Fly Fishing the White River outside Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Tripp Standing in the White River Mist

I was in such a state of mental agitation, in such great confusion that for a time I feared my weak reason would not survive. . . . Now it seems I am better and that I see more clearly the direction my studies are taking.  Will I ever arrive at the goal, so intensely sought and so long pursued?  I am still working from nature, and it seems to me I am making slow progress.

Paul Cezanne (words recorded by Maurice Merleau-Ponty “Cezanne’s Doubt”)

I must say that this is one of the most welcome Spring Breaks I have known in many, many years, and I am barely into it.  I have (so far) pursued a daily regiment that balances household chores with studio time, and have been working on three watercolors over the stretch of a day-and-a-half.  This is the first time I’ve published this one, begun late last night.  The other two were “emulations” of Winslow Homer fishing compositions.  This is from a photo taken by a professional photographer nearly four years ago while he and I were fly fishing the White River outside of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  His wife was taking my watercolor workshop at the Eureka Springs School of the Arts that week, and he and I were getting into the river as much as possible, outside of class hours.  The river is remarkable as it is frequently shrouded in mists, and I have always been intimidated, trying to capture misty atmospheres in watercolor.  I always thought it would be relatively easy, but for me it’s not–I have tried this painting over and over again, and this is the first attempt that I have dared put on the blog.  The others were shredded and discarded.  I still don’t have what I want, but I am getting better, and think I can share in Cezanne’s exasperation–how much longer do I need?  Will I be given that time?

Thank you for reading.

A Day More Proustian than Warholish

Acrylic on Canvas in Martin High School Library

My Spring Break should have started yesterday at the end of school, but I believe it actually began tonight at 7:03.  That was when Something Happened (I love that title from the Joseph Heller novel, and loved the novel–it should be read by every man over 40).  Now I feel a real Break, a real potential for cleansing, for enlightenment, and am glad to have enough “juice” in me to stay up awhile tonight and try to record some meaningful thoughts.

Among the plethora of books I’m trying to read at the same time (such a bad habit), there is included the Andy Warhol Diaries.  Geez, the man can be so vacuous!  It’s been reported that he suffered dyslexia, and therefore didn’t write.  The Diaries  are actually transcribed from daily phone calls he made to Pat Hackett.

So, with feeble humor, I begin this blog in Andy Warhol Diaries fashion, and promise to do it only once:

Woke up at 8:25 this morning without the alarm.  Showered, dressed, drove to Kroger and bought basic groceries ($45.30, 4 miles).  Cooked breakfast in the kitchen.  Spent three-and-a-half hours cleaning a study that I had abandoned over a year ago (second bedroom in the house) and gathering information to file my taxes.  Watched on TV the St. Louis Blues beat the San Jose Sharks in overtime 4-3 and was glad.  Got a voice mail at 7:03.  Filled up my gas tank ($58.92) and returned some belongings to a friend ( 83 miles).  Drove home through a hellacious rainstorm.

Great stuff huh?  Imagine someone buying a book with 807 pages of that.  I just did, and I’m reading it.  To be fair, I am gleaning the occasional Pop Art history from his daily musings, but wow, I have to plow through so much vacuous verbiage to mine those facts.

And now, the actual day:

Following breakfast I settled into my comfortable living room reading chair and continued my reading of Proust (Swann’s Way).  I could not get past this story:

[Legrandin] came up to us with outstretched hand: “Do you know, master booklover,” he asked me, “this line of Paul Desjardins?

            Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.

Isn’t that a fine rendering of a moment like this?  Perhaps you have never read Paul Desjardins.  Read him, my boy, read him; in these days he is converted, they tell me, into a preaching friar, but he used to have the most charming watercolour touch—

Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.

May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, as it has come for me now, when the woods are all black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I do, by looking up at the sky.”  He took a cigarette from his pocket and stood for a long time with his eyes fixed on the horizons.  “Good-bye, friends!” he suddenly exclaimed, and left us.

