/29/2023

It’s been a while, but it is so good to feel my soul waking up again.

Pastel in progress, 18x24 landscape.

03/16/2022

Color study with Yellow Ochre, Indian Yellow, French Blue, Ivory Black, Carmine Lake, Titanium White. I want to explore this palette through some portrait and still life studies. The arrangement pictured influenced my color choices along with the Zorn Palette (Ivory Black, Titanium White, Yellow Ochre and Cadmium Red).

Inspiration for this came from the Hugger Family Creativity Club, which my daughter Etta founded just today. 🥰