There is a Certain Slant of Light

Watercoloring in the Afternoon, with thoughts of Emily Dickinson

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance
On the look of death.

Emily Dickinson

This afternoon, as I chip away at this still life, I am flooded with the silence of the day, the slanting light that I cannot keep away from my garage door windows (all the blinders I taped up day-before-yesterday have fallen off), and the sense of relief that follows a noisy day of high school teaching.  Only the drone of my clothes dryer just on the other side of the utility room door is heard, except for the occasional rustle of dead, dry leaves blowing across my driveway.  It is an affirming ambiance for painting.

Emily Dickinson’s poem is considerably darker than what I feel right now.  I thought about her “slant of light” as the sun came out a few minutes ago and threw its shafts through my windows and across my still-life arrangement.  And I recalled that it was a winter light of which she spoke.  And I knew that the poem was overflowing with the mixed feelings of sublime and depression in regard to religious sentiment.  That final note is not on my heart as I write this.  I’ve been listening to Voices and Visions broadcasts of the works of Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams, and I once again am finding myself lost in these objects before me, and I regard that as a good thing.

Thanks for reading.

My Answer to Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”–an Abandoned Service Station in a Ghost Town

Abandoned Service Station in Robertsville, Missouri

During my three-day weekend, I chose to return to a composition I painted several years ago, titled “Cold Desolation”(http://davidtripp.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/a-frozen-moment-along-route-66-at-christmas/).  I had taken more than a dozen photos and processed them on 35mm Kodachrome slides a couple of decades ago.  The “Cold Desolation” painting was of this abandoned gas station from a frontal perspective.  Now I have chosen to paint it from this 45-degree angle, including the fuel tanks and the neighboring brick building, as well as trees backing the composition.  I also have chosen a full sheet of watercolor paper (22 x 30″), rather than the mid-sized “Cold Desolation” composition.  The original title was selected due to the weather being about 10 degrees when I photographed this site.

Robertsville, Missouri is the setting for this defunct service station.  Robertsville is defunct as well.  The town is south of historic route 66, west of St. Louis, in eastern Franklin County, just six miles southwest of the town of Pacific.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertsville,_Missouri) I have photographed several abandoned structures from this town, but this service station is the only one I have managed to paint.  The winter light was better on these buildings than the ones facing across the street.

The three-day weekend was packed with plenty of obligations, but I found some space and temperate weather to retire to my garage studio and begin this painting after hours.  My “companions” for the most part were VHS documentaries on Willem deKooning and Paul Gauguin.  I enjoyed the communion as I thought of those great artists and their contributions, saddened that they are no longer among the living, though their immortal works will remain.  And the sighs of melancholy that I experienced as I thought back over past memories that grow faint over time had an effect on this painting’s process that probably I alone know intimately.

I was also tinged with the sad note of William Wordsworth and his “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey; On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798.”  I recalled some of the words from this lyric poem on that winter morning when I encountered this “wild secluded scene” that impressed on me “thoughts of more deep seclusion” that connected “the landscape with the quiet of the sky.”  This particular holiday weekend offered a few spaces of quiet seclusion, and I accepted those gifts in sincere gratitude, particularly late Sunday and Monday evenings in the studio.  A part of me thinks that I could have been happier spending this day working in the garage studio, but on second thought, I doubt that.  I’ll accept those late night gifts, and look forward to the next time I find space to paint.

I’m going to close this post with the portion of the Wordsworth poem that touched me the most profoundly, and I felt were my own sentiments as I worked over this painting, and remembered that scene from the dead of winter:

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:–feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:–that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,–
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

On a separate note (one which probably has no connection to this post), I did manage some quality reading over the weekend, mostly from Immanuel Kant, of all people.  I have, throughout the years of my education, found this man’s thought a tough nut to crack.  But this weekend, a few fissures opened, and I finally caught a glimpse into some of his work that yielded some fine food for reflection.  I am most intrigued with his intellectual “Copernican Revolution” and its implications for thinking in the centuries since the 18th.  I may be posting some of those a little later, when they’ve had more time to mature.

