Truth Finds Us As We Paint

Heading home after a day of painting, I have the hope of seeing the moon rising over St. Mick's church. It's one of those little visual treats. I always think of my friend, Ronnie, who texts me moon alerts on how beautiful it is each full-moon evening. This morning the moon was full and bright at 6 AM in the Western sky but it was nine degrees out and a muffin was waiting for me in the studio. My day is starting great, and I'm sure Ronnie is still warm in bed. Should I text her a morning moon alert? Parking the car, I check which pocket my studio key is in. I don't want to be fumbling around freezing my hand searching the six pockets for the keys. Adrienne, my friend in Arkansas, has probably been in her bakery for a couple hours already. My so-called smart phone keeps me posted on where my friends may be freezing.

Warming up with my cocoa and muffin, I think about last night's news and the reporting on how likely it is that Russia would be invading Ukraine. I check Facebook right away to see how my artist friend in Ukraine is doing. Her paintings are beautiful and they express her feelings for her homeland. People waiting in the snow for a city bus, is one subject she has done. Another is of a couple kissing. Her young son, sitting with a newborn calf, is beautifully painted. Through her art I feel life in her Ukraine. My artist friends in Russia, I am wondering, are they out painting a scene of cows grazing behind a country church? It's winter there too, so they are braving the cold to capture a winter farm scene. A hardy group who meets all challenges.

Over the years artists around the world have shown me quiet corners of the globe. An old woman sits in her kitchen in a country town in Argentina, peeling potatoes in one artist's painting, while an old woman stands holding a hoe in her American garden in another painting. Good times radiating, I am invited into an Australian country watering hole. Headlights and red taillights show people dodging cars in a Johannesburg's rain storm, while cowboy is unsaddling his horse at the end of a long day in Wyoming. A girl, holding her breath as water and air bubbles swirl about, in her blue underwater Florida playground. A barber applies his skills on a street in Delhi, India and men race a sailboat off Long Island. A woman with a battered face, a boy with a bloody nose. Artists show us the world around us - the good, the bad, and the ugly. I would like to say we keep the bad and ugly out of our studio, but truth finds us as we paint .

Youth Gives Us Hope & Age Gives Us Peace

Standing in front of Norman Rockwell's painting "Freedom From Want," I was taken back to my days of sitting at the kids table and an older cousin picking pellets out of my piece of pheasant. Some people see in Rockwell's painting a family having a Thanksgiving dinner. Some see how talented Mr. Rockwell was. Everyone brings something to a work of art. For me it was the ping of small pellets hitting a white china plate.

Auntie Maria's house is packed with family, Uncles in stuffed chairs, some sleeping and others reminiscing about an old Ford car. Aunts in a tiny kitchen heating up casseroles and carving up rabbits and pheasants. Others are on the mud porch, attending electric roasters. Cousins are rough housing on the living room floor, a few begin to cry followed by a call from the kitchen for someone to see what has happened. Grandma rushing in to kiss a cheek and assure the wounded one that they will be just fine. Out the window of this tiny farmhouse Uncle Henry and Uncle Paul are burning the feathers and fur in an old rusty barrel. Uncle John returns with a case of orange crush strapped to the back of his Indian Motorcycle. He tosses a candy wrapper into the fire and asks if the hunt was a success or if it will be an all-casserole dinner. Uncle Adolf is reminding those in the house of last year's pumpkin pie with the birdshot in it… You always check for birdshot, an apple pie last summer had one lone pellet in it, and we never heard the last of that one.

In the summer, these family gatherings were held out under the giant Cottonwoods. Usually there were motorcycle rides through the fields, and once, pony rides. The clanging of horseshoes hitting metal stakes sounded in my ears as I looked at another artist’s painting.

Art is a memory, a sound, a smell and sometimes a painful remembrance. Colors and care are how we form our poems and tell stories. We compliment people by asking them to pose. We see wisdom in crows feet creeping from eyes and worry splitting once smooth brows. Untold stories remain silent, hidden in leathered and worn faces. Sometimes young beauty is our subject, but as we grow as artists our eyes and minds see what real beauty is. With brushes we pry and pull in search of ourselves. Youth gives us hope and age gives us peace.