A New Direction

A blog a day, a painting a day, something done intentionally each day to bring myself into correct alignment.  I know it won't happen everyday but if good intentions mean anything....

Six weeks ago we drove to Alabama and loaded up my parents and brought them to live with us here. It has gone well, better than I could have ever expected.  They are healthy and happy and are settling into their new lifestyle in a our home.

It has increased the work load for me but it has also made me more intentional about the time that I have. It's also teaching me flexibility, to switch modes quickly and without frustration (okay, I'm working on that.)

So I have a few minutes each week to paint but a few is better than none.  I vow to make the most of the time, to grab little snatches of time and to rejoice in them!

(This is a study done from live model in one session with a short follow up the next day.)

Brush Strokes

The view from the kitchen window is a canopy of fragile autumn light. The redbud closest to the house is a deep vibrant yellow. The leaves of the ash are yellow underneath but garnet on top. The red maple that towers over both is in transition from deepest green to fiery red. I looked out yesterday as the wind ripped away a hundred ash leaves and tossed them to the sky. I wanted to cry out at the wastefulness, to slow down the destruction, so that I might savor it at my leisure. It's as if some marvelous painter, after a frenzy of beautiful bravura brush strokes, threw down his brush and tore the canvas to shreds and let the wind carry it all away. Nature says, I've done my work for the season, I've adorned my trees in their finest, for my own glory, and now I am tired and will take my rest.

I have never comprehended the radiance that emanates from the dying leaves. It appears not to be reflected light but generated from within. Particularly on a cloudy day, each leaf shines brilliantly as if a tiny solar system cycled around it, irradiated by its golden glow. I do not want to let it pass without celebration, this fleeting moment between autumn and winter, seconds before the wind ravishes the leaves and tosses them carelessly to the sky. I want to hold onto the leaves, pressing them into my mind, painting them with thick chiaroscuro strokes of pure pigment. If I turn my head, if I look away in busiedness, I may miss it, this dying of a million suns.

Nothing is wasted by the loss of leaves, but rather they are speedily dispatched to be shared by the ecosystem of which they are an integral part. I know all about the leaves turning to sugar and falling to the ground to be used as compost to nourish the soil. I'm a gardener, after all, and comprehend the overall genius of the master plan. But nothing makes me more sentimental.

I do not willingly allow the past to be flung away in gusts of time. I yearn for past autumns when my children walked down the street carpeted with leaves, backpacks flung over a shoulder, books curled in an arm. The light is suspended in tiny fluttering suns above them, around them, and below. Yet in my memory they are always walking away from me, always going towards some thing, some where, some one else. It is a selfish longing, to hold onto leaves, children, the past. They go the way they are meant to by the master gardener. Only in trying to grasp the present do we lose it. Let them be swept up into the azure sky, trusting that they will flutter down gently to be used mightily in another time and place.

September

The summer is winding down. The angle of the sun is lower and the days are shorter and the light is golden. August was so exceptionally cool that September slipped in almost unnoticed but I want to proclaim it's arrival:

September is here!!! The high-schoolers walk past my house to the campus a block away. I heard the marching band practicing on the field early in the morning and the first football game over the loud speaker in the evening. My neighbor's sweet gum is, as always, the first tree in town to change colors, tempting the others to follow. I watch the lively finches gorge themselves greedily on the herbs that I let go to seed, tipping the stems almost to the ground as they feast. Open the windows and drink in the sweet ripening air. Drape the quilt over the porch railing. Take my coffee out on to the porch and sit a spell. It never lasts long enough for me.

October signals the dying of the year. Endings, not beginnings. But September is still mild and hopeful, life sustaining. The garden doesn't need tucking in yet nor do I bring in the plants. But I get an urge to "nest," gathering sticks and twigs. Renewed energy to clean house and rearrange the furniture. Must be some primal urge to "gather in" before the winds of winter blow.

I'm expecting a houseful of guests for the weekend. Perfect. No worries about adequate air conditioning or what to do with extra people because the weather will be fine and we can spread out over the house and grounds. And did I mention that it's also my birthday month? And my sister is coming to celebrate because she shares my birthday? And my mother and grandmother both had September birthdays. And my two best friends have birthdays in September, too. It really is the best time of the year.

Round Food

I don't cook much anymore. I let Tim take over the cooking a few years ago because he wanted to and was so good at it. I went from cooking every day to cooking only on weekdays to almost never.

I never minded cooking, really, but got bogged down in the planning and shopping phases. I worried about budgeting and calories, things which Tim never seemed to mind. He plunged into cooking like an artist, a composer, a CHEF.

Chefs view food differently that the rest of us mere mortals. To them, meals are the palette and food is the paint. The finely sharpened knife and the saute pan are the brushes that they use to create beautiful textures and tastes, the instruments to perform a symphony of sights and smells, temptations of the eye and the imagination.

These days it comes down to pragmatism. Time and Diet. Three nights a week we are in the studio and many other nights we are involved in festivals on Main Street or other outside activities. So we eat to live, not the other way around. I "do" breakfast and lunch most days. Tim "does" dinner (notice the sense of duty in the imperatives "do/does.") For expedience, he usually broils a chicken breast or fish fillet and pairs it with a steamed vegetable. When called upon to prepare dinner (once in a blue moon,) I only cook "round" things: soup, chili, cornbread, pancakes, pizza or eggs. Well, eggs technically are not round but are when fried in a skillet or scrambled. Some nights we come home from the studio and have a bowl of cereal.