Thanks for reading.  I have had no computer access for four days, and am most happy to be back at the blog, especially since I have a new painting emerging.

Snowscape at Wayne White’s Ranch

Winter at Wayne's

Last winter in St. Louis, snow was everywhere.  I stayed as a guest at my friend Wayne White’s ranch west of St. Louis and was delighted at this view off his back deck.  I completed one watercolor sketch of the woods and fields, and then started this second one, but quit because it wasn’t going the way I wanted it to.   After a one-year hiatus, I got the idea this morning to add a row of mailboxes, deepen some shadows in the woods, complete some more snow shadows and then call it a painting.  I’m ready to look at a new project now.

I look at this and think of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep.

I return to school tomorrow for a work day.  Students will show up the day after.  The winter break is nearly over.  And I’ll probably recite that Robert Frost poem as a mantra in the months ahead.  I do resolve this time not to let school completely crowd out my discipline of completing new paintings.  I look ahead to the prospect of discovering new things as I continue to explore watercolor.

Thanks for reading.

Finished the Wyeth Winter Snowscape

Wyeth winter finished

I’m ready to move on to the next watercolor sketch.  A few finishing touches were added to this copy of an Andrew Wyeth drybrush of a snowscape at Kuerner’s Farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.  I spent most of this evening reading reflectively, writing in my journal, and just now, around midnight, found the notion to pick up the brush again.  I regret that my camera abilities are severely limited with the kind of lighting I have in my studio–I do much better photographing these pieces in the daylight outside.  Nevertheless, this one is finished and I choose now to move on.

Thanks for reading.

A Second Cup of Coffee and a Second Attempt at Andrew Wyeth Drybrush

Wyeth Winter

I’m surprising myself with today’s output, on only the second day of the New Year.  School will not resume for three days yet, and already I’m wondering in my head how many watercolor sketches I might kick out between now and then.

This is my second attempt at copying the essence of an Andrew Wyeth drybrush of a winter landscape at Kuerner’s Farm in Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania.  I’m still pondering the Six Canons of Xie He, and am fascinated with the idea of distilling the essence of what you see.  As previously recorded, I had a good experience at an Oklahoma camp a few days ago, staring into the depths of a forest and trying to capture the essence of the masses of winter trees to record on paper.  I have always had a primal visual connection with Andrew Wyeth’s renderings of snowy scenes  in graphite, watercolor and gouache.  I missed my White Christmas in St. Louis this year, but decided nonetheless to pursue some winter scenic paintings.

The coffee has been delicious all day (my niece works at Soulard Coffee Garden & Cafe in south St. Louis, and gave me a wonderful Christmas gift of Soulard Coffee).  The reading has been delicious as well.  I’ve felt a rich communion with Marcus Aurelius and Paul Tillich as these great men left behind wonderfully introspective writings about life, always a good read at the beginning of a New Era.  I owe them a genuine, heartfelt thanks.  The readings and my own musings have produced about a dozen handwritten pages in my journal, and I regret to say that my journaling had dried up considerably in recent months.  It is great to be back at it again.  And this blog also gives my personal journals a shot in the arm, so thanks to you readers as well.

 

New Year’s Day with Coffee, Andrew Wyeth and Watercolor Sketching

Wyeth Studies

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape–the loneliness of it–the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it–the whole story doesn’t show.  (Andrew Wyeth, 1987)

Though I have left the Oklahoma wilderness behind, my mind’s eye still sees the winter trees that filled my imagination the past few days.  Today was a good quiet day for putting on the coffeepot, opening a stack of large Andrew Wyeth volumes, sketching with pencil and finally attempting a drybrush sketch of autumn or winter trees.

This image posted is the beginning attempt of some gnarled trees I examined closely in one of my larger “coffee table” Andrew Wyeth books.  Again, taking a lead from Xie He’s Six Canons (mentioned in the previous post and marvelously researched and posted by one of my devoted readers) I am attempting to work directly from Andrew Wyeth drybrush illustrations and extract the essence of his dense forest renderings.  Yesterday while looking into an Oklahoma forest, I noted how the trees stood out in light relief against a dense and dark neutral background of foliage and atmosphere.  As the day progressed, I watched those tree trunks and limbs wax brighter as their backdrop waned in the setting sun.  I wanted to stop and sketch the scene then, but I had camp appointments intruding and chose to meet my appointments.