I could not stop laughing.  To put it in context, the author thought he had been snubbed the day before outside church by Legrandin.  Now, while walking, he runs into the man again, and out comes all this verbiage over one line of a poem that is supposed to be profound, and then just as quickly, the man walks away.  No conversation.  No exchange.  Just a quick moment to pontificate, and then move on.  I laugh as I recall the many, many times this has happened in my past and present.  Not just that kind of treatment from someone putting on superior airs, but that kind of insipid advice to look to blue skies when the woods turn dark.

But the line that actually made me record this was: “in these days he is converted, they tell me, into a preaching friar, but he used to have the most charming watercolour touch.”  Ahhhh.  I spent most of the day digesting that.  I guess I’m going to adjust my goals to include some line about trying to learn to write (and blog?) with a “watercolor touch.”

Not long after Proust “tagged” me, I suddenly, while texting a dear friend, was pointed to a new direction in watercolor that had been in the back of my mind for a few days.  And after these texts settled, I suddenly “saw” what I want to do next.  But alas, it is 10:53 now, I am still in the mood to read and write in my journal, and it’s raining cats and dogs outside and the Man Cave is smelling kind of moldy.  I also don’t enjoy the garage lights too much after dark, preferring instead to let the natural light flood in through the garage door windows (or even open the door completely, weather permitting).

So instead, I post this 3 x 4′ acrylic canvas I painted as part of a series of “book covers” for the Martin High School library (where I teach full time).  And tonight, I choose to sit up late and read some more of the Nick Adams series from Ernest Hemingway, most particularly the two-part “Big Two-Hearted River.”  That has been one of my favorite short stories since high school, and though I will not be able to journey to Colorado this Spring Break to fly fish for trout, I know I will again some day.  Meanwhile I enjoy it vicariously by reading Nick’s story.

My plan is to begin this new series of watercolors tomorrow, and begin posting them as they emerge.  Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the Hemingway canvas.

Thanks for reading.

Transitions

Transitions

Lazy Ike and Lucky 13

Bomber and Tiny Lucky 13

Like many Southerners, I was ruined for church by early exposure to preachers.  So when I need to hear the sigh of the Eternal, I find myself drawn to a deep hollow between Fork Mountain and Double Top Mountain on the eastern flank of the Blue Ridge.  This is where the Rapidan River plunges through a hemlock forest and through gray boulders that jut from the ferny earth like the aboriginal bones of old Virginia.  This is a place of enlightenment for me, the spot where I received the blessing of my middle years.  Here, after three decades of catching fish, I began learning to fish.

Howell Raines, Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis

Finally I get around to posting the three watercolor sketches I finished up yesterday afternoon (Thursday) after school, while inhabiting my Man Cave.  Tonight, I sigh with a deep sense of contentment, enjoying my first evening of Spring Break, not returning to school until March 18.

Though I doubt that I will get any fishing in during this break (there is so much work to do and I welcome the space for it), I have turned recently to watercolor sketching these vintage pieces of fishing memorabilia.

I am opening this meditation with these words from Howell Raines, whose book changed my life profoundly.  He and I live in parallel worlds–I learned to fish as a young boy, and it was always my passion, but when I took up the fly rod about ten years ago, everything changed in ways that carry religious overtones for me.

I have titled the top piece “Transitions,” because of my shift from bass lures to trout flies about a decade ago.  All the subjects in the sketch are vintage.  The lures are borrowed from dear friends of mine.  And then, a student a couple of years ago gave me a beautiful wooden box filled with vintage flies!  I have been randomly selecting them for watercolor sketches as well.  I dare not fish the vintage flies though.  I just love to look at them, along with a few vintage bamboo fly rods and antique fly reels I have acquired over the past decade–great for looking at and watercoloring, but not for real use anymore.  I treasure them like museum pieces.

Almont, Colorado, about to enter the Taylor River

And of course, I couldn’t resist inserting a picture of myself during happier days.  The Taylor River, a few summers ago, lifted me out of this world of business, and inserted me into a paradise where time seemed to evaporate.  I felt those Howell Raines sentiments, with the Eternal breathing gently in my ear, and my heart palpitating every time a brown rose to sip a dry fly.  The babbling sounds of a Colorado mountain stream just have a way of changing the way I breathe the moment I step into the waters.

 

Thanks for reading.

