A Bagette and Some Red Wine

Just a Hint of French

We spent the Christmas holiday on Cedar Key, where homes are built on the second floor. The first floor is left empty to minimize damage if and when tides come rushing in at the front of a hurricane.

There was no storm during our stay. Just a few days of blessed peace and quiet, and some retired snowbirds taking their winter residence far from Ontario, Quebec and other cold, dark places.

Speaking to such neighbors put me in a Frenchie sort of mood when I saw the woman above from "our" second-story porch. "Madame et la Petite" (A Ladie and the Little One).

All that was missing was the panier, the bread basket, on her bike. That would set the stage for a trip to town and the purchase of groceries for the evening meal. Something flavorful.

The dog would poke along, sniffing at all the usual spots and marking as many as time and fluid would allow, then run to catch up with Madame.

In town, Madame would select some choice cuts of meat and eye the butcher's thumb as he weighed them. That bagette, a bottle of wine and some fresh-cut flowers would round out the purchase.

The trip home would involve the usual sharp calls to the dog, who would chase the same cat, bark back at that same big spotted hound, and wander down the same trail she always does.

Madame might even use some of those rougher French phrases that slip out when la petite isn't as charming as she is at home.

Back at home, the evening meal would be prepared. The small house would fill with the aroma of things to come. The dog would curl up in the pool of fading sunlight at the base of the storm door. The wine would be airing out on the table by the new flowers in the vase.

The winter sun would set beyond the bayou across the street.

But, of course, that didn't happen. It was just a neighbor taking an afternoon ride.

Art is the spice that adds flavor to an ordinary meal.

A Little Color

Goes a Long Way

This entry is filed under Mattie Walks.

The girl does get bored with the same left-or-right decision to our walks on our one-street neighborhood. I try other sites to break up the daily grind. She likes the cemetery. I like the lake.

That's a view of the lake above. "Fall, Lake Hall". The lake is part of Maclay Gardens State Park, a former estate of wealthy New York snowbirds who wintered in Tallahassee while most grandees chose to roost on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. The estate was ceded to Florida and attracts many visitors during the camellia and azalea seasons. Locals enjoy the park all year around.

Mattie doesn't care as much for it as I do. The trails creep her out a bit. I think she's a suburban girl at heart. Then again, she may be getting scent of a bear or other threatening critter. What do I know?

Lake hall winds around, creating little coves here and there, and the shore is heavily wooded with the region's collection of pines, oaks, sweetgum and magnolia trees. A nice place to be during every season.

And the truth is that the scene above was one of a pretty hot summer. Everything about it is true to the moment except the color of the leaves indicating temperature and season.

The problem I have in seeing so many enticing moments and events in the nature of my environment is ... that those moments stack up. Getting to a painting in its time is difficult. So many impressions amass on the sketch pile that it's often winter before I finish summer paintings, spring before the fall art gets easel time, and so forth.

A counter-pressure comes from galleries asking for works denoting a current season. It's understandable, of course. Patrons are as susceptible to the seasons as I am.

I hadn't yet gotten to this Lake Hall painting and wanted to do it, so what the heck -- it became a fall painting. And the stripe of wind-whipped ripples on the water (which were there in summer) add a touch of chill to the air.

The original moment indicated a cooling breeze.

I'll catch up with other summer lake views soon because the temperature and the leaves are falling.

Somewhat Wild

But Not Really

These posts are exercises in free association, spurred by one image as a starting point.

I've described the wild acres beyond our back yard in previous posts. Since there is no fence, it's sometimes hard to tell where the free will of nature ends and the struggle to impose our will on nature begins.

We get a lot of free-booter wild plants spreading throughout the back in the spring. I dubbed one variety I like very much as it blooms a wild Iris. The more I saw real Irises, the more I came to think this was not one. But I kept playing with that name -- Irish Rose, Iris Rose, Wild Iris Rose.

"Wild Iris Rose" ... free association and imagery began to form a young lady, well, perhaps not a "lady", but young, Irish and a little wild. I played with that theme for quite a while, but couldn't put Iris in the picture.

In the meantime, I thought Van Gogh's portraiture -- all line and color, "modernist" and rebellious while gorgeous in color -- and of course his iris paintings.

I kept coming back to that idea, over the months, each time I saw one of the faux-irises in the yard. But I still had no model for that moody lass.

Finally, as I was thumbing through Daughter's recent post of photos, there was Iris!

I am a shameless thief of Daughter's stuff, though I do work at it to make it my own.

I combined Van Gogh's Irises, a makeover of Daughter into a redhead (and a few other changes here and there), an industrial brick wall for a background, and there you have it: "Wild Iris Rose".

These things don't come for free, though.

As I looked over Vincent Van Gogh's output of work again for this painting, I had to admit to myself that it was his story that appeals as much or more than his art.

