In her seventies, Nevelson’s energies were unceasing . . . . she described her creative life to an interviewer. . . “An artist goes to the studio to work. Not when the spirit moves you; you go every day and work–just plain work, physical work–and you keep right on going. The tools are put away at night, and the studio is swept down, and things you want for tomorrow morning are placed out.” And when you return the next day, she added, “Everything is clean, is nice. You are very happy. You start working.”
Richard Lacayo, Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old age a Time of Triumph
I’m tired tonight, as I’ve been every night this past week. But I’ve always gone to bed exhilarated by the progress made on this commission. Plein Air on the White River will end tomorrow afternoon after I finish judging the competition that began Wednesday morning. A host of enthusiastic artists have been out painting daily and will turn in all their work tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to feasting my eyes on all their inspired pieces.
I am hoping to get my body into shape so I can feel the energy Louise Nevelson felt in her seventies. Thanks to some changes in my lifestyle of late, I have started to feel a significant change this week. The nine-hour drive on Monday left me feeling somewhat drained on Tuesday, but the enthusiasm of the plein air artists made the all-day workshop a very engaging and affirming activity. By Wednesday, I was ready to handle any tasks required of me and found time to work on my watercolor commission when the other tasks were completed. The schedule this week was balanced such that I found quality hours daily to take up what I chose, and I’m pleased that I had the interest and energy to work on this assignment. The commission is due on the 22nd, I leave for St. Louis tomorrow, but I’m confident now that when the time comes for me to return to Texas, this piece will be ready for delivery.
I’m grateful to the White River artists for making this event so inspiring. Time spent with these artists has put a spring back into my step.
Not just the labor of months, that show was the work of a lifetime.
Remark about Louise Nevelson’s solo show at age 60, by Richard Lacayo, Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph
This is my fourth day at Plein Air on the White River in Gaston’s Resort in Lakeview, Arkansas. And the first time I’ve been able to stop and post a blog. The experience has been rich indeed, and I’ll post pictures at the end of this entry. The shot above was from last night, late in the cabin, when I had time alone to resume work on a commission started last week at home. This morning I’ve moved to the bedroom to work at the window seat:
I’ll do my second art demo this afternoon at 4:00. I did my first one Tuesday during the all-day plein air workshop.
I’ve taken delight reading about the life of sculptor Louise Nevelson, finally getting recognition at age 60. And I love the insights of this entire book, about famous American artists in their senior years, still chipping away at their craft, as I do mine. When asked how long it took me to complete a current painting, my general answer is 70 years. I know that I can kick out an 8 x 10″ plein air watercolor in 60-90 minutes. But I really take seriously all that goes into making a single piece. Each of my paintings or drawings is my response to the world I encounter. I pour all my inner resources–my imagination, my education, my curiosity, my attention to detail, my critical faculty–all of this filters what I see as I translate it onto a white rectangle lying before me, waiting.
One of the many perfections of this week has been the space and quiet embracing me every day and night. I haven’t known such quiet and a “slowing down” of the world since my week on the Laguna Madre in 2015 when I worked as Artist in Residence for Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi. This morning, I feel that quiet all over again that I knew and loved in those days of painting. I also knew that yesterday all afternoon and evening till I retired to bed. No sense of time or deadlines or schedules. Just time to paint, to read, to reflect, to journal–all quality time.
I’ve made so many new and wonderful artist friends at this retreat as well. And I cannot express the depth of feeling I experience when I see so many people happily engaged in making art in the open air. I will gladly post many pictures I took of the Tuesday workshop event when they finally arrive on my email. The Wi-Fi here is slow as molasses, and I have yet to receive the photos I’ve transferred for blogging . . .
Saturday does not find me in The Gallery at Redlands, or anywhere in Palestine. Sickness knocked me down several days ago, and I am thankfully climbing out of it, though still in bed this morning with much happier thoughts of late. Reading from my old journals led me to pull some photos from the file and repost something I scribbled out in the journal with genuine gratitude:
5:56 a.m. Tuesday morning, March 13, 2018
Yesterday we journeyed 2 hours to the canyon, taking the dog. At Quitaque, we found a cool Mobil gas station. Population 411 in Brisco County.
We journeyed to Caprock Canyon State Park, saw plenty of bison & mule deer, and I got in some painting. Amazing colors, there. Sandi took a picture of me at my easel. As I painted, she & Patches walked a trail. We may go back there to camp.
