2022, "Sleepwalking Into Catastrophe"27 x 54", oil on canvas, has Artemis pointing her bow outward. You may be standing in its path. A fire boat makes a futile attempt to contain a burning oil tanker. Look closely and you can see silhouettes of falling sleepwalkers from the melting Antarctic ice sheet as a spewing oil processing plant in red and black contributes to a scene that is ironically, frighteningly beautiful.

Touch Me Not (60 x 48", oil on canvas, 2015) was completed after the massacre of nine parishioners at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, June 2015. Using antique photos, I juxtaposed a white schoolboy ready to restore the Southern antebellum order with the racist Confederate flag threaded through two African American boys picking cotton. Interrelationships reveal a deeper truth, the roots of a pernicious and unrelenting American racism. “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” In the "George Floyd Social Conscience Art Movement" collection, JW Jones, Charlotte, NC.

30 x 28",  oil on canvas, 2016

Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral win of the presidency is a perfect illustration of Faulkner’s insight about the past.The lotus, a Buddhist bodhisattva symbol and “hungry ghosts”, creatures who did not control their appetites during life and are therefore, condemned for eternity never satiated by food, wealth or sex, are the metaphorical environment for the anticipated slog needed to get through the next four years.

37 x 27", oil on linen, 2015

A staring toddler crushes her solid leg upon a dying fish and a bewilder father looks on. I believe it is a strange juxtaposition since children are supposed to be cute or playful. This toddler is daring the viewer saying- I AM HERE. She crushes the wild life of the fish. Do not mess with her. Her dad has tight lips and eyes glaring. Distance and tension separates them, which is relieved by an environment of playful dolphins. This painting was a response to a Ragain poem, "Let the Dolphin Dance – A note to my daughter Megan." Ragain, Maj, "A Hungry Ghost Surrenders His Tacklebox". Pavement Saw Press, Ohio, 2006 pp.137-139

77 x 47", oil on linen, 2014 

Several antique photographs were sources for "Raised With Walls - Bad Education". I identify with boys of an era. I feel their desire to please. They are not yet formed but are boys molded within a field of red blood. They are caught in an endless chain of mis-education. It is bad education when young boys are taught to fill boots they are too young to understand.

23 x 13", oil on linen, 2014 

A small black and white snapshot, taken around 1948 inspires "It’s In Our Hands." The photograph both disturbing and provocative is of a very young girl holding a rifle. Around her are laughing adults as she struggles to hold it. My imagination wandered and I saw those adults as apparitions representing teachers of death and of unthinking callousness. My subtle use of red forebodes the loss of blood. Over the ensuing five decades, American society has witnessed an alarming rate of child deaths due to rifles and handguns.1. Guns kill children daily. Most often it is not the deranged mass murderers doing it, rather, it is the parent’s gun that kills. The National Rifle Association obfuscates the truth about children’s deaths. 2. Moreover, rifles and handguns are more lethal, lightweight and easy to use. It is never a laughing matter when a child has a gun.  

http://www.nasponline.org/resources/crisis_safety/Youth_Gun_Violence_Fact_Sheet.pdf 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html

67 x 84", oil on canvas, 2007 

I found an old Kodachrome color family photograph. My family is all dressed up for an Easter Day Portrait. The photo portrayed that perfect 1960 family: strong dad, adorable daughters dressed in pastels and a beautiful mom. But this painting is not a copy of the original. Instead, I saw something else: a stilted man, a girl with a snarly smile separated by a mother from the other girl, a gleeful girl from a more current time. The mother's face is skull like in her Easter bonnet. She is almost a monster pushing out children like so many decorated Easter eggs. This painting brings forth references from art history and prevailing cultural myths, as well as, a cynicism toward such myths.

Who are You? Children? (48 x 62", oil on canvas, 2001) This painting was started during the idyllic summer of 2001 while I basked in the sun drenched days and intellectual bliss of the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA residency. It was completed after the horrific events of September 11, 2001 and therefore took a ominous turn. Here are five archetypes: the impish demon, the seer, the male and female hapless witnesses and the fallen doll. My poet colleague, Maj Ragain, composed a response poem, “The Ancient Ones at Trail’s End,” and ended it with these lines: I am the sighted one. Only I can see what is coming for us. Our flame headed sister has fired her last musket ball at the wounded moon. The beasts have found the breech in the fence. This is the time we have feared. - Maj Ragain I interrogate myself with this painting. As I suspect most people did after those fateful events. Here follows Ragain’s complete poem: The Ancient Ones at Trail’s End A Response Poem to Who Are You? Children? We are not children. We walked out of the wood’s womb before the first light. We wait now at the edge of razor grass, picketed by the wooden teeth fence. Down the long, narrow trails, we linked hands, the five of us, our legs kissed by summer, poison oak, trumpet vine, nightshade. In the clearing, we unraveled into who we had always been, the heavy bucket of the skull, the noise in the chest, the hands that long to fly away like strange, knuckle-winged birds, to call back to us from treetops. I am the sighted one. Only I can see what is coming for us. Our flame headed sister has fired her last musket ball at the wounded moon. The beasts have found the breech in the fence. This is the time we have feared. - Maj Ragain

