Yesterday morning my painting teacher became an impressionist. Just like that. At age eighty-eight. After decades of capturing nature realistically on canvas, she made the switch and unceremoniously announced it to the class. In recent years, pride prolonged her efforts to paint in ways she enjoyed most, but gradually her failing eyesight pushed her to make choices. Her decision was to resurrect herself, a phoenix rising. And so she painted her first work in a new life and artistic phase, one where she can still control the composition but use colors and light and details the way her eyes now see them.
Any of us who ever thought of morphing into something new and different can’t help but applaud what she is attempting to do. At an advanced age, she is confident that going down this fresh path is the right move. If her work at the easel today is any indication, I can’t wait to see more results.
Her signature mark has always been a pair of cardinals placed somewhere in the painting. Now she may as well add a couple of butterflies, too.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
The Foggy Faraway
Tomorrow will be the third day in a row starting with a dense foggy morning. I’m not describing a metaphorical fog, because Lord knows we have plenty of those around here, but a genuine meteorological fog so thick it probably shows on the radar map. Sunday the sun came out for the drive home, but today the late afternoon had fog equal to the early morning.
Crossing the bridge over the Sabinal River, I looked to the left and saw a tall owl sitting near the top of a mostly dead tree. Nothing else on that side of the road was visible with any clarity, but that bird perched frozen on its branch and foggy background, merely one dimensional. Ahead of me was pea soup, as the old-timers used to say, but now I’m saying it, so we know what that means.
Tomorrow when I drive to painting class, I expect to travel through a gray glaze much like the one I apply to my paintings when I want a hill to recede into the faraway. How easy would it be to brush myself into the faraway with tinted Liquin-loaded bristles, smooth the sharp edges, reduce the contrast, flatten the panorama, almost disappear.
Crossing the bridge over the Sabinal River, I looked to the left and saw a tall owl sitting near the top of a mostly dead tree. Nothing else on that side of the road was visible with any clarity, but that bird perched frozen on its branch and foggy background, merely one dimensional. Ahead of me was pea soup, as the old-timers used to say, but now I’m saying it, so we know what that means.
Tomorrow when I drive to painting class, I expect to travel through a gray glaze much like the one I apply to my paintings when I want a hill to recede into the faraway. How easy would it be to brush myself into the faraway with tinted Liquin-loaded bristles, smooth the sharp edges, reduce the contrast, flatten the panorama, almost disappear.
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