In 1995 I reached what I then considered a milestone of thirty years as a visual artist . In a time of introspection I wrote the following musings as evolving inquires, and reflections on nature, art, and culture. The bird in flight ink drawing shown on the cover was drawn in 1965. The original Ltd edition soft cover book sold out. Below a sampling of the contents .... Norman Rich

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As an artist are you attentive to the scent of flowers, and the joy that nurtures you? Do you perform the remarkable dance of the bee that lets others know where the meadows are?

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We want to know what time it is. The sun dials our way home in deep green shadows. Will nature take us back at this late date?

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Stay long enough, dwell there. Stay long enough and the galaxy and all its splendor will emerge from this little tide pool.

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Long ago humankind freely drew bison on the walls of altimira’s caves. Wildlife adorned teepees, and was honored in traditional and tribal living spaces. Picture in your living space, the wild spirit of raven. Come full circle to your ancestors memories, of worlds intact: wild, free, and honored once again.

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Artists like rogue systems analysts thrash about in the upheaveal of social change. Inside I find myself in the calm of an ancient present, entrusted with primordial rights, making my way back to the garden.

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Our countless brush strokes pushing and pulling, fishtailing their ways through blue ribbons of water. We go the way of the sockeye, struggling upstream to spawn. We change in flowing transformations turning and lifting on the wings of eagles.

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Here comes the same question. Every morning the same hope, tail wagging. Are you going off to work and art or will you live your dog's dream on forest trails and shoreline sanctuaries?

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The entire universe is found within you. If the artist conveys only the depth known to the artist, how will the art find its way out.

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With no head, no brain, and no thought salmonella has found you inside and out. If salmonella can do it why can't art?

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I prepare to paint, like a child entering the forest with all the tensions and expectations of alert curiosity. Drawn deeper into the heat of expereince I have become afire with improvisation. this is my own free form dance. I have entered this wilderness for vision, I return to offer up a painting.

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Interacting energies of tree, sky, and mountain. Role models of branching, spirals, meanders, and waves.

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As art rises phoenix-like from the ashes in the depth of timeless space, what of art itself is burned away and what is revelaed by the fires of transformation?

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In the context of art history, in the face of art theory, what visual language will we avail ourselves of to express an inner, unspoiled essence of things.

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If we knew all, and more, all at once, would it make any difference to the great blue heron poised along the shore?

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Having domesticated ourselves, how can we determine to what extent freedom and wildness remain in us or our art?

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Organic intuition or planned purpose? Rhythmically forming or thoughtfully constructed? Painterly experienced or conceptually designed? From where we are, do we see from where we are coming from?

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You are in search of truth and beauty ~ have you tried putting yourself in the way of it?

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Here we are but an ocean away from knowing the dreams of one periwinkle.

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Craggy bark, stony mountain, wind bent arbutus. In the absence of smooth flat walls, where will art hangout?

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We come and go, snow flakes and family trees alike.

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Have we noticed? Wasn’t art supposed to be dead, or was that first blow a long way from the heart?

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Again the annual bird count. This year how may cranes, ravens, owls, and eagles can be found in landscape art? Each year is the count going up or down?

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Art came to the outer edge of wild nature asking permission to enter. Barely audible, nature whispers “ where does your self end?”

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How can we keep art in its place as long as you’re content with belly laughs, and rolling on the ground like that?

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You see yourself mirrored in glass and granite corridors, along a steel rimmed hallway, leading out to an asphalt alley. Do you see the spring below the concrete still running, still watering your hopes and dreams?

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If you stand on the prow of your boat waiting for your one perfect koan to come in, what need is there to chart a course or set sail, with all those other koans floating in the harbor?

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You are in search of high art in nature’s galleries. On comparative merit which is better, or is more significant? The colorful peacock, the black raven, or the fuzzy ball of duckling?

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Inspirations. Creative intent paired with an open ongoing invitation to serendipity. Together they dance and will, I know, come to astonish me, one leading the other over time.

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Are we floating bubbles of sea water, suspended in boxes perched in twig nests on the back of a turtle, or is that some other circulating system?

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Be wary, as the art world on a critical path, head bangs and deconstructs its way through sociopolitical causes. What is gained if we lose whole intact realms of creativity? What is left if we are drained away? One less way of fathoming the sublime.

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We sun ourselves like otters at play in the rhythms of sea and sky. Countless waves are woven through our art and love. The beat we keep runs deep with tidal breath and tenderness.

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Fine art values. The unique artist ego. I look up for a moment and fly with a flock of geese until I disappear from sight.

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Mind brought back to nature is mind once found, never left behind.

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Lattice of woven energies, interlace, entwine, appear, and reappear on their circuitous route. I find in myself a mobius strip of beginnings, seemingly without end.

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Would you prefer to experience a wider set of beliefs, a narrower set of assumptions, or no beliefs or assumptions at all.

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I asked nature for a release from art for a while. The sheep gave me their wool. The cochineal bug gave itself up for my red. With heirloom dreams of timeless truths, this tapestry has tufted art. Am I now back where I started?

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On the one hand art is a source of pride, power and investment to the few. On the other hand art can be a resource to catalyze, gratify and nurture the many. If I cup these hands together can I bring together what has been separated?

