Failing Up

8 x 8 oil Available here Lilacs on LeDoux

I really didn’t get it right.  I was excited to find the two beautiful lilac bushes flanking the door near the Blumenschein Home and Museum* on Ledoux Street in Taos.  I set up my plein air easel and quickly set about painting.  After two hours of struggle it was clear I had a failure.    The composition was dull—one, two, three things in a row.  The middle was a gaping dark uninteresting rectangular door, the wrong focal point--not the flowers, the whole reason for the painting!  The painting was 95% dark.  The brushwork was heavy-handed. I was disappointed and disheartened.  So distraught I destroyed the painting. I had come to paint lilacs, and, by-gum, I was going to get these lilacs!—just not today.

Photo of the first composition try.

 Of course, part of my problem, was in not thinking before painting. If I were to make progress I was going to have to look at this mistake and find the roots of it. First, I chose to paint the scene from the most comfortable vantage point (shade and level ground), not from an interesting composition vantage point. Bad me! Second, so worried about losing the light late in the day, I didn’t take the time to work out a few small sketches.  Finally, had I thought any about what my teachers had taught me? I went back to lessons on compositions, about light versus dark, about balancing warm and cool, and about finding some exciting place for a spark of unexpected color.  What was I trying to say in the painting? After reconsidering these, I went back later in the week.  The result is my failing up “Lilacs on Ledoux.” (top)

A lesson learned in the hot and dry western land is not soon forgotten. You’ve got to use your brain when you paint.

Postscript* The Blumenschein Home and Museum is an appropriate place for a “failing up”, of making progress as a painter.  Ernest L. Blumenschein was  one of the New York and European trained artists who settled in Taos, NM in the early part of 20^th c and founded the Taos Society of Artists.  Though it was disbanded about the time of the Great Depression, he and its members are largely credited with making Taos the artist colony that it continues to be today.

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My paintings are available at Sheffield Art Studio in Cary, NC and online and now, if I have paintings on auction, at Daily Paintworks auctions (see above.)

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Why'd the Artist Cross the Road?

"Reaching for the River" 8 x 8 oil Available. Painted outdoors below the John Dunn Bridge

Whirr, whirr. We saw and felt the sickening sight of flashing trooper lights behind us on 64W, the same 64 near our home in Cary.  We had just come back onto Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, aka 64W, from viewing the big Rio Grande Bridge.  I determined that painting there would be difficult because of wind. How could this be, going only 55 on the open, flat, clear road outside Taos? The officer approached our car, and seeing we were a tourist couple in a rental car, warned us we were doing 55 in a 45, but kindly only directed us to our next destination, the John Dunn Bridge in the smaller Rio Grande Gorge. 

Relieved we were on our way.  To the right we viewed the Pueblo Peak of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range.  

Pueblo Peak area

The road soon dropped down into a deep arroyo, a small stream bed, that ran left to the Rio Grande.  We turned left at an old hippie colony from the 1970s and followed a small paved road until it turned to dirt.  Bump, bump, bump.  Up the hill we drove to the mesa trailing more dust and dirt, then we dropped down steeply into a ravine to a one lane bridge.  More dust and bumping over rocks.  I was losing faith there was a John Dunn Bridge.  “Let’s turn back!  I’m not inspired!  Only sagebrush and rocks in sight”, I yelled at Walt in anguish.  Just then a car approached in the opposite direction.  “You’re there.  Just round the next bend.” 

One view from the John Dunn Bridge

We did.  A beautiful site.  A wide running river sparkling in the western sun, high cliffs, a wood plank and metal truss bridge, flat sand beaches, and toilets.  A plein air painter’s paradise!  And a place of community to walk the road to fish, to picnic and to drive across to work.

Thank you John Dunn for opening this “road”.

Long John Dunn (1857 – 1953) was a saloon keeper and gambler who owned the only bridge and stage coach into Taos.  He was a former cattle driver from Texas who escaped a 40 year prison sentence for murdering his brother-in-law by sawing through the bars and floating down river.  He was wise and resourceful, however, in understanding that roads, rivers, and mail opened up land all through the expanding continent and he made it possible in northern New Mexico.  His obituary quotes him as saying, “Transportation made the West, not blazing guns as is so often preached - although I know the guns played a big part. It was those sweat-stained horses and tireless mules, those worn saddles and creaking wagons and the men and women who were riding them across muddy rivers, rocky ridges and up those long dusty trails."  For more on John Dunn, see John Dunn’s Story

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My paintings are available at Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary in Ashworth Village. 919-462-2035 Mon-Sat 11 am - 5:30 pm.

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Pointing Home

Bella's Lilac's 8 x 8 oil SOLD

I bent the white, lavender and pink blossoms to my nose.  If I couldn’t reach them, this skinny kid could climb to the highest spindly branches and sit among them and take in the fragrance, knowing that school would soon be out, jackets shed and, if I remained still,  butterflies would land on my arms. Spring in Michigan! Our small yard had at least three lilac bush-trees. 

