and nature bent way down, furrowing her brow at her canvas. and then, after careful consideration, she took her paint pens to the swallowtail caterpillar and drew stripes – the lightest green, almost opalescent. thinking that wasn’t enough, she took out her most vibrant sunshine-yellow pen and polka-dotted in-between the stripes. she sat back and looked at her work, smiling. “yes,” she thought, “yes, this is right for the swallowtail.” she moved on to the other caterpillars waiting to get their colors.
it never ceases to amaze me what is quietly starring just in our backyard alone. when i opened the little gate to our potting stand, they took me by surprise. they stand out.
since i am a big fan of painting polka dots on rocks, i was instantly fond of the two caterpillars eating their way through the wild vegetation growing between the big flat rock-slabs on the ground. they made me think of children’s books and writing stories of two caterpillars out adventuring for the day, their obvious names “stripe” and “dot”.
i was careful not to disturb them as i tended the parsley and basil, snipping back the spindly ends. they stayed right there, not at all thrown off by my presence. i closed the gate and checked on them later. they had made little headway, maybe an inch or so. but caterpillars, so i surmise, are not in a hurry.
we think we are so brilliant, we humans. we study and research pantone matching systems and cmyk process charts. we bring home paint and fabric swatches. we mix paints on palettes thick with color.
and nature giggles – glancing at her caterpillars and butterflies, flowers and trees, canyons and mountains, sky and prairies, oceans and fishes, birds and rainbows and sunrises – knowing she will always have the upper hand. it comes naturally to her.
from a distance they are paintbrushes, sporadically appearing in the meadow, catching plumes of downy fluff that spread like thick contrails, and, catching the wind, fly off. i can imagine plucking one of these paintbrushes, dipping it in paint, touching it to canvas, light strokes of color.
i have some paintbrushes downstairs. they are wood and some kind of fiber, inexpensive brushes i purchased when i was painting the canvas for the hall and the canvases for the living room. i actually didn’t use them. instead, i used a couple of housepaint brushes and, in alignment with that, house paint. latex. in cans. there was nothing about my painting that would be called “fine” – it was big strokes, big spattering, big expression. big brushes to big canvas. i saved the wooden brushes and, even now, haven’t yet used them, though recently bought a few small 8×8 inch canvas boards. i’m not sure why yet.
on the other hand, david cherishes his paintbrushes and knows exactly why to use each of them. his careful hand applying just the right amount of paint, brush to canvas, shaping the narrative of the painting. he recently bought a big roll of canvas. cutting off a five foot square, he painted a replica of a previous painting he had done, a piece that someone wanted but that he had painted for me. it was an amazing process to witness, as he brought the same energy, the same freedom of movement, the same emotion to this emerging painting. and suddenly, a month of hours-each-day later, it was complete. unfettered II had a destination and we shipped it off, like a short-term child he carefully tended and then let go.
one of our youtube addictions is to a channel of a man named martijn doolaard, a dutchman who is restoring two stone buildings in the italian alps. slowly, deliberately, patiently – with no expectation, no judgement, no apparent worry – martijn painstakingly goes about this restoration, working from sun-up to sundown, cooking himself dinners that look as beautiful as his vista and relaxing by editing hours of video or by painting. his brushes and his oils are precise. with brush to canvas, he paints landscapes of his surroundings, the environment of peace he has created, his studio the mountainside and sky.
i wonder who will pluck these thistlebrushes. i wonder what medium they will use to paint, upon what canvas they will work. what strokes will be applied to the prickly leaves, the blossoming flowers, the unrealized buds, the underbrush dying from eradication? what colors will be mixed to mimic the rising sun, the blur of a hawk on the wing, the flat bill of the white crane, the camouflage shell of the turtle?
nature has already brought its best in this meadow, in this forest, its brushes to canvas. it has brought its best at the line of surf of the ocean, upon the summit of high mountains, in the deepest of canyonlands, in the setting sun on red rock. it has brought its best in the faces of those we love, those who love us. it has brought its best in the perfection of creatures – domestic and wild.
it lay in the snow, the last of the sun’s rays dancing across it. it was merely a single pinecone. but the sun drew me to it and the way the light played on it called attention to the texture. up close and personal, it is a painting.
reading reveals that pinecones are the safe place for the seeds of the tree, that pinecones can remain on a tree for even ten years, that pine cones open and close depending upon moisture. more complex than you might think.
though ever-important for the proliferation of pine trees, pinecones are one of those things we pass by, often not noticing. what else are we missing – passing by the ordinary, not stopping to really look.
because we know our favorite trail well, we see the tiny shifts, the changes, the transformation. we watch the light play on the cattails and marsh grasses and catch the shadows as they fall. if one note in the woods is different, one tint of color, we draw up, stop. there are days we are stopping often, capturing the transitions, watchful.
we don’t buy a lot of new things. we are sorely behind the fashion curve – i suspect our target jeans are a few years behind-the-times. instead, we accumulate these moments of noticing. our breath is not connected to the facets of diamonds, but rather to the way underbrush berries stand out against the snow. we don’t reach for the keys of a porsche; we reach for our backpack to take on the trail. we do not watch a larger-than-life screen tv; our big-screen of choice is outside.
we look for the paintings in the snow, in the sky, in the stand of trees. we listen for the song of the breeze, of wildlife sharing space with us. the wind stings our cheeks and makes the tips of our fingers burn. we are grateful for the quiet and this path through the forest, across the marsh, along the river.
we immerse in the 3D canvas nature is providing us. no virtual reality needed.
reverse threading 