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Category: Santa Fe

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It’s not the subject that makes the picture

It’s what you bring to it. That’s true in life as much as in painting.

A wee little demo I did of water tumbling over rocks. I’m using the same watercolor kit as my students will use next week aboard American Eagle.

This week I’m on a ranch high above Pecos, NM. The owners and the cloud of dogs who usually trail after them are elsewhere. It’s just me, three horses and a donkey. “Aren’t you worried about being alone out there?” one of my workshop students asked me. No.

I had horses when I was young but it’s been a long time since I’ve handled them closely. They set a rhythm to my day. I block out time in the morning and evening to attend to them. Among the pinon and dust of a New Mexico September, I have long stretches of absolute silence. That’s a rarity in the modern world.

Donna finds serenity in the Pecos River.

We don’t form as tight a bond with horses as we do with our dogs, but the potential is there. In 1910 there were about 20 million domestic horses in North America, or around one for every six people. They lived and worked side-by-side with their humans with an intimacy we can’t imagine today.

The owner of Scout, Lucy, Duke and Jimmy (the donkey) is a tiny woman, but she bosses them with impunity. She’s their alpha human. I’m a stranger. Inevitably, like children, they had to test me.

The monkey business started on Tuesday evening, when I came out of the tackroom with an armful of hay to be mugged by the two geldings and a donkey. I’m half a foot taller and sixty pounds heavier than Jane, and I could not push those knuckleheads out of my way. They leaned on me, inevitably getting me to drop their supper. After I’d retrieved and separated it, they started fussing at each other.

Yves painting in the historic barrio of Santa Fe.

Duke bit Jimmy, and Jimmy kicked out at anyone who was nearby. I yelled. Jimmy laid back his ears, stuck out his lip, and brayed. He looked so much like an angry toddler that I started laughing. “I don’t know which one of you started it,” I yelled, “but you’re all grounded!” At that moment they reminded me powerfully of my own children back in the day.

The horses outweigh me, but I have an advantage: my opposable thumbs. On Wednesday, I scarpered out the back and around to the other side of their corral, where I distributed their hay before they realized where I was. Peace has reigned ever since in the Horse Kingdom.

I’ll horse-sit these darlings any time!

I love this place, but that doesn’t lessen my appreciation for my own home in Maine, or my workshop aboard American Eagle, which starts Sunday. Would I be this happy in a flat in a rust-belt city? It’s been almost forty years since I’ve lived that life, but I hope so.

I do an exercise with my workshop students where I ask them to paint a scene chosen by committee. It’s not the subject that makes the painting, it’s what they bring to it. That’s true of life as well. Obviously, crisis and grief are exceptions; we all go through seasons of loss, and we’re not expected to be happy in them. But in the general run of events, we are designed for happiness. If it eludes us, it behooves us to figure out why—and to fix it.

No blog next week, because there’s no internet on Penobscot Bay. Please, techies, never fix that!

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Two fine painters taken by cancer too soon

