As some warmer days get sprinkled through March, I can’t help but think of Shakespeare’s opening line in Richard III, Now is the winter of our discontent.  Whether it is the minor struggles of cabin fever and too many Zooms, or the major devastation of lost lives and jobs, we are all tired and sad…

For many weeks, it was a glorious fall in Greater Boston. Knowing this time was fleeting, I tried to capture it in this painting. The leaves were changing color and falling, the number of Covid cases was falling, and the Trump administration was falling. Hope was in the air.       We continued our…

As we say goodbye to 2020, we reflect on all we have lost and all we still hope for. I remembered this painting and felt it captured my thoughts. Like this willow, several of the trees I’ve painted over the years no longer exist. For a while, I thought perhaps I wielded the brush of…

For a week near the end of September, my husband and I escaped to outer Cape Cod (see my previous post, The Getaway, Part 1).  While walking in marshes, woods and on beaches, there were many times—seconds, minutes, maybe even an hour—of not thinking about the pandemic, job hunting, and related worries. One of our…

It was the time of year we most look forward to—early fall, when we would typically travel to Europe or take a cottage on outer Cape Cod. Clearly, our original thoughts of Nordic adventures were out. And with my husband already more than three months out of work, could we realistically splurge on a couple…

August was hot and dry, as every year in Boston gets hotter and drier. Leaves on the trees are tinged with yellow long before summer is even over. The pandemic has pushed climate change into the background, despite a surging season of fires, hurricanes, floods and drought across the country. All over New England, weakened…

It was July 31 and the highlight of our day, the evening walk. We serendipitously stumbled upon a live chamber music concert by the troupe Mistral in a local park. There in the center of the park, masked and distanced, the seven or so musicians played to an equally masked and distanced crowd. We delighted…

It was a curious juxtaposition. It was late April, the height of the Coronavirus outbreak in the Boston area where I live. The news was dreadful daily, increasing numbers of cases, hospitalizations, deaths. But all around, spring was blooming like never before. My 91-year-old mom remarked on it daily, never having seen this season with…

In late March, I went for a long walk at the Mass Audubon Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary in Natick. Throughout the winter, I had found myself particularly focused on the only green growth to behold, the pines. I had never been so visually arrested by them in the past, and looking back, perhaps I had taken…

I began “Twilight Flight” before the pandemic. It was only the evening sky with a dark wedge across the middle. It sat in my studio for months. On paper, I sketched a scene with several houses, a road and oversized trees on a chunk of land floating away. When the lockdown came, I painted my…