Some New Endeavors

I paint so I’ll have something to look at. I write so I’ll have something to read.

Barnett Newman

It’s a rare moment to be in Studio Eidolons this time of night. But I cannot stop thinking about this day. Time spent in Studio 48 was enriching enough that I’m convinced to continue doing this on Wednesday afternoons. I only stayed two hours, but the time flew quickly as I found myself immersed in this large watercolor. This is my third in a series of Palestine settings, the first two centered on Lightnin’ Hopkins. This one features Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I began it a few days after the passing of David Crosby. I suppose while I’m at it I’ll go ahead and post the earlier two.

#1

#2

Today also found me reaching back into a novel I’ve been writing, featuring Hank and Randy. I’m thinking of the life and friendship I share with Wayne White from Missouri whom I’ve known since second grade. Wayne remains the brother I’ve never had. We’ve enjoyed life as an odyssey and share many stories back and forth. These memories have spawned this book. I’m posting the rough draft of another piece I just fleshed out day before yesterday:

Finally, standing before his first university class, Randy stood behind the podium, opened his folder, looked out at the expectant faces of the students on the first day of the semester, and began . . .

“Welcome to the fall term. And allow me this moment to introduce myself and this course of study.”

Stepping out from behind the podium, he continued:

“I am the school within the school, much as eighteenth-century European Pietism sought the church within the church, ecclesiola in ecclesia. As you pass through the halls of this university, you may have difficulty sorting the rivers from the tributaries. My elective courses appear in the catalogue as tributaries. I assure you, they are rivers. Indeed I am the main channel.

“I am a university man. My very lifestyle is that of a scholar—a perennial researcher. Daily my mind sifts, sorts, and discards data from books, professional journals, and yes, even the Internet. And what I bring to my courses, every bit as important as the subject matter, is the Love of Learning.

“If you choose to walk with me this semester, or even throughout this year, I will take you through the Great Conversation. I will toss you into the river of ideas that has surged with unbelievable force and increasing momentum these past 2800 years. I will sit you at the conference table in the select company of thinkers, writers, artists, musicians—those creatives whose collective vision has shaped this present world.

“I will grant you the opportunity to put your foot into that Mississippi River and feel the pull of the undertow. I am the institution of learning. I know what I speak. More importantly I know what I don’t know.

“I am the school within the school. We are the school within the school. You have no idea what awaits you this semester. I know some of it because I have taken this tour before. But I am going to tour some streets where I have never before visited. I don’t know what awaits all of us there.”

More to come. Thanks for reading.

I make art in order to discover.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am not alone.

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Sunday Morning in Studio Eidolons

Half the world wants to be like Thoreau at Walden, worrying about the noise of traffic on the way to Boston; the other half use up their lives being part of that noise. I like the second half.

Franz Kline

I love the tension between wilderness and city discussed by Kline above. I have missed the wilderness of late, yet have enjoyed the quiet tranquility of my home and Studio Eidolons during this quiet Sunday. I managed to finish a commission I started recently, and as I worked in silence, I recalled a line from Julia Cameron that I read years ago and continue to cherish:

Artists toil in cells all over Manhattan. We have a monk’s devotion to our work–and, like monks, some of us will be visited by visions and others will toil out our days knowing glory only at a distance, kneeling in the chapel but never receiving the visitation of a Tony, an Oscar, a National Book Award. And yet the still, small voice may speak as loud in us as in any.

So we pray. Fame will come to some. Honor will visit all who work. As artists, we experience the fact that “God is in the details.” Making our art, we make artful lives. Making our art, we meet firsthand the hand of our Creator.

Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Thanks for reading.

Another Turn of the Crank

Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

My sister is taking the morning shift with Dad in the hospital. This gave me some space to collect my wits and do something constructive. Reading from Emerson and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek brought some calm back into my system.

I’ve resumed a watercolor in my sketchbook inspired by what I saw in last evening’s walk through the neighborhood. Sketchbook drying time is much longer than what I’m accustomed to when I paint on stretched watercolor paper. But my haste in getting to St. Louis meant simply throwing the very basic watercolor supplies into a backpack. The longer drying time means time spent in books and journal, which I suppose is better anyway. I like it when I can feed my mind and imagination while working on art.