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Release a fecundity of creativity without anxious interference. Open yourself to the cosmos that has mothered you. Let eternity father your desire. This moment, pulse of the heavens surge through your clear blood.

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Would you purchase a work of art at substantial savings if the artist reserved lifetime rights to alter the piece?

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Evolutionary ladder. Who amongst us can live both in the shallows of tide-pools and sea depth of 30,000 feet, discharge all their internal organs and grow them back again in just over a week. The sea cucumber can.

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Salt water bubble. Origins and ancient memories. Some days more than others, the moon pulls the ocean, back through the many watery veils.

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Nocturnal eyes of the heart see radiance. Polyrhythmns have set about empowering my art arm. I am in the act of painting. Intuitions come to play, cross polinating, and renewing. Rites of painterly passage that will go on becoming, have their need to astonish me.

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If we are to preoccupy ourselves with the seemingly static appearance of things, how can we continue to honor the vital energy inside, ceaselessly in change, forming and transforming the nature of things?

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I am drawn to visual thinking and a study of energy, of flow and forming, figure and ground relationships. Over decades this journey and these lessons cross pollinate my wild nature photography. Oh joy!

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Two waves. One wave remains at the same spot while the other wave wanders across the surface. Are you certain which is the sea and which is the stream? Do you currently prefer a wandering or a lasting form?

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I float effortlessly in an inter- tidal pool, arms and fingers dangling drapped in kelp, little sculpins swimming through my open fingers.

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I began by making art a record of what was seen, a consequence of my perspective. Fluent, I came to satisfy a need for self expression. Now an angel is enquiring of my muse" How well is he on the way to becoming the nature of things, expressing themselves?"

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Art waiting for you like a ripe orange. Are you going to suck out the juice, decorate the bowl, or go marmalade in the peels?

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Tip of the wet brush, the eye of the stroke sets sail, dripping and drooling, licks and smacks the snow wall, blood red pigment coming on the downstroke. Now how are you going to take a thing like that home with you?

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If finally everyones need to know is satisfied, will art then return home to welcome wonder and its cornucopia of mysteries.

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The spark of art and life. The same oxygen atoms breathed in and out by all the people who have ever lived, not to mention the rest of everything else. Can we bring our art any closer to everything that ever was?

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Wild nature likes the life it lives, and lives the life it likes.

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At ease at the center, presents are given. Energy is forming in a rich micro life of sea and soil. I am that. Do you recognize me iin the act of painting?

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If you built art as a vessel to take you to nature and found this vessel disintegrating the closer you got, would you turn back or stay the course?

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Presenting all we know all the time, how will we sense the wonder of mysteries before the acorn got its name?

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Rhythmically swaying. I look up into a canvas of clear blue sky. I enter this sky, loaded with pigment, a ball of flaming sun.

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I see and feel the ebb and flow of salt water tide-pools. From the form of the shell, I am drawn further into the forming itself, to primal creative energies of branching, spiraling, and meanderings.

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I sustain myself. in the power of becoming, I mediate between lingering triumphs and anxious doubts. I retain myself, all the while I'm undergoing metamorphosis. I take the risks to proceed, for the possibilities of entering the larger creation.

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Walking on smooth concrete slabs I walk as if I know where I am going. On rough natural ground I find myself exploring by looking where I am going.

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If tears alone could give you back innocence along with a free and unfettered life, would you return those tears to all the situations that you would have grieved for in the first place, if you only knew then it mattered.

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Oxygen atoms are bringing you greetings, having come thousands of miles to visit you, along with the sound of an exploding galaxy dancing on your radio air waves while you surf the dial. Is art jealous of nature streaming through you like that?

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Nature has stored precious things in its galleries. Pearls in oysters, veins of time in fossils, and seeds in a chipmunks pouch. What are the nature of things we are storing for ourselves?

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Art from the future. Coming in waves from afar in a hurry to come ashore. Vigilant defenders with owl feathered shafts, we take our turn, looking out from our evergreen positions. Why do we not leave this place? Because our fletches are in the earth, and we will not be the ones to let painting die.

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As artists go out on a limb, our branching paths send signs in mulching leaves, to get the message back to the roots.

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You tell your pets, art and nature to sit and heel. But for the moment they have other senses to follow.

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Nature going looking for us, doesn't have to come far in this little boat.

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Interweaving perpetuity and rhythmic change. Learning to see, to prioritize seeing over thinking, discovery over knowing, and treasuring the in between liminal spaces of subtle perception over the security of closure.

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We live our lives in relational energy fields. The more I play with opposites the more I find them complementary.

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Want a motto? Here is one to live by. Let intuitions guide your intent, and be fearlessly creative.

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A small hummingbird hovers just over your out-stretched hand. Toads approach you making you laugh. Are you up to making cartwheeels with the sun and the moon, or is it still a long way from play day?

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Blank canvas on the easel: you ask the muse can it drive. Yes, but are you going to let go of the wheel?

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Looking into art. Do you see a mirror, a shadow, a window? What else other than likes, wants, and needs are we seeing?

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Inside of you works of art arise from spirit in solitude. Outside of you notions of art flitter in worlds crowded by opinions. Weather this. Live the life that lives within.

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