Both will be remembered as far more than the sum of their work. We should all aspire to that.
Jorge, by James Asher, courtesy of the artist’s website.
When I met painter Jim Asher, he and his wife, Joe Anna Arnett, had just learned that he had untreatable esophageal cancer. One would never have known that from their demeanor. They had invited the painters of Santa Fe Plein Air Fiestato their home, a 1930s adobe that was featured on This Old House. Despite their personal disaster, they soldiered through.
Jim and I talked briefly about his diagnosis, as I’m a cancer survivor myself. We talked much more extensively about the North Atlantic, which they both knew well and loved.
Joe Anna Arnett and James Asher, courtesy Santa Fe New Mexican.
In the normal course of things, I would not have attended his memorial service. However, I was in New Mexico with our mutual friend, Jane Chapin. It seemed wrong to send her alone. 
The service celebrated Jim’s life’s work, which was notable and well-recognized. But the central theme was love. Jim loved his family, friends, fishing, poetry—and, of course, painting. Others mourned the loss of that love; I walked away with a keen regret that I hadn’t met him decades ago.
That same day, another fine painter, Walter Lynn Mosley, died on the other side of the country. Walter had been suffering visibly from throat cancer since long before he told the world, growing thinner with each passing month. I knew him from the Art Students League but mostly kept up with him through my friends in New York Plein Air Painters, and, of course, on Facebook.
Walter Lynn Mosley, courtesy Cloud Gallery.
Walter was a Brooklynite by choice but a Southerner by birth, and it showed in his manner. He was a kind, gentle, man, humble in his very fine painting skills. His graveside service will be private, and his family asks that donations be made in lieu of flowers “to local artists and faith communities in his honor.”
In neither case did my thoughts leap to their work when I heard of their deaths. I thought of the men themselves and of the people they left behind.
Once, a long time ago, I was moaning about some material setback, now long forgotten. “In the end,” my wise friend Toby told me, “what does it matter? We all end up in a recliner in a nursing home somewhere.” Or a hospital bed, or if we’re exceedingly lucky, we can have a quiet death at home.
That is inescapable. None of us take anything with us—not our work, not the encomiums we have earned here on earth, not even a passport stamped with our good works on behalf of others.
Williamsburg Bridge Sunrise, Walter Lynn Mosley, courtesy artist’s own website.
“The grave’s a fine and private place/But none, I think, do there embrace,” wrote Andrew Marvell in the 17th century. We may have invented a whole new world since then, but that truth remains inescapable. We still must seize the day.
And if we’re remembered as nothing more than painters, we hardly deserve remembering at all.
Jim was, at the end of his life, able to peek through heaven’s doors twice, and he came back to tell his family about it. “The next time, I think I’ll stay,” he told them—and he did.
A week before he died, Walter posted a video on Facebook where he claimed healing through Jesus Christ. You may scoff, but he has that final healing now. Godspeed to both of them, until we meet again.
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How I plan to spend my summer (if it ever gets here)

Teenagers and artists choose interesting paths.

Teressa studying painting in Rochester, many moons ago.
Yesterday, I got two registrations in the mail for my Rochester workshop. Kamillah started painting with me when she was a junior in high school, working at a local diner so she could afford art lessons. Now she’s a graduate architect, studying for her boards. Her sister Teressa is in nursing school. It’s a joy to see these kids embrace adulthood with such grace.
Kamillah once painted with me on a late spring weekend in the Adirondacks. We were at an inn that hadn’t opened yet for the season. It was blowing and snowing, as the higher elevations tend to do this time of year. Kamillah is tiny, and I was concerned she’d be blown off the mountain and right into half-thawed Piseco Lake. Summer eventually showed up that year, as it will this year—at some point.
I get to teach in some mighty gorgeous places!
After I got their registrations, I opened my Little Book of Workshops. As of today, I have: 

(I don’t know about Exploring Rye through Paint (May 11-12, Rye, NY); contact the Rye Arts Center for information about that.)
That puts me about exactly where I am every year at this time. Suddenly, when it warms up enough for people to think about painting, those slots fill up.

Will I have a chance to paint in the surf this season? Who knows? Photo by Ed Buonvecchio.

Meanwhile, I—like every other plein air painter—anxiously await jurying results. Most are not in yet, but what I have promises an interesting summer ahead. On the 27th, I fly to Santa Fe, NM for Santa Fe Plein Air Fiesta.
William Rogersfrom Nova Scotia is in that event too. That means I’ll see him twice this summer, since he’s the Honorary Chairman of Parrsboro International Plein Air Festival in early June. The roster at that event is like old home week, including many artists I’ve painted with for ages. That includes, of course, Poppy Balser.
Nova Scotia is one of the world’s great beauty spots. It’s a privilege to paint there.
I’ll be at Ocean Park’s Art in the Park in July. That’s really six old friends doing an ensemble act together, as we’ve done for several years. At Cape Elizabeth I’ll run into Janet Sutherland for the second time this summer. She’s a crackerjack painter and a regular at Castine, but we seldom get time to say more than a few words to each other. If only I could slow the tape down!
In August I’ll be back in New York for the Adirondack Plein Air Festival. And other than that, the jury’s still—literally—out.
Barnyard lilacs, by Carol L. Douglas
Except for one other thing, which is perhaps the biggest thing of all: in September I’ll be an artist-in-residence at the Joseph A. Fiore Art Center. I was raised on a farm, and I’ve got a deep affection for agriculture. This will be the first time in several years where I’ve isolated myself to paint reflectively, rather than tearing around in a car painting fast. I’m terrifically chuffed.