The poor, angst-ridden man who cut off his ear (actually, a lobe). Everyone "knows" that story.

Combine the story of struggle, illness, the exhilaration of revolution (Impressionism and Post-Impressionism), stir in elements of political correctness and it becomes very hard to say "But he doesn't draw very well. His color is brilliant, but many of his compositions are just plain clumsy."

Maybe it's aging. Maybe I'm becoming the crabby old fart who says things for effect.

Or maybe, at this late age, I'm beginning to admit to myself what I really think.

Going with the Flow

Boy, Hot Enough for You?!

Took a little road trip Out West to see Daughter a while back. Got on I-10 and headed west.

If you go far enough west, you can see remnants of the old Route 66. Sometimes it's on your left, other times on the right. Just over there.

A little sign of life clings to some of those strips of pavement. I recreated the scene above, "Oasis", from memory, of a restaurant out there on a stretch of old 66.

I was moving along that I-10 flow. There wasn't time to stop, so this is pretty much a whole-cloth image, capturing the feel of the moment and not necessarily the details.

There's something about traveling at 70+ mph for hours or even days that makes it hard to stop.

That momentum builds up and takes over the trip.

Now, when I look at that painting, I think of another trip taken even earlier with Daughter's grandfather. Gramps needed to go to California and I went along.

We put all our stuff in his Chevy El Camino and headed west from Tallahassee. Then stopped in Quincy (19 miles west of our starting point). A radiator hose was unclipped and got burned by engine heat. Ka-ching.

Hose fixed, we started west again.

We stopped for different engine or radiator problems two more times (ka-ching, ka-ching) and switched over to Highway 40 in Arizona. We finally got to Needles, on the eastern edge of California, crossing the Colorado River. Last water until the Pacific Ocean.

In between the Colorado and the Pacific lay the Mojave desert and the San Bernadino Mountains.

That radiator started acting up again when we attempted the rise outside Needles. The El Camino just couldn't make it to the top without the radiator boiling over.

I could spend a lot of time on this part of the story, but I won't.

Let's just say we decided to fill up on water and move out into the desert. And overheat. And stop. The engine and radiator would cool and we'd add water. Then get on the road again.

After 20-30 miles the engine would overhear again. Re-read the paragraph above.

We crossed the Mojave that way, 30 miles at a time. We went without a.c. to stretch the mileage.

At about the halfway point, we pulled into a chain/family sort of restaurant. Some entrepreneur always stakes out these halfway points. Think of the drive the staff has to make. The parking lot was full.

We got a booth and I noticed most patrons seemed red-faced, flush. And tired. The kids were lying on the booth benches. Neither Mom nor Dad nagged them to sit up straight. Waitresses kept the water coming.

We cooled it as long as we could, then climbed back in the saddle and moved out again.

That crossing lasted all day and we climbed the mountains in the setting sun. The car was able to go longer and longer without overheating. Then we headed downhill and on to our destination, Pomona. Glorious Pomona.

What a trip! We didn't die. Memories are made of this.

Lollipop Guild

Even Munchkins Grow Up Eventually

A minor theme of this post will be technique.

I often work from photos I've taken. I use my camera as my sketch pad and get details and lighting effects I could never fully capture if I were painting on the scene.

Anyone who has ever taken note of sunlight and shadows will have an understanding of how fast the day moves along.

Artists good at painting outdoors (en pleine aire, the French called it), have developed a quick start on their compositions as well as a good memory of how the light looked 15 minutes ago.

The sun moves on its arc that fast. Shadows have lengthened or shrunk, lightened or gotten darker. Colors all around are now slightly different. Perhaps not as sharp as they were when the work was started.

So I try to capture that moment with the camera. Then the fun, and the "sketching", begins.

Using the Photoshop computer graphics program I can change the composition to fit a desired canvas. I can remove unwanted details from the image or re-proportion elements within the composition. I can even alter the colors to better suit a desired palate. Bla bla bla.

Shop talk. Edging on boring. But this technology is a great tool for the preliminary work.

Just for the fun of it, I scanned an old black & white photo of a neighbor kid and me from wayyyyyyy back in the dawn of time and turned it into "Lollipop Guild", above.

That image is not a painting. It's a direct manipulation of the scanned print.

I worked it just like a painting or pastel drawing, shaping the contours and adding color.

To tell you the truth, the photo, probably taken by my mother with an old Kodak box camera, is of a time so long ago I really have no memory of the other boy. I doubt that he has a picture of me, so I probably have been erased from his world.

I don't know when the picture was taken. My parents have both passed away, so the only clue to the moment is the notation on the back of the photo.

This other kid and me, maybe three years old. Best buddies for the moment.

Maybe it's Spring. It's in Canada. That small town.

A rare sunny day. The image is cropped closer than the photo. We were wearing wool shorts and long stockings. Fashions have changed for three-year-old boys.