The Emerson quote above really stirred me. I acknowledge that my art is an attempt to manipulate nature, using my training and imagination. And at my older age, I acknowledge now that my efforts are so small when measured against our universe as well as the history of art. I read years ago some wise words from an artist who said the world doesn’t need our art; it will get along just fine without us. That liberated me from the oppression of cranking out blockbuster paintings. These later, experimental years are much more interesting, to me anyway.

I’m trying some new things. I began my trees with a wash of Winsor Lemon. Then I used the Masquepen to stipple the area. A light wash of Cobalt came next and is now drying (very slowly). I will stipple with masquing again. Then I’ll work on the darker, richer parts of the leaf clusters. I will leave soon for the hospital (Cheryl just texted there is no change from yesterday. Better than hearing that he’s worse).

Thanks for reading.

Birthday Musings

Ernest Hemingway manuscript from his early days in Paris

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Today I turn 69 and understandably am having a satisfyingly pensive morning over coffee, books and journal this morning. I’m grateful for this gift of life and that I have been afforded the opportunity to explore my art. Three decades of teaching brought plenty of reward and experience, but now I am blessed to know retirement and leisure sufficient to graze in these pastures. I am especially happy to feel I am emerging from a nasty illness that has flattened me for over a week. I really believe I’ll enter Studio Eidolons later today and resume the art I abandoned ten days ago. Reading Hemingway was timely. All of us know the feeling of flatness and anticipate with appreciation the invitation to return to creativity.

This morning’s reading turned up this gem from Robert Henri, truly a fiery prophet for the visual artists who made up The Ashcan School in the early twentieth century:

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual–become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.

At such times there is a song going on within us, a song to which we listen. It fills us with surprise. We marvel at it. We would continue to hear it. But few are capable of holding themselves in the state of listening to their own song. Intellectuality steps in and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect. It is aristocratic and will not associate itself with the commonplace–and we fall back and become our ordinary selves. Yet we live in the memory of these songs which in moments of intellectual inadvertence have been possible to us. They are the pinnacles of our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate sensations, this song from within, which motivates the masters of all art.

What I would have given to occupy a space inside Henri’s studio at 806 Walnut in Philadelphia! It is written that he gathered the young newspaper illustrators around him and read to them from Emerson, from Whitman, from Tolstoy, and continually fired them up to draw, to paint fearlessly, to take their work to the grimy urban streets and render the world that encompassed them daily. They began as The Eight, and finished as The Ashcan School. I’m excited to think of tonight when I get to meet the other Nine of this new circle that is opening Studio 48 for the opening reception. Hopefully we’ll be able strike a match, light a torch, and continue this art trend that is sweeping across this portion of Texas.

The final paragraph of Henri’s statement above brings to mind something that has occupied my attention for a long time, this struggle between the flourish and the discipline of making art. The ancient Greeks knew of the conflicting forces of Dionysus and Apollo, the passion versus the order. Throughout my life I have felt I was too anal, too cerebral to be a true artist. No doubt I have surges of feelings about making a painting, but I also possess much training and listen to too many voices while I work.

In Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast there is the humorous account of his assessment of artist Wyndham Lewis, whom Ezra Pound worshiped. Gertrude Stein, however, referred to him as “the measuring worm”. She complained that he looked at a subject, held up his pencil and with his thumb measured out the proportions of what he was going to paint. Then he went back to his studio and got it all wrong.

The first time I read this account, I wrote the following in my journal:

This has implications for the illustrator vs. the artist, the guitar player vs. the musician. It is about mechanics vs. style. I know how to play the guitar, but I don’t feel I’m a musician; the musician has the “touch”, the “it factor” that somehow pulls music out of the instrument, creating a sublime sensation. When it comes to art, I know I am well-trained, and have many tools in my toolbox. But when I make art, sometimes there is that special Something that emerges greater than my studied techniques, and it emerges unexpectedly. It is in such moments that I feel I have done the work of the Artist.

Time to get back to the studio. Thanks for reading.

I make art in order to discover.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am not alone.

How it All Began . . .

Three pieces in Studio Eidolons

The Reference Photo from my Phone

The way to look at them, Hopper was showing me, was hard: ‘Look to the point of fascination,’ he seemed to say, don’t turn away. Trust that if you stand long enough to lose yourself you’ll see something. And if you learned how to wait, things . . .would slowly seep into your mind and acquire a gravity, a significance that could be measured with paint and feeling.'”

