Last week before the rain, the air was very clear. I had to work on Saturday, so in spite of having stuff to do in order to prepare for First Saturday, Trail Guy and I drove down to Lake Kaweah to enjoy the morning. This isn’t something I have done many paintings of; I’m not convinced anyone else will appreciate it, especially from the unfamiliar viewpoints of walking along the river in the lake bottom.
You can decide for yourselves if any of these views would appeal to people.
If I were a hobbyist, I could just paint what I want. I am a professional artist, so figuring out what my customer base is interested in is just part of the business of art.
Did I learn anything in November? It is my busiest month. Lots happened and perhaps I learned a few things:
I joined BNI, Business Network International. The Visalia chapter isn’t official and won’t be until there are 20 members; I was #12 to join.
I taught a drawing workshop to 5 eager learners at a gallery in Visalia called Arts Visalia.
St. Anthony’s Retreat hosts a great event each year called “Festival of Trees”. I’ve been a judge of those fabulously decorated Christmas trees for all 5 years, and it is very difficult and very rewarding, especially with my fellow very thoughtful and careful judges. Who knew??
The annual Holiday Bazaar wasn’t well attended but the attendees were all committed shoppers; I see evidence of a growing economy, for which I am thankful.
The Kaweah Artisans have been together for about 20 years; we continue to be a very compatible group who put together simple and enjoyable boutiques in Three Rivers.
I can paint large; maybe 18×36″ isn’t large in the Art World but in my world it is practically a mural. It is much slower than a mural, because of the many layers and amount of detail and amount of time for each layer to dry.
I went off my fiction fast with a vengeance and slammed 9 books, all fiction. The top ones were: One of Us (audio, Tawni O’Dell), The Lightkeeper’s Daughters (Jean E. Pendziwol), Fair and Tender Ladies, (Lee Smith), Harriet Beamer Takes the Bus (Joyce Magnin), and Flatshare (Beth O’Leary). Hmmm, perhaps I was trying to escape the busyness.
In order to refresh a garden, the old stuff needs to be removed but it can be transplanted elsewhere instead of throwing it on the burn pile. I replanted the area around my studio, about 18 years after first planting anything free that would grow fast. Back then, I also spent money on real plants, and probably killed 3 times as many plants as have prospered.
One of my favorite podcasters is Don Miller; I subscribe to his daily Business Made Simple tip. One day in November he advised this: “Do not be confused about something that is not confusing. (sounds dumb, eh?) Ask yourself, “If I wasn’t confused what would be the obvious thing to do? Am I afraid of letting someone down? Do I really not want to do this thing?”
Somewhere online I read about a thing that allows an old car to play a cell phone’s podcasts (or whatever else your smartphone is playing, like the talking lady telling you how to get places) through the stereo speakers. It goes in the cigarette lighter— IT WORKS AND IS EASY TO USE!
What did you do and learn in November? Want to share in the comments?
“Indecision” sounds a lot like “indigestion” which sounds a bit like “indigent” which means “poor enough to need help from others”.
These paintings might be poor enough to need help from others. I can’t decide if they are finished, if there is a way to improve them, or if they just need to be painted over with something else.
I like it, then I doubt my own opinion, then I decide to just sign it and be finished, but I can’t because something unknwon is holding me back. I can’t decide.
This was my first plein air painting in Mineral King this summer. I hid in the trees so no one would watch me flail around. Does it need more light on the edge of the larger red fir? Maybe wildflowers in the foreground would solve whatever it is that makes me not love this painting. Maybe it needs to be detailed, the way I normally paint. I can’t decide.
There was no good place to stand on the bridge so I was off to the side, and had to be careful each time I stepped back to not trip or step into traffic. I’ve painted this cabin scene so many times before, but never from this angle, and never with this lack of detail. Does it need more detail? I can’t decide.
This was painted in my front yard shortly after I returned from the plein air painting workshop in Georgia. I think it is boring, in spite of being the best time of year. Is it boring or is it just that “familiarity breeds contempt”? I can’t decide.
This is how the same scene looks now. This photo is definitely boring, but Three Rivers is still the best place to live in Tulare County. No indecision in that department!
September was so full that I forgot to tell you what I learned! Better late than never, so here is the list of recent nuggets I’ve gleaned from life.
Painting with Marty Weekly – I learned so much about plein air painting by observing Marty.
Kinesthetic Sand – this is a cool toy of gritty squishiness, fun and fairly useless (but is fun supposed to be useful??)
Travertine is a new word to me: “white or light-colored calcareous rock deposited from mineral springs, used in building”. I doubt if I could use it intelligently in a sentence; it was used to describe the grass in the front yard of our cabin (hunh?) and I learned of Travertine Hot Springs on the East Side of the Sierra (but haven’t been there.)
