"… we love the flowers, the grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart." 

-       Percy Bysshe Shelley, On Love

Along with arranging the furniture, unpacking boxes, building tables and setting up the studios, there was the garden. Mud and construction eventually yielded to crisp, Spring days wandering the nurseries.  In twos and threes, in bunches and by the truckful, we slowly brought home a cast of characters. Magnolia Ann for Mother's Day, Japanese Maple for Father's Day, grasses, and Anemones for Monica's birthday.  We dug holes for trees because, as Mary Oliver once said, "All good ideas begin with the trees."  A weeping willow for Monet sits behind the studio and a soft, white pine joins its native cousins surrounding the yard.  Inside, we stretch canvas and stir color, we make dinners and hang pictures, and we look at garden catalogs on cold winter nights.  In the paintings, moments from the outside are brought in, images and colors are cultivated on the garden plots of canvas and paper. Spring comes early in the studio, imagining the blooms to come, while outside, the bulbs planted as an act of faith in the Fall, are just sending up their new, green shoots. 

-MICHAEL RICH