Gift Horse

“Looking a gift horse in the mouth” is one of those expressions that always made me laugh, so I googled it. Turns out, horses used to be evaluated by their age and their age was determined by their teeth, specifically, how ‘long in the tooth’ they were. I find it ironic that this has evolved to become an expression for “being grateful for what you get.” Is it essential or prudent for us to determine a value on the things given to us? Is it necessary to determine a worth on the things that are ‘gifts’? Is this level of evaluation actually being ungrateful? Maybe we should stop looking our gift horses in the mouth and instead start looking them in the eye and just saying “thank you”.


Gift Horse

Piecing It Together

“Piecing It Together” originated from a photo of my grandmother Helen and her sister, Julie, working on a puzzle. On the back of the photo, in my grandmother’s handwriting, she wrote “1943 and still at it”. The image and the quote got me thinking about how we spend are lives doing just that; piecing it together and figuring it out. The silhouetted bird represents the things we do and think that hold us back and prevent us from seeing the complete picture. The irony of it all is that the key to piecing together the big picture is usually hiding right in front of us in plain sight. This 4' x 6' painting is charcoal, acrylics, fabric and paper collage on 6 wood panels.

Piecing It Together