If you have followed my blog for a few years (THANK YOU!), you may recall that I love February. When we have decent winters, things turn green and the wildflowers begin. It isn’t hot yet, there is snow on the mountains, the air is clear and the rivers are flowing. With no apologies to those of you who are in the depths of winter (because we all have our tough seasons wherever we choose to live), here are some glimpses into February in Three Rivers, which is the beginning of spring for us.
a very sorry broccoli harvestRed maidsDon’t eat thisFiddlenecksThe second red chair is in the shadeEverlasting pea, something new a neighbor has plantedSpeedwell?That amazing flowering pearBuckeyes are the first to leaf out Patriotic seatingNorth Fork of the KaweahThe primary colors in my yard
An easy-ish walk with a little climb and good views.
Don’t you wish you could live in Three Rivers in late winter/early spring? Fret not, we’ll pay for it in July, August, and September.
Photo taken in Clovis by Jane Sorenson. (Used without permission)
One morning when I shuffled carefully down the driveway by flashlight in the dark toward my neighbor waiting with her flashlight, I asked her, “Tell me again: why do we do this?”
She said, “They say it’s supposed to be good for us.”
I asked, “Are ‘they’ the same people who told us margarine was better than butter? Or coffee was good, then bad, then good? Or wine was bad, then good, and now bad again?”
We chose to go the shorter steepest route, because we find it easier when we can’t see how steep it is.
We turn around at the gate which leads to this place because we are cold, it is dark, and my neighbor has to get to work.
As the light increases each day in February, we start dreading the time change. When we were kids, it changed to Daylight Saving in April, and then it changed back to Standard Time in October. Some time in early adulthood years, the changes got moved to March and November, so that Daylight Saving is a now longer stretch than Standard. So “Standard” is more accurately “Nonstandard”, or “Irregular”.
Like with most big issues, we Americans are evenly divided on which time schedule is best. In general, urbanites prefer more light in the evening, and rural folks prefer (and often NEED) more light in the morning. Almost everyone agrees that jerking our internal clocks around is annoying at best, and dangerous at worst. (The dummies think they are somehow tricking Father Time into providing more hours of daylight.)
I expect that in spite of widespread discontent and the adverse consequences of a twice-yearly time change, the People in Charge will do nothing. Politicians are so concerned with retaining votes that they are paralyzed when decisions are a 50/50 proposal, with the unintended consequence of everyone being unhappy. In addition to the elected officials, it is often the bureaucrats who end up interfering in our lives.
I expect to be walking in the dark for the rest of my life.
“You’ll never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats, procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” —Thomas Sowell
Have you heard of her? Read any of her books? She writes both fiction and non-fiction and is an odd combination of being very politically liberal and outspoken about her Christian faith. Her thoughts are oh so relatable, shocking, irreverent, vulnerable, infuriating, and at times, highly entertaining.
The books she might be most known for are Bird by Bird, about the writing process and Operating Instructions, about raising her son alone.
Here are three things that I have copied down from her writing to contemplate and muse over on today’s blog post.
“Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared.” The older I get, the more I see this is true. Those tailgaters? Yep. Politicians? Yep. Your neighbors with the glaring lights and barking dogs? Yep. The cranky salesperson at a big box store? Yep. Me? Hey, let’s not get personal here, okay?
“Try not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are.” Comparison is a terrible way to live. Just stop it.
“…deteriorating faster than you can lower your standards.” This may apply to many aspects of my life. Let’s not talk about the state of my old car, the cleanliness of my house, the number of weeds in my yard, the unsorted piles in my studio.
*Clutter is the physical manifestation of unmade decisions fueled by procrastination. -Christina Scalise
She also has a list called “Twelve Truths I Learned From Life and Writing”, which is one of my favorite Ted talks of all. I used to listen to those while painting and drawing, but now I seem to be continually trying to catch up on all the excellent podcasts I subscribe to.
About those Twelve Truths: she is oh so very wrong about chocolate with 75% cacao.
… I am working on several art projects at once. That is, IF I am actually working.
The little beach paintings are still progressing. I have enough boards for twelve of these. Six are now completed, three more are in the messy first layer stages, and three more are waiting for my decision to either paint more beach scenes, or paint some oranges.
I like these little boards.
Pacific Ocean IV, 5×7”, oil on gessobord*, $75
There are also three unfinished oil paintings in the painting workshop, but none have deadlines. The beach paintings don’t have deadlines either, but their small size gives me the illusion of productivity and progress.