Photographer Joel Meyerowitz discussing painter Edward Hopper’s vision

Last night, while reading Emerson’s Nature, I was arrested by the following text:

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

I had to stop and catch my breath, because Emerson’s words reminded me of that magical moment when I encountered the scene that spawned the three paintings posted above. I was leisurely walking in downtown Palestine, Texas on Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 11:21 a.m. I know this because I went back into my smart phone to record the exact moment I took the picture. The instant I glanced to my left and saw this, I knew there was a painting waiting to be created.

The following Sunday morning, while sitting up in bed over coffee at 9:51, I recorded the following in my journal:

Yesterday, May 14, in the morning on Saturday I SAW my next BIG watercolor. Took picture with my phone. The RxR crossing and the Pearlstone building loading docks. Rich in green. And I’ll have a bluesman and guitar walking along the tracks. I’m enthused about this. I believe I’ll get 300# watercolor paper for this project. And begin this week while the image is hot on my retina.

The initial painting sold before I was even finished with it. I decided to have limited edition giclees pulled from it, and one of my smaller framed canvas editions is in the photo above. The first edition features the ghost of Lightnin’ Hopkins walking with his guitar along the tracks. He used to play in a juke joint in Crockett, Texas, thirty-five miles south of Palestine. The second of the series is nearly completed. In this one, Lightnin’ is seated and playing his guitar, and has been joined by a guy playing harp. The third and final piece, barely under way, will feature an acoustic quartet seated in front of the decaying grocery store.

The story of this series of watercolors continues to develop, but I’ll always be thrilled at the surprise encounter I experienced the morning I looked over and saw this scene while walking. The photographer Joel Meyerowitz used to say that Edward Hopper painted scenes he surveyed that seemed to “put out a call.” He would step into that scene, answer the call, and never be disappointed in the resulting painting. On that Saturday morning, I felt that strong invitation to paint, and am glad I responded.

Today I returned to Studio 48 (the new name for Show Me the Monet Art Gallery in Arlington, Texas) to complete the hanging of my exhibit. I have been offered a pair of seven-foot spaces adjoining the original fourteen-foot area where I hung my first pieces last week. Six new watercolors have now been added. I had intended to take down the pair of large collages to replace with large framed watercolors, but decided to wait another week before doing that.

I’m excited as we draw nearer to the re-opening reception for this newly-christened art gallery April 20 from 6-8:00 p.m. I’ll have more to write about that occasion as details continue to emerge.

Thanks for reading.

I make art in order to discover.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am not alone.

Saturday Morning in The Gallery at Redlands

This morning I discovered that 5 a.m. in The Gallery at Redlands on a Saturday is a good time to work on a watercolor. Untangling a gaggle of Clydesdales in the blowing snow is proving a slow, arduous task, at least to the eyes. I’m now pouring my second cup of coffee and settling into a little reading and journaling while waiting for the paint to dry.

Approaching Yuletide 5×7″ Watercolor Print in 8 x 10″ frame. $40

I’ve taken several breaks from painting this morning to frame a trio of prints. I have a pair in the gallery in 8 x 10″ frames for $40. I also have the same print (8 x 10″) in an 11 x 14″ frame for $60. The Polar Express season is at high tide in Palestine and our gallery is bringing out all my original watercolors of trains, many of them available in framed prints as well.

As I work through the final volume 4 of Richardson’s A Life of Picasso, I’m surprised to learn that he stopped painting for a year in 1936. His life was complicated as he worked through a divorce from his wife Olga and at the same time took up writing poetry to pour out his emotions. I’ve known that kind of suffering through a Christmas season long, long ago, but cannot imagine giving up painting for such a long period. Going several days without touching the Clydesdales seems like ages to me; how could one endure a year without art?

Tonight during “wine-swirl” I look forward to making art alongside our friend Deanna Pickett Frye. Her work is included in our gallery and she will painting at an easel here while patrons enjoy the wine-swirl event. I will also work on watercolor at the drafting table.

