The paintings were more inside-moon paintings. How I lived. The difference in a Sunday and a Monday. Having to leave the mountain in order to work in order to return to the mountain. Loving the mountain; loving in the mountain.

They were also an experiment - a dare - in energy.

I was scared before I started the series; I wasn't sure I was ready to commit myself. I wasn't sure what the paintings would be about: only that the mountain and the moon - already symbols in my work - would be the shapes, and that I would somehow record what was happening each day, beginning on the next new moon.

The weekend before I still didn't know - there were all those panels to prepare, there was 'so much' to decide (should I make diary notes on the paintings?) and to worry about (would I end up with 29 bad paintings?) - and, then, I was so be half way across the state on the day I was to begin. I asked friends: Wait a month? Stay home and paint? Go off and not paint? Go off and start a series?

Finally, a friend said, Marlene, why don't you just shut up and paint. I started the series crosslegged on the floor of a Nashville motel; away from the mountain, I painted her, and was committed.

Marlene M. Wills [Mountain]
January 28, 1981