12 x 12", oil on canvas, 2001

September 11, 2001 occurred while my daughter was in the fourth grade. Her school, in Montgomery County, MD, about fifteen miles outside of DC was located in an area where parents were told not to pick up their children. Apparently there was concern that the roads would become too congested. Joanna told me that the kids in her class gave each other comfort. One girl's father was an American Airlines pilot and the kids rallied around her. I concentrated on the mutual comfort the children shared while the monkey holding on to the tree limb represents the horrors of the day's events.

Gifts (44 x 72", oil on linen, 2000)- Three generations are pictured here. In the foreground two sisters have just opened a Christmas gift. The one girl gazes at an unknown sight and her eyes mirror the doll’s. Their mother is the recorder of this still moment in what could have been a frenzied morning. In the sunlit hallway is a blurred painting. Look closely you will see another Christmas morning pictured.

60 x 30", oil on canvas, 2000

Originally four-year old Adriana was photographed naked, holding a towel after shedding a sandy, wet bathing suit. Since the day lily represents the immortality of a child’s day, she holds it. Adriana is that sweet child frozen in time. The child herself has a different concept of time. “Who shall say if the day was too brief, For the flower, if time lack? Had it not, like the children, all Time In their long, immortal day? Ibid, p. 77

Lalla Finds Her Wings (88 x 36 x 3", oil on canvas, 2021 & 2004), was reworked in '21 after the long confinement of the Pandemic's lock down. Indeed, I felt liberated. This painting is inspired by another Ragain poem, "You Will Need the Wings of a Crane."

I was drawn to his poem because of the story of the poet Lalla. "In bad weather, she was naked. She lived in her soul. She wanted paradise. What husband could give her that." This painting expresses a body partially landlocked. She is ready to fly away.

Be Secret & Exult (88 x 36 x 3", oil on canvas, 2021 & 2004) was reworked from my 2004 version. It is a painting inspired by a Ragain poem of the same title. This heavily impasto artwork took a lot of strength. I loaded my palette knife with thick oil paint varied in tone and hue and then used my entire body moving strokes to make pectoral muscles, strained gluts and calf muscles. The climber's nearly impossible finger and toe holds suspended over turbulent currents was the image of death defying strength. Hubris or courage, the painting confronts know and unknown dangers - our fear of death.

Each 12 x 12", oil on panel, 2016

The two 12x12" oils on wood panels are companion paintings which respond to Ragain's poem "Clouds Pile Up North." This long, narrative takes the reader from a quaint summer scene and exposes a raw anger in a child. My approach was to identify with the children, their inquisitiveness, fantastical clouds and a more distant jumping child. The next panel of murky green offers comfort and forgiveness.

Maj Ragain's poem "Clouds Pile Up North" begins with an idyllic setting. The old man recounts his playfulness with the local children. Tom Hall, (radio program host, WYPR) uses his melodious voice to bring us to that time. We see and hear each child. They are not easily fooled. The mood changes as does the readers voice. There is tension and a warning given to the youngsters.

12 x 12", oil on panel, 2016 

Maj saw my painting and it immediately reminded him of his poem, "A Luminous Phenomenon". My painting imagines Maj as a Taoist fisherman, a speck in the universe, under the Northern Lights. After a doctors visit where "She knows I am waist deep in muddy water." Maj remembers the awe he felt under the Northern Lights as he faces his diminishing health.

“A Luminous Phenomenon” is read by Tom Hall (Program host, WYPR). We enter this poem through a doctors office. Maj's health is not good and "She (the doctor) knows I am waist deep in muddy water." Then we switch to the cosmic sphere. He recalls his father’s love. The Northern Lights, an amazing phenomenon is shown to the sleeping child. He is part of the eternal.

12 x 12", oil on panel, 2016 

This painting is about the ghost the poet recalls in his poem "Winter for Skylark and Little Sister." I was drawn to the poem even though I found it elusive. The girl ghost wanted to be heard, she had so much more to say. Perhaps Maj is also wondering how he will be heard after the grave?

Steve Heine, the reader, is a father and a bank president. Recorded during a very busy day, he nonetheless read with sympathy for the speechless.

