Sitting up in bed with my morning coffee, I looked up again at one of my watercolors we keep framed and hanging in the bedroom. The composition always brings to mind words from my Mom about the morning she brought me home from the hospital over sixty-six years ago. She still tells me that the fragrance of lilacs blooming greeted her when she carried me through the garden gate of my Dad’s parents’ farm. That was the reason I painted this composition; Sandi and I purchased this gate from an antique store in Lubbock years ago for the express purpose of bringing it home and my painting it.
Continuing to think over the painting, I went to the bookcase and retrieved my volume of Candide’s Voltaire, which closes with these words:
. . . but we must cultivate our own garden.
Those words haunt me because I awoke this morning, my head filled with the acrid smoke of degrading words wafting through our atmosphere from our perennial political rancor. Some people seem to crave this diet. I am not among them. Years ago, when I started this blog, I wished to send words out into the social media torrent that would make readers feel better, instead of worse, living in this current climate. I believe we have the strength to determine what to fix our minds upon, and I further believe the ancient Proverb that states “for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
My continued reading in Zola’s The Masterpiece continues to fill me with richness of thought. The words Claude spoke to his author friend may as well have been directed at me:
“Why should you worry?’ said Claude, after sharing Sandoz’s silence for a moment. “You’re happy, you’re working, you’re producing something!”
Studio Eidolons
Walking down the hall and entering Studio Eidolons with a glad heart, I sat down to one of my drafting tables and made a collage greeting card, using folding card stock with matching envelope from a vast collection I have been saving and hoarding for over a decade. While refurbishing my studio over past months, I have opened boxes and cabinets stuffed with art-related materials that I had forgotten about and decided I would begin making things with them once again.
Once the collage/card task was completed, I went to the other drafting table and resumed work on the trout fly still waiting for me. This is a Parachute Adams pattern that I could possibly finish later today. It will complete a series of three trout flies I have been commissioned to paint.
1903 house in Flippin, Arkansas. 18 x 24″ framed $400
Yet for better or for worse we love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colors and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them.
Jun’ichero Tanizaki
Sunday mornings usually draw me back to the Bible to read for creative as well as living inspiration. Again this morning, I read the creation narratives in Genesis, pondering about the world as a chaotic void until God organized it through a series of spoken words. As an artist, I am more amazed at my current age than ever before at the profound dynamics that go into any kind of creative activity.
My continued reading of Emile Zola’s The Masterpiece feeds my daily creative eros. Recently, I have returned to drawing and watercolor sketching in a diary to break out of the routine of working on commission pieces (I have two more to complete before all orders are finally filled). What I read this morning certainly set off a string of musings. The words come from an older, seasoned artist in his studio:
“It may suprise you,” he said, for he had been successful from an early age and his place in French painting was now firmly established, “but there are days when I question my ability to draw a simple thing like a nose. . . . Every picture I paint, I’m as excited as the rawest novice; my heart thumps like mad, my mouth goes dry out of sheer emotion. “
Some years back, when my watercolors began selling more successfully and I took blogging and marketing more seriously, I developed this fear of “whipping out Tripps to feed the market.” Not only did I worry about being locked into a particular style to keep up with demand; I still wondered exactly what my “style” was. I have posted a painting above from my earlier years when I focused on aged, decaying subjects. I still work on those kinds of images, but not exclusively. Rather, I have tried to broaden my subject matter to pick up some themes I’ve always wished to pursue but never took the time to do so (Hence, my recent trout fly patterns).
I believe all of us hope to live out our lives free of regrets. However, recently, I do look back on my college years with regret–I was an art major, but relied on my talent and listened very little to what my instructors tried to teach me. I had excellent instructors, and wish to this day I had been more mature and open to what they had to offer. Now at my present age, I am attempting to learn things I should have learned long ago as I experiment daily in the studio, and truly try to be “open” to experimenting. As the days proceed, I will most likely post the drawings and watercolor sketches I’m attempting, along with the commissioned work in progress.
Lingering over Coffee and Journal inside Studio Eidolons
In the bleakest days of a bleak winter, Jackson took up pen and paper and began drawing again. During all of 1950, he had hardly touched a sketch pad. His ambitions demanded a far grander “arena” (his word).
Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Jackson Pollock: An American Saga
Saturday in the Studio Eidolons finds me at leisure. Last night I completed my second of a series of three trout flies. I immediately blocked in the composition for the third painting, but this morning have yet to find the initiative to begin the actual painting.