I’ll try to record what happened as I painted. Drinking in the horizon, I spread water across the sky & quickly spread Cerulean & Antwerp Blue in a light wash. The climate dried it rapidly. With a Mirado Classic pencil I laid in 2 or 3 action lines to follow the horizon & diverging terrain, accenting 2 or 3 bluffs, then went to wok, dotting the horizon with my modified “ugly” brush (one I cut with an X-acto knife, creating a ragged edge of bristle for foliage). Mostly I blended Alizarin Crimson with Winsor Green & a touch of Transparent Yellow to get a near-black silhouette of horizon tree line. Then I worked myway down the canyon ridge, laying wet wash of Cadmium Red & Transparent Yellow & dried patches of Quinacridone Gold & Winsor Blue for some varied green earth tones. When it suited me, I drew with my pencil into the wet washes to cut the lines of striations in the rock. When dry, I mixed a Winsor Green/Alizarin Crimson to create black & used a liner brush for sharp shadows & creases of rock striations. I also scumbled varying washes of reds & oranges over the bluffs, then laid in Winsor Violet & Transparent Yellow for deep shadows behind the red bluffs.
It was a rewarding time, drinking in the dynamics of the shadowed canyon walls I viewed from a distance. I want to go back when I can stay longer . . .
Now . . . Heidegger!
“To be old means: to stop in time at that place where the unique thought of a thought train has swung into its joint.”
Now, at age 63, with only twice-a-week classes to teach, my thoughts are able to slow down & subjects are given time to swing into alignment. It’s because I no longer have to submit papers by a deadline or prepare multiple subjects to teach. There is time to stop and ponder, ruminate, drink it in. Chew on it. Return to it. Re-examine it. Re-word it. Re-arrange the categories.
The logos gathers together. It is the ligature, the religion, that soothes me, mends me, calms me.
Yesterday the strife was there, as I met the earth with my world, and sought to make art emerge from that nexus, that arena of conflict. And as I wrestled with the horizon, I felt that I was living out my purpose, doing what I had prepared 63 years to do. Stand there at Ithaca, and embrace my home. . . . I was home on this earth.
The child is indeed father to the man. As a child, I saw myself standing, surveying the landscape, and capturing it on a flat plane. My eye penetrating, my hand moving, my thoughts flowing, and the world and I belonged together.
I could have just as easily been flyfishing in a moving stream, my eyes surveying the surface, looking for the seams that held the waters together. Finding the seams. The ligatures. The connections where parts are joined together to form harmonies.
Harmonious searching. Wanting all of it to fit together. Now I return to my landscape, seeking a composition, a framwork, an armature. What is it that makes the eye wish to look further?
I do not echo the sentiments of Wordsworth. At 63 I still know the splendor of childhood and feel more awake and alive than ever before. It is just that I am slower and (I hope) calmer in these years.
Thanks for reading. I’m grateful for this morning’s opportunity to re-read my old journals. I recall well the experience of plein air painting in Caprock Canyon State Park. I just don’t remember scribbling all this out in my journal! I’m glad I did.
Working on watercolors while it pours rain this evening
There’sa pervasive myth, shared by artists and non-artists alike, that art is a product of genius, madness or serendipity. Wrong. Art is not the chance offspring of some cosmic (or genetic) roll of the dice.Art is mostly a product of hard work. When you look back on the results of a lifetime of artmaking, even the role that talent played is insignificant. Living life productively, however, is very significant. If you learn to live your life productively, your artwork will take care of itself. If you do not live your life productively, nothing will save your artwork–not even talent. One of the less-advertised truths about artmaking is that it’s more important to be productive than to be creative. If you’re productive, your creativity will take care of itself. If you are not productive–well, if you’re not productive, then how exactly is it you intend to be creative?
Ted Orland, The View from the Studio Door: How Artists Find their Way in an Uncertain World
Occasionally I sit in a rocker and stare at the memories I’ve gathered over the years
Today, Sunday, was restoration day for Sandi and me. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we only managed three hours sleep before rising Saturday at 5:30 a.m. to journey two hours to Palestine for the Dogwood Art Council’s monthly Art Walk. We arrived back home last night around midnight. So, today, after a long sleep, we decided to take a road trip to Thurber, Texas and enjoy a meal at the Smokestack Restaurant.
Returning home, still tired, but hunger satisfied, we napped into the late afternoon, and now, with a driving rainstorm outside my Studio Eidolons windows, I’m ready to relax into my next adventure. I have French-pressed coffee and poured it into my Stanley for an evening of coffee and art-blissing in the company of my studio companion Paddington.