The crape myrtle is sometimes called the southern lilac and is lovely, but cannot match the lilac for fragrance.  I miss the lilac and in recent years have added Lilac Festivals to my travel and painting list.  Several years ago we traveled to Mackinac Island in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for a June festival.  They did not disappoint.  The UP’s combination of severely cold winters and moist air provides an ideal growing condition.  Abundant, large spikes of florets to wander among were heavenly and awakened long ago memories.

 A few weeks ago we sought to recreate that experience in Taos New Mexico’s Lilac Festival.  I was at first amazed to learn that Taos had such a festival, associating as I did lilacs with northern states.  I learned, however, that Taos did, indeed, have cold winters at an elevation of 7000 feet and that lilacs had been imported into the area around 1900 by a British citizen.  After de-boarding from or air flight in Albuquerque and driving several hours to Taos, I ran excitedly to the central plaza to see the lilacs I’d come to paint.  In disappointment I exclaimed, “Where are the lilacs?”  Several locals nodded knowingly and remarked, “A late snow last week froze the buds.  There are no lilac flowers this year.”  I was simply horrified I had come all this way for burned buds!

I wasn’t so easily deterred.  In searching around town, we found a few lucky protected places where some survived and I happily painted their beauty.  Outdoor painters must be resilient, so we were on to plan B to find southwestern splendor and create new memories in Taos.

Plan B included painting in the garden of Nicholai Fechin; he was a Russian immigrant painter who lived in Taos for many years.  He planted Aspen trees outside his studio windows to remind him of his native Russia where he hoped he would return.  I went to Taos to rekindle memories of my home in Michigan, and found kinship with a painter who sought memories of his home in Russia.

Pointing Home 8 x 8 oil Available Painted at Nicolai Fechin House garden

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My paintings  are available at Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary Ashworth Village. 919-462-2035 Mon-Sat 11 am-5:30 pm

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Beauty and the Beast

Zinnia and Daisies #4 oil 4 x 4

In this case the beast is composition.  Creating well balanced, interesting, unified compositions has always been a challenge for me.  There is so much literature about the various types of compositions, but it’s difficult to prepare a scene to one of these standard formats, for instance, the S curve, the steelyard, or the tunnel.  And does one want a formulaic composition?  Yet I’m always in doubt when I look at one of my compositions and wonder if I’ve arranged the spaces and shapes well.  There is so much thought and work to it, and that is another rub.  Work, ugh!  I want to paint in that free “zone”, not plan, plan, plan, and think so deeply about these hard topics!

But a painting without good composition fails, even if well painted.

Here is where beauty helps.  I’ve found that if I setup a vase of wildly arranged flowers—a cheap, big old grocery store bouquet, and set out a collection of 4 x 4 gessobord  panels, I can paint what are essentially a series of “thumbnail” paintings of flowers.  I can practice small compositions, balancing how the shapes come together in these small spaces.  It’s free and fast and so much fun working around the beauty and fragrance of the flowers.  I don’t think about the formula compositions. I just look at the positive and negative spaces and how the sizes and shapes are harmonizing, flowing and creating balance and movement in and around the flowers and within the small square I’m working in. I’m finding it good practice and I believe it will translate to better compositions on larger panels.

What beast can you tame by surrounding yourself with beauty?

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My paintings re available at Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary Ashworth Village. 919-462-2035 Mon-Sat 11 am-5:30 pm. 

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A Wandering Mind

I once had a wandering mind.  I hope to have one again.

In my recent de-cluttering, I uncovered some books I’d never read.  Many were from a former book festival I’d organized.  Author Charles de Lint attended one year and he inscribed The Ivory and the Horn to me, “Dream True.”  In this book, a series of short stories, the characters enter into imaginary situations that cross over into their “real” lives.  At first I found it difficult to “get into”, but then it became absorbing.  I let the original stories carry me away. 

What does it mean to “Dream True”?

Dreams or daydreams are raw material for creativity.  Daydreams may provide ideas you act on later.  Daydreams open you up to possibilities.

Doodling, likewise, is another form of “dreaming true”. Drawing while seemly unfocused and unaware of your immediate surroundings, actually increases memory retention. A study published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology showed that doodlers actually retain more information from meetings than non-doodlers—they are both “here” and “there”. It means that in this wandering-mind state, you draw your way to awareness!

I now give myself permission more often to let my mind wander and I’m taking up doodling.  It’s important for artists to have a wandering mind.  As Charles de Lint says, “Dream True’! 

Recently I took a trip to Tucson.  Enjoy this little photo from my "wanderings" around Tohono Chul Park.

My visit to the park was courtesy of a pass provided by John Tuttle Clymer MD

  In memory of John Tuttle Clymer, MD June 27, 1925-March 19, 2014

Whose inquisitive mind and kind heart spread much wisdom and joy in this world.

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Just a few days remaining to get down to the Tipping Paint Gallery special exhibit, “Eggistentialism” to benefit Urban Ministries.  The show reflects the joy and beauty of chickens and eggs, the gardens they live in and urban farming.  April 1-26.

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