Shall we say it is an interesting mid-summer season of first harvest? Here on our little patch of earth food and flowers are coming early and passing quickly. Outside, the land has gone from green to brown. The struggles of flora and fauna reflect my own. I know I’m not alone in this feeling.

The spring rains brought massive amounts of greenery, the largest color field within sight typically. We cheered to the first flowers and victorious thymus minus, a carpet of ground cover. The heat brought color to life with a new zinnia collection. In the south bed of the garden, there were so many bees buzzing on the thousands of volunteer Bachelor buttons and larkspurs that I could not easily walk the path to tend the tomatoes and zucchinis.

More birds come every year. Flocks of gold finches were feasting on Bachelor button seeds, so I let them go to seed. Our birdbaths might be the only available water for miles around. We’re leery of this drought when there is less green.

Herb garden, south bed, Royal lilies, garden closet wren nest

I hardly know what to say about these last few months in the studio. Except that it’s called me there to paint almost every day. That’s all I want to do, frankly – process not product. My mission is to portray realms of wonder, places sensed below the surface appearance of things.

The Long Path Home

Sunwise Farm and Sanctuary- its gardens, fields, forests, birds, deer, and architecture – is the source of creative inspiration. It becomes obvious when I evaluate the artwork that I completed in the Creative Visionary Program. The process of reviewing basic principles of art and soul resulted in 16 acrylic studies on wood panels and journals filled with studies and notes.

16 paintings on wood panels, 12 x 12″, by Kathleen O’Brien

In the studio I bring to life in paint The Great Curve, Garden Academy, the series Zinnia Gardens, Lilac Enchantment Retold, the series The Long Path Home.

detail “The Great Curve”, 20 x16″ by Kathleen O’Brien

Daily art practice in the journals was, and still is, what encourages me to explore new ways of expressing the depth of nature, and how to share that with you. It’s like being in an alchemist’s workshop integrating a new medium, new perspectives, clarifying my mission as an artist, and all that I know.

Daily Art Practice, journal page May 1

Geography of Time, Place, Movement and Networks, Volumes 1 and 2

“Geography of Time, Place, Movement and Networks” volumes 1 and 2

Greg and I are very pleased that our chapters in these geography books edited by Stanley Brunn, professor emeritus at UK have been published by Springer. About Volume 1 he wrote: “This book describes the journey concept relating to cultural and social history of Western and non-Western worlds. By including time journeys negotiated by women, racial minorities, artists, and scholars from the humanities and social, natural and physical scientists, the book explores time/space journeys in personal, professional, and cultural life and place experiences. The sixteen chapters in this book offer new insights into time/place worlds in different contexts including history, culture, astronomy, and science fiction. The concept is one where science and art worlds intersect in the emerging worlds of the unknown. With contributors from different disciplines and countries expanding our understanding of this concept, this volume provides a valuable source for disciplinary and interdisciplinary classes and seminars exploring these scholarly frontiers.”

I have written several blogs about my chapter, From Inner Realms to Outer Worlds: An Artist’s Time Journey.  In summary:” I began my journey as a professional artist in 1968 when I sold my first oil painting, “Beethoven.” Much led up to that moment. Follow my story as I write about the routes that led me from Japan, Italy, Germany and many parts of America from coast-to-coast learning about navigating the choices I made about styles, mediums and process as I adapted to the changes in the art world. In this chapter, I reveal how my persistence and consistency of mission as an artist sustained me in the journey to the present. This is a story of mapping the inner world in the pursuit of self-knowledge through art making and journaling. By integrating my experiences of a life time, I share with the world the importance of communication, creativity and contemplation.”

Amateur Archaeology and the Mystery of Daniel Boone’s Footprints, Persistent Myths Collide with Native American Indian Archaeology

Greg’s chapter, in Volume 2, is Amateur Archaeology and the Mystery of Daniel Boone’s Footprints, Persistent Myths Collide with Native American Indian Archaeology. Here is the beginning of the chapter that describes our history on our land:

“The following chapter details the critical role of an amateur archaeologist in unraveling persistent myth, unquestioned assumptions, and archaeological research to reveal a new understanding of the legend of Daniel Boone (1734-1820) and his exploration of the state of Kentucky

In authoring this chapter, I seek to document to a limited degree, my journey into amateur archaeological research, conducted over a 23-year period, from 1999-2022. In doing so, help to create improved methods for other non-professionally trained researchers to sort fact from fiction, make practical assumptions, and conclude tentative findings into an approach supporting future research.

On Thanksgiving weekend of 1998, having located a parcel of land to purchase in central Kentucky, I traveled there to walk the land personally, and to determine if it met the desires of my wife and I for a homestead. The tract contained 44 acres once owned by the Shaker community of Pleasant Hill Kentucky, located near the Kentucky River in Mercer County, near the center of the state.

