It's always a little amazing to me how a landscape painting evolves. Even though I'm intimately aware of the stages, it still surprises me every time when, in the end, I have something I can actually recognize and identify. Between the first dabs of paint and my...
musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
taosdawn
jumping off and leaping in
I guess it was my turn. My turn to have a crappy week…or two. Let’s face it: I lead a pretty charmed life. I’m self-employed doing what I love; I’m active and in good health (I haven't had a cold in five years); I’m reasonably financially secure; I live in desired...
finding grounding in the new year
I never would have thought I'd find grounding in the sky; in flight. This new year loomed for me with a feeling of. . . . . . lack of focus? Imbalance? My birthday is lost in the week between Christmas and New Year’s—a weird time when I always feel kind of in...
prejudice and creative epiphany at the age of 13
I found myself kind of quiet the day I learned that David Bowie had died. Not that I’m ever really very moved by the lives and deaths of celebrities. Still, each is a reminder of the coming end to our own lives and therefore a reminder to "take kindly the counsel of...
falling, gratitude & why i want to return to the trail
It’s been two months now since I came off Vermont's Long Trail. I can finally descend the stairs in my own home without holding my breath and having to ease my legs down step by step. The golf-ball sized swelling over my left clavicle has abated. I can almost kneel...
where a walk across vermont ends
Where does a walk across Vermont end? I can’t tell you. But what I can tell you is where it does not end. It does not end on the first day in the first hour or two or three or four with gnats spinning dully in your eyes and ears during the greatest September heatwave...
where a walk across vermont begins
A northbound walk across Vermont begins with the first footstep upon the trail in Massachusetts. Well… No... really….that’s not quite right. Really, it begins a few moments earlier with you and your first friend in life—your friend of 49 years—embracing, choking down...
my walk across vermont
On September 9 of this year I set out to walk across Vermont. My passageway was The Long Trail, the oldest established long-distance hiking trail in the United States. Begun in 1910—two decades before the Appalachian Trail—it courses for 273 miles along the spine of...