Meanwhile, I have two very complicated pencil commissions to complete. One is now in progress; the other is awaiting my thumbnail sketches for the customer to choose from.
“Bad things happen quickly; good things take a long time. This is why patience and determination are such primary virtues.”
I don’t know who said this, but I intend for these two difficult pencil commissions to be good, so they may take a long time.
*Gessobord is something akin to masonite, coated very smoothly with gesso, a thick white paint, probably acrylic.
What is editing? You mean you get paid to just sit around and read??
… I’m either tending to the logistics and administrative duties of a microscopic art business* or I am editing. IF I am actually working, that is.
Yes but it isn’t the same as reading for escape or to learn. Instead, you read with multiple purposes. An editor’s job is to make sure the reader can flow through the book without tripping over the words.
The reading is something like this:
Why do I keep going back to that paragraph? It might have too many words, but for some reason I am not sure of the author’s intent. Maybe it would be clearer like [try a different way of phrasing].
Wait, wasn’t that guy’s name Jim in the last chapter? Then who is Jack? Better do a Jim/Jack check throughout.
Oh-oh, the author is using the tab key instead of indention for new paragraphs; better make sure all those tabs/extra spaces/extra returns get removed throughout.
Eighteen? I thought she was twenty. Where did it mention her age? Better make a note to find all those references and verify the timeline.
Why does this character start every sentence with “So”? This might need a bit of modification. Not too much, because that is how he talks, but if he gets too boring, we might lose our reader’s attention.
Oops, those paragraphs are ragged right rather than justified; better “select all” and choose “justified” so the entire manuscript is consistent. While I’m at it, better make sure hyphenation is turned off or some words will go wonky.
Hmmm, sometimes that word is spelled with a hyphen and sometimes as a compound word. Seek and replace the wrong version.
What am I supposed to do with this list of bullets beneath the heading? Or the bullets beneath the bullets? Wait, is that a subheading that needs to be indented? Does this need to be a new section, or do those words need to be non-bold? If I am confused as to the main topic, the reader might just skip this section.
Semi colon alert! Better watch more carefully.
What is the point of this paragraph? Can it be deleted?
Meanwhile, I am keeping up with the storyline, making sure that it is moving along at a good clip. A problem with editing is that I get caught up in the story and forget to think all those multi-layered thoughts as I am reading.
Sometimes the day goes quickly, so quickly that when I head home, I am surprised that it is dusk. I would be surprised that the cats were put away for the night if Trail Guy didn’t stick his head in the studio to let me know.
“. . . Of making many books, there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” —Ecclesiastes 12:12b
A dear friend told me that she really enjoys my blog posts when I write about thoughts. Here, this is what she said:
Maybe it’s because I’m a worker of words, but I really enjoy your entries that describe your central valley world, your life in it, and your feelings. The reader responses you receive indicate many others do too. I believe getting to know the artist who produces beautiful views of the world beyond our human angst and cultural foibles is an important part of any sale, and I hope you keep posting such thoughts often! I can see them in a book of your own some day. 🙂
Wow. That was thought-provoking, encouraging, and as always from this friend, very kind.
Late one night I had a mental list of ideas to write about. Instead of writing, I went to bed. Now my head is empty, so let’s just have some photographs today with a little commentary.
That giant flowering pear, the last one to hold its fall color, is also the first one to bloom. I took this picture on February 2.My flowering pear is not quite thinking about blooming yet.
There are no words. Well, there were some words, and those were them.
Look at the black stripes on Jackson’s tail: they get wider as they move toward the tip. Made me think about Perkins’ checkerboard tail.
Both cats came from the same place; well, more accurately, Jackson’s mother came from the same place as Perkins.
Linda’s Barn, pencil and colored pencil, SOLD This barn used to be an excellent source of cats, but alas, the Order of All Things has unfolded and we are developing hard hearts in order to cope with the harsh realities of trying to keep cats alive in Three Rivers. (Tucker, Jackson, and Pippin are all thriving at the time of this blog post—thank you for your concern.)
This is what winter can look like in Three Rivers.
Don’t you wish your computer had scratch-n-sniff so you could fully enjoy this rosemary?
Okay, maybe I’ll just sit here for a pair of minutes and see if any of those great late-night thoughts reassert themselves.