You see, I can manipulate the heck out of that image, but nothing will ever bring back that moment. The world outside the frame of that image is gone forever. You can't Google it or book a flight to it.

You either have to have a good memory, or an old black & white photo.

And hope someone made notes on the back as well.

Starlit Winter Nights

Were Made for Walking

While we're in the old neighborhood walking (see the previous post), let's take a left down this street. And go back about 15 years.

I worked in the newsroom of our local paper for over two decades. That meant going in later than most nine-to-fivers (which really means 8-to-5. Don't know where the nine came from.) and coming home late.

Newspaper work is often a response to the daily fire, figuratively speaking.

News happens in a haphazard fashion and the caffeine kicks in when the adrenaline fails. When the work is done; when editors are pleased enough with it to release the troops; reporters, photographers, graphics folks and whoever else had a hand the next day's stories, find the exit.

I used to get home still keyed up from it all and would go for a hike around the 'hood to work the edge off.

In the winter the sun sets around five-thirty or so November through February, so the streets would be dark for the walks of those months. Tallahassee rarely got cold enough to prevent a walk for me. I'd just put on a jacket of suitable thickness and take my coffee buzz to the streets.

The neighborhood was designed in the early 1950s, with large wooded lots and small houses tucked behind walls of azalea bushes. There were few straight-line streets. Most roadways curved in gentle arcs and coursed up and down the hills.

I would walk from one pool of streetlamp light to another. Eventually the newsroom would fade from my thoughts and I would begin to notice the play of lights and shadows among the trees and ground surfaces. Someone else would emerge from the distance, walking their dog (our dog wasn't even born yet). We'd pass in the night. Moving through our own shifting thought streams.

There would be nights like the one above in "Neighborhood Nocturne," clear and cold and filled with stars. The pace would slow in the dark spot between streetlamps because the stars were brightest then. The air was clear. Breathing was a sensation. Coming back into lamplight, I could see my breath.

At some point I would begin to feel the cold. It was time to circle back toward the house and some supper.

Things to Come ... and Go

You Miss 'Em When They're Gone

I was walking my neighborhoods long before the pup came along.

Walks have always been a way for me to rant, rave, arrange thoughts, give a rousing sermon and still have friends.

Not that I am one to keep my thoughts to myself. People who do that don't blog.

The old neighborhood had an appreciable pond on a neighbor's generous-sized lot, by the road.

The pond bed was probably a sinkhole, judging by the funnel shape the water collected in.

The road meandered lazily around that depression and various trees and shrubs filled the space between the two.

The decade or so up to that point in 2000 had been a wet one. At least once I had to turn back on my walk because the roadway was under water from the rains. Properties across the street became waterfronts.

Being genetically Canadian, I love a broody walk with overcast skies and cooler temperatures, so the detour didn't bother me. There was more than one way to meander the neighborhood.

The years closing in on Y2K were dry ones. Heat and no rain took its toll on the pond's water level.

The drought continued throughout the South. Little rain. A lot of heat.

I continued my walks past the pond, remembering the painting I had done of it with ducks in among the shoreline bushes. No ducks were there now. The waterline was way below the bushes.

As the months wore on, the pond continued to dry up. City trucks came to remove the dead fish. Groups rallied to save the turtle population that relied on the pond.

The pond became a bowl of dust.

For a long time after that, walking by the former pond was a sad affair for me.

There is something almost holy about a body of water. The interplay of light and shadow. The line drawn at the surface between the opposites of air and water. We air breathers above looking at the swimmers below, looking back at us.

The natural community whose life is supported by that body of water numbers the walk-takers as edge folk. Day trippers. Tourists.

The part of the community that could, moved on to another life-support system.

Of course, the weather turned. Eventually the rains fell again.

Slowly, the pond also returned.

But while it was empty, talk of a warming globe had my attention.

There was a practical demonstration going on right there in my neighborhood.

Nothing but bad news

The Day When the Planes Came

It's been eight years this month.

Coincidentally, I discovered a copy of this painting made shortly after those events.

So much happened that whole week of September in 2001.

We were up for a coastal vacation in Maine, near Bar Harbor, Mt. Desert Island.

Once again, Wife had found a nice cabin. This time on Frenchman's Bay. We could see Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park across the water.

It was one of those isolated places, right on the water. 50 yards of rock beach when the tide was out. No beach when the tide was in. Perfect.

We spent the first days wandering and hiking Acadia. Flat on the edges and high in the middle.

We'd get some food on the way home and fix supper while watching for the next day's weather.

Wife wanted to take a boat out to see the whales. A hurricane out in the Atlantic was playing havoc with that idea. We'd call to see if they were going out. Not today; high seas.

We thought it could only get worse if the storm's track continued northward.

The next morning's call got a positive answer. We're going out; come on.