Paddington will always drop into the studio for a visit
A 16 x 20″ watercolor started a month ago, still waiting for closure
Years ago, I took Ted Orland’s words to heart which I’ve quoted at the head of this blog entry. Now enjoying my senior years of retirement, I no longer have to worry whether or not I’m good enough to be making art to put on the market. And I now compete very seldom in art circles; I don’t need the prize money, the recognition, or the headache of wondering whether of not the judge will value my submission.
About ten or so years ago, I registered for a conference at an airport to listen to Jason Horejs, gallerist from Scottsdale, Arizona. I wanted to be successful, hanging my work in galleries. Jason looked at the crowd and emphatically testified that the most important information for a gallerist reviewing a portfolio was the question: “How prolific are you? How many works do you crank out in a year? If we sold your entire portfolio to one collector, how many pieces do you have in reserve, framed, and ready to hang?” I sat there stunned. I knew the answer to the first question–I was creating about ten watercolors a year. I set a goal that day to finish the year with thirty. I finished with nearly eighty. Since then, I have easily created a hundred pieces per year, from 5 x 7″ to full-size. I now have enough work to hang in a number of galleries. I can easily enter an art festival and fill a 10 x 10′ tent with my work without stripping the pair of galleries that now carry my work. I have a public library show scheduled for September/October of this year and already I have set aside the framed pieces I’ll hang in that show.
I’m inspired by Andy Warhol’s “Factory” environment of the sixties, knowing that I always have a handful of watercolors in progress at the same time, and when I finish one, there are a number of others lying nearby, ready to be resumed. The church painting above has been waiting a month for me to return to it, and I just may get around to that one tonight.
Artist Steve Miller setting up for plein air oil painting in downtown Palestine
Completion of Steve’s second plein air oil painting
My own plein air set up for the morning’s activity
Watercolor in progress
The Art Walk yesterday turned out to be fun, for me. Steve Miller (we’re proud that he has joined our Gallery at Redlands) set up across the street from our gallery, and I set up on the corner just outside. I have known Steve since the days we both competed in Paint Historic Waxahachie. That was my introduction to plein air painting. Every May, about fifty artists would descend on the city of Waxahachie to paint for a week and compete for awards and enjoy brisk sales. Hundreds of paintings would fill the Chautauqua structure in the heart of Getzendaner Park, and patrons would overflow the center, taking out wallets, purses, cash, credit cards, and scooping up the paintings. Steve turned out to be a perennial winner, and took home a pair of awards a few weeks ago at the competition. He managed to sell his first painting off the easel yesterday to a family visiting Palestine from Oklahoma City. I’m seriously considering our city in Palestine hosting a plein air competition. I know a large number of plein air artists, and believe I could get answers to all my logistical questions by talking to the Waxahachie hosts. The Ellis County Art Association has hosted this competition for nearly twenty years.
I’m finally nearing the finish of my large watercolor posted below. The day David Crosby died, I decided I wanted to do a third painting of this Palestine series and insert a composition of the youthful Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young super group. These men turned my head as a guitarist in 1970 when I first listened to their debut album released the previous year. I had just acquired my first 12-string acoustic guitar and wanted to play and sing like David Crosby, and surround myself with voices comparable to that musical group. My dream has been fulfilled as I’ve immensely enjoyed performing “Helplessly Hoping” and “Southern Cross” with like-minded musicians years ago. I knew David was living on borrowed time for years, but I still was not ready for him to leave us. So . . . this watercolor is my loving tribute to him in appreciation for all the decades he enriched my musical life.
Nearing the finish of this full-size watercolor project
As one grows older one sees the impossibility of imposing order on the chaos with brute force. But if you’re patient there may come that moment while eating an apple when the solution presents itself politely and says “Here I am.”
Albert Einstein, quoted in the film “Why Man Creates” written by Saul Bass and Mayo Simon
Colorado gave us rain most of the day, forcing me to stay inside the cabin, or at least on the deck. Before the rain arrived, Sandi offered to drive us on an extended road trip over the Silver Thread. We managed to get ten miles past Creede before . . . (wait for it!) . . . a sleet storm overpowered us! So, we turned around and headed back to our cabin in South Fork. Before the rain, I rode along as a passenger, admiring the vistas, especially the aspen trees.
