Sitting Northwind Arts Center with the exhibit Small Expressions (12/2013), I looked at Maureen Piper’s “Strata”, shown here, and drew my own piece, “When I Draw (Your Painting) Everything Changes”. Click on this image to start the slideshow:

Strata, by Maureen Piper

Such differences & such pleasure:

• The hand in Maureen’s original painting is frail and smaller. Everything is more delicate, and the strata below is softer. There are three delicate but strong translucent seed-moons that are also leaf. The hand has dropped these seeds to the ground below. It is a dark but hopeful winter image.
• In both versions of my drawing the hand is solid, substantial, and there are not seeds, but a single moon-world.
• In the middle monotone version, the hand stops you from approaching the moon and the land below it. You are held back.
• In the second version, the color creates a connection between the hand and the moon-world. The hand is either releasing that moon-world, or is pulling up the land to form a new world. You are the observer:  which is it?