There is an excellent museum in Three Rivers, and parked in front are some old fire trucks plus this tow truck. I had to wait for a couple of friends stuck at one of the many ongoing lengthy roadblocks, so I wandered around with my inferior phone camera.
On a recent walk, I took this photo because it reminded me of my painting titled Swinging Oak. You can see it below with a convenient link for purchasing from my website. It’s just business. (I’m tryna earn a living here!)
Swinging Oak, oil on wrapped canvas, 12×16″, $375 (plus tax in California) Available here
Where’s the other chair?
Why am I not showing you any paintings or drawings? Because I am spending most of my time in the studio, editing another book for another writer on another topic.
A good friend, mentor, and wise man asked me if I have a relationship with my paintings. I wasn’t sure what he was seeking, so I just told him what goes through my mind while painting. Then I looked at the email conversation and thought, “Hmmm, this might be an interesting blog post”.
Just a typical view on a morning walk in Three Rivers. Nope, not down those steps to the river—just passing by on the road.
When I start a painting, I have photos to look at, and I copy what is there while also trying to improve on it. Move a tree, brighten a color, ignore a tangle of branches, don’t get too weird about making those rocks or cracks in the cliff perfect, increase the contrast, make that insignificant part blurry or leave it out. . . on and on and on, a continual mental conversation about how to depict a scene realistically but cleaner than real life. Real life is pretty messy, and I try to clean it up.
Often I think a painting is finished when it isn’t. It takes awhile of studying it, sometimes a couple of years, before realizing that it can be improved. This isn’t improvement to make it look more like the photo, but improvement to make it more appealing to the viewer.
A very popular place to walk in Exeter—and the way we prefer to drive home when the hills are green. I used to walk this in the olden days when I was training for some very long walks, before my feet were numb.
My method of painting is to layer and layer, over and over, tightening the details, correcting the proportions, remixing the colors with each layer. Usually when I start, it is very sloppy, getting better with each pass over the canvas. This is similar to writing, where you tell yourself the story in the first draft. Then as you edit and rewrite, you refine your words, rearrange your paragraphs, realize that something can be misunderstood so you correct that piece, decide that something sounds foggy or stupid or unnecessary so you delete that sentence or phrase. Then you think it is done, until you look at it the next day or the next week or after you hit “Publish” and WHAM! THERE’S A TYPO! Or you wonder “why did I say that??” Or you think, “Nobody cares, why did I write this?”
A friend and I went boldly trespassing through some orange groves on a walk a week or two ago.
I’ve never thought about it as a relationship with a painting. It is a project, separate from me. I talk myself through it, talking to myself rather than to the painting. Sure, occasionally I’ve said to a painting, “Buddy, you are toast!” just before painting it out entirely.
But the conversation is entirely to myself—“WHAT are you doing?? Stop licking the canvas! Choose the right color, get it carefully on the best brush for the job, and decide what you are doing before you just dab and jab. Okay, that is looking good, so now do it again over here. Your brush is too small and this will take forever. Whoa, I thought that part was finished and it looks really weak. Oh great, now you’ve missed entire pieces of the conversation on the podcast you are listening to because you were trying to mix a better green.”
So now you know what goes through my brain while I am painting.
Contemplating matters of consequence
With drawing, things are much easier, more automatic, and it is easier to talk to other people, or listen to a podcast while drawing. But I don’t feel as if I have a relationship with my drawings either. Many years ago I had to learn to keep emotional distance, to stop viewing them as something fabulous and irreplaceable or it would have been too hard to sell them.
And here is your reward for reading to the end of this very long post.
Some friends went to Mineral King in January and shared this photo with me. Now I am sharing it with you. (Thank you, KC!)
I’m not much good in town, but if the town is on a beach, I’ll cope with it just fine. These paintings were done from photos taken around Monterey, but I am simply titling them Pacific Ocean I, II, and III, with hopes for IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX in the near future.
Pacific Ocean I, 5×7″, oil on gessobord, $75 (plus tax—sorry, we are in California)
Pacific Ocean II, 5×7″, oil on gessobord, $75 (plus tax)
Pacific Ocean III, 5×7″, oil on gessobord, $75 (plus tax—is there an echo around here?)
Email, call, write me a note, or tell me in the comments if you would like to buy one of these paintings. (They look better in person, as you probably already know.)
We can pretend they are in Pismo, Cayucos, or any other spot along the Pacific Ocean that floats your boat.