Since the year 2000, when I first visited Colorado, I was smitten by the sight of aspen trees, their glittering, shimmering round leaves blinking through the mountain atmosphere. And those white tree trunks against the dark forest interiors! Over the past twenty years of Colorado visits I have tried to solve the pine trees in watercolor, and still feel I haven’t arrived. But I was always befuddled, wondering how to render aspens. As Sandi drove this morning, the idea finally arrived. Thinking of Heidegger and Einstein, grateful for the visitation of inspirations, I spent the day inside the cabin contemplating how I was going to paint my first stand of aspens.
After taking ten photographs and adjusting them for my composition, I decided to begin with (I don’t know what this is called) negative painting or painting by subtraction. I penciled out the aspen outlines, then used my masquepen to block the trunks and branches. Later, I poured some of the masque solution onto a saucer and spattered with a toothbrush my first layer of “white” aspen leaves.
Nightfall has arrived. Tomorrow, under natural light, I will apply my first wash of light sea-green, sprinkled with salt and stale bread crumbs. When dry, I will spatter more masquing fluid. Once that is dry, I will apply a darker layer of aspen green. Dry again, then a new spattering of masquing, followed by a yet darker color, etc. I tried this method for the first time in the summer of 2015 when I was doing my Artist-in-Residency for Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi. While on a spoil island in the Laguna Madre, I was reading Heidegger’s “On the Origin of the Work of Art” and was inspired by a quote from the Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dűrer:
For in truth, art lies hidden within nature; he who can wrest it from her, has it.
Sitting on the island my first evening of the residency, I read that statement and contemplated the cord grasses growing in the shadows of the research station where I was residing for a week. Recalling the appearance of Albrecht Dűrer’s watercolor of tall grasses, I puzzled out the technique of multiple layers of masquing and watercolor washes.
Now, seven years later, I’m ready to try it again on the Colorado aspens. We’ll see how it turns out.
The day has been filled with gods (I believe Emerson wrote that), and I am grateful to have been alive to experience the visitations.
Thanks for reading.
I make art in order to discover (especially today!)
Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile.
Mark 6:31 (Jesus advising his disciples after they had finished a lengthy preaching and healing tour)
Morning colors are always amazing here
My 1st Colorado watercolor sketch
The start of my second watercolor sketch
A portion of my morning journal
At 10:13 tonight, I finally pause in the darkness of the Colorado night, sitting outside on the Brookie cabin deck, enjoying the 62-degree temperatures and the cup of hot tea Sandi just brewed and brought out to me. The south fork of the Rio Grande is filling the night with its own conversation, and the soothing sounds of the stream remind me that I’ll be sleeping soon.
While making coffee this morning, I began translating the 6th chapter of Mark’s Gospel from my Greek Testament. The text came alive, and I found myself scribbling several pages of personal observations concerning his effect on the synagogue audience as he spoke in his hometown of Nazareth on the Sabbath. They were astounded. The 1st chapter of Mark records the same audience reaction in Capernaum, noting that he spoke with authority and not as the scribes. The Nazareth audience was astonished for different reasons: they knew his family, his roots. And the wisdom with which he spoke far transcended what his townspeople had heard before. I have been intrigued with Mark’s Gospel since the 1970’s, and since I began reading Harvey Cox’s When Jesus Came to Harvard, I have been translating this Gospel with fresh eyes, avoiding the stacks of notes taken during seminary and pastoral days. What intrigues me about Mark’s Gospel is that he frequently registers the audience astonishment, but never tells us what Jesus actually said.
I have opened this blog post with the passage above where Jesus invited his disciples to retire to a “lonely place” after they had returned from a preaching tour, exuberant with their success, but no doubt tired. The Synoptic Gospels have always fascinated me with the rhythms of Jesus three-and-a-half year itinerant ministry from town to town. He frequently withdrew from the public into a solitary place to re-charge, to re-calibrate, to re-center. The Greek word translated “lonely place” is the work often translated “wilderness.” The word was used of John the Baptist’s domain in the trans-Jordanian region where he dwelt in isolation. The wilderness motif has engaged me ever since my studies in the Gospels along with Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden. Throughout my professional life and now even in retirement, I still periodically withdraw “to the wilderness” to re-focus what I am doing in my own life. These two weeks we’ve set aside to spend in Colorado are part of that plan. I love my life and everything I do. But I also love those opportunities to break away from the weekly cycle and go to a solitary place, hide the calendar, and do what I wish.
As to the pictures posted above, I have attempted two watercolor sketches from the view of this Brookie cabin deck, looking down toward the stream of the south fork of the Rio Grande. The first is just a rough, quick sketch; the second I may try to develop into a more serious painting tomorrow, we’ll see how I feel about it when I look on it with fresh eyes.