2nd fly completed: Royal Wulff, 8 x 10″ watercolor
The morning has been given to coffee, journaling, listening to music, and going through some files of material I haven’t perused in years. I’m a little tired, not sleeping as consistently as I could, and feeling rather low on energy. I recall the critic Clem Greenberg in an interview discussing how Jackson Pollock, after an intense creative output, would knock off for a few weeks and just walk his property, smoking, thinking, not necessarily drinking, but decompressing, and over a period of weeks would purge himself of his mannerisms and seek a new direction for his art. The quote above arrested my attention because today I have gotten out sketchbooks and watercolor diary to see about returning to some practices I have not pursued in awhile due to a long line of commissions I’ve striven to complete. Days such as this no longer alarm me; I’m just on hiatus. It might last a few hours, or the rest of the day. But I know I’ll be back in the saddle, making new art. Already, the next assignment waits on the drafting table.
There’s something undeniably romantic about an artist’s studio. They’re always filled with light, and paper covered in scribbles and sketches. We’re instinctively drawn to these safe spaces where something incredible can materialize out of nothing. An artist’s studio is the place magic happens (imagine being physically present in Picasso’s studio when he painted The Dream, it would have given you goosebumps). The artist’s studio is also a place for the most incredible kind of isolation, one that’s full of creative potential. It’s an escape and even torment. When everything aligns, your work space can be a source of inspiration, helping you become a better artist. The images below perfectly capture that bohemian life style we all dream of having one day. Get inspired by the beautiful organized chaos of these artists creative work spaces! [The article follows with the most delicious color photos of artists’ studios, including Cezanne’s and Monet’s.]
Natalia Borecka, “The Most Beautiful Artist’s Studios on the Planet”
Forty-eight hours ago, while engaged in my morning watch activities before beginning the days’ schedule, I was visited in the most profound way by a hoard of ideas. Before long, I had scribbled out ten pages of longhand notes in my journal, feeling I was trying to catch a swarm of butterflies in a small net.
In Pursuit of the “Spirit” of Art
I had a watercolor class coming up in three hours and was still trying to find a way to introduce what we were going to attempt that day. I decided to work on the First Canon of Xie He’s writings about painting. It has been translated this way:
Engender a sense of movement through spirit consonance.
While trying to unpack this aphorism, I came across the notion that the word translated “spirit” refers to the Chinese chi or qi.
Opening my Art History book by Marilyn Stokstad, I found the following:
The first principle announces that “spirit consonance” imbues a painting with “life’s movement.” this “spirit” is the Daoist qi, the breath that animates all creation, the energy that flows through all things. When a painting has qi, it will be alive with inner essence, not merely outward resemblance. Artists must cultivate their own spirit so that this universal energy flows through them and infuses their work.
Two days later, my head is still spinning with this visitation. For decades I have been aware of this tension within my own perception of art, between skill and inspiration. I have possessed the skills most of my life, and continued in training to refine those skills. But inspiration is much more elusive, and I have always pondered this great divide between “work of art” and “art”. Just what exactly is the nature of this energy that animates one’s work, transforming it into “art”? This theoretical, spiritual side has driven my imagination for so long, and I still enjoy seeking it out.
In the midst of my writing, I laughed, recalling Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
Dean and I sat alone in the back seat and left it up to them and talked.“Now, man, that alto man last night had IT— he held it once he found it; I’ve never seen a guy who could hold so long.” I wanted to know what “IT” meant. “Ah well”— Dean laughed—“ now you’re asking me impon-de-rables— ahem! Here’s a guy and everybody’s there, right? Up to him to put down what’s on everybody’s mind. He starts the first chorus, then lines up his ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it— everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He’s filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it’s not the tune that counts but IT—” Dean could go no further; he was sweating telling about it.
The IT factor–that is what I seek in making art. And the visitation in Studio Eidolons two days ago still has me shaking my head in wonder. I’m glad that I have nothing on my agenda today, no appointments, no deadlines. I’m ready to explore these matters further.
I’m getting closer to finishing this commission on the Royal Wulff fly pattern. It is an 8 x 10″ watercolor that has resulted in a number of new color combinations and experiments for me. It’s been a fun experience and I look forward to closing this one out and moving on to the next assignment.
Working on the details of a Royal Wulff fly pattern
Ever the mutable,
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,
Issuing eidólons.