18 x 46", oil on linen, 2014 

Janet Lewis' poem "Winter Garden" inspired this fantastic landscape and a child's perilous walk along an unsecured plank. Lewis recalls a child in a beautiful garden with calendulas, pomegranate tree and twisted vines. Then, like so many fairy princesses, she pricks her finger, but is not cursed. Instead Lewis makes a vow, "Now that you sleep your joy to replenish, Each branch, each varied lifting bough, That not a leaf in your garden perish." It is a “Wishful Vow”.

A 2019 oil on canvas, 81 x 12" "sliver" painting references Tim Joyce's poem, "Small Boy With Stick Going After a Wolf." I was drawn to this poem's imagery because of the futility of his chase. A wolf chases its prey and here is the child's hubris. The suckling babe helpless and dependent for comfort, safety is also a reference to Remus and Romulus myth.

The poem, "Small Boy With a Stick Going After a Wolf " written by Tim Joyce is read by Jeff Murray. Murray's reading at first expresses authority and as he proceeds, the tempo slowly diminishes.

Murray's sonorous voice is the voice of conscience, reminding the listener not to forget those who were once golden as sun flowers, our military veterans.

The two 2015 companion paintings, oil on linen, 17.5 x 38" are responses to Ragain's "An Old Man Lies Down With the Lion" It is a story of transformation. The last verse, "Thou shall lie down with the lion. Thou shall be reborn as an old man." I imagined a boy, embarrassed, everyone is glaring at him. Perhaps he missed the big catch or struck out. He is humiliated and alone. That boy becomes an old man, he imagines comforting another boy or catching that hit.

"An Old Man Lies Down With the Lion" a poem written by Maj Ragain and read by John Wright reminded me of the bitterness children can feel when they feel they haven't performed. Bitterness lodges when a kid can't ever please. The failed baseball play was my entry point.

Dolce et Decorum est, Pro Patria Mori (71 x 78", oil on linen,  2014 & 2004) is a line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace’s Odes (III.2.13). The line can be roughly translated into English as: “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” Wilfred Edward Salter Owen (1893-1918) used Horace’s line in his famous WWI poem of the same title. The last line forewarns the impressible boy the Dolce Et Decorum Est is the old lie.

Scofield has taught Wilfred Owen's powerful poem and the pain and fear is loud and clear with his reading.

60 x 28", oil on canvas, 2000 

The model's pose refers to ancient Greek kouros. It addresses the ambivalent identity of male youths caught between their most elemental needs for security, love and tenderness, and their fear of being labeled effeminate. American youths are not encouraged to live with balance and beauty and therefore my kouros are clothed. Their sexual nature is conflicted. I represented the conflict with two figures, one with his pectoral muscles strong and sure, the palette knife sweeping across his chest. The other molded with a more tentative blade, his glance reticent and his colors softer and more muted.

Soft and crashing waves introduce the reading of Maj Ragain's response poem "He Rushed Forth Without Weapons" to my painting, "My Two Selves." The qualities of water: life giving, tranquil, crashing and dangerous express perfectly the dichotomy seen in "My Two Selves." Senft's deliberate reading seems to express a hesitancy but someday, he will be one.

84 x 40", Chinese ink, watercolor, acrylic, gouache on Mulberry paper, suspended from a wood dowel and an American Eagle door knocker. I imagined Side A of “It is Rumored” as a remembrance of murdered slaves who were cruelly tossed from ships. There is no documentation from insurance claims to support the practice of disposal of dead or near dying slaves at Bloody Point. But it is documented at other sites off the coast of Africa. (1) Although it does seem possible that if one wanted to hide nefarious deeds, the deepest part of the Chesapeake Bay would hide the evidence. I imagine a young woman attempting to hold up her newborn infant and a young man struggling to swim despite the chain weighing him down. Light filters through the murky water as figures fall toward an unnatural light. (1) http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/refserv/bulldog/bull01/bull15-18/html/bull15-18.html Haley, Chris. "A Point of Land On Kent Island." The Archivists' Bulldog: Newsletter of the Maryland State Archives, Vol. 15, No. 18 (Sept. 24, 2001)

84 x 40", Chinese ink, watercolor, acrylic, gouache on Mulberry paper, suspended from a wood dowel and an American Eagle door knocker. I imagined the B-side of “It is Rumored” as a remembrance of massacred Native Americans who unwittingly arrived for an "interview” only to be killed by colonists. There is a court record documenting the trial of a pirate who murdered four seamen. The pirate was tried, condemned to death by hanging and his body was left to rot at Bloody Point. I imagined the bounty of The Bay and its surrounding land. Crab and Rockfish literally leaped out of its waters, oysters covered it shallows. The surrounding land was verdant with timber, fertile for farming and of course, the tobacco cash crop, which made many planters wealthy and drove the economy for the enslavement of Africans.

Water fowl feed as bodies struggle to survive.

One is able to see the muted image of the hung pirate, as fish swim by and falling figures descend to the abyss.

