It’s Right Under Our Noses

Funny how I can be friends with someone on Face Book and yet feel shy when I bump into the person around town.  This happens, for example, with Patricia Brown.  Check out her personal website.

Paintings for the Spirit and Soul - Patricia Brown - http://www.patbrownart.net/biography.htm

I gingerly asked her to be my Face Book friend.  Her acceptance opened a new art gallery on my laptop.  Plus more.

Patricia is a gifted artist who has been in the periphery of my life for many years.  Her art demonstrates the meticulous care she takes with detail.  Patricia sees what so many overlook.

One of her paintings is a circular pile of rocks, bones, shells, and feathers – of every shape, size, color, marking imaginable.  It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s also dried plants, nuts, and seeds painted in there as well.  I’ve studied that painting until my eyes sting.

The painting gives me the same feeling as a home that contains an eclectic clutter that facilitates an endless stream of discovery.

Patricia’s been my neighbour – although while we lived in adjoining acreages, I was continuously running off to contract jobs around our province.  So I never conducted myself in a neighbourly fashion.  Being a wife, mother and artist, she looked as though she was juggling copious amounts of responsibility, too.

Years have gone by, Patricia has roller bladed to town thousands of times, helped the family coffers by working in one of our fun pubs, parented two sons and a daughter with her husband, and cultivated a growing voice in the community.

That facet of Patricia’s soul really caught my attention.  This energetic woman is an activist.  Though not yet a grandmother, she became involved with the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign that supports Grandmothers in Africa caring for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.  She even apologized in print about not being a Grandmother while declaring her belief in the cause and jumping in with hands, feet, heart and soul.

Yeah, I know.  Lots of people have lots of causes.  But here’s why Patricia captures my respect.  She sees.  She catches the subtlety.  She senses the nuances.  She intuits the goodness.

Why write about Patricia today?

Because she caught hold of something that captures my heart.  She took the time to “share” this transformational attitude so the rest of us could see:

It’s right under our noses.