Walt Whitman, “Eidólons“
Buoyed by the spirit of Walt Whitman in my own atelier, I’ve enjoyed working on this commission requesting three popular fly patterns from the trout stream. The Elk Hair Caddis and Parachute Adams I’ve used many times, but I have yet to put a Royal Wulff in the water, though I must say I am loving the colors of this pattern.
Having named my studio after Whitman’s poem, I’ve been reading the piece daily, and decided today to post another segment from it. I love his reference to the “changing, crumbling, re-cohering” nature of the process I witness while working on a watercolor composition. And as for my personal working space, my imagination vacillates between the elegant historic French notion of a posh atelier similar to a show room and Andy Warhol’s notion of his working space being a factory, because he was always cranking out work for the next commission, much like an assembly line.
As for my dog, he has recently marked out a spot, designating Studio Eidolons as a comfy place to relax.
Patches has found a resting place beneath one of the drafting tables
Time has been divided today between painting and continuing the task of sorting out materials that have been stored for years, deciding what to discard, what to file, and what to store in a more orderly fashion. A master bathroom adjoining my studio has now been re-assigned for studio storage. Not only is it nice to have nearby sinks for water (instead of traveling to the kitchen) and ample counter space for lining out and stretching watercolor paper, there are now two walk-in closets and a built-in set of cabinets. Finally, all art supplies, paintings, papers, matting materials etc. are stored in closets, cabinets and a lateral file–NO MORE CRAP lying about the floor or leaning against walls!
I also found rolled up in a tube the presentation I made to my principal for what would become the first of many murals painted at Martin High School. This sketch eventually became a 15 x 50 foot cafeteria mural. With a sigh, I decided it was time to discard. So I rolled it out one last time and took a photo to store in my memory collection.
Tomorrow (Monday August 24) I’ll be teaching a watercolor class from 2-5:00. We’ll paint a Route 66 motel that was torn down years ago. A few seats are still available if any of you in the area would like to participate. For $55 I’ll supply all materials to paint an 8 x 10″ watercolor on stretched paper. The reference photo we’ll use is a painting I’ve done recently:
Ozark Court Motel, Stanton, Missouri
For anyone interested in attending, you will need to phone Gracie Lane boutique at (817) 468-5263 to reserve your seat. The class will be taught in the boutique building which also houses our Show Me the Monet art gallery, at 4720 S Cooper St, Arlington, TX 76017.
I have rewritten my story from the Turvey’s Corner manuscript that I hope will one day be a book. I’ll post the re-write below:
Sunday morning rays of sunshine lanced through the slits in the closed blinds of Room 18 at the Ozark Court Motel. Randy lay with his eyes closed. It took a few moments before he realized where he was and what day it was. Hitchhiking had not fared well the day before. Driving rains soaked him to the skin and no one was pulling over on Route 66 to offer him a ride. Why would they? No doubt he carried all the charm of a drowned city sewer rat as he trudged along the muddy shoulder, his knapsack beginning to let in water as well. But this morning he was OK. A soothing shower the night before and a Jack Daniels nightcap ushered in a quality night’s sleep. But now it was Sunday. What to do?
His Greek New Testament lay on the bedside table; he had removed it the night before, intending for it to be the first thing his eyes would see the morning after. Now he sat up in bed, stretched his limbs, and reached for the small volume he once thought he was going to discard when he dropped out of seminary. He couldn’t. Though he no longer congregated, he still woke on Sunday mornings feeling the need to reach for a text that had been his companion for two-and-a-half years, only now he no longer felt shackled by deadlines of term papers and Sunday morning sermon manuscripts. He could read what he chose.
But what to read? The Gospels crossed his mind. Always a good choice. But what did he want this morning from the Gospels? Did he want to see or hear? Seeing would include mental images of Jesus walking along a shore or down a dusty Palestinian street. Would he be solitary, seated in the wilderness, or thronged by a clinging crowd? Or did Randy just wish to hear as he translated the texts this morning? What would he hear? The voice of Jesus resonating in a synagogue, or speaking softly inside living quarters? Would he be strolling country lanes with disciples listening, or seated on a boulder discoursing? Or would he be sitting in a boat, his calm voice going out over the water while disciples pulled at the oars?
Why was Randy reaching for the New Testament, anyway? Because it was Sunday? He wasn’t congregating. He wasn’t called upon to address any hearers. So what exactly did he want this morning?
