my front row seat on the dance floor of david’s studio affords me this unique opportunity to watch him waltz with his canvas, shift his weight from one leg to the other, lead the painting or let it lead him (much as i unintentionally do when we dance.) the images come to life. i can feel the pull in her neck, backward-bent in the beautiful flow of the tango, their faces raised to the sun in this morsel of TANGO WITH ME. i can feel their hands embracing, arms outstretched, reaching for their forward steps. the painting around them is magical and surreal, fantasy almost, just as a couple dancing is lost in the dreamy quality of their moving together.
ahhh. it is a privileged front seat i have. each time…watching another birth.
i visit this place everyday. the place of contemplation. of pondering. of remembering. of dreaming. of silent conversational prayer. this morsel of david’s painting CONTEMPLATION speaks to me and my need to sometimes go inside…to sort, to be grateful, to relinquish a hold on something negative, to wonder.
SOFTLY SHE PRAYS
there is a similar painting, based on a similar image…called SOFTLY SHE PRAYS and i adore this for its monochromatic approach, its gentle existence. conversely, this piece CONTEMPLATION is filled with color – the colors of life and vibrance, saturated with the palette we live in every day, the colors we don’t always notice as we walk by, missed in our efforts to move into the next moment. ahh. yet another reason to sit and rest and contemplate.
a couple of early summers ago The Girl called to tell me she had gotten her summer job -common for snowboard coaches and instructors – lined up. she sounded excited and i asked her what it was. “i’m going to be a white water rafting guide!!” she exclaimed. it took me a few seconds to digest this, as i couldn’t remember her ever being ON a white water raft. moments later i asked her that question, to which she replied “nope! but they’ll teach me everything i need to know.” wow. wow. wow.
and so she underwent intensive training, not only on the river but in safety, first aid, teamwork. weeks later she was out on the river, grit and determination her partners as well as some really great rafting colleagues. she would send pictures of the churning water and waterfalls and mountain views and i was stunned by all of it. the journey from landlubber to river bum is exponentially shorter at 26 than 50-something, i suspect.
i will always remember the day she called to tell us about a terrible accident on the river that had happened to a different company. she, like all the river rafting personnel, was devastated to learn of a death on the river. there was nothing like that event to add humble deference to a healthy respect of the water. no matter what, water is more powerful than you think.
this morsel -waterfall dreams- (from the painting HOT SPRINGS that just made its way back to david) made me think of the magical moments she had on that river weaving its way through the mountains. rich color, robust movement, spray from the rapids catching the sunlight…a playground in the hills.
in the bins in the basement (and scattered in places around the house) are child-drawings and paintings, ornaments made of paper and glue and sparkly glitter, painted rocks of various sizes, necklaces of beads and shells, framed little scraps of paper with things like “goodnight mom” written in pencil and surrounded by hearts. The Girl and The Boy have marked time through their artwork (and also through their writings) and i cherish each saved piece. this morsel – the field in early october – makes me think of such pieces.
in the corner of a new piece on david’s easel i found this morsel. extracted from the painting it is so childlike in feel. such simplicity and innocence. it immediately brought me to open fields we have walked…where sunflowers gaze for just a bit longer and grass is still verdant and lush and there are wild red berries on the bushes along the trail. the sun is in our eyes and everything takes on a muted hue. i can smell the leaves burning from the farmer’s field far off to our west.
what is more heavenly than remembering an early october day from a reality-fantasy visual perspective? what is more treasured than the artwork of a child? what a delicious combination. just ask picasso.
it goes by. time. no matter how much you want to hold onto it. there are THOSE moments…the ones you treasure. there are THOSE moments…the ones you want to forget ever happened. the only thing we can depend on, despite wishing otherwise, is that either moment – the one we cling to or the one we abhor – either moment will go by. we can’t hold the sun. it is elusive. it is fleeting. but a new day will come. we can look to the dawn for a fresh start, one more try, a little hope, another moment to cherish.