We got there early and bought our tickets for a trip out on the Friendship V. We had an hour to kill so we walked around Bar Harbor and headed back toward the landing as time neared.

We were walking toward the mooring when a young woman came up to us and asked if we had heard that planes had slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. She was near tears as she said the towers had collapsed. I though she might be insane.

She added that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. In fact, she was distraught because she and her husband worked at the Pentagon, she said. He was out on the water, fishing, and she couldn't reach him. They needed to get back to duty.

This was ALL insane. Vacation, whale-watching. That's what was going on here. Not disaster, death. Not unthinkable horror.

Amazing though it may be, the Friendship V sailed on its scheduled run about an hour or two later. There was a sense among all those lined up to go that we should. It was rough going out because of the high swells, but the water calmed when we reached the whales. And we were calmed by the sight of them.

We spent the rest of the week going to the national park in the mornings and watching details of the horrorshow on TV in the afternoons. What a strange disconnect one part of the day was from the other.

I'd walk the beach at low tide and see a spot on the rocks where evening bonfires were held and imagined the scene above in the painting titled "Vigil". Waiting and hoping for a loved one to come home.

The planes started flying again on Saturday, in time for us to go to our home. We flew over the Twin Towers site and the Pentagon on our way south. Both still trailed long smudges of black smoke.

Crow's in the moment

When Magic Happens

The thing I love most about making these images is the moment when the bell rings.

When the alarm goes off. When the "Boyoing!" happens.

And it has happened countless times. It probably happens to everyone.

The moment I speak of makes you say "What a day!" "Wow!" or "Did you see that?!"

And for artists like me, we get the chance to commemorate those moments.

Like the one in "Crow in the Rain," above.

The house we lived in at the time had a lot of large windows. They opened onto the forest of trees in the neighborhood. More likely, the neighborhood was in the forest.

I sat at the dining room table reading during an hours-long rain. A soft, soaking rain like they have in England or Oregon.

Looking out one of the large windows, I noticed a large bird perched atop the dead uppermost limb of a tree.

The dim overcast light threw the bird and limb in silhouette. I thought it might be a big hawk.

Watching it for a while, trying to determine what species it was, I became totally taken with the calm action of its preening. I got out the binoculars and saw it was a pretty good sized crow.

I looked on, the rain softly falling, the bird preening, when whatever it is that does it ...

thumped me on the head and said quietly "Hey! Stupid! That's a painting!"

Of course it is, I answered. Of course it is. Thanks.

The gifted folks who designed our house included wide roof overhangs, so we could sit outside and still be sheltered. A nice feature.

I got my sketchbook and sat out there, under the wide eave, sketching while the bird sat enjoying its cool afternoon shower.

I live for those moments.

The spirit is willing

A Memory Haunts the Place

While we're in the neighborhood of Abiquiu, let's drop in on Miss Georgia's old haunts.

The same trip that brought me to Zorro's house (in the previous post) allowed me to wander around some of the region Georgia Okeefe loved so much.

The tough old bird was a tough middle-aged bird when she finally moved to the high desert region of New Mexico in the 1940s. She lived at Ghost House on Ghost Ranch.

The Ranch is out in the country a bit from Abiquiu, and originally consisted of traditional adobe cabins. Abiquiu itself is just a blip of a stop off the secondary highway that goes on to Ghost Ranch.

I bring that up about Abiquiu because I'm always amazed when little places in the world can claim large amounts of renown in our culture. Most art students have heard of Abiquiu.

Ms. Okeefe was a survivor of the art game that won a seat for Modernism at the cultural table.

As I said, she was tough, sometimes ornery. Did what she was going to do, and devil be damned.

She first came to Ghost Ranch as a guest of the owners, who were patrons of art and culture.

The house she stayed in was dubbed Ghost House, which is also the title of the painting above.

I just wanted to encapsulate my whole Okeefe experience through this iconic reference to her visits and eventual residence there.

The artist is remembered throughout the region for her art and folks who are anywhere nearby tend to seek out the places she painted and where she lived, both at the ranch and in Abiquiu.

Ghost Ranch has survived as a place where art pursuits are maintained. Summer sessions are held there by universities and associations. The modern world keeps moving on, moving forward ... sometimes just moving.

New generations come and make their own acquaintance with the dry, spiky landscape.

But there was a time when outsiders didn't come here much. Georgia Okeefe and her generation of artists gravitated to the area because it was inexpensive and not as miserable as New York in the winter.

And their art showed the world why they kept coming back.

A New Pal

Zorro Leads the Way

Went along on wife's business trip to Albuquerque.

When business was done, we rented a place in north nowhere New Mexico, near the Chama River. A good place to be when you want to get away for awhile.

Abiquiu, home of famed, long-deceased artist Georgia Okeefe, is just around the corner.