Unknown to us at the time, the property was also less than 4 miles from the legendary “Boone’s Cave”. Its historical marker reads as follows; “Only cave in Kentucky historically verified as used by Daniel Boone. He spent rest of winter in cave alone after companion, John Stuart, was killed in January, 1770, the first recorded white man killed by Indians in Ky. Boone joined in summer by brother Squire. Together they continued to explore and hunt before returning to North Carolina.”

The marker reveals scant details of the adventures of this famous man.

The tract of land for sale consisted of 45 acres, and contained within a flat hilltop of 20 acres or so, which gradually ran downhill to Shawnee Run Creek, and included a spring rumored to have never run dry. The flat hilltop continued beyond the property line to the South, and in total, the hilltop was roughly 75 acres and located at an elevation of 1000’ above sea level, dropping in elevation to the west about 300’ to the creek and spring, which ran directly into the Kentucky River a mile or so downstream. The land, like most, did not reveal its history in an obvious fashion, and though owned by the Shakers from the 1820’s till the 1920’s, contained only traces of the Shaker limestone fences that once outlined its boundary. There were no obvious traces of Daniel Boone on these 44 acres, thus the possibility had not even been considered.

Having purchased the land in 1999, and building a home on it during 1999/2000, bits and pieces of the land’s history had come to light, namely, that Harrodsburg Kentucky, being the nearest town and 7 miles west, was known as the “first permanent English settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains”, and was settled in 1774, or nearly 5 years after Daniel Boone wintered over in a cave just 2 miles east of the future settlement.

“Harrodstown” as it was first known, had been attacked by a variety of Native American Indians seeking to drive the settlers out of their age-old hunting grounds and ancestral home.

Through the journals of the Shakers living here at Pleasant Hill, their 5000-acre intentional community, it is revealed that the Native American Indians had not been demonized by the Shakers in the same fashion that the local community of Harrodsburg had. Having arrived in 1806, the Shakers were never attacked by the Natives, which by then, had mostly left the state going to the south and west.

The Shaker journals go on to claim that they had received messages from “Spirit”, including spirits of deceased Indians, whom revealed to the Shakers the location of sacred local sites used by the Natives. The Shakers had, in turn, used the sites for some of their own outdoor worship services.

“Spirit” would later tell the Shakers to dismantle the sacred site, and conceal the location permanently. It would be another century and a half before an amateur archaeologist would locate the site, allowing for its restoration in the late 1990’s, to the original Shaker configuration of an inner and outer ring of fencing placed there ages ago, and used for sacred dance.

This story would be the first to reveal to me the importance of amateur archaeology in uncovering the history of this location, and it had inspired a deep curiosity to know more. It seemed reasonable to simply ask the local residents what the history of the neighborhood was…and so my personal journey toward amateur archaeology unknowingly began.

From a neighbor bordering on the south, it was learned that the Native Americans had settled the hilltop thousands of years before our purchase in 1999, and had left behind stone tools and implements, later found by the pioneer farmers working the land in the late 1700’s. Though not considered “collectable” then, the stone tools and arrowheads would begin to find their way into private and public collections by the mid 1800’s as local burial mounds were unearthed by archaeologists seeking treasure and knowledge of the ancient peoples of the area.

By the early 1900’s, it was becoming fashionable to pick up and save exceptional examples of native tools, arts, and crafts, primarily arrowheads and spear points, as collectors were amassing the local artifacts in private hands.

Sunwise Farm, the name chosen for our homestead, was no exception. The hilltop settlement once owned by the Shakers, was sold by them in the late 1920’s when the last local Shakers sold the community at auction. It was bought by local farmers and used a similar fashion, farming common crops, grains, forage, hemp and tobacco. Along the way, a local farmer continued to collect the stone artifacts, and over a period of several decades, had collected nearly all of the artifacts on the surface.  The artifacts from the hilltop at Sunwise Farm were gathered in earnest beginning in the 1940’s, and the vast collection would be saved for decades, and eventually find its way to auction around 2010-2015

Having built Sunwise Farm, and occasionally walking the land in search of any remaining arrowheads and artifacts, I questioned how the Native Indians survived on the same soil, how they hunted, built shelters, obtained resources, and traveled. As evidenced by the vast collection of artifacts left behind, the Native peoples likely thrived here for millennia.

The answers to these questions would not come easily or quickly, even though the large field did contain clear evidence of their occupation in the form of stone chips left behind by thousands of years of tool making. The stone chips, called debitage by archaeologists, were scattered throughout the village site. Though not a tool or arrowhead, I began to collect some of the chips in an effort to learn more about the people who had lived there, and in doing so, began to understand their daily life.”

For your listening pleasure

Detail of Mozart from Spotify

Writing this blog was a challenge because my art is evolving and I don’t have the words for it yet. My solution is to listen to Mozart, and that always helps me focus in this situation. Here is a detail of him on a Spotify album. This is from the portrait I copied in oil as a commission in 1981. In From Inner Realms to Outer Worlds: An Artist’s Time Journey I wrote about the importance of music in my early career.

Mozart Piano Sonatas