Today however, I am fascinated with the idea of drybrush and pencil renderings of tree bark showing up lightly against a darker, denser background of tangled and confusing foliage.  So, I chose to lay in the background first, and it is now so wet and soupy that I fear I’ll be waiting about an hour or more before I can lay my hand on the page and begin the detailed renderings of the tree textures (dinner perhaps?).

Among my resolutions this year is the notion of studying abstract compositions and applying what I have learned to my current representational watercolor subjects.  For years I painted abstract acrylic compositions on canvas, and once I turned to watercolor, I ditched those compositions in favor of copying representations as faithfully as I could.  For years I have been aware of how successful artists seemed to have the knack for doing abstract work within the confines of their representational scenes.  And I have undoubtedly done that with reference to tree foliage.   But now I would like to look at overall composition in abstract fashion and see if I can push my watercolors in a new direction by applying abstract principles of design to my paintings.  We’ll see how that one pans out.

While working in my studio in the back of the house today, I have been playing and replaying a video of “Paul Gauguin: The Savage Dream” produced by the National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C.  What a sad, sad human being!  I have often been haunted by those feelings of torment and have tried to reject the label “temperamental artist.”  Granted my feelings have been worn on the sleeve more often than not, I still have always hoped to find a way to cope with life even when it is beset by disappointments.  Again, I feel that these are worries that have a way of surfacing during the holidays and opening the New Year, and again I need to find a way to work through them.

In closing I wish to share something precious from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar.”  This has lifted me for a couple of decades now.  Though I assume he speaks of the writer, I find this tribute applicable to anyone who creates, no matter what avenue is employed:

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

The Pulse of a New Year

Fiddler's Dream

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

(Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of the Morning” January 20, 1993, read at the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton.)

With the dawning of 2012, I have so much on my heart to share with my faithful blog readers.  I open with these soulful words from Maya Angelou, because I always feel the dual heaviness and lightness of Being when an old year dies and a new one emerges.  I cannot seem to shake the anxieties that have a way of creeping out of the shadows during the holiday season, and this one has been no different.  And I cannot help but turn pensive when January arrives.  “January” comes from the Roman god Janus, the two-faced image looking simultaneously backward and forward.  The dual head served as a fitting visual symbol of that human habit of looking over the shoulder at the past while trying to navigate the unfamiliar future.

New Year resolutions are always an obsession with me.  I have faithfully kept a journal since the late 1980′s, and sometimes I go back and re-read resolutions I have recorded in previous Januarys.  I am not going to bore my blog readers with my personal list of resolutions–I only wish to state that currently my prioritized list includes watercoloring better and blogging better.

I still intend to watercolor daily, though it will not mean completing a painting a day.  And so today I post this watercolor sketch, actually created yesterday morning, New Years Eve.  It is not yet noon today and I haven’t “awakened” sufficiently to get out the watercolors for today’s fresh start.

I have just returned from the Fiddler’s Dream Music & Dance Camp hosted by the North Texas Traditional Dance Society.  The camp was held in Oklahoma, and I had the experience of meeting a number of fascinating, talented people in the fine arts.  A highlight of the camp for me was the opportunity to lead a watercolor plein air workshop.  We pulled a work table out under the trees, and I enjoyed showing some eager painters a few things I knew about rendering winter trees in dry brush.  The image posted above is the sketch I did about an hour before the painters arrived.  It was around 10:00 in the morning, and I spent approximately 40 minutes on this sketch.  As I worked at it, I felt my breathing change and my pulse change, as always happens when I settle into a plein air activity.  The air became fresher, the slanting sunlight clearer, stirring winter breezes caressed the pores of my skin, and for a moment, the world became perfect again.  I felt as though the trees were letting out a deep sigh, exhaling the past and inhaling the present.  That is the pulse of a New Year.