Our rental is a horseshoe-shaped, owner-built home of amazing charm and utility. Adobe brick inner walls and large round river-rock outer shell. So well insulated we never felt the desert night chills. Water in the birdbath froze every night we were there.

The house is surrounded by miles of desert expanse.

An added plus to the rental is pictured above, "Zorro, Desert Dog."

Zorro belongs to the landlady, but immediately fell into a routine with me (or did I fall in with him?). He probably felt that renters were temporary loaner pals for his walks.

Every day we were there, he'd be waiting bright and early to go take inventory over the dunes out back. He proudly showed me all his desert brush, low trees, some random hares, wadis and whatnot.

I looked out the window one afternoon as Zorro calmly sat there. A herd of about 20 horses was moving from the desert toward the Chama to water. It was a regular occurrence for him, but it excited the heck out of me.

Calm seemed to be the bedrock of Zorro's nature.

Ahh, la Turk

City in a Forest

As I reviewed my stuff, I was surprised to find so many "wildlife" images in the works. I'm not a wildlife artist.

After all, I was a newsroom denizen for decades. Summer in the South ... speaks for itself. Who's ideas was it to combine Florida AND summer? Excessive, to say the least. Florida's winters last only a few months. So a lot of my waking time was/is spent indoors.

The reason so many of those critter paintings occurred to me is that our town is inhabiting a forest.

Go to the top of our highest buildings and you'll see a few other tall buildings and a lot of church spires sticking up out of a solid carpet of pines, oaks and and magnolias.

The city's practice of building holding ponds for flood control has set up wildlife oases all over town. And I've been lucky to live in a few neighborhoods that were very supportive of wild species.

The neighborhood we live in now has a network of ponds and runoff streams that feed to a large prairie lake (during a drought it's a prairie; in a wet pattern it's a lake).

Our lot also backs onto a 100-year flood plain. Sort of like Pooh's wood but much smaller than a hundred acres. Those woods regularly have deer munching their way through. The ponds are regular wading grounds for egrets, storks and whooping cranes. Early Bird specials.

Hawks, kites, owls and bats abound. All of this in a typical modern middle-class high-density suburb. I see these species regularly as I walk Mattie. And I'm usually knocked out by the sight of them. Naturally (no pun intended) the images become paintings.

The one above, "Blue Rondo a la Turk," came to me because Wife saw wild turkeys in the back last winter. She grabbed the camera and I wished her luck. I've heard stories again and again from photographers about how hard it is to get good turkey photos.

Well, the girl did it! Came back with several usable frames. And generously allowed me to paint from one. The one above, obviously.

The painting's title is also borrowed. Dave Brubeck wrote this wonderful composition with a fast, choppy beat that I though of as I worked on all the foliage and even the bird. That was fun.

We in this town are fortunate to have this Southern forest around us. So much so that a neighborhood evening's walk is like a walk in the woods.

I'll be posting more of the local wildlife paintings.

It's about time

The Way Things Change, and Don't

This painting was done in the early 1970s.

"Time Machine" came from my head. Made it all up.

This was a kind of Norman Rockwell-influenced take on the times.

First of all, the the obvious. Old pick-up truck, elder driver and young man.

The driver and the truck belong together, of an age and culture.

The young man is experiencing change, as befits that age. His hair is longish, but still country. It bothers the older man because that hair is getting longer.

And that shirt of his. Embroidered! Like a woman's blouse. Where does he get these ideas?

The truck has been around for three decades, and the old man longer.

The young man is in his late teens.

They sit quietly as they drive through space and time, their thoughts to themselves.

They're going to town in response to a letter from the draft board.

The painting itself has traveled through time and space with me for about 35 years.

Some days are up

Others, Not So Much

I don't know about you, but I can get overwhelmed.

Some days, it just doesn't look like we can get there from here.

This image, "Ophelia (Everything is Dying)", finally expressed itself on such a day.

The population seemed a giant gang of lemmings going into the abyss while snarling and clawing at each other.

I had seen Mel Gibson's version of that brooding Danish chap earlier in the year.

Then I spent a hot Saturday afternoon cruising dark rivers with Bruce Willis in "Striking Distance." Bruce and his partner found a floating body in one scene. Lovingly shot white skin in dark water. Bingo!

A stark image stewed with a brooding sense of planetary death throes. Report after report of species loss, overpopulation, climate warming. Added argumentation about causes ad nauseum to that mix.

And kept stirring. On low boil for a month or two until one day, voila! Low-grade depression and one heck of an image.

It's very nice. Now, put it away.

Do you have any of the fun stuff?

Mattie walks

Bon jour, Monsieur Monet

Our dog's name is Mattie.

Mattie is a shelter pup. Chow Chow-retriever mix (why two chows? One does the job). Sweet disposition, excepting smaller dogs. An issue we're working on.

