Ramblings Archive September 2008

September 27th, 2008



Low Tide at Thomas CoveYesterday I headed out to paint on location. The mornings are really nippy now and my days of painting on location are almost finished for another year. I had an idea for a half sheet with laundry and the bay in behind. I packed up the pegs and laundry in case the perfect wash wasn’t hanging out. When I got to “my clothes line” there was the owner’s car in the driveway and so I realized that I’d have to find something else. What else? I didn’t have any other ideas.

I turned around and drove west. A couple of hay bales in a field with the bay in behind caught my eye and I went back and did a wonderful little quartersheet painting. It just seemed to sizzle. Then I continued driving and ended up at Thomas Cove. Totally disorganized, I set off walking; my pop bottle of water under one arm, my hand holding the two stools and my brushes, palette and paper in my other hand. 
Sand stone at Thomas Cove
This isn’t the best way to hike in the woods. Anyways I found some sandstone that appealed and did a second quarter sheet painting. Again this one clicked and seemed to really catch what I was after. I packed up and was ready to hike back to the car when the view of low tide against the other sand stone cliffs really seemed to beckon. By this time I was cold and tired but I splashed a little bold purple and orange paint on the paper and suddenly I was wide awake and things were perking.

When I was finished the third painting I couldn’t stop looking at the three of them. 
I just love them. So many days I try so hard and the paintings are just mediocre and then suddenly I get a day when everything is easy, the paintings astonish me and it’s as if someone else did them.
autumn

Sep 27, 2008 1:57 PM

September 22nd, 2008

Rocks at Chebucto Head
Yesterday I had a marvelous afternoon sitting at Chebucto Head; my favourite spot in the world. The autumn colours are creeping into the low growing foliage. The ferns are glowing orange, the cranberries are red and delicious and the white granite pokes out here and there and slides down to the ocean.- the Atlantic Ocean; deep and blue and rolling in against the rock, the white sizzle of breaking waves accenting the edge, the spot where ocean meets rock. I’ve always loved sitting at Chebucto Head. Once I brought a childhood friend and “our” six kids here in the pouring rain. Once I saw a huge great blue whate. Once sadly, I was robbed here. It’s the solidness of the rock and the continual rolling of the ocean, even on a calm day, that seems to put life into balance. I’m a speck and the world is as it should.

cheapjoes
Although a rock behind me was calling to be painted, I didn’t want my back to the ocean. I wanted the hours to soak it up and so I did a half sheet of rock, foliage and ocean. Then when I was freezing cold, I stayed a bit longer and did a fast quarter sheet of the rock against the sky with the blaze of orange fern in front. Eventually I was shaking from the cold and trudged back to the car. With the seat heater on 5 and the car heater on hot, I gradually warmed up. When I returned home and looked at the paintings, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with them. This morning I spent the morning doing the shine and polish to these two paintings and now I love them. 

Sep 22, 2008 1:57 PM

September 4th, 2008

em-1
All these days, weeks, months of painting with nothing of consequence happening. Then yesterday a break through. I played with the waterlily painting, tore off bits of paper, used gobs of white painting, scrubbed, nudged, shaped the painting like a clay sculpture: pushing and pulling the life out of it: working intuitively like a blind person feeling just what is ahead but not seeing the sum: Enjoying the process but wondering if I was making garbage.

Then because the tedious full sheet of Lunenburg is looming, I chose to finish up two paintings that have been sitting 90% done. One of chairs on a beach that I thought was perfection (for sure a new print etc). All those expectations sapped the life right out of the painting and of me. The other painting, a whimsical garden that I might have enjoyed or hated until one daughter said “But Mom, the flowers are way too big, the chair is way too small” and one best friend “A pink chair, It’s the pink chair that doesn’t work. Have you thought about red?” So now I have a dead chairs on beach and a too small red chair in a bunch of large flowers.

washdayonisledesolem-1
Still procrastinating, I start scribbling the shape of a woman doing her laundry in South America. I watched her, photographed her, sketched her for four hours last February: as she knelt on the ground and scrubbed, as she squeezed and rinsed and then as she lay the clothes on a rock wall to dry. I didn’t think I got any one image that expressed her beauty: the way her shape and her work captured my heart. But yesterday while I was fighting the “have to” demons, I plucked a scrap of watercolour paper off my floor and although it was narrow, rolled, untapped--- a miracle happened. This it the joy, the satisfaction, the reason to continue painting. Occasionally due to hard work, or procrastination or some other nebulous reason: a creative person (me) becomes so worn out and discouraged from trying to control the creative process that they stop. When there is time and space for play, there is also time and space for miracles.  

Sep 4, 2008 9:26 PM
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