Outside the motel, traffic was heard murmuring along Route 66 below the bluff. Randy was aware that he was seated in bed, alone, in the heartland of America. Today is Sunday, the Fourth of July, 1976. The country had been surging with anticipation for weeks as she edged closer and closer to this day—the nation’s bicentennial. No doubt Randy’s former seminary friends—preacher friends—had been wrenching themselves into a frenzy over what to preach on this Special Sunday. Randy breathed serenely, no longer trapped in that vise of psychological pressure. Still he wondered. What exactly would he have said today, standing before a congregation?
Opening his small volume, he read at leisure, allowing his mind to drift down pleasant corridors of memory as naturally as a canoe in a gentle stream. To this day he was thankful to have learned Koinē Greek. He recalled that first semester of structured recitation, vocabulary, and functional grammar. It was forbidden to purchase and attempt to read a Greek New Testament; the objective for the first semester was functional literacy. As children learn to speak their language before learning to read and understand the technical architecture of grammar, so the Professor endeavored to train his students to recognize Greek early and dissect the grammar later. And so, Randy studied his lessons and performed the daily recitations for a semester.
On the first day of the second semester, the Professor entered the lecture hall without a word, set his books on his desk, turned to the blackboard, picked up the chalk, and scrawled the following:
Sitting at his desk in the third row, Randy leaned forward earnestly and stared at the words. As if scales had fallen from his eyes, he recognized and read the words instantly: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.” The Professor turned to the class fixing his eyes on their faces, and solemnly declared: “You are now reading the New Testament. In Greek.” Sitting up in bed, Randy felt waves of warmth surging through his being as he recalled that historic morning. He was certain that he was re-living the spirit of the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment, Die Aufklärung. Life for him had been marked by so few quality moments. Opening his New Testament to Mark 1:15, he read the words afresh.
The time is fulfilled. On that historic day, years ago, Randy felt he had fulfilled his apprenticeship to elementary Greek vocabulary and grammar. He read a Greek New Testament passage with no assistance from a teacher or book. It was a new day. A new world dawned and beckoned. He had no idea then that a ministerial life, just underway, would collapse and burn in less than two years.
Now it is Sunday, July 4, 1976. The nation celebrates its 200th birthday. Randy wondered what exactly he was celebrating, if anything. What was life offering now? Was he about to pass through another portal? Again, why was he reading the New Testament? Because it was Sunday? Because it was the Fourth of July? Because the country was now two hundred years old? What was in the air for Randy? He wanted to know.
Was he reading from the life of Jesus because he needed a mentor? Someone to guide him? Thinking back over his life, Randy realized he had always sought direction from a strong leader. His father, his pastor, his professors, and a few years ago that conference with Reverend Elton in Dallas. Did Randy need a mentor now? Or was it time to think for himself? Maybe his apprenticeship to life was ended and it was time to stand up, to strike forth and find new ground under his own direction. The time is fulfilled.
Rising from bed, Randy stretched and strolled across the small room to the writing table in the corner where he had placed his journal from the night before. Opening it to the pages he wrote the day he quit the seminary, he found a passage he had copied from James Smart’s The Divided Mind of Modern Theology:
There are remarkable parallels between the European mood of the twenties and the English and American mood of the sixties: God seemed to have gone into hiding; religious and theological language out of the past had become wooden and unconvincing; men felt themselves suspended between a world that had died and a new world that was waiting to be born; a church indifferent to the plight of the masses was recognized as unworthy of the name Christian; the identification of Christianity with Western civilization, and of divinity with the higher elements in man, had become highly suspect; in various forms the hunger for a new world now was felt, and some understood it as hunger for a living God. In that kind of world Barth and Bultmann became theologians whose one endeavor was to find the word that would unlock the future, the word that would bring wholeness of faith and creative power by being the very truth of the living God.
It is Sunday, Randy thought. Today, churches would perhaps fill to capacity to celebrate a 200th birthday. Yet, Randy sensed that the ministers would still crank out those same tired sermons, their singsong voices rasping like rusty squeeze boxes, sounding out the same two-note refrain of the deadly forces that continually threaten the vitality of our church and nation—abortion and communism.
Randy replayed from memory a line he had memorized from his reading of one of Nietzsche’s early essays:
He who has but two strings on his instrument . . . does not understand those who can play on more strings. It is of the essence of the higher, multi-stringed culture that it is always misinterpreted by the lower culture . . .
Randy’s recent sojourn had undoubtedly added more strings to his life’s instrument. No doubt this was the reason he was not attending church this auspicious morning or any morning for that matter. Virtually everything delivered from pulpits he had heard before. Indeed, he was beginning to write out such tired words in his own sermons before he quit.
