For the most part, the change has still been almost imperceptible, but it is there. It’s a fire are brushed across masses of green, there are just enough splashes of gold and orange, however, to warn that the changing of the guard is on the way.
Here in Vermont, that’s the sign to get the firewood stacked and the studs in the tires. It’s the time to get ready to bundle up and hunker down, and I have yet to meet a single Vermonter, who isn’t secretly giddy at the prospect.
Old Lady Katie is in her 80s, in dog years, and like the middle-aged ladyshe follows around, she has to visit the necessary room a little more frequently these days. Katie’s necessary room is the great outdoors, and, because she has the world’s worst recall once the sun goes down, I always take her out on a leash for her last potty break.
The late night leash visits, give me a chance to enjoy the great outdoors in all kinds of weather, sometimes when we have visitors of the giant, furry kind near the composter, and, as happened last night, when the yard in the forest and Mountains beyond, are under the spell of moonlight.
Last night, the moon was gold, almost orange, forecasting, the change in seasons that is almost upon us. It will be our last autumn in Vermont before we move, and in that five minutes, I was reminded that there will be some magic from this place that we will miss. Sometimes, though, a little bit of bitter makes the sweet more special.
For ages I’ve wrestled with the ethics of painting with a medium that requires the purchase of little plastic tubes of pigment that will ultimately end up in a landfill. My neurodivergent brain perseverates on the idea that all these creations will end up at a garage sale, and then the landfill. Does the world really need more pretty pictures of landscapes?
I know when we move to a city next year, I will paint the things that I find beautiful there and I wonder again, does the world need more pretty pictures?
As election season gets uglier, however, I realize the answer to that is a resounding yes!
I paint the landscape Vermont, because it is increasingly developed and less wild, and I want to share a beauty that I think is worth protecting. When we go to the city I’m always drawn to parks, filled with people from different walks of life, and I don’t want to get better at painting people. That expression of community is also rare and precious.
As I was standing in a field, trying to remember how to paint (not quite there yet), I was able to remember exactly why I need to meet these things. When I’m standing there, I feel like the little mermaid if she was middle aged and fat and still wanting to be part of those precious parts of the world.
So there won’t be anything profound or deep. There’ll just be more pretty pictures (I hope), but I think it’s actually maybe, just maybe what we do need.
Scott, the person who boards our ancient mutt Katy, while we’re away, has taken to calling her Old Lady Katy. She’s over 13 and navigating the world as a senior citizen.
This week, missing my left inner ear, my entire life is about navigation.
Saturday, the Big Guy after took Thing2 to work, I decided to take advantage of a break in the rain and walk part way up our 900’ gravel driveway with old lady Katy.
Each old experience — something as simple as walking up the driveway- is brand new. Suddenly, I’m hearing my footsteps on the gravel in a different way. The field of vision jerks a bit more as I move from foot to foot.
I am doddering and feeling a bit like a senior citizen myself (I have many years before I will admit to being in that category.) It’s disorienting, but I suppose that’s what happens when the world is new. And how often do you get to discover a whole new world,let alone when you’re in your fifties?
Too much rain has brought out the fall colors far too soon. They are just starting to peek through, and it would only have been noticed on a day like today when the sun makes an all too rare appearance for the summer.
The first spots of red and orange always seem to be signs telling us to enjoy time outside and carefree days while we can.
This past weekend Manchester/Sunderland, hosted the annual hill climb — a bottom to top tour of the Equinox mountain in Manchester, Vermont. The hitch is that all of the cars doing the climbing are classics, and none of them are equipped with the all wheel drive that is emblematic of most vehicles in our brave little state.
I passed by the classic car convention a few times this weekend, every once in a while, wishing we could take an hour or two to drive to the top (Thing1 climbed it by himself on foot on his 17th birthday). It was a perfect day to be at the top of a 5000+ foot mountain. Puffy, clouds, and the sky is a deep saturated blue these days.
I’m having a lot of conversations with spring in my work these days. Some days spring is popping; others it’s buried under a fresh dumping of snow. Likewise, some days I paint the conversation with reckless abandon and no image in mind, but as my head turns, outdoors again, I find myself going back to the land to absorb and paint it as I feel it in the moment.
The natural world feeds my soul.
A few months ago, I worried that returning to representational landscapes was simply a fear of being brave enough to paint abstract. Now I realize that the mountains and changing seasons are not only integral to feeding my soul, they breathe new life into creativity.
Going back to the land doesn’t become a choice between abstraction and reality. It is the way to connect the visible world to the abstraction that lives in the soul.
It’s been in the 40s and 50s the last couple of days, and even though there are some sizable snowbanks left, it feels like Mother Nature is ready to keep her annual promise.
The light is changing. it lasts longer every day. It seems as if there are even more critters crawling around in the dark outside.
Suddenly, the forest that seemed populated only by the wind a few weeks ago, is teaming with life again.
12 x 12, oil on canvas
I see this particular view every time we come back from and the Equinox that I have to go back to again and again because I can’t get them out of my head and they never the same two days in a row. This is another one of those spots.
The difference is I have to remember this one because there’s no good place to park and draw or take pictures, so, each time we round this particular corner at the crest of this foothill in the Taconics, I try to commit another part of this view to memory.
This stand of white birches and poplars has become an annual painting pilgrimage for me. Late in the summer, the colors of the blowing leaves and grasses are comfort food for my soul.
We’re at the point in the summer where we open the windows of our earth-sheltered house for an hour in the morning to freshen things up and then close everything up for the day.
I go to draw even in the heat which makes the mountains look like they’re melting.
I’ve been coming up Muddy Lane At least three times a week for the last 20 years, and I thought there really weren’t any surprises left there. It’s amazing, though, how a glance at even just a car going by can turn your gaze in a slightly different direction and give you a completely fresh take on an old situation.
Picking My Battles 