But Mattie is a people-person. Constantly amassing Facebook friends.

She allows me two sections of the paper in the mornings, then we have to hit the road.

Evenings we wait out the heat.

Every walk shows me a potential painting. I thought up a challenge of doing just that: A painting per walk. The Mattie Walk show. Someday I'll take that challenge.

The painting above, "Pond Lilly", resulted from a walk at Lake Hall, Maclay Gardens State Park.

Walking the girl can be a challenge where people are concerned. Parks have leash rules, so we're always in tandem. Lake Hall has a sand beach where dogs are not allowed. Some people don't want or need a dog interrupting their moment of serenity.

So walking Mattie is a constant judgment call of navigation.

Mattie has a great ability to moderate her response to those she approaches. She is calm and even demure with little kids and older people. Frisky and energetic with those who can handle it. I'm always impressed by her intuition.

But, mostly, I wimp out and take her on trails where the population thins out.

One trail goes around part of the lake. I like that walk a lot. It meanders through the woods and touches the shoreline here and there.

Mattie's indifferent. She keeps an eye out for lions, tigers or bears.

We came to a shoreline view of this shaded cove, covered with lily pads. And one blossom catching a spot of sunlight.

I'm no Claude Monet, but this was a Monet moment. How could I resist?

Mattie, Monet and me. Out for a walk.

On a clear day

Thoughts of Home

These blogs have featured paintings from more than a decade ago.

Let's mix it up and bring in something more recent.

This painting was done last year for my sister-in-law. We are both from the same town in Canada, though she was there much longer than I was. She married my older brother and South Florida became her home.

I figure living in Quebec Province into her adulthood, she had been cold and didn't feel the need to continually repeat the experience.

There is a thought I've had for years now. One that's gaining expression in columns and books: That immigrants (anyone who moves to a very different place, say from Idaho to Mississippi even) get stuck in a mental bind of their own.

They retain memories of the land they left, as it was. Some never really assimilate into their new place. Meanwhile, the land they left changes. Nothing is ever static.

That memoried place in their heads is all that remains of their home.

The painting, "A View of St. Georges East", is both real and idealized. The real town of St. Georges is in the northern end of the Apalachian range. The weather can be rainy and raw at any time of the year. I caught it on a good day. The view is a small detail of the town and a lot of clutter from power lines and other details have been left out.

A combination of photos from the internet contributed to my composition. Good fortune contributed to my getting the houses of my sis-in-law's family in there as well.

She was touched by the work and I got to spend some time in the "home" I remembered.

Anyone who leaves home and returns many years later can feel the dissonance brought on by that return. The world's population is on the move more than ever before. Huge swaths of people looking for something better while leaving a big chunk of themselves behind.

Ash Wednesday

The party's over

This image came to me in pieces.

The setting is based on the architecture of the stairwell of a downtown parking garage. You park on the lower levels and walk up to street level where the attractions are.

This design was so nicely done that I wanted to use it for something. But what?

Later I was thumbing through a book of Edward Hopper's art. Early in his career he had done a street scene while studying in Paris. All the young dudes went to Paris in the 1920s. The Hopper painting was of a sidewalk cafe crowd enjoying the evening. Among them was a man dressed as a white-faced clown. Just sitting, smoking. One of the folks.

Boy, I wanted to do that somehow.

But why?

I knew a young cop a bunch of years back. A real nice guy. He'd be there for you. He was also a real upper. Buoyant in spite of all he saw on the job.

One Halloween he dressed in the classic Pagliacci costume, including white-face and the blue tear from one eye. It knocked me out! His contemporaries came as Forrest Gump (that's how far back this was). I thought it took a little courage to reference something from classical opera.

Next thing I knew, the clown showed up at the stairway railing. In my mind, of course.

One of the most rewarding moments for me is when something comes to mind, breaks through the thought process and just presents itself. This was one of those moments.

The french-curve swirl of the railing, and the tile work, suggested a bit of New Orleans to me. So now I had Mardi Gras. But what else? Someone with the man?

I played with the scene a bit and decided to leave him alone. Literally.

The party's over. Confetti is suggested on the floor. It's late, almost Wednesday morning. A time of reckoning. A time to account for past thoughts and deeds.

Ash Wednesday, when the long wintry lenten season begins.

I painted this in 1993, but it still seems applicable today.

A Closer Walk

A Closer Walk

Mid-December, 1993. Daughter was graduating from Arizona State after long years of working her way through school. It was a big deal. We packed up and flew out.

Southern Arizona is not very different from North Florida in temperature, except more so at times.

We got to Tempe, home of ASU, and shortly after went for a run to get the travel kinks out of our system. Tees and shorts. Worked up a sweat.

We were there for the week and commencement wasn't until Friday, so we planned to see some of the state.

Took off next morning for the Grand Canyon.