Deanna has a number of large canvases hanging in our gallery, but has also exploded on the mural scene in Palestine and surrounding towns in east Texas. How she manages easel painting, mural composing and college teaching astounds me. As a former teacher I managed to juggle a few balls in the air, but never worked simultaneously on tasks the way she has managed lately. If you are in the area, you will love the opportunity of meeting her while she works here tonight.

Thanks for reading.

I make art in order to discover.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am not alone.

Sweet Evening Solitude & Recovery

Working Lightly in Studio Eidolons Tonight

Current wisdom, especially that propagated by the various schools of psychoanalysis, assumes that man is a social being who needs the companionship and affection of other human beings from cradle to grave. It is widely believed that interpersonal relationships of an intimate kind are the chief, if not the only, source of human happiness. Yet the lives of creative individuals often seem to run counter to this assumption.

Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

Storr’s book has been like a Bible in my collection for over thirty years now. This was the first book, read when I was in my thirties, that convinced me I was O.K. even though I didn’t have much of a social life. The ministry dripped with a sense of alienation. Graduate school meant long solitary days in a library carrell. Welding-well, how many people stand around to visit with you when you’re under the hood while the arc lights up the room? Public education for nearly three decades saw me scrambling for privacy at the end of each school day. So yes, I have regarded myself, despite having a family whom I love, as largely private.

I don’t recall the last time I was ill; it hadn’t occurred since 2017 when I retired from teaching. And I don’t recall the last time I missed school due to illness. I have lived a life for the most part without need for doctor’s visits or medication. I wasn’t prepared for what happened when I tested positive for COVID yesterday morning. The good news was that Sandi was already in Palestine to run the gallery in my stead, leaving me to attend tonight’s artists’ reception in Granbury. She has since tested negative, so she will be staying out of our house till I am past all this. To repeat–I wasn’t prepared for this enforced isolation. Yesterday and today were among the longest days in my life, here in my home and studio, alone with a pair of small dogs.

This afternoon, while the isolation had reached its bleakest moment, the phone calls started coming in. Three of my paintings sold, two of them major works.

Six Subjects in Search of a Painter. SOLD

The New Owners

I was elated to learn that a student of mine from fifteen years back purchased my large still life at Baron’s Creek Winery in Granbury. I was deeply saddened that I was unable to attend this event.

He Was Here Yesterday SOLD

And then . . . Sandi phoned from our Gallery at Redlands. She had just sold another large watercolor of mine to a local automobile restoration artist. She told me he was fascinated with my collection of gas station compositions and chose the large one from among the pack.

Evening Hole. SOLD

Sandi also sold this mid-size watercolor of me fly-fishing Troublesome Creek in Colorado.

Needless to say, news of the triple sales (and boy, Sandi sold quite a number of other artists’ works the past three days in the gallery!) created somewhat of a soothing balm for my tortured feelings the past pair of days. Though absent in body, I’m glad that my “spirit” somehow lingered in the events where my work was on display. The affirmation helps, believe me.

I believe I will sleep better tonight. I have completed the first day taking dosages of Paxlovid, and already am feeling some physical relief from this dreaded illness. And news of the art sales has certainly provided a strong measure of good will; I feel much less isolated now.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

I make art in order to discover.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am not alone.

Preparing to Hit the Road

Five framed limited editions ready to pack and load

Destination City                                                       

Muses again whisper in the air.

Healing breezes stir.

Like monks in their cells, creative spirits toil

in the city.

Believing.

Anticipating.

Believers once again are painting, carving,

writing, singing, acting.

East Texas again awakens, breathes,

stretches the limbs.

Railroads once united communities.

Art becomes the New Railroad.

And all Railroads lead to Palestine.

David Tripp, April 20, 2022

Good morning, Friends. I wish I had more time to write, but we’re packing and loading for our journey to Palestine, our new Destination City. From 5 till 8 this evening, we’ll celebrate the coming out of volume 7 of The Eyes of Texas Fine Art Gallery magazine. The city is proud to join the host of fine arts communities of East Texas featured in this magazine, and we’re anticipating exciting days ahead. I’ll try to continue writing and sharing this new spirit in the air that has refreshed our arts community. The poem above was my first attempt, and I have several other pieces in the hopper that I’m still trying to edit. I’ve laughed at the metaphor of nailing Jell-o to the wall. That is exactly what I feel when I try to describe the happenings around here of late.