Shopping in stores does not suit me – I’ve known this most of my life, but it was recently reinforced. It is not a recreational activity to me where I want to examine all the possibilities but more of a hunting expedition. The music is annoying, loud, and makes me want to leave immediately upon arriving; there are too many choices and too much stuff, which makes it hard to find what I am seeking. Further, I don’t even dress right to be in those settings (nope, leggings are NOT pants and I will outlast this fad).
Cities are fun! I enjoyed living in San Diego in my late teens and early 20s, but didn’t really belong and got homesick. Tulare County is a mess, but it is our mess and it is home. However, it is crazy fun to visit a city, especially with people who also enjoy being there.
There is a book called “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now” by Gordon Livingston, and it is summarized on this website: https://sivers.org/book/30TrueThings of Derek Stivers. Wow, great information from a long time psychiatrist, gleaned from listening to patients for many years.
Estate sales are difficult for many reasons. They involve so many decisions that are hard enough to make without experience, and those decisions are layered over with emotions. It requires enormous organizational skills, and lots of patience and energy. I helped with an estate sale recently and was astounded by the amount of work.
There is a new frozen yogurt shop in Three Rivers, appropriately named “Three Rivers Yogurt” and it is very well put together with a great product and service. (It is next door to Sierra Subs and Salads.)
A very high-end motel complex is in the planning stages for Three Rivers. The developer came to a town meeting and described it, then opened himself up to many questions from the audience. I went with a completely open mind, and left convinced that this will be very good for our community. This will be a class act and I believe”a rising tide lifts all boats”.
Mountain lions chirp, almost like a shrill bird. A cabin friend heard it while sitting around his outdoor fire ring in Silver City (4 miles below Mineral King), looked it up online and learned that yes indeed, that is the mountain lion’s sound at times.
People, we are getting slammed and bombarded on three fronts: email, real mail, and the telephone. Most of our incoming calls these days are from unidentified sources who do not leave messages. Most of our mail is solicitations for money. It takes me a pair of minutes or more to delete the unwanted emails several times every day. Does anyone actually respond positively to these solicitations? There must be some sort of success rate, because otherwise these highly annoying interruptions to life would cease.
If you have a spot on your shirt and spray it with OxyClean, don’t let it sit there and dry for a week; it will make a hole. (Bummer! I loved that dress for about 20 years!)
Dentists are artists, sculptors, and kind care givers. My dental experiences are limited, and I was kind of shocked by how unpleasant such a common experience actually is. My dentist, Dr. Darren Rich in Three Rivers, is OUTSTANDING! (and so is his staff)
If you wait long enough, maybe your pomegranate tree will produce fruit. Twelve years is a long wait, but this year it is producing about a dozen pomegranates, very small, but very real.
Hey Central California Artist who hikes, what are you doing these days? Not working, not hiking.
Then what? I dunno. Knitting, reading, helping people, yardening, editing, planning for drawing lessons in September, thinking about painting ideas, messing with the calendar design.
Some of that IS work! Yeah, but I like it all.
Why aren’t you hiking? Because helping people and anything involving the computer happens down the hill.
Okay, then let’s look at pictures that Trail Guy took on a recent hike. Okay, good idea. He went to White Chief again.
Borrowing a friend’s river view. The river is still high and loud, particularly unusual for early August.
In the months of July and August, I don’t give weekly drawing lessons. This gives me an out-of-proportion sense of being on vacation. My schedule is freer, so I putter at multiple things, some work, some personal.
A former drawing student (from about 2000-2004) will be having a baby in September, so I am knitting like a crazed machine.
It is time to begin designing the 2020 calendar.
An odd job appeared: someone has a torn painting and asked me to repair it. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t, but a mediocre patch job might be better than a ragged hole. The customer doesn’t want the original artist to know that it got torn, so you only get to see a corner. I’ll show you Wednesday.
My neighbors are relandscaping their yard and asked me to help. It is very absorbing work, and we keep coming up with ideas. I really enjoy figuring out what might grow, and digging extras from my yard, along with starting new ones from cuttings. (We think of ourselves as “The Frugal Gardeners”.)
I’ve been reading a lot, and my Want-To-Read list on GoodReads is down to about 160 now. (If you want to follow me on GoodReads, try it – I don’t know how to instruct you other than to say I am under my real name, nothing cute or clever). 1. “The Blue Shoe” is a meandering novel of very little plot about people you could imagine knowing by Anne Lamott whose writing captures my attention whether fiction or non-fiction. 2. “An Innocent, a Broad” by Ann Leary is a memoir by a writer I’ve discovered recently. 3. I loved “The Good House”, also by Leary, a first person novel about an alcoholic in total denial. 4. “House Rules” is my 2nd Jodi Picoult novel and it was a page turner written in multiple voices; the main one was an autistic teenager.
Since I’m not ready to show you the calendar, and the torn painting is a slow process, have a look at the baby blanket in progress, our old friend Reading Rabbit, and some of the yardening.