The final picture is of the journal I began this morning on the deck over a cup of coffee. Since it is Sunday, I had this urge to translate from my Greek Testament, and I pasted a photo of Karl Barth in my journal, as he still inspires much of my work these days. I took that picture after dark, so the lighting is rather strained.
Thanks for staying up with me. I hope to have more to share tomorrow.
I did not pick up the brush today as I had too much college work to catch up since we are returning to the classroom in the morning. I’m excited finally to get to deliver my inaugural semester lecture to students I have not yet seen.
Before retiring to bed last night, I pulled all my journal volumes from 2016-2017 in order to re-read what I had recorded during all my stays in the remote East Texas store that my friends allow me to live in during periodic escapes from city life. I had forgotten that I had set up a plein air easel and painted on site a watercolor of a chuck wagon on the property. Having recently developed an addiction to watching 1883 on television, I decided I wanted to paint a wagon train much like what is seen on the series. I hope my schedule will allow me a visit again soon to the old country store. It’s been a few years since I last resided there.
Plein Air Watercolor Sketch during Colorado Vacation
My hope is to launch a series of blog entries this weekend encapsulating the amazing three days experienced this week in South Fork, Colorado. Departing yesterday morning at 10:00, we took our time driving back to Texas with our two small dogs, stopping frequently to visit interesting locations on the return, finally pulling into our driveway at 2:30 this morning. After about four hours’ sleep we cleaned up, re-packed, and made the two-hour journey to Palestine to be ready and in place for the city’s monthly Art Walk tomorrow (Saturday). Currently I’m sitting in The Gallery at Redlands, eyes barely focused, but still wishing to begin this series tonight just in case tomorrow brings a flurry of activity and distractions preventing me from posting.
I still cannot believe how much was crammed into those three Colorado days. Above is an image marking one of my many personal highlights. Sitting on the deck of Brookie Cabin at South Fork’s Riverbend Resort, I have gazed over the years below at this magnificent boulder seated between me and the South Fork of the Rio Grande. Several years ago I painted it and felt satisfied with the results, but still found myself since then continuing to stare at the amazing visage of that massive rock. The textured surface, the pock marks, the lichen patterns, the subtle shifts of warm and cool neutrals playing across it–I’m still mezmerized.
In recent years my desire has intensified to study the colors and textures of boulders, cliffs, canyons and mountains visited in west Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. My satisfaction with my results has been mixed with far more misses than successes. Yet still I wish to pursue these watercolor and pencil studies and hope that with the Colorado visit behind me I will nevertheless continue this focus and see if I can turn a significant corner in my watercolor ouevre.
While selecting colors for this particular rock, I turned to some pigments I’m not used to working with in my watercolors–Stephen Quiller’s Venetian Red, along with Daniel Smith’s Quinacridone Burnt Sienna and Shadow Violet. For awhile I attempted to render the myriads of pock marks with Albrecht Dürer watercolor pencils by Faber Castell–Dark Sepia 175 and Cold Grey VI 235. I then finished out the work by scumbling about the boulder surface with a pencil I’ve become attached to over the past year–the Blackwing Matte. John Steinbeck used this pencil to write his manuscripts, and Looney Tunes creator Chuck Jones, along with Disney animator Shamus Culhane, sketched with this tool. I have enjoyed the velvety feel of the graphite when scribbling in my journals and eventually used it to draw into my watercolors. I have always loved the graphite quality of Andrew Wyeth drawings, watercolors and drybrush sketches, and always hoped I could find satisfying ways of weaving pencil into my watercolor endeavors. This recent scumbling experiment excited me as I finished up this plein air sketch.
I’m glad to be back home in Texas, but still feel the Colorado excitement in the pores of my skin and am happy that the memories are very fresh and alive, though I am exhausted tonight as I write this. Hopefully, I’ll find more lucidity tomorrow after a good night’s rest.
Plein Air Watercolor Sketching as Evening Approaches
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Sandi and I rolled into Utah yesterday evening, checked into our hotel in Kanab, and after a restful night’s sleep made two trips to Zion National Park, one in the morning, and again in the later afternoon.
As afternoon stretched into evening, we parked in the eastern part of the canyon and I got out to paint. As I was setting up my easel and staring in wonder at the rocky hillside in front of me, I detected movement. Unable to make out the shape, I used my smartphone camera to go full zoom, and saw what it was: a desert bighorn sheep. Solitary. Stopping to look back at me. I took about a dozen photos as he contined to ascend the rocky slope, pausing frequently to look back at me. I then felt Emerson’s sentiment–I was perceived, accepted, embraced. It was OK that I was in the park. My heart melted as I watched the sheep till he disappeared into the shadows of one of the crags of the rocky landscape. I only wish I had a better camera than my phone to capture his image.
