from my sketchbook

A short walk away from my home is the beautiful Lewisville Park. It is one of the oldest parks in Clark County and dates back to 1936 and the Works Progress Administration. I can't say enough about this oasis. It has more than 150 acres of trails, trees, play structures and fields, plus the untamed east fork of the Lewis River.

Yesterday's sunshine drew me to the park with my sketchbook. It was a welcome break from the "busy" of life to spend time in one of my favorite places.

Chicago. "Saturday in the Park."

daffodils

Daffs. 12 x 12. Oil and charcoal on canvas.

Spring
By Mary Oliver

I lift my face to the pale flowers
of the rain. They’re soft as linen,
clean as holy water. Meanwhile
my dog runs off, noses down packed leaves
into damp, mysterious tunnels.
He says the smells are rising now
stiff and lively; he says the beasts
are waking up now full of oil,
sleep sweat, tag-ends of dreams. The rain
rubs its shining hands all over me.
My dog returns and barks fiercely, he says
each secret body is the richest advisor,
deep in the black earth such fuming
nuggets of joy!

spring

2073. 11 x 10. Watercolor and ink on paper.

Appalachian Spring, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. 

poetry and Mary Oliver

I have always loved poetry.

Jump rope rhymes of childhood still spring to my mind at opportune (and inopportune) moments.

Say, say, oh playmate, I can not play with you...

Memorization assignments from elementary school stir around inside me and pop out of my mouth.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things..."

from "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll

College scrutiny did not dim my love of poetry, in fact, just added to my internal arsenal.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies...

from "She Walks in Beauty" by Lord Byron

My appreciation of poetry has continued as I have aged. These days my attention is on the poetry of Mary Oliver. Her contemplation and introspection and artfully crafted poems make my breathing slow and invite me to read aloud her words again and again. Like this poem, "Wild Geese." I hope you will read it aloud. Again and again, too. Like me.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I hope you will have about an hour to listen to Krista Tippett's interview with Mary Oliver (from February 7, 2015) on the radio program "On Being." Listen here.

Canada Goose, photograph Katherine van Schoonhoven at Ridgefield NWR

breaking the shell

Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. 

Khalil Gibran

watching paint dry

"Watching paint dry" is a phrase my father used to describe something that exceeded the definition of boring. Funny. I have discovered that it provides a still space of quiet inside of me and helps me be completely in the moment.

I'll meet you there

Out beyond ideas of 

wrongdoing
and 

rightdoing

 there is a field.
 

I’ll meet you there.
 

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

The Fray. "Be Still."

a step on the path

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

clearing clutter

beginning painting books

In 2005, when I took my first art class, I did not own a single art book. Not because I wasn't a book collector, because, believe me, I was. I have a library full of books about music, literature, theology, history, nature, travel, birds, and other topics. But none about art.

My art classes answered a lot of questions but raised at least as many more. I started to acquire beginning books on how to draw trees, how to draw the figure, how to mix color, how to arrange a still life, and so on.

As my interest grew, so did my book collection. I collected books on painting florals, landscapes, water, buildings, en plein air and in the studio. Books on composition, color theory, painting substrates, and on and on and on.

Little by little, I added books that were filled with plates of paintings by painters. The Group of Seven, Matisse, Picasso, Manet, Monet, Hopper, Rembrandt, Bischoff ... too many to name.

In the last several years, I have not looked at those beginning books at all. I have loaned several of them out to interested students, but I have not used them beyond that.

Real estate in a studio space is precious. My book case was full of books, many of which I no longer looked at. Time to clear out the clutter!

Now there are empty spaces for the new books I will collect, books about painters and their paintings and drawings. Books like these new purchases:

Sarah Mclachlan "I Will Remember You."

color!

Acrylic paint, ink, colored pencil

The small leaf pattern you see in this piece comes from poinsettia petals. I used them as a stencil and as a stamp. Sometimes it's good enough to go out to the studio and play with color.

If, like me, you've had a rough patch in life lately, I hope this old Johnny Cash tune. "I Won't Back Down" speaks to you, too.