Title: “Everything you see is lovely if love is what you choose to see.”

It’s amazing how something as easily forgotten as a dead leaf on the ground can be so easily disregarded. Look around. There’s beauty everywhere, even in a leaf.

Several years back when I lived in Malibu, I met a songwriter, Dean Grakal with whom I shared a few interesting conversations with about our life experiences. One of them was after I had been at the barn riding my Warmblood, “Blind Faith.” It was this perfect, sunny Southern California day and the view was crystal clear as far as I could see out over the ocean. After my ride, I spoke with Dean and told him about how everything I could see was so clear, as though the world was standing still and it was as perfect of a moment as anyone could possibly experience.

So the next time I saw Dean, he pulled out his tattered, worn notebook and said to me; “Everything you see is lovely if love is what you choose to see.” That was what he got from what I explained as that epiphany/perfect moment. At the time, he was working with Ringo Starr on an upcoming album. He incorporated those words into a song that went on to be one of Ringo’s albums.

The skinny of this story goes back to the dead leaf, dried up on a sidewalk. If you feel and see love, it’s what you will see all around you. I have to thank Dean for summing that up for me. It can be applied to so many things on a daily basis… like this beautiful leaf! That’s why I love creating art from something so easily looked over as the leaf or the second-hand shoes that I created a canvas piece from a few days back!