2:15 a.m. this morning marked the 68th year of my entry into this astonishing world. I cannot say that life has diminished for me, yet. Funny, I thought when I was younger that these senior years were to be the most pitied. Who would have guessed that they are far better than any era I’ve previously encountered. I am grateful that I have been allowed to remain. It would have been tragic to miss the past five years I’ve known since the Palestine community entered my life.

I’ve posted above five of my favorite limited edition giclee prints recently framed and ready to hang in The Gallery at Redlands.

Thanks for reading.

I make art in order to discover.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am not alone.

Easter Predawn Musings

Looking up at the 2nd-story unit where we reside during gallery weekends

By reality and perfection I understand the same thing.

Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

Early morning reading and scribbling

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page . . .

Wallace Stevens, “The House was Quiet and the World was Calm”

Waking at 5:17 a.m. is never my plan. But there it was. Knowing my gas tank was nearly empty and we have a long country drive ahead of us in a few hours, I decided to get dressed, go downstairs and take my vehicle out for a fill-up. The Kroger pumps were active so I filled up, then walked to the donut shop nearby. The lone friendly attendant was chatty and cheerful, commenting on my being up so early. “What about you?” I asked. “When did you have to open up?” “At 4, he replied with a grin. But Pop is already baking by 2, otherwise we’re behind!” At that moment the light went on in my brain: most independent donut shops close early in the day. Of course! They have already put in their time. I immediately recalled those bleak times when I worked for UPS unloading 40-foot trailers at 3:15 am. I was working on my doctorate and had to study throughout the daytime hours. Then I was off to bed early in the evening, knowing I would have to set the alarm for 2:30 to get to work on time. I’m glad those hours are behind me (until days like this, which are elective–today excepted).

Trekking back upstairs to the second floor, I found my favorite place beside the floor lamp at the kitchen table near the windows and waited for the light to come up over Palestine.

My favorite morning vista of Palestine

I’m looking out the kitchen window now, through the fire escape, at the Carnegie Library which will soon house Palestine’s public library once again (when that happens, I’ll probably have to put a sign on our locked gallery door saying something like: “IF YOU WANT ACCESS TO THE GALLERY, YOU’LL HAVE TO CROSS THE STREET AND FIND ME IN THE LIBRARY!”

I enjoy gazing out through the fire escape, because I have had this romantic notion of Palestine embodying the best of Manhattan’s 1950’s art culture. Fire escapes on buildings such as this 1914 hotel make me think of Manhattan. I was writing out these sentiments a year ago when we took possession of The Gallery at Redlands and readied ourselves for the annual Dogwood Art Festival. And of course I was ecstatic the morning of the festival when a Manhattan sculptor responded to this blog and sent us her well wishes.

Though finishing the book, I am still re-reading and re-hashing much of New Art City as I discover striking parallels between the Abstract Expressionist artists of New York in mid-century and the climate we artists are discovering lately in east Texas. The following quote I find particularly striking:

For New York artists, who take it for granted that they live in a city that is less than perfectly beautiful, the idea of asserting that reality and perfection are one and the same may be a way of asserting the possibility that art will be able to flourish in an environment that pushes against the idea of art. A New York artist has to believe that beauty can be found in the bare, immediate facts, for only if reality, which is by its nature imperfect, has a chance of perfection, can an artist who lives in this unpredictable environment have a chance to create something with a permanent value.

I am still searching for adequate words to express what is happening in east Texas recently. There is a growing number of creative spirits (artists, musicians, writers, actors) in this region who sense a surge of enthusiasm for the arts as new venues are opening and new public events keep popping up in our communities to promote the arts. At the same time, we find ourselves surrounded by a climate of gross negativity, particularly in social media and news outlets. I always wonder why so many seek out ways to spread unhappiness. We creatives are determined to keep doing what we do, refusing to listen to the sourpusses. Recently I’ve been studying the art culture of ancient Byzantium and how much of it inspired the rising tide of New York art in the 1950’s. The result is that I am beginning to see East Texas through the lenses of Byzantium, the ancient citadel for the arts. I plan to write much more of this in the days ahead.

