Better than prozac

'Minus Tide' 24x24" oil pastel;  Kathleen Faulkner

I like to walk along the channel at low tide.  

there is so much to see and hear and smell

The Swinomish Channel connects Skagit Bay, to the south, with Padilla Bay to the north.  It separates Fidalgo Island from the mainland of Skagit County.

Eleven miles long, it was once a collection of shallow tidal sloughs, salt marshes and mudflats known as Swinomish Slough.

During the Depression, the Army Corps of Engineers used dredging and diking to make it a navigable channel.  It is heavily used today by many types of vessels.

I consider it one of the necessary ingredients for mental health.

New Life

'Just North of Here' 18x24" oil pastel, charcoal;  Kathleen Faulkner

I hear there are kestrel fledglings just north of here.  

I haven't seen them yet but I know the area:  

lots of mud.  

Life in the marsh.

a dirty story

'Mudflats II'' 16x20" oil pastel, charcoal;  Kathleen Faulkner

We don't really talk about it but it's always there.

a refuge

it has magic

There are bones, shells and feathers, 

reeds mixing with the mud 

and long views.

the day, the time, the season 

this all keeps it interesting

history

'Passage' oil pastel, charcoal,  28x33"   Kathleen Faulkner

The river glides in silence.

The night is deep, like a

  loving mother.

A silence goes back and forth

  through the marsh.

The same silence that was here

in my shack waiting for me.

  It was always here.

I was gone so long, now

the silence is so much deeper, and

  I sink down into it.

The sadness I met in the world 

  falls away from me.

One by one my dreams return.

Robert Sund  from 'Shack Medicine'

One more

'Low Tide'12x12"  oil and soft pastel, charcoal, medium;
Kathleen Faulkner

It rains.  The wind blows and  

we lose our light as the days grow shorter.

It is a good time to make some art.

and another..

'High Tide' 12x12"  oil and soft pastel, charcoal, medium;
Kathleen Faulkner

The big lesson I'm learning this Fall is, yes, everything really does change.  Nothing stays the same.  The only constant Is change.

This can be a hopeful reality.  Maybe things will change for the better.

another marsh picture

'Wiley's Marsh' 12x12" oil and soft pastel, charcoal, medium;
Kathleen Faulkner

My first oil pastel of the fall season.

This piece is part of a series of studies I'm working on before attempting the very large (for me) 3x5'

painting.  

It is very dark but I think like it.  

Tidal Marsh

"Tidal Marsh" oil and regular pastel, 

charcoal, gesso, 9x9", Kathleen Faulkner

It was an adventure.  We headed out early. 

Muted colors, bird sounds and the smell of salty sea grass hosting billions of organisms.. Standing in the midst of it all,  I could hear "it" living, breathing.

I lost my boot but got it back and, once home, pulling it off, I was struck by the blackness of the mud  blacker than the darkest farmland dirt   almost blue. 

"Salt marshes are one of the most biologically productive habitats on the planet,  rivaling tropical rain forests."  Wikipedia

"A tidal marsh is: soft, sticky, living tissue that grows on you.  Once into tidal marshes, you can only extract your person.  The mind continues to wander through with long, complicated, sinuous, personal thoughts"  Josh Collins 1996