A Necessary Kick in the Pants from a Dutch Uncle

Putting the Final Touches on the Fishing Still LIfe

In spite of his own writing difficulties, Ernest played Dutch uncle to Fitzgerald, repeatedly urging him to get forward with Tender is the Night.  The only thing to do with a novel, said he, was to finish it.

Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story

Today, I decided enough is enough.  I’m tired of this sickness that has been draped all over me like a cheap suit for over a week now.  Today is President’s Day, no school.  And though I am still weak,  I am tired of the lethargy, the sleeping, the moping and the self-pity.  Reading this morning from the Hemingway biography gave me the necessary kick to get up and return to the cave, and finish this darned still life that I’ve been mooning over for far too long.  It is time to get on with the next endeavor.  This one is done.  The only thing to do with a painting is to finish it.

There was nothing left to do but work a little more on shading the lantern and signing my name.  After spending some morning time staring, painting, staring some more, painting some more (again, I felt like I was Willem de Kooning, who was laughed at for staring and contemplating more than actually painting), I finally decided I did all I could, and that it was time to move on to something else.

I am grateful for Dutch uncles as Hemingway was to Fitzgerald, and  Jackson Browne was to David Crosby, nudging him to complete The Delta (one of the most moving songs ever to come over me).  Nobody thinks twice about the work-in-progress, the Ph.D. all-but-dissertation or the season that almost was.  I find just as much joy as anyone in the process of creativity, but how much more I love looking at something finished, a fait accompli.  

So, thank you, Carlos Baker.  Your published word this morning became oracular to me, when I need it the most.

And thanks all of you who read me.

The Completed Painting

Back to the Day Job, But Still Composting the Painting

Fishing Memories

I am still too sick to feel effective as a teacher today, though my students are treating me with respect and deference, and doing their tasks.  I am just hanging on, trying to shake the lingering effects of strep throat and a nasty sinus infection.  It has sucked all the energy out of me.  Nevertheless, I want to attach a piece of fiction to this painting.  The scenario has been moving about in my head for a couple of weeks now, so I thought I would try to put it out there in print.

The quiet neighborhood was shattered by the sharp crack of three crushing blows from the ball-peen hammer that broke open the padlock on the old fisherman’s shed door.  Day-before-yesterday, they found him dead, seated upright in his favorite back-porch metal lawn chair, with a cold cup of coffee and his tattered copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass on the side table.  Beneath the layers of his faded beard, they thought they could detect a slight smile.  His book was opened to “Song of Myself” and he had underlined in pencil: “I am large; I contain multitudes.”  The onlooking friends mused about his eight decades and all that his life had encompassed.

Entering the dim interior of the fishing shack, they looked silently at the tangled pile of gear in the corner, and hesitated to gather it up, as though rudely disrupting the sanctity of a shrine.  There lay the Garcia Mitchell 300 open-faced reel, with which he had landed his 6-lb. largemouth bass while poking about the lily pads in a rowboat one evening on Hunnewell Lake.  He was only a teenager then.  The bait caster was still there–the one he never could seem to get the hang of, trying in vain to cast old wooden bass plugs without backlash.  His Uncle Art would just look on, shake his head, smile, and mumble through the smoke of his Lucky Strike:  ”Cute Kid.”  The Pflueger fly reel and vintage bamboo rod were a gift from an aged farrier in Pine, Colorado, who passed them on as a torch, noting that his fly fishing days were behind him.  The battered suitcase was from college days back in ’42, when he hopped the Frisco passenger train for his monthly cross-the-state visits to his parents back home.  And on that train, he was always served Dining Car Coffee.  And the old knapsack–he never tired of bragging on the day he talked an Athenian merchant out of that tattered leather bag for $12.  On that day, he owned the world.  

The friends stood there silently, their eyes surveying the stack of assorted memories, each item with its own story, clinging to its own fragment of history.  

And now it was time to take down the monument and move on.  New chapters were waiting to be written.

Thanks for reading.