Gallery at Redlands lobby window display

We hope you will join us for our Magazine Launch party next Wednesday, April 20 from 5-8 pm as we celebrate the arrival of Volume 7 of The Eyes of Texas Fine Art Gallery magazine. Palestine has been designated as one of the “Destination Cities” and has taken out ten pages of advertisements with sponsors promoting the creative spirits of this town. Publisher Gloria Hood will join us for this party as will the artists and sponsors featured in the ads. We are offering wine and refreshments and much fun as we gather.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for coming art-related events.

I make art in order to discover.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am not alone.

An Artful Palestine Weekend

Mike Long posing beside his Father’s Art Work

“Mitcha, why aren’t you at home painting?”

Hans Hofmann, chiding Joan Mitchell for walking her dog

For the past 72 hours, I’ve heard Hofmann’s stinging rebuke in my ears as I closed the door to my Studio Eidolons and bowed to the ugly task of consolidating all my financial data to submit to my tax preparer yesterday. I absolutely hate going over volumes of spreadsheets of dollar figures to submit to IRS once a year, and swear every year that I will do a better job daily or weekly of consolidating all that stuff rather than poring over it for days on end once a year. Today is Saturday, and my dream for two weeks has been to paint the Chamber of Commerce building across the street from The Gallery at Redlands. Well guess what–it is dark and overcast all day today, so there will be no sun on the side of this building, so I won’t paint today after all. But I can blog . . .

Postponement of painting till the sun emerges again. At least the preliminary drawing is in place

So . . . the photo of the Dr. Pepper ghost sign at the top . . . Last night we were surprised in the gallery by a visit from Mike Long. His father, Donnie Long, painted this Dr. Pepper billboard on the side of the building next door to The Redlands Hotel in 1964. I have been looking at the ghost sign since 2017 when I arrived and have yet to paint it, though Dave Shultz our local friend and photographer, has photographed and enhanced the image numerous times since I’ve known him.

Mike’s information about the Dr. Pepper sign still has my head swimming today. His father painted it free-hand. I have a special gift book about ghost signs that my dear friend Dian Darr handed to me not long after I completed the ghost sign watercolor last year from Hot Springs, Arkansas.

“Palimpsest” Framed Watercolor 22 x 33″. $800

I am fascinated by the stories I read of sign painters and the special templates and tools they used to render their images and slogans. Hearing that this sign was painted free-hand has made me go out there and look at it more closely with astonishment.

I’m sorry to learn that Mike’s father is deceased, and in fact had passed away in 1979, before the sign had been covered over by some kind of new siding. In the late 1990’s, Mike got a surprising phone call from the business across the street while he was working in his office across town. “Come down here, now. And bring your camera.” Mike closed his office and drove to the location to see the “ghost sign” that had been covered over for decades. No one present knew the sign was underneath the siding until it was removed. Mike had even forgotten about it, because he was only a boy when his father painted it. As it turns out, the siding protected the paint from the elements for over twenty years.

As Mike and I visited, he reminisced about his father’s studio, filled with paintings in progress. Mike said his dad would work on whatever his mood directed each day, some of the paintings lying incomplete for months or years before finishing. This fact made me feel better, because I have closets and file drawers filled with “in-progress” watercolors dating back to 2006, some of which may never be finished. I suppose I have more patience in my senior years of work being postponed. After all, I thought I was plein air painting today, and the weather said No. Another time. There are plenty of other tasks to chase today.

Sandi, always working, cleaning, tidying in the gallery

I’m grateful to Sandi and her partnership in this endeavor. All morning she has been working on the gallery, tidying, re-arranging, etc. while I’ve pursued paperwork, this blog, and made preparations for an art lesson this afternoon. There is always something to do in The Gallery at Redlands.

Magazine Launch Party Announcement

Speaking of which–we have a Magazine Launch Party next Wednesday, April 20, from 5-8 pm here in the gallery. The new magazine has come out, Palestine as a “Destination City” has ten pages of ads in the publication, promoting artists and local business sponsors of the arts. If you’re in the area, we would love for you to stop by, meet the artists, sponsors, and Gloria Hood the magazine publisher. The magazines will be available here, and I’m sure that artists would be happy to autograph their pages! We’re looking for a good time that night. Special treats are being prepared, and there will plenty of wine to pour.

Thanks for reading. I’m always happier when I land in Palestine, city of the arts, to pursue new adventures.

I make art in order to discover.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am not alone.