INTRODUCTION ~ Artist

Her drawing frenzies began with crayons and doodle pads before she went to kindergarten. 

Mom and Dad weren’t married anymore. They fought it out on the front porch or in the courtroom. A ready-packed suitcase and pair of houses defined her family. Sometimes she heard, and she always felt, the undercurrents. Dissension, revenge, and later, each of them assimilating their own brand of freedom. To be responsible for her became the loss. Mom and Dad scurried through living, it seemed, punctuated by marked calendars, new people, and renewed hope, leaving her tossed on the waves of time. 

Her head surfaced occasionally. A chance to breathe, the wild distraction to save herself, hidden in a well that never ran dry: thoughts within the mind, emotions of the heart. A fate relegated to brush strokes, a child’s unnoticed drawing frenzies, a teenager’s painting outbreaks, a woman’s studio sabbaticals. Nobody used the word art, instead, a glance or comment. That’s pretty. You like to draw. Is it the ocean or the sky? 

 Ariadne Franklin, of canvases splashed in blues and greens, a mermaid darting between reality and escape, ever detected, if anyone had looked. Her bouts lasted until the waves rolled out to sea again and calm restored for a little while. The story of an artist. 

“Sunshine and Lev” is a romance/suspense novel, my third release, available in print or eBook at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

–Clare Cinnamon