100% cotton, machine washable, recommended for baby blankets, ordered from Webs online, stitch pattern from a book called The Stitchionary.
Salt & Light, or Reading Rabbit, oil on board, 11×14″, not for sale
There will be flagstone on the path, and we are trying to find something to plant around the stones. Moss? Grass that doesn’t require mowing? Low-growing thyme that can live in relentless summer heat?
I’m particularly enamored with the blue wheelbarrow.
Having a picnic on the friends’ deck by the river adds to the sense of being on vacation.
Did anyone notice that I didn’t learn anything in June? Actually, I did, but had so many other things to post about that I didn’t make my usual list, which means this month’s list is twice as long as usual.
Pippin learns he doesn’t like black coffee.
For the very first time in my life, I gave away a cat. Two, actually. I learned that it is a beautiful thing to share kitties with people who might love them even more than I do.
Arizona’s speed limit for trucks is the same as that for cars, and it makes for much smoother traffic on freeways. Only Delaware and California require trucks to go 55 mph.
I was wrong last year when I said that Manx is not a breed of cat but the accident of birth through malnourishment in the womb. (Did I get that info on the internet?? or in a book??) The veterinarian who made sure Scout doesn’t have another litter set me straight. Scout has a weird stump of a tail and received superior nutrition while growing her 5 babies, resulting in 2 with tails and 3 without.
No matter how often I try to understand, the meaning of “meta” eludes me. Do the people using this word just pretend that they know what they are saying, and do the people listening just pretend too?
You can buy hard-boiled eggs at Costco. I don’t belong to Costco, but thought it a curious fact when I overheard it this summer.
Getting cats “fixed”: we had Scout fixed and she disappeared 3 weeks later. I was wondering if we shouldn’t get Georgia “fixed” so she could make us more kittens, but now she is also gone. This is why I want to have lots of cats. We have a controversial approach to pets, but it is right for us.
Not all my friends are readers. (Why does this surprise me?) I was quite amazed to learn that 3 of the 7 friends who reunited at Shaver Lake don’t read much!
Shaver Lake is wonderful. I had never been there before although it is only 2-1/2 hours away from Three Rivers.
I was the only one of the Shaver Seven who doesn’t color her hair. (Why is this interesting to me? Who knows.) Maybe it is because I’d rather be reading.
You can accidentally grow pumpkins. I thought I was accidentally growing zucchini, because the blossoms look the same. Only one is becoming a pumpkin, but wow, the plants are going nuts. (Because they are accidental, they aren’t planted in gopher-proof cages, so I fear for them.)
Airdrop is a thing that can send pictures from an iPhone to another nearby Apple device. It makes a funny noise when the photos are sent. (I am learning how to use the dreaded cell phone bit by bit, in spite of zero reception at home.)
Branches on a tree make knots on firewood and look strange if you ever have the opportunity to view the inside of a hollow tree.
Many flowers have the unfortunate-sounding syllable “wort” in their names. Why? It comes from Old English “wyrt”, meaning root, herb, and plant.
Pumpkin vines look like zucchini plants. The disk keeps the critters from digging where I buried kitchen waste, and the kitchen waste is why I am accidentally growing pumpkins.
Does Tucker look capable of supervising three young feline hooligans?
He is very patient.
Georgia had such a pretty face, unlike Jackson’s, which is sort of pointy like a fox.
Jackson’s markings are very similar to Samson’s. They would have been cousins.
“Out there” is a strange turn of phrase. Does it mean on the edge, in outer space, and weird? Or does it mean away from one’s comfort zone, out in the world? Either, but today it means having my work out in the world away from the comfort of Three Rivers, my known and beloved drawing students, and my own private studio.
I entered two pieces in “Seascapes” at the Exeter Courthouse Gallery. It is a juried show, but I have doubts that any entries will be turned away. The part that feels “out there” (vulnerable) to me is this: WILL ANYONE CARE ENOUGH TO SPEND $ ON MY WORK?? (or more accurately, $$$)
Excuse me for shouting. This sort of show makes me shudder, but at least it isn’t an auction. The shows are interesting to see, but it is nerve-wracking to interact with the public and wonder if they care or if they are just making conversation to be polite.
Wood, Wind, Waves, pencil, 14×19″, $400
A Walk to the Rock, 11×14″, $275, oil on wrapped canvas (looks square here, but that is simply misbehavior on the part of the blog)
But wait, there’s more. I also will enter these 2 pieces in a juried show at the Tulare County Government Plaza Building. And, I’m in the process of producing a third piece to enter.
Before M&Ms. . ., pencil and colored pencil
Little Cabin, Big Trees, pencil
What if they aren’t accepted? What if no one wants them? What if someone does, but can’t get them for an entire year?
Stop it. Just stop it.
Okay. I’m fine now. Thank you for listening.
“Seascapes”
June 1-28, Exeter’s Courthouse Gallery, 125 South B Street, Exeter, California.