Randy recalled with a smile a quote he had read from his readings in the religions of India, how the Upanishad movement was sprung partly because the general population had grown weary of listening to the traditional chants of the Vedic priests “who sounded like croaking frogs in the swamps.” America in 1976 was sounding restless. Perhaps a new world was beginning to dawn. The time is fulfilled. Randy wondered if his own odyssey was corresponding with the quest of this American nation in 1976, poised to enter a new Age of Enlightenment. Where was Hank? It had been months since that night they sat at the fire, camping in west Texas. It was time to get together and talk some more. No doubt Hank had just as much weighing on his mind as Randy.
Turvey’s Corner was only thirty-five miles away. Randy had hoped to reach home yesterday, but the nasty rains hindered his ability to hitchhike with any consistency. The sight of the Ozark Court Motel and thought of a hot shower convinced him to stay at least one night here. Feeling refreshed and rejuvenated this morning, he decided he would step into the sunshine on this Independence Day and head back to his hometown. Perhaps Hank was already there.
Decades have rolled past since I worked on a Sunday sermon. Three years have passed since I composed a classroom lecture. Still, my lifestyle has not abandoned the morning practice of reading and composing thoughts to give some kind of positive direction for the day. These moments in the sanctuary of my Studio Eidolons often carry over to my journal, my blog, and more recently Instagram. Sundays often yield something special and this morning was no exception.
This morning’s journal
I often like to open my morning journal with some collage activity, to mark off the page the way the ancient illuminated manuscripts often opened a new chapter of the text. For this playtime, I keep a padfolio stuffed with collected clips of images and texts to cut, tear and gluestick onto my journal pages. This morning, after pasting in a picture of Karl Barth and Edouard Thurneysen studying together along with a torn page from a damaged fragment of a German volume I acquired years ago and refused to discard, I found in a pile of old stamps given to me an image of Edgar Lee Masters. Going to my library, I retrieved my copy of his Spoon River Anthology and resumed reading where I had bookmarked the portion last read months ago. I found this magnificent poem of Walter Simmons, testifying from his midwestern gravesite:
My parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the Octoroon.
But then at twenty-one I married
And had to live, and so, to live
I learned the trade of making watches
And kept the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,–
Not of business, but of the engine
I studied with calculus to build.
And all Spoon River watched and waited
To see it work, but it never worked.
And a few kind souls believed my genius
Was somehow hampered by the store.
It wasn’t true. The truth was this:
I didn’t have the brains.
Closing the volume, I felt the compulsion to laugh. And cry. How many of us know this story personally? We set out early in life to do something great, to build some kind of monument to mark our contribution of greatness to society. And no matter how hard we strive for that excellence, we grow old and, looking back, feel that we fell far short of what we could have done. And we look for areas to place blame–people or circumstances that restricted us, circumvented our attempts at greatness. And then, one day, hopefully, we reach that point where we acknowledge that we didn’t fall short; we played the best we could with the hand we were dealt. Nothing or nobody stood in our way, the cosmos did not scheme a way to prevent us from doing great things. We merely did the best we could with the tools we had.
Reaching for my Bible, I found the passage that the Spoon River text brought to mind, from Romans 12:3 (King James Version):
For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
The morning reading and meditation have been rich indeed. Now it’s time to return to the drafting table and resume the painting commissions promised. The temptation abides for me to spend the rest of this day swan diving into rich texts and writing out my thoughts, but I have something that needs to be done, and in closing I post these words from Robert Frost that always come to mind when I find myself in this situation:
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 have christened my newly-developed studio space “Studio Eidolons”, inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem “Eidólons”. As mentioned in an earlier blog, I find it unfortunate that this Greek word translated “idols” has taken on a very impoverished meaning by the general public (as I perceive it). In the Greek ethos, the word referred to ideas, images, imaginings–overall a very rich word for the creative enterprise. From time to time I’ll insert a portion of this lengthy Whitman poem.
Ever the dim beginning,
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,
Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)
Eidólons! Eidólons!
Anytime I attempt to describe my sensations while submerged in this arena of creative eros, I feel I have tossed a word salad across my blog page (without the necessary dressing). This is one such moment. But these words from Whitman I feel in a primal sense that escape the harness of my words.