While I looked into the Oklahoma forest, selecting a pair of trees to render in drybrush, my conscience was flooded with ideas from Xie He’s six canons of painting, formulated around the 6th century, and images of Andrew Wyeth’s renderings of winter trees in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.  I felt a gladness settling in as I worked in the comfort of this environment, and immediately decided that I would not let this winter pass without turning some significant corners in rendering the naked trees of winter in all their nuanced contours, neutral colors and arrangements.  I have always felt this was something lacking from my previous body of work, and now resolve to look more closely at these natural phenomena and work daily at recording them on paper.

As for the rest of this day.  I have plenty of quiet around me, and space to pursue some quality reading, reflection, journaling, and of course, watercolor study.  Maybe I’ll get back to you before I retire for the night, but if I don’t, I promise to return tomorrow.

To all my readers, again thanks from the bottom of my heart that you care enough to look at what I paint and write.  I appreciate you more than you know, and I harbor your supportive comments in the depths of a grateful heart.  I was thrilled last night when WordPress sent me the word, shortly before midnight, that my blog was viewed about 31,000 times in 2011–enough to sell out the Sidney Opera House for 11 performances.  That news came at a good time.  Thanks all of you for reading.  I wish all of you a splendid New Year in 2012, and hope you find what you are seeking.

Ready to Deliver Christmas Watercolor Gift

Merry Christmas, Uncle Paul

The painting has been picked up from the frame shop.  I’m ready to pull out at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow, en route to St. Louis to deliver Uncle Paul’s Christmas gift, and spend Christmas with Mom, Dad and the siblings.  Still have plenty of packing to do, so I cannot linger here, though I wish I could.

Merry Christmas to all of you who keep my blog alive.  I cannot thank you enough for your visits and kind sentiments.  You truly are my inspiration to continue painting.  Have a fabulous and safe holiday season!

And thanks always for reading.

Finished the Christmas Watercolor

Grandpa Tripp's Dwelling

I’m feeling a sense of satisfaction and closure, now that I have completed this watercolor for my Uncle Paul.  He has been admitted to a nursing home facility, and his health is failing.  He has fond memories of his father’s cabin, so I’m happy to have this one ready to surprise him this Christmas.  I’m taking it to the framer today.

Thanks for reading, and for staying with me, helping me see this one through its stages.  On to the next one!

Christmas Watercolor Activity in the Man Cave

Uncle Paul's Christmas Present

Saturday has been a good day to spend in the Man Cave.  I have jokingly referred to my garage as my “man cave” though I have no power tools or table saws in place–just my drafting table, easel and watercolor supplies.  The winter light is really terrific now in Texas, and the temperatures today have hovered about the mid-fifties.  The sun is bright and the lighting is quite cool and clean.

I am hoping to finish this painting by Monday so I can get it to the framer.  It is for my Uncle Paul, an amazing man now in his 90′s and in failing health.  Paul lived in San Mateo, California since the 1950′s and did well out there.   He lived a quite life, working for Greyhound all those years, mostly night shift.  That was so he could support his habit as a writer.  The night shifts were quiet for a supervisor, and Paul loved to write and publish.

Paul was always a terrific humorist and story teller.  I had my own Garrison Keillor in the family while growing up, and never quite appreciated what a treasure he was.  In his final years, he re-lives the memories of rural Jackson, Missouri, where he lives now, and loves looking upon the monuments of his growing-up years.  This picture is one of them–the cabin where his father resided for the final decades of his life, about 20 paces from the main house on the farm.

I am trying to cool the colors as much as possible, because Paul always appreciated the blues and lavenders visible in the shadows of the snowdrifts that piled up on the family farm.  I am going to regret seeing this painting come to an end.  I’ve been chipping away at it slowly and methodically, enjoying every nuance of the decaying timbers of the cabin and every branch of the naked trees hovering overhead.  One day I hope to approach the “Andrew Wyeth” standard of dry brush as I continually explore rural winter landscapes.  The world indeed takes on a beautiful aura during those months of quiet.  I am so glad school ended yesterday.  The Christmas holidays are a splendid time to relax, enjoy the quiet, and attempt a few watercolor experiments.

Thanks for reading.