Bronze - Reviewers Choice Awards
New book by Janice E. Kirk

Drawing Close, Encountering Joy

An Artist’s Psalms and Prayers for the Earth

From Fort Rock to Hovenweep, redwoods to the Rockies, ocean to high desert, here is an invitation to connect with the natural world.

“Kirk’s choice to intersperse her own drawings along with her writings and Scripture passages offer readers a warm invitation to gaze at images as well as reflect on the text.” -Kirkus Review

Bronze - Reviewers Choice Awards

Seeing the Natural World

Welcome! Bring your sketchbook, camera, and notebook. We’ll walk the neighborhood or browse along a trail. Not a footrace, we will take a good look and then a second look at what makes up the natural world.

Let’s inhale fresh air, stir up a bit of soil, skip a rock across the lake—these are basics of life that feed the soul. Puddles, pebbles, odd leaves, creepy-crawlers, I have to bend down and say hello. Each one has a history, each one has a job to do, each one helps to keep us alive. That’s the amazing part of the whole natural complex: every plant and animal is needed to make this work. That includes us. We live in and depend upon our life community, our neighboring plants and animals. To be a good neighbor is to understand nature’s ways. Come along! Let’s take another look!

Find Art, Nature, and Spirituality stories in my Books and in my Blog Archives: Out SketchingNature NotesPainting America the BeautifulCherish the EarthPraises, Prayers, and Poetry.

Enjoy!

From the Blog

View the Drawings & Paintings
of Janice E. Kirk

Here you can find paintings mentioned in my book, The Road to Beaver Park.

From the Pacific Coast, across the Great Basin, through the Mesa and Canyon Country, into the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado Plateau, and low deserts, including Death Valley and the Sonoran Desert, it was a feast to the eye, a journey of the heart.

Published Books

Drawing Close, Encountering Joy

From Fort Rock to Hovenweep, redwoods to the Rockies, ocean to high desert, here is an invitation to connect with the natural world…

Milton the Mouse

A chase, a ride, a chase and hide, and Milton the mouse lands in new territory: the Stewart household. The wily escape artist has the run of the house until one fateful night when he is caught. What do you do with a mouse that hitches a ride home from a camping trip…

The Road to Beaver Park

Part travelogue, part natural history, part field course in art appreciation, the author records her development as an artist as she learns to paint and learns to see…

The Christmas Redwood:
A Forest Parable

An Advent tale of waiting and watching… A redwood seed, planted by wind on the very night Jesus was born, becomes the most steadfast of all trees on earth…

Cherish the Earth

Is Earth Stewardship biblical? Yes. For anyone wanting to understand what the Bible has to say about earth stewardship, here is one of the most complete discussions of environmental scriptures in print and comes with a scriptural index…

Wild Edible Plants of Western North America

A best seller since 1970, this book has sold over 100,000 copies. It lists the great bulk of the edible plants found west of the Great Plains and in southwestern Canada and northwestern Mexico…