The last few lazy days of summer, and right now, it’s the light and the lines of the trees that compel. There are some red hair in there, but mostly the mountains are a jumble of green and gold.
Talking to Trees
Tag: featured
Missing Michigan
Too many things came up this summer, and we are missing seeing our family along the banks of Lake Michigan. I anticipated missing seeing parents and siblings, but I’m always surprised when I actually miss the violent storms that are a fact of life up there these days.
Increasingly, south western Michigan sees storms coming off the lake that morph into tornadoes. It’s always scary when it happens or is being reported, but it’s also more than a little exciting.
I don’t wish for death the way I did when I was younger. I even fear it a little now, and when the storms come, sometimes threatening life and property and getting hearts pounding with the wind, they are powerful reminders of just how alive we actually are.
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Winter Heat
Sometimes to help someone, you need to disconnect just enough from your empathy to keep the other person from the fog instead of marching into it holding their hand. I’ve had a few such cases at work lately. I can recognize my own traumas in the person I’m helping, but to use the lessons of experience and education, had to resist the temptation of wading into memories.
One of the pitfalls of that professional detachment is that it is sometimes hard to reconnect with other parts of life.
Painting is usually my lifeline, but the latest sessions felt as flat as the rest of my day. I’ve recently moved into abstraction, channeling the emotions inspired by our local mountains and the storms that move through them, and the emotion wasn’t there.
I tried faking the emotion. Then I tried painting the flatness.
Finally I decided to fight the flatness and get out of the studio for a day and go to the fields and woods.
I hadn’t been plein air painting since summer, and I rarely paint outside in the winter. Sometimes, I paint in the car with watercolors, but last Saturday, I knew I needed the kiss of the cold and wind to bring my whole brain to life.
It was bitter cold when I parked the car by my favorite field. I had my fingerless mittens and layers of shawl and scarf, and, after finding the right way to position my easel by the car door so that the wind wouldn’t blow things over and wick the heat from my body, I queued up a new playlist of mostly melancholy music to match my mood.
I was keen to get the racing clouds as they brushed the tops of the mountains with a new dusting of snow. I could feel my fingertips freezing, but there was a glow of life in the midst of this winter scape. I could hear ice cracking on the nearby Battenkill as the sun briefly emerged, and some creature, disturbed my presence, rustled nearby, invading my iPod playlist with their own music.
For the first time in days I was fully awake, intensely aware of every emotion, completely at peace, and seeing the answers to a question that had been plaguing me for months: Why do I need to paint nature?
Is there a point to painting nature when the world is in chaos? Aren’t there more important subjects? Why do I need nature in order to paint?
The answers had happened as winter’s soundtrack and sights and my moving brush reconnected with the same emotions that make me want to help and have hope for a world at peace in the first place.
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Little Piggies
While I’m working on art for art’s sake, by limiting myself to one art/craft fair for the summer. The unintended consequence of making art and not selling it is that you accumulate a fair amount of it, And not all of my little piggies, as I’m calling them, won’t end up going to market, and not all of my little piggies, as I’m calling them, will end up going to market.
I’ve been very good about not trashing canvases I don’t like. Almost every piece I make might get painted over when I go back to inspect it after a few days away, but I’ve had a watchdog protecting the proof of my “progress.”
Thing2 is taking on the role of taste maker and under 30 art critic in our house. As a musician, he is, naturally, willing to comment on other forms of art. He’s always, for sentimental reason, also been protective of any art that mommy makes. If he senses a piece might go into the trash or get painted over, he has a history of asking for it or even spiriting it into the black hole that is his room.
Someday , he’ll either be sitting on a small fortune of art or have a nice pile of fire starters. In the meantime, it’s nice to have at least one serious collector of my work in between the increasingly infrequent fire sales.
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Get Closer
Thing1 texted today that his spring break return this weekend will be the beginning of an extended stay as his schoolmoves to dance learning to respond to this virus that the world health organization now calls a pandemic. The University, like so many other organizations, is recommending “social distancing“. I often think we have too much social distancing in this country already.