After a luxurious walk through the park on this sunny Saturday morning, I entered Studio Eidolons in a spirit of expectation, and have not been disappointed. The Royal Wulff fly pattern is slowly emerging from the tip of my brushes and pencils. What began as an 8 x 10″ white void of a rectangle is slowly yielding the image of a trout fly, and my heart quickens in anticipation with each stroke of color.
I posted the details in a previous blog about the watercolor class I am teaching Monday. I am following up with a second class on Wednesday, August 26, from 2:00-5:00. The subject will be evergreens as we will paint Colorado evergreens on an 8 x 10″ stretched sheet of 90 lb. watercolor paper. All materials will be included in the $55 fee for the class. Anyone interested in signing up will need to phone Gracie Lane at (817) 468-5263. The class will be taught on location at Show Me the Monet Art Gallery, 4720 S. Cooper St., Arlington 76017. I would love to see you there. Monday’s class is the same price, same hours, and will feature a Route 66 motel painting.
When Leonardo was summoned by the duke, they ended up having a discussion of how creativity occurs. Sometimes it requires going slowly, pausing, even procrastinating. That allows ideas to marinate, Leonardo explained. Intuition needs nurturing. “Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least,” he told the duke, “for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.“
cited from Walter Isaacson’s Leonardo da Vinci
New work on a Royal Wulff fly pattern for my next commissioned watercolor has radically altered my studio habits. Inspired by recent readings in biographies of Leonardo da Vinci and Willem de Kooning, I take comfort in knowing that those two masters perfected the art of procrastination as they focused intently on the task at hand and how to execute it. Leonardo of course is known for the thousands of pages of copious notebooks he left behind. As for myself, my thousands of pages are comprised of journal entires, but not nearly as many art studio sketches and observations. Until now. For two days, I have been going through my storage drawers, extracting art supplies I haven’t used for years, most notably two large sets of Prismacolor watercolor pencils. Using the backs of watercolor paintings that failed, I have been covering the surfaces with various washes, color swatches and scribbled notes identifying the various combinations of colors I’ll need to copy this fly pattern that I’ve expanded to an 8 x 10″ photograph. I’ve also painted portions of the fly body, most notably the thorax and abdomen, studying the color patterns and trying to reproduce them as best I can. I would show the painting in progress, but the only thing I’ve completed to date is the bare hook–nothing really to write home about at this time.
Studies for the Royal Wulff project
My new studio space has surpassed all my dreams and fantasies for a place to make art. The studio is no longer crowded–I am able to work on the surfaces of two drafting tables, one library table and a rolltop desk. The best part of my art library is now in this same room, and the adjoining bathroom has two sinks, a long counter, two walk-in closets and built in cabinets offering an abundance of storage space. All my past watercolors, prints, pre-cut mats and drawing papers are now tucked inside a five-drawer lateral file cabinet for easy retrieval. I’ve only waited thirty years for such a space and cannot believe the day has finally arrived. I so look forward to sharing my art life with you in the pages ahead.
Well, the past month has been one of the “revival of energies” so to speak. I have determined and have got well started on a plan of action that is one of the most serious I have ever contemplated, not excepting a thing.
N. C. Wyeth, letter dated June 7, 1907
Working in the Studio Eidolons this fine Wednesday has spawned a myriad of fresh ideas and plans for the coming days and weeks. N. C. Wyeth has visited my working space in spirit daily, and currently I am enjoying a Youtube presentation as I work on my projects. The title is America’s Greatest Illustrator: Paintings of Robinson Crusoe & Treasure Island (1999). While listening to the lecture covering the biography I read over this past year, I have broken ground on a second dry fly painting, of a Royal Wulff pattern. I’ll post it as soon as there is enough detail to show off. Working in the studio is inspiring when I imagine N. C. entering his sacred creative space early every morning, picking up his palette, and striding up to his enormous painting surface. As for myself, I am contented working small–8 x 10″ lately.
Next week, I will teach two watercolor classes, three hours each, on Monday and Wednesday (Aug 24 & 26) from 2 till 5:00. Monday’s subject will be a Route 66 Motel. Wednesday will be watercolor renderings of evergreens. Classes are restricted to five participants, masks are required, and social distancing is facilitated with seating and tables. The classes will be at Show Me the Monet art gallery in the Gracie Lane complex in Arlington, 4720 S. Cooper St. Cost per class is $55. Anyone interested needs to register in advance by phoning (817) 468-5263. All supplies are provided and the paintings will be 8 x 10″ on stretched watercolor paper.
Recollections 54 The Art of David Tripp 