Highway 17 runs pretty much up the middle of the state to Flagstaff. It goes north and climbs in altitude all the while. Turn west at Flagstaff for a bit, then north to the canyon. The climb is so gradual at that point, you don't really notice it.

There we were at the south rim of one of the places you grow up hearing about. We checked in to our lodging. No problem this time of the year. The summer season was long over. Kind of chilly out, too.

Noodled around, going from lodge to lodge, some of them original Mary Colter architecture from the 1930s. Lovely stacks of local rock shaped into timeless places that belong to the terrain.

Stood on rim lookouts, deep-breathing. How would you not?

Spoke to members of an Irish bus tour. An employee at a lodge with a big fireplace said a tour of Japanese travelers was in the day before. This large, graceful crack in the earth captures imaginations the world around.

Eventually ate, then turned in for the day. As we walked back to the room, snow was falling. Big fat flakes against the dark pines and firs. The lodge architecture, the railroad tracks and depot, all suggested Germany or Switzerland, Places where people schuss.

We went to bed.

I'm the early riser of our crew. Morning came and I was out, camera in hand.

Blanket of snow. A cliche phrase, but true here. Most of the folks visiting were still in bed. Light was bouncing every whichway off untouched spreads of white. I walked carefully in some areas where ice sheets had formed.

A low wall follows the rim near a group of lodges. I followed that waving line, a very long way down waiting just over the wall.

Little winter-nude trees followed the same wall. I was focusing my camera when I heard a purring sound. Looked to my left. In the tree, just a few feet from me, a canyon raven was purring at me. A very soft, gutteral rrurrrrring. Can't describe what that felt like.

Then I came up to Bright Angel Lodge. And that scene in the painting "Angel in Snow", above.

I had taken pains to keep my feet to the walk, leaving the "blanket" unmarked for others. One look at the eternity at the bottom of the stairs told me to leave that for other visitors, too.

Island hoping

We are not great travelers, the wife and I. We'd like to be, but it's been hard to get outta town. We're a couple who put off our honeymoon for months because of bizzi-ness.

It has been our good fortune to get some quality trips, since quantity of travel is lacking.

The painting above, "Abaco #2" is from one of those trips.

Somehow, we homed in on the Bahamas as a destination. Wife is the researcher of this union. She found a small beach house for rent on Man-O-War Cay, an outer island of Grand Bahama.

Beach house is a stretch. Man-O-War is a parentheses of an island with a harbor in the space between. The smaller paren, with our rental on it, is wide enough to hold two small lots back to back. No beach. All travel to the the larger part of Man-O-War was done by skiffing across the harbor.

Man-O-War is primarily the home of descendants of Tory refugees from the American Revolution. The Albury family are the prime movers of the area, running stores, the island shuttle, as well as being our landlord. On the shuttle to the main island, a youngish local asked us how we "ended up here. Nothing much happens here." Fine with us.

We like quietude. Crowds are o.k. Over there. Way over there.

We also like Fall vacations. Fewer people. The down-side of Fall vacations is that many attractions are closed for the season.

The hope of dear wife was to snorkel coral reefs. We had been spoiled by our honeymoon in St. John, V. I., where one could swim to reefs right off the beach.

There was desperation in the air when we couldn't find reefs nearby. We contacted a diving company to book an afternoon. That's how anxious we were to do this. We were willing to pay! We only had three days left of our vacation.

They told us they needed more people to make the trip worth their while. That another couple may be interested. They'd get back to us. A day passed.

We called back. The other couple couldn't make it. Bummer!

A hurricane was brewing in the southern Atlantic. Locals were beginning the boarding-up drill.

The boat crew called to say they were going to a couple of the islands to take photos for brochures and we were welcome to go with them. Wanna come? You bet!

They showed up the next day and we were off to Green Turtle Cay, the PARTY island.

Wasn't much of a party. Late season. Hurricane coming. We hung while the crew shot location. Drank a $6 beer (that was a lotta money then).

Eventually got back aboard and headed home. About midway, crew dropped anchor. The bay at that point is pretty shallow. Clear water showed mostly a sand bottom. Crewman pointed to the other side. Dark green! Suit up!

We were wet in a flash.

Glad I went to the pool for two weeks before the vacation. Was in middling shape. That elkhorn coral formation shown in the above painting was at one end of the whole reef. Full of fish. All colors.

We dove and came up for air, then back down for as long as they could stand it, then went home happy. Pals to the end. Birth to earth. Don't remember their names now.

Days of other people's lives

We live our lives facing days as they come. At times we hit periods of bland repetition. We may become bored with our routines. Sometimes our days live us and we wake up to weeks or months having gone by.

Contented routines or frustrating stretches of career make us lose awareness of the lives of others.

The painting above, "Close to the Limit," came to me in the summer of 1993.