Nearly Finished with the Fishing Memories

Fishing Memories Nearly Completed

I have laid down the brush for the night.  Tomorrow, in the daylight, I’ll take a fresh look at this.  I have tried tonight to push the lantern back more into the shadows.  I don’t know that I have done that enough yet.  I cannot take a decent photo of this large painting at night, because my studio lights are grossly inadequate for photography, and so are my house lights.  So, tomorrow I’ll do some more shooting and posting.  Once I’m convinced that I have done all I can, I will sign it can say “Done!”  And believe me, I’ll post it, yet again!

I wish I had something interesting to quote, or to say.  But I’m still very sick with this crud.  I worked our District Spelling Bee, and I was devastated by day’s end–had to come home and head straight for bed.  Feeling really puny tonight, but glad nevertheless that I got to paint.  I’m just not thinking too clearly.

Thanks for reading.

The Man Cave with Still Life and (Nearly) Finished Painting

Trying to Close Out the Fishing Memories Watercolor

Closeup of Fishing Memories

Though still sick, I really wanted to get into the Cave for a little while tonight and try to finish this large still-life.  It isn’t going to happen tonight, but I am closer to closure.  I just photographed the lower half of the painting, because that is where I did all of tonight’s work.  I painted the left latch of the suitcase, laid the shadow under the Garcia Mitchell open-face reel, painted the handle of the left fly rod, faceted the left fly rod. and that’s about all I had in me.  I’m still not over the sickness that has plagued me since Saturday.

I hope that I can finish this entire painting tomorrow night.  I should be closer to recovery by then, now finishing three full days of antibiotics.

When they got back to Paris, the December rains were gone and the weather was clear and cold.  After the vast reaches of Switzerland, the apartment seemed small and crowded.  Ernest rented a bedroom nearby on the top floor of the tall old hotel where Paul Verlaine had died exactly twenty-five years before.  Here he could be quiet and alone, taking contemplative turns around his chilly citadel, keeping warm with the bundles of twigs he bought in the streets, and gazing out between sentences on all the roof and chimney pots of Paris.  Sometimes in the afternoons he went to walk the graveled paths of the Luxembourg, stopping in at the Musee for a look at the Cezannes and the Monets, thinking inside himself that they had done with paint and canvas what he had been striving to do with words all morning in his room at the old hotel.

Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, by Carlos Baker

The Man Cave was cold tonight, but I huddled in my hoodie and worked for about 30 minutes on this painting, thinking that what Hemingway has done with words on paper, I have attempted with watercolor on paper–direct treatment of the thing itself without embellishment.

Thanks for reading.

 

When the Studio Becomes an Addiction

Still Working in the Man Cave. Late into the Night

I don’t recall ever putting in this kind of studio time in my life.  I entered the Man Cave around 9:00 this morning, and worked on this painting throughout the day and night, stopping only to eat meals inside the house and to watch a hockey game at 7:00.  Aside from those breaks, I have devoted this entire day to working on this 28 x 22″ watercolor  It is 1:42 a.m., and I am forcing myself to turn out the light and go inside to bed.  But I don’t want to.  I cannot wait to return to this tomorrow (today!)

Thanks for reading.

Late Nights Painting and Thoughts of Thoreau

Painting the Still Life Late at Night

It is never the deed men praise, but some marble or canvas which are only a staging to the real work. . . . The true poem is not that which the public read.  There is always a poem not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this, which is stereotyped in the poet’s life, is what he has become through his work. . . . Perhaps the hugest and most effective deed may have no sensible result at all on earth, but paint itself in the heavens in new stars and constellations.  Its very material lies out of nature.  When, in rare moments, we strive wholly with one consent, which we call a yearning, we may not hope that our work will stand in any artist’s gallery.

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, June 30-July 1, 1840

At 5:00 this afternoon, when I stepped into the studio, I just couldn’t find the impetus to begin painting.  So I sat, poured myself a fresh cup of coffee, and set to reading from the Journal of Thoreau.  And I was arrested by this passage.  I love it when a thinker celebrates the act of making art, rather than the record of the deed.  The art is in the making.  For several years now, I have known this joy of making art, and not being quite as obsessed with the results.  If the painting comes out terribly, I can still say that the task of making it was a pleasant one, a rewarding one.

