No Defense Against the Dream

Pre-Dawn Companions

At 5:44 a.m., an unspeakably cruel dream shattered the darkness of my deepest sleep.  And the debris of that wretched visitation disallowed any chance of returning to sleep this morning.  There was no one I dared call in the pre-dawn–I would call that a genuine test of friendship, and I didn’t want to put anyone to that sort of test.  Turning to my bedside table, I found the kind of companionship that will not be tied to a clock, beginning with Robert Frost.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

 

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

 

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

 

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

By the time I finished reading this, I was a little better.  Reaching for my journal, I began to write things I don’t need to put into this blog.  But thanks to conversations with a friend last night, I found encouragement in writing, and the longer I mused and wrote, the better I felt.  And as I wrote, I became conscious of the ticking of my bedside clock, and Frost’s words returned:

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I realized that each tick of that clock was the sound of a footstep walking away in the night, never to return.  Time leaves us behind.  Thinking on that led me to the realization that life is too brief to dwell on the demons of the night.  I was too awake to return to sleep, so I declared myself rested and determined to make this day a good one, or to quote from the bard Thoreau: “to affect the quality of the day.”  There was a still life waiting in the garage, and tools ready for my return.  Looking up at the window, I saw the grey light of dawn breaking through, and took that as an invitation to follow my bliss, and I shall.

The Studio Always Waits Patiently for my Return

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog as a reminder that I’m never really alone.

Remembering Robert Frost’s Snowy Evening

The Property Behind my Parents’ Home in High Ridge, Missouri

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

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.

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

I know–I have posted Robert Frost’s immortal words on previous blogs.  But this poem surged through me as evening arrived and I stood at the backside of my parents’ property during the Thanksgiving break and gazed upon this tree laden with snow and the broken down fence beneath it.   All I could think of was the lament of Robert Frost–his wish to visit the snowy woods, but obligations preventing him, so he could only imagine the possibilities.  It was Thanksgiving.  I was out of school.  I was seven hundred miles from home.  Nothing prevented me from standing in this winter wonderland and exploring the surroundings.  This is my third and final plein air watercolor sketch of my holiday season, and I did it with gladness in my heart.

This 5 x 7″ watercolor is matted in white and installed in a wooden 8 x 10″ frame with glass.  I am offering it for $50, grateful to Robert Frost for giving me the inspiration to sketch this composition.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Rural Missouri Property in Winter

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.

Robert Frost, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”

The image posted above is the property behind a friend’s ranch where I stayed as a guest a few winters ago while spending Christmas holidays visiting my parents in the St. Louis area.  I stood in his kitchen and looked out through the glass patio doors at the beautiful snow across his sprawling woods, and worked on this quick watecolor sketch, so I guess I could say I was painting en plein air, though I was indoors, and warm.

I’m closing out a beautiful, though cold weekend (my furnace has been out of commission since Thursday–supposed to be repaired tomorrow), seated next to an electrice space heater (which is doing its job), working on an Andrew Wyeth power point for tomorrow’s art history classes.  While reading through my Wyeth materials this weekend, I came across a conversation he had with Robert Frost concerning the poem of which I’ve posted a portion above.  Wyeth assumed Frost had been standing in the snow when he came up with this idea, and that the poem had required long periods to compose. Frost surprised him with these words:

Andy, I’ll tell you about that.  I’d been writing a very complicated, long-drawn-out poem, almost a story type of poem entitled “The Death of the Hired Man.”  I had finished at two o’clock in the morning.  It was a hot August night, and I was exhausted. I walked out on the porch of my house and looked at this mountain range.  It came to me in a flash!  I wrote it on an evelope I had in my pocket, and I only changed one word.  It came out just like that.

About an hour ago, I was prompted on Facebook that it was snowing in south Arlington.  Though cold inside, I wrapped up and dashed outside in genuine joy, walking through my yard, out into the street, and then out into my backyard, looking up in wonder at the night sky filled with those beautiful flakes.  I just wanted to bring my coffee outdoors and spend time walking around in it.  But alas, I have promises to keep, a power point to finish, sleep to accomplish, and classes waiting for me tomorrow.  Promises to keep.  And miles to go before I sleep.  But I’ll still feel this gratitude.  It is a beautiful night, capping a beautiful weekend.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself I am never really alone.

