I am intoxicated by the shapes & shadows of this world, fascinated by what they represent & enchanted by the energy each form offers to an open heart. You can suppose that the furrows created in Cordelia's dress when she bends forward are mere wrinkles. For me, they are as electric as the words in a Walt Whitman poem or the notes in a Chopin sonata.

   This picture evokes a line written by Homer millennia ago in The Odyssey, "So you, in form, are excellent, – better God could not fashion…."

   This is the beauty that calls to us every day. Liz Wessel & I write about loveliness as an offering into the sometimes gray lives of caregivers.

   Work at any job for ten, twenty or thirty years & it becomes hard to see the elegance around us. When we find it our days breathe meaning.

   What seams & shadows decorate the sheets you tuck around a patient? What do you see in the wrinkles of the old man to whom you offer comfort? What light glows from the skin of the newborn babies you lift into this world? 

   The world harbors dark pain. The world offers startling folds of grace. 

-Erie Chapman

"Cordelia's Dress" – Erie, 2016