While I texted back-and-forth with Thing1 about the logistics of getting his stuff home for an extended stay, I clicked on Facebook a few times. A fellow artist in town announced that it was plein-air season and she was looking for people to go paint nature. I had too many meetings after work to go paint today, but as she posted another open invitation to any would be painters, I begin mentally assembling my travel kit and checking the weather for the next few days.
Painting outside, for me, means painting alone most the time, but is anything but lonely. Painting outside means communing with bugs and birds. it means meditating on setting Suns or the dozens of colors of green. It means becoming part of the scenery so that you can feel it and try to keep that feeling in your work. It is solitary, but it is never lonely.
A few years ago I used to run. My favorite places to run were our mountain roads, flanked by trees and teeming with life. Like Plein air painting, running was solitary but never lonely. It was feeling morning do on your skin mixing a sweat. It was hearing your feet setting on dirt and dead leaves crackling underneath. It was listening to birds and smaller creatures wrestling in the woods next to The road or path. It was The opposite of distancing. It was getting closer to nature end to life.
So even though I know temporary recommendations for social isolation are probably wise in light of the impact of Corona in other countries with excellent health care access. I do think there is a an antidote do the Loneliness (and fear) it may bring. The answer is to move closer, Not farther, to life. Reconnecting with the natural world seems like one of the better ways to do that.
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From Mac on the Occasion of his 17th Birthday
Wanting to protect him in his formative years, I’ve never written Thing1’s name on this blog. On the occasion of his 17th birthday last week, however, Thing1 went on a walk-about up the back of Mount Equinox, the highest peak of the Taconics. It was from the top of the Equinox, about 4PM, that he sent me the photo that inspired this painting.
Mac – short for MacLean is as independent-minded as you’d think someone with a name like his might be, but he’s also something I’ve never been.
He’s brave. Not fearless – but brave.
On the way up the mountain, he texted a few photos and the occasional weather report – ‘a storm is passing and it’s so cool – don’t worry, Mom’. His phone ran out of battery before he could text about the bear that crossed his path on the way down the mountain, but neither a lack of communications or a close encounter of the furry kind sent him scurrying to our doorstep. The only thing that brought him off the mountain seemed to be the acknowledgement that, as it got darker out, his mother would be doing what mothers do best – worrying.
When he got back, he showed us the pictures he’d taken and told us of everything he’d seen — the abandoned farm, the gates of the monastery that sits midway up the mountain and the animals that had crossed his path. He ended his story with plans for a next hike and an invitation to join him on a future adventure, and I realized we’d received the best possible birthday present from Mac on his 17th birthday.
We heard a kid who could acknowledge the reality of unexpected dangers on a hike while refusing to let fear keep him from the path. And I knew his invitation wasn’t a cry for help but an encouragement to join him on a new adventure.
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Snow Days
I love snowy days when the whole world seems quiet. Maybe not truly at peace, but just enough silence to let a body stop and think.
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Things I can’t Control
These are dust devils in eastern Washington. They rise up from the dusty Palouse and wheat fields especially after the wheat has just been harvested.
I love them because they are proof that, even though, on the surface, the land has been thoroughly tamed by humans, there are some things we can’t control.
Each time I see them they inspire awe. Also, the recognition of dust bunnies … I mean Devils … as something that can’t be controlled is a great metaphor for the way I keep my house.
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Small Town Summer
Our family used to spend a good part of the summer in Southwestern Michigan. It’s still mostly rural, kind of like where we live in Vermont, and one of my fondest memories was spending summer mornings running around with my Grandmother to the butcher, the market and the farm stand as she shopped for the nightly feast for the family.
Our last stop was at a driveway where a card table, laden with corn, whatever veggies the owner’s garden had yielded that day, and an unlocked cash box. Folded index cards to display the prices. The woman who owned the makeshift stand had usually retired to the beach by the time we got to her place. Even back then, I marveled at how successful the Honor Box tradition was.
I still love the honor box. It’s a quaint way to support a tiny business, but every little self-serve farmstand is also a kind of beacon. It’s a reminder that there’s still trust and trustworthiness. It reminds me there’s still something good out there that I can help grow, just by putting my money in the box.
