The sun began the setting ritual in the cloudless southern Arizona sky, such a beautiful but unfamiliar blue edged by mountains, so different from what I see each day. The day does not surrender to night without notice, the showy change of light and color mark every single thing, dark to darker, dusk to night and then, it all begins again. Time is a circle. For the artist, time is a circle.

We are born filled with wildly free creativity and must pause to learn the craft, the tools, the mediums, the techniques, the disciplines that will be our allies as we pursue what we have imagined. And often, our course is changed, must be changed. I was the painter that found my way into the world of commercial art and design and I confess, I loved it, the parameters, deadlines, sensibility, pace. Projects with beginnings and ends. There was satisfaction in seeing a finished product but always, the disappointment of it never quite being as envisioned and intended. And then there are the complications of life. So that button that held back the most creative thinking stayed in the pause position for a long time. But the circle does turn, slowly, and it has returned me to the artist, the one with the wildly free creativity but tempered with the good lessons acquired in the circle. The painting, drawing, sculpting, etching, printmaking, building of the early years come to mind so clearly, the techniques of long ago are now present and ready to be the allies, the ones I need right now. The desert was the quiet place, in a desert mind I could think and see clearly, I saw the sun set and rise, I saw circle, I saw my circle.