How the times have changed. I remember when we would eat a full meal no matter how late when we got home. We entertained in our home and cooked lavish meals for friends and family. Food was an enormous part of our life. I'd like to think that we have something that is more satisfying, now, than cooking. Life in the arts is rich and stimulating. We use up our creative energy in the studio and have not much left for the kitchen.

Maybe that's a cop-out, I don't know, but tonight I made the best chili and cornbread...

Creative Energy

I've been on hiatus. I decided to express my feelings of frustration and anger and even rage by painting them rather than writing in this journal. Perhaps it's because these emotions were unspeakably dark and I was afraid. Or maybe I just didn't want to dilute the passion by pouring it into too many vessels. I chose to paint.

I'm constrained after all, by the fact that my family and friends read this. Of course, I could write in secret, lock it with a key, "Dear Diary", and all that. However, constraints are not necessarily bad. They provide a framework, a metered verse, a haiku, into which I must form an economy of ideas and words.

But more than this, I needed to push away from the safety of the shoreline in my painting. Looking over the progression of my work this year I see growth, change and some success. But mostly I detect a change in direction from the painting of safe, pretty pictures to bolder statements of vulnerability and exposure. For that I needed to mine raw emotional materials that had not been codifed and cauterized through writing.

Of course, I am aware that I've just written about not writing and... I'm still writing... and I hope this hasn't siphoned off the energy needed for my next painting.

In Search of Wings

Mom and Dad say I was a naturally pleasant and cheerful child, even as a baby. They said I would greet them in the morning, while standing in my crib, with: "Hi! Hello! Good morning, Mommy!" I'm sure I was indulged and cosseted, being the third child and the first girl. But, even so, or despite that, I was sweet and good.

I also had a devilish streak, too. One time my friend, Suzy Kohl, and I were taking a nap at my house. I guess that makes us about four years old. For some reason we were placed in my brothers' room. We didn't nap, but instead the devil got into us and we proceeded to tear up the room. I don't know if it started with a demon or a dare, but before we were through the room was destroyed. Not even my brother Steve's brand-new box kite, which I don't think he had even flown yet, was spared. I'll never forget how sad and ashamed I felt when I saw his face. He stood in the doorway and his face crumpled into tears as he looked over the devastation.

But, when I was being good, truly good, my mother would say to me, "Oh, look, Chrissy: I see your wings budding. Look here!" She pointed to a spot just inside my shoulder blades and I would turn in circles trying to see behind me. "There," she said, "tiny little wings. Can't you see them?" When I cried, "Where, where?" she reassured me that they would grow if I would only be good.

I think I'm still by nature a pleasant person. I'm good natured and I laugh easily. I can't stay angry at someone no matter how I try. I easily forget wrongs and I rarely say mean things on purpose. That doesn't mean I don't hurt people by mistake, but I'm not vindictive in any sense of the word. But does that make me "good?"

I believe that, even though I have goodness in me, I'm not "good". My human nature, left to itself, is pretty rotten. I desperately want to be better, to get my full set of wings, so to speak. While I'm not consciously trying to improve myself every day, I do have a plan.

The main thing I try to do is to put good things inside my mind. I read great literature, listen to music that enriches my mind and soul, study great art and most important of all, I read the Good Book consistently. When I get sad or discouraged, I usually find that I've failed to "fuel-up." My storehouse has gotten low. I don't want to run dry. I know that none of these things will make me good, that only by being truly renewed in my spirit by God's grace have I any righteousness at all, but that by developing the habit of fueling up with good things will I ever have a chance of getting my wings.

When my youngest child, Ben, was about seven years old, he was sitting at the table eating breakfast before school. Beautiful music was playing on the stereo and I was busy getting his things together. When I turned towards him I saw that tears were streaming down his face. I said, "Oh Ben, what's wrong?" And he turned towards me and said, "Mom, why don't we have wings?" I suppose the music had touched his tender spirit and made him want to soar like a bird. I don't know where it came from but I said to him, "Because then we would have one thing less to look forward to when we get to heaven."

I don't think we will, like Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life, all become angels nor that we have to earn our wings when we get to heaven. But Ben was sharing my life-long desire to soar on wings of beauty and goodness. Next time you see me do something good, you'll know that I'm still trying to grow those wings.

Invisibility Cloak

I've been meditating on the imperatives in the Bible to "be humble." Paul, in Colossians, says to "put on" humility, as if it were a cloak. Peter says, "Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.'” (emphasis mine.)

In the much loved David Copperfield, the smarmy Uriah Heep says: "I am well aware that I am the umblest person going." As soon as you think you are humble, by virtue of your awareness, you are not. So, I am deducing that humility it is an action that we must employ, not a quality that we can claim to have.

It's not until the end of the saga that Harry Potter realizes the uniqueness of the invisibility cloak that Professor Dumbledore has given him. Throughout the story Harry employs the cloak to slip in and out of Hogwarts, to do mischief and to do good, but mostly he just takes it for granted. He draws it over himself and he becomes completely invisible to the eye and even to witchcraft, virtually undetectable. Invisibility is something which he puts on. In no wise, even as a wizard, is he able to become invisible any other way.

Where do I find a cloak of humility? If this is a characteristic that I am commanded to display but which I can't manufacture from within, then how do I go about putting it on? "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." So, is the Bible saying that if I chose to love someone in the way that is best for them then God will give me the grace to do it? This is tough. I like having the last word. There is something so monstrously satisfying in being justified in my own mind. But there is no peace in it. No, the only choice is to love and that can only be done well through the grace of humility, not in weakness but in strength.

I don't have to become invisible but I do have to get my motives and preconceptions out of the way. Choice is the action, grace is the means, humility is the result. After all, as Dumbledore says, it's not our abilities that make us who we are but the choices that we make.