Pulled by the Charms of a Midwestern Winter Town

Happy to Work on a Watercolor on New Year’s Day

We realize that there is no one way of seeing a thing no matter how simple that thing may be.  Its planes, values, colors, all its characteristics are, as it were, shuffled before each new-comer arrives, and it is up to him to arrange them according to his understanding.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

I am back in Texas, but my heart is still in Hermann, Missouri.  Hemingway said he could not write about Michigan until he was in Paris, and could not write about Paris until he was back in the United States.  Well, here I am in Texas, painting from a photograph I took last week in Hermann, Missouri, a German town perched high on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River, a town that was blustering cold on the day I took this photo, yet the sun was knifing its way across every facade down this main street.  I don’t know how many photos I took of this historic town–all I know is that I wished I could stay there a few weeks and just sketch and paint every street corner.  But I had promises to keep.  And miles to go before I’d sleep (Robert Frost knew).  So I find myself back home, with only visual memories of Hermann, and attempts to capture some of it on paper.  And I suppose I feel some of that Hemingway Hangover (though I didn’t imbibe last night).  This cold wintry Midwestern town is still all over me.

I’ll be frank about this–I find zero environmental satisfacion in a 61-degree New Year’s Day, such as I work in today.  I am a Missourian, and yes, I was sick of winter weather when I moved to Texas in 1977, but after my first two boring winters in this state, I was begging for a sight of snow, for a wintry sky, for something, anything, to make me remember real winter seasons.   Today, as I chip away at this small watercolor, I have the NBC Winter Classic on TV.  105,000 fans are huddled in the stands at Michigan Stadium, snow is blowing everywhere, and two teams from the NHL Original Six are battling on the rink below.  It reminds me of my high school days in Missouri, playing hockey on frozen lakes, bonfires on the banks, hot chocolate beside the fire, layers of clothing–and now here I am in Texas, New Year’s Day, and it is 61 degrees and sunny outside.  I have already gone out into my backyard barefoot, in shorts and a T-shirt–hardly my thought of a genuine New Year’s Day.

This small 8 x 10″ watercolor sketch is really drawing me in.  I now wish I had started this on an 18 x 24″ or larger page.  I am absolutely loving the details of the photo and wanting to capture all I can, yet feel so hemmed in by the smallness of the composition.  I’m applying all I’ve learned about cold winter environments and trying to capture that sense of coldness that enveloped the town the morning I walked across it.  All I could think about as I walked along was how much the town looked like a Christmas card, and I was existing insde the Christmas card.  I just absolutely loved every sight.

This morning has been an excellent experience, as I have felt the embrace of 2014.  I was reading from the Isaacson biography on Benjamin Franklin about his retirement at the age of 42, because he saw no need to make more money than necessary to sustain life.  What he would seek from that moment forward was “leisure to read, study, make experiments, and converse at large with such ingenious and worthy men as are pleased to honor me with their friendship.” What a wonderful goal.  I am now adopting that as my mantra.

Thanks for reading.  What a wonderful start to the New Year (weather notwithstanding).

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

There is a Certain Slant of Light

Watercoloring in the Afternoon, with thoughts of Emily Dickinson

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

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

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

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

Emily Dickinson

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

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

Thanks for reading.

Snowscape at Wayne White’s Ranch

Winter at Wayne's

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

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

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep.

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

Thanks for reading.

New Year 2011, My Sleeping Cat and a Winter Landscape en plein air

 

Missouri Winter Landscape

Happy New Year to anyone who reads this.  I have just returned from a St. Louis Christmas holiday, and though the family activities kept me busy, I did find a brief opportunity to paint.  My eye was filled with wonder the entire six days I spent in the midst of the snowy Missouri winter.

 

One of my profound blessings of recent months was renewing a friendship with Wayne White, a classmate I knew since second grade but lost contact with following high school graduation.  Thanks to Facebook we found each other again.  Wayne is a farrier who works on his beautiful spread at Double D Acres in Labadie, Missouri (not far from historic route 66) southwest of the St. Louis area where both of us grew up.  You can read all about his life and work at http://www.doubledacres.com/.

Wayne graciously put my wife and me up in a comfortable apartment on his ranch, and we spent a quality morning with him in the frigid barn temperatures, watching and photographing as he worked, shoeing one of his horses.

The morning of the shoeing, I awoke to a gorgeous snowscape, and could not stop admiring this view of his property behind his house.  I was filled with an Andrew Wyeth drybrush-sense of wonder, and could not stop gazing at it, all the while hearing the words from Robert Frost–“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”–

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 was not going to let this opportunity pass.  It was frigid cold outside, but the view through the kitchen apartment door was fine enough for me.  I laid my supplies on the table, held the block in my left hand, and sketched, brushed with my right.  I only spent about 30 minutes on it (a small 8 x 10″ sketch), but was happy with the results.

I am back home now in Arlington, Texas, in my garage studio (man cave!), with the door shut because of the 35 degree temperatures.  I finished this work a few moments ago, adding only the tree trunks and their shadows at the bottom of the page.  I believe that is all this needs.  Hopefully I can work on some more snowscapes this winter, if not from Texas landscapes, then from photos I took while in St. Louis this past week.

Meanwhile, in the company of my sleeping cat, I believe I’ll move on to another watercolor.

Thanks for reading.