i have a unique front row seat to paintings in process. running downstairs to throw in another load of laundry or seek out a tool i need, i will glance at the easel in the studio to peek at what’s up next…this time, the sketch of two people dancing made me stop. it immediately made me thinking of when we have danced in the front yard or the kitchen or out on the deck or on a mountain trail. i got lost in the tango and wandered back upstairs, no new laundry spinning in the washer or tool in my hand.
the next time i looked at the easel i found these two people emerging and color exploding off the canvas. i have learned, in this time of living with a brush-in-hand-artist, that this is the under-painting, a place that involves steps at which i often want to tell him to stop!wait!it’s perfect! sometimes he does – stop. other times he keeps going, for the vision in his mind’s eye is beyond what is on the easel and there is more to develop.
it’s a unique place in the front row. maybe more comparable to back-stage or the green room or the recording studio before “record”…a place of preparation, a place of reflection, a place of swirling beauty, a place of possibility, a place where the-painting-someone-dreams-of-hanging-on-their-wall is being born.
standing in a stand of aspens. simply magical. the way the leaves quake in the wind, the glowing bark that takes on the angle of the sun, the graceful spiring height. and the quiet. on a trail in the woods, the backdrop of the rockies peeking between the trees, i breathe easier, deeper. i feel in tune with that place; its voice speaks to me. i whisper back my gratitude.
i can feel the sun over my shoulder, low to the horizon, warming the back of my head. in front of me the field of cut-grain takes on the color of the sunset and the sky darkens in answer to the summoning of nightfall. the color is intense; the darkness is perforated by the suggestion of clouds, maybe stars…maybe it’s too early for that, i wonder. i want to walk up the hill to see what color might lay there, what color might be beyond that which i can see right now. but i stay still. and listen to the crickets in the grass, the cicadas in the small stand of trees behind me, the sigh of day’s end.
the little mermaid music swirls in my head, “under the sea, under the sea…” i can’t help it. the gorgeous brushstrokes of blues and greens and deep reds inspire thoughts of beautiful oceans full of color and hues that are untouchable by dictionaries far and wide. this morsel, from the painting EARTH INTERRUPTED VII, i titled AQUA AGUA MIT ROUGE, a name derived from several languages (english, spanish, german, french), a nod to the inability of words to describe it.
this morsel is somewhere underneath this beautiful painting – within the depths of EARTH INTERRUPTED VII – not visible, but part of the underpainting, a layer of, well, the earth. how much more perfect could that be?
we often walk at the end of the work day. we go inland to a lake trail and walk a couple times around the lake, somewhere around 6 miles or so in total. we mostly hike around the lake clockwise, which means that we are watching the sun come down across the lake at the beginning of our walk, a time when we are still processing the day and haven’t yet gotten immersed in the trail. sometimes we are so engrossed in talking or thinking-silence that we have to remind the other to appreciate…”look at that sunset,” one of us will say.
sometimes we will get up early and, with our coffee mugs, go sit on the rocks and watch the sun come up over lake michigan. every time we are witnesses to the beginning of a new day this way i think we should do that more often.
sunrise. sunset. it makes me think of the song from the musical fiddler on the roof. it’s truly a beautiful song, simple, sung with great heart. the passing of time. so fast. wendy wrote to say it was time to bring logan back to college – for his second year. i could so so feel how that felt, remembering times i had brought My Girl or My Boy back to college.
“Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don’t remember growing older When, did, they? When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall? Wasn’t it yesterday when they, were, small?
Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset Swiftly flow the days Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers Blossoming even as we gaze Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset Swiftly fly the years One season following another Laden with happiness and tears.”
(Sunrise, Sunset – by S. Harnick, J. Bock)
life somehow fits in between these sunrises and sunsets. and somehow, some days, we just seem to miss it. too many things to do, to worry about, to perseverate over, to check off lists. every time i vow to honor the sunrise and exhale with the sunset, somewhere in between i realize i forgot. i’ll try again tomorrow.
SUNRISE. SUNSET. a morsel from the painting A DAY AT THE BEACH
reverse threading 