Side A lower section is dense with black ink and saturated color creating a more chaotic scene.

Side B upper section: A ship under sail, one that brought slaves across the ocean is reflected in the water. Bubbles of expelled air are released. Elegant Blue Herons are reflected as other waterfowl dip into the Bay searching for food. One can see through to the other side, the falling side. Beauty and dread are combined within each frame.

The veins of the tobacco leaf are juxtaposed with falling figures.

Installation shot of Side A of "It is Rumored" from "Altered Truths - Fractured Myths" two person show with Oletha DeVane, at City Arts Gallery, Baltimore MD, Nov 2011- Jan 2012

Installation shot of Side B of "It is Rumored" from "Altered Truths - Fractured Myths" two person show with Oletha DeVane, at City Arts Gallery, Baltimore MD, Nov 2011- Jan 2012

This painting, Strawberry Wreckage & Lilac Dust (81 x 12", oil on canvas, 2018), was inspired by Janet Lewis' "Girl Help". Lewis describes the sweeping girl's pause, "In the warm, lofted air, Soft lips together pressed, Soft wispy hair, she stops to rest. .... The great white lilac bloom Scented with days to come." This is a suspended moment when all is present and eternal. The strawberries, red and succulent, represent a fallen, wounded heart that will be swept up with the debris.

Olivia Hollander is a graduate from Baltimore's School of the Arts. Her area of concentration was theatrical arts. Her reading of Lewis' "Girl Help" is paced and measured. The introductory sound of humming honey bees is clearly reminiscent of Lilac's scent. The girl and flowers are fully bloomed.

In Granny's Garden is Running Away (81 x 12", oil on canvas, 2017), the long thin format is a sliver of form, space or time. Like the arctic ice tube samples, my slivers tell a deep, ancient story. I am also influenced by ancient Chinese landscapes, portraying time as moving rhythmically toward heaven. This painting was inspired by Lewis’s poem, "Lost Garden." "Children asleep in deep meadows. Young popples Grew round the house and a wasp nest hung in the door, silvery like logs..... Granny Cadotte, Granny Cadotte,Your garden is running away." The garden running away is a perfect metaphor for the end of child rearing, the very fast passage of time.

"Lost Garden" by Janet Lewis is read by Joan Haas. Her sensitive reading is introduced with the sound of loud cicadas. The monotonous rhythm of the cicadas' clicking contrasts with the fleeting nature of granny’s garden.

The Earth Falls Away (81 x 12", oil on canvas, 2017) is a portrait of a girl forgetting the earth. She is groundless, imagining herself in another time and place. Swirling around her are forms, formulas and other fun mysteries. Lewis' "The Reader" also describes a lost reader, there the "Sun creeps under the eaves,... While he forgets the earth." Time passes." And all so still.. But "A creature fresh from birth Clings to the screen door. Heaving damp heavy wings." In timeliness, there is birth and death.

"The Reader" by Janet Lewis and read by Catherine Hinton. A reader is suspended in time, or lost in another time. Everything is still except the rustling of leaves. Catherine's captures that sense of suspended time with her soft, deep voice. Her voice seems like an embrace. Janet Lewis. Poems Old and New 1918-1978. Swallow Press, Ohio University Press, Chicago, IL, 1982, p.23

Morning Hue & Buried Fossil  (81 x 12", oil on linen, 2017). Two of Lewis’ poems inspired this painting: Fossil, 1919 “I found a little ancient fern Closed in a reddish shale concretion, As neatly and a charmingly set in As my grandmother’s face In a round apricot velvet case." Fossil, 1975 “Changed and not changed. Three million years. This sunlight-summoned little fern Closed in a cenotaph of silt Lies in my hand, secret and safe. In quiet dark transformed to stone, Cell after cell to crystal grown, The pattern stays, the substance gone…. Changed and not changed. The spirit hears In drifting fern the morning air.”

Two poems by Janet Lewis influenced the making of this painting. To picture the idea of geologic time, I used the sliver format.It's mostly deep dirt and hidden fossils. Carole Heine communicates the surprised of finding a fossil that's so ancient and yet, it resembles her grandmothers apricot case. Time is both ancient and present. Donna Emory reads the longer reflection about time's mysterious, and never ending change. The introductory sounds of tickling stream and shoveling set a mood and enhance the meditation upon time's meaning.

Lacing Life & Death (82 x 13", oil on linen, 2015)  was inspired by Lewis’ “Meadow Turf”. I remember my son, an adventurous boy, who perilously climbed every obstacle and yet, always seemed rooted to the ground. I see his radiant smile as he is betwixt heaven and the earth. And I am reminded of Lewis’ last lines, “Oh, heart, here is your healing, here among / The fragrant living and dead.”