Snapshots from Wonderland

Whitecaps (Peony), 5" x 7", wool and acrylic yarns on linen.  Designed and hooked by Karen D. Miller, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 2016. I get happily lost staring into the chaos of a peony’s bloom. Its hues and shadows roil and boil together like surf on a colorful sea.

More than half of the journey to making art is first seeing it. Once you see it, you can capture it. Often, though, we think that our daily routines are too absorbing to spare moments for wonder. Burdened by the monotony of the everyday, we forget how to be adventurous. Wonder, we say, is for children, as if only children can be carefree and only children can see something for the first time.

I have a garden in my backyard. It isn’t grand by any means, and I have little patience for tending it these days. So it is at times a wild place, beginning right behind my doorstep. Occasionally I get inspired and throw in a new plant, but it is merely throwing an extra splash of color into Mother Nature’s palette. It is her place to play. So I have learned to watch what she does each year. I have learned to observe her living art. I have learned to be amazed.