POSTCARDS FROM CHILE

    A friend invited me to his studio and asked me if I would share my impressions of Chile. 

But I had not been in Santiago long enough to give a visual description of the experience,

despite feeling so much at home there.

    As I watched a young girl call over to us from her rooftop playground,

laughing and being very silly with her friends,

I thought of a passage from Somerset Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence"...

    "Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes he has never seen before,

among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from birth.

Here at last he finds rest."

    How does anyone define and explain what moves beyond a simple visual experience,

onto that which grips our imagination with a force that moves the soul...