Work on this still life is starting to speed up. This afternoon I worked on darkening the skillet on the door, then working further on the woodgrains of the door itself.  I then refined some of the details on the vintage fishing reels littered across the bottom of the arrangement, as well as one of the handles of the fly rod.  I was surprised by a drop-in visit from a pair of great friends, true kindred spirits whom I have known for several years now, friends that share my enthusiasm for art, music and educational issues.  The chat that ensued still has me inspired as I continue to work into this night.  I was sorry to see them go, even though we put in a nice long evening of conversation.

Once alone again, I realized that I had not yet made dinner (it was 10:30!).  Once dinner was over, I came back out into the Cave and began work on this suitcase.  And there is where I leave it tonight.  I’m still trying to build stronger contrast, and create darker areas in this composition.  Nevertheless, I’m pleased with some of the objects that are now beginning to take shape.  I look forward to more fun with this tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Between the Darkness and the Light

Still Life of Fishing and Camping Memories

Nodding gently in his rocker beside the rusting lantern, the weathered farmer stared across the dimly-lit garage at the jumbled remembrances of his former years–fishing, camping, Dining Car coffee and Lucky Strike cigarettes.  His tired eyes were growing dim at the close of the day.  The Jim Beam in his tumbler was slowly drawing him down.  But his memories waxed even as his strength and vision waned.  Once more, he read from the small volume of poetry that lay in his lap.

I cannot find my way: there is no star 
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere; 
And there is not a whisper in the air 
Of any living voice but one so far 
That I can hear it only as a bar 
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair 
And angel fingers wove, and unaware, 
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.

No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call, 
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears, 
The black and awful chaos of the night; 
For through it all–above, beyond it all– 
I know the far sent message of the years, 
I feel the coming glory of the light. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson 

Looking up from his book, the old man peered intently into the darkened recesses of the Canada Dry crate, barely discerning the dark, distressed leather knapsack from his early touring days . . .

The summer morning in the Athens Plaka was as dreadfully hot as any Texas summer day.  Sitting wearily at an outdoor cafe table with the taste of Greek coffee in his mouth, he gazed across the street, through the white dust rising from the shambling sandals of tourists, and saw, hanging on a post of a leather shop, this dust-coated dark-leather, used knapsack.  Dashing across the street, he inquired of the short, stocky mustachioed Greek proprietor:

“How much for the knapsack outside?”

“Oh no!  Too old!  Too dirty!  Have new ones! From Italy!  Finest leather!”

“No.  I want the one outside.”

“It’s used!  Worthless!  Only for show!”

“I like it.  I’m American.  From Texas.  I like old and dirty.”

“Why?”

“Character.  More interesting.  I want it.”

“Twelve dollars, OK?”

“Deal.  Here you are.  And an extra gold coin, with my thanks.  Kalimera!“

Gazing at the abused knapsack this night, he mused over all the places it had traveled, and the assorted cargoes once wrapped in its embrace: books, journals, tools, tobacco, bottles of beer, small boxes of leaders, dry and wet flies, fishing reels . . . What a contrast between the darkness of the leather, the even darker inside of the crate, the ultimate darkness within the knapsack, and the blazing light of the Greek sun on that hot day, the whiteness of the dusty street, and the gleam of the marble monuments everywhere.  Darkness and light.  Laying aside his poems, he reached to the small table beside him and picked up his old worn and tattered Latin Bible, glad for what he retained from Catholic School.  Thumbing through the crinkled yellow-stained leaves, he found what he was looking for:

Et lux in tenebris lucet

Et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt.

And the light shineth in the darkness;

And the darkness apprehended it not.

John 1:5 (American Standard Version)

He reflected on the reality of life as a balance between the light and darkness, thinking of his fading days, his ebbing strength, and what still remained within his abilities.

Yet a little while is the light among you.  Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not.

John 12:35

He smiled inwardly as he slowly nodded off to sleep.  The room was dark, but he remained in the light.  The memories were bringing back the light.  And the printed words on the page were bringing light (“The entrance of Thy word bringeth light”).  And the dawn would soon bring new light, a new day, and new opportunity.  It was the closing of another good day.  It was alright for now that the darkness was drawing near.

Thanks for reading.