Look out! It’s a new year!

Here are four examples of my holiday – new year’s card. I had fun playing with color on these – different color rings, different color backgrounds, highlighting the figure with ink, and so on. It was all about play, and I hope that’s a theme that will continue throughout the year, as I try new images and new techniques.

I hope it’s a theme for my readers’ new year as well. May you all have the time and opportunity to seriously play in 2012.

A friend recently asked about this image, and what was my thinking behind it. There are many answers to that question; as I carve and print I usually keep thinking about and finding new ways of looking at my own work. But it all began here:

This is a photo from my pilgrimage on the Camino Frances in 2006. We were leaving Murias de Rechivaldo, just past Astorga, early in the morning after a night of thunderstorms. A beautiful double rainbow graced the sky, and kept growing, changing, and developing over an extraordinary length of time.

I was walking with a French pilgrim, and he exclaimed: “The Camino! So wonderful! Every day, there is a miracle!”

Being the contrarian that I am, I immediately thought to myself, “Ha! Spain is not magic!” (That was my literal thought; I still remember it.)

What I meant, and mean, is this: There are miracles every day no matter where you are. We notice them on the Camino, or in any special event, because we are looking out for them. The trick –and the hard part– is to keep looking for them in our everyday lives.

Let’s all look for the wonder in 2012.