Desert Bighorn Sheep
I was so moved at the sight of the bighorn that I found it difficult to shift gears and paint. I also found it difficult selecting a small piece of the enormous canyon landscape that enveloped me. But I finally began, tentatively, trying to figure out color, texture, contrast, and the accents of the undulating lines flowing across the face of the canyon walls.
First Attempt as the Evening Light began to Fade
As I waited for the first to dry, I took out another sketchbook and did a pencil sketch of the same subject. After the painting dried, I flipped to the next page of my diary and began afresh, this time with a little more confidence.
Second Attempt, before the Light Evaporated
After all these years of plein air sketching, I still find myself grasping for the right words to describe the sublimity of the act of painting on location. The evening was delicious as I stared at the rocky facade, made selections of color, brush, pencil and technique and forged ahead with the task, all the while savoring the sounds of laughing and chattering children in the distance, hiking with their parents and asking a myriad of questions. It was a perfect world. Once I finished the second sketch, Sandi rejoined me after her walk and together we strolled about the terrain where we were positioned, and enjoyed the cool air as the evening began to darken.
Leaving Zion on our return trip, we approached for the third time a pasture where a herd of buffalo gathered. The preceding three times, a dozen cars were pulled over and tourists lined the fence, taking pictures. This time no one had stopped and I decided I needed a closer look.
The cloud of lingering dust was what attracted my attention and made me want to pull over and watch awhile. But when I saw the cow and calf come toward me, enter the pond and drink, I felt my heart melt again, just as I felt when gazing at the bighorn so far away. I took dozens of photos of the pair, then directed my attention back to the herd. I have done very little painting of animals in my past, but I am going to have to give buffalo a try, especially after this heartwarming moment of watching them in the cool of the evening.
Today was totally enchanting. I have never before visited Utah and am so happy to be here for awhile, and grateful for this chance to share with you some of today’s best moments.
We decided we had had too much of the Texas triple-digit daily temperatures, so we put together a plan for a one-week Odyssey to Colorado and Utah. Two days before departure, we saw the winter storm warnings for Colorado, but decided to soldier on. Spending the first night in Amarillo, we noticed temperatures dropping to 59 degrees. By the time we cleared Walsenburg, Colorado, snow began dumping on us and the temperatures dropped to 32 degrees. South Fork greeted us one hour later with no snow and a surprising 57 degree afternoon, but that changed at nightfall. At 7 p.m., the electricity for the city failed, and did not resume till 1:30 a.m. Fortunately the cabin was well-insulated and sleeping was never a problem. Morning greeted us with a foot of snow, and it continues to fall, expecting to continue till noon Thursday. Today is Wednesday. The first thing I did when rising this morning was read “Snowbound” by John Greenleaf Whittier. After that, I read the Heidegger poem, then went outside to photograph the breath-taking mountain vista shrouded in mist above.
28 degrees isn’t so bad if you’re sufficiently bundled. So I set up my plein air easel on the front porch and gazed at that lovely mountain scene, deciding to give it a try in my watercolor sketchbook diary.
View from Inside the CabinSandi captured this photo of me working on the sketch
This is only my second watercolor sketch in the diary. I purchased it last week, deciding to bite the bullet and see if I could do some decent watercolor experiments and keep them in a bound book. In the past I’ve attempted many sketches that ended up worthy of framing, so I feared that I would merely tear up a sketchbook. Now I’ve decided that I will work freely in this book, and if something is suitable for framing, tough luck; I will keep the sketchbook intact and enjoy flipping through its pages.
Even when my watercolor attempts don’t pan out, I have a luxurious time painting, loving every moment. This mountain view really sent me to another world, watching the mist descend over the crown of the mountain, all the time trying to capture the colors and textures I saw evolving. Thanks to a small spray mist bottle, I was able to continue dissolving the paint at the top of the mountain while continuing my work down the slope. This is only a 5 x 7″ attempt, but I’m happy with how it came out and will gladly keep it in the book. I’m still amazed that I was able to paint en plein air outdoors in 28-degree weather.
Thanks for reading. Our first full day here in Colorado is proving an eventful odyssey, and we’re happy and safe.
Recollections 54 The Art of David Tripp 