Months of news reports about long periods of rain in the heartland culminated in stories of lost harvests, lost homes, lost lives.

Levees had given way all along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Farm land was flooded, small rural towns were inundated. Evening news footage of people wading in hip-deep water in their living rooms, trying to save what they could of their belongings. I remember the image of a young wife carrying out an armful of things. Among them were a stuffed toy and a small American flag.

These reports went on for days as the flooding worked it way down the Mississippi.

Something about that mass misery caught my attention. I've forgotten whatever was going on in my life at the time. But I remember that large swath of misery and sorrow. I was safe and dry.

I responded to it with an image of an aging farmer who didn't go to his neighbor's funeral, who had nothing left but ruined land ... and was not going to be able to take one more piece of bad news.

I don't show the painting much. Who would want to live with a painful reminder of tragedy hanging on the wall? But I keep it. It is a reminder worth keeping.


The technical information on the painting is that it's 24" x 18", acrylic paint on canvas. Most of my paintings are in acrylics on canvas.

The irony here is that acrylic is a water-based medium and canvas is a cotton product grown in the river deltas of the South. Flood zones.

Art as Autobiography

I was thinking of getting into the whole "what is and isn't art" thing and had second thoughts about it.

I don't want to get smart-assed about that subject, but all it is is an argument waiting to happen.

we'd get bogged down in the mire of is-so!-is-not!

Totally counterproductive. I don't want to wade into that.

Check out the movie "Vincent and Theo" and/or the documentary "Who the $%#& is Jackson Pollock?" and you can have an art argument with yourself. And anyone else but me.

Every generation rejected artists (musicians, writers, painters) that following generations declared geniuses of their age.

People will respond to what they like, no matter what certification it has or lacks.

No one likes Barry Manilow, but 20 years ago the man had sold over 45 million records. I read that in a Rolling Stone interview. He probably has sold over a 100 million by now.

Nobody would admit to liking Mr. Manilow or his music. Someone must have been lying, don't you think? I just picked Mr. M as a metaphor for taste. Success in the arts is often measured by monetary success, except for Barry, I guess. Maybe there's another category ... secret success.

It takes a few generations to see what hangs around to define the overall culture of a people.

Me? I don't care about that any more.

I've found that I do what comes to me to do. I wouldn't mind being popular in some way because a lot of my paintings are the capturing of moments I experienced. A sort of "Wow, look at what I saw!" If more people were in on that exchange, it could become a conversation.

A gallery once existed here in Tallahassee called the Explorers' Club. I thought that was a great name. In my imagination, artists showing there had just returned from a trek and their work was a report of the safari to the club. Public welcome. Lecture at seven, refreshments will be served.

It occurred to me lately that most of the art I did was just that, a report on my trek. A view of my body of work will show most of the places where I've lived or visited, some of the people I've known and a few weird ideas or takes I've had on life.

Every picture tells a story, don't it?

The painting at the top, "Sunshine and Stream," is a view of the park in our old neighborhood, Indian Head Acres.

I must have looked at that runoff stream in the park throughout the 15 years we lived there. I also painted several other views of the same park. Just couldn't avoid it. There it was, right in front of me.

What's in front of you every day? What things do you notice that make you want to say "Hey, look at that!"? Tell me about it. I know what you mean.

More pictures and stories will come.

Start at the very beginning.

My thumbnail bio says I'm an apprentice retiree. A year and a half into it, I'm still a newbie. Still learning the ropes of the new gig.

I spent a career faking my way through a variety of jobs because I could draw. Never good enough to truly excel at it but managing to do it well enough to keep coming back every day.

Came back every day through forty years of design, layout, production, cartooning, illustration and book design. Charts, graphs, photography, line art, sign and window designs.

All the while, I went home evenings and painted.

Most of my life has been lived in Florida. I've painted in Miami, in Orlando, in Tallahassee.

On the Panhandle coast and the Atlantic coast.

But mostly in Tallahassee. Hills and oak trees. Pine trees. Magnolia trees. Azalea bushes and camellia bushes. Painting Tallahassee requires a lot of green pigment.

I hate green now. I have the common male weakness in seeing the red/green spectrum.

I can see it, but it takes a lot of careful looking and good lighting conditions.

Forty plus years later, I think this blog is going to be about art. Big "A" and little "a" art.

Being an artist and doing it because ... well, because I have to. Can't really say I'm a successful painter. Never won a notable competition. Entered a bunch.

Managed to sell a respectable amount of paintings over the decades, but couldn't make a living at it. Fine art is a tough game to master. It takes determination and grit. People skills. Patience.

Having talent wouldn't hurt, either.

Finally, what does "making it" mean, in the end? What are the possibilities for holding one's head up with a pride of accomplishment? How does one begin to know if, when, one is a good artist?

Does it matter? Who cares?

Let's find out.