The Cardinal

2017

30" X 19"

Oil on Panel

SOLD

The complete backstory for the Kuerner Farm Series can be read on my blog post for July, 18, 2017 …

which you can search for by clicking here

In her letters, Willa Cather described a passage in her novel, The Professor’s House,
where she had been describing the aging and depressed professor in his foreboding attic writing room,
which he shared with his wife’s dour black clothed dress forms.
She wrote that she wanted the transition to the next chapter,
which takes place in the brilliant arid sun of the deserts of New Mexico,
to rattle and transport the reader, as the professor would have experienced,
after flinging open the tiny attic window to escape his despair,
and go soaring into the brilliant warm light and openness of a freshening wave of freedom.

And, so we now step, dear reader, out of the darkness of the barn…
and… turning back…
have to shade our eyes from the source of that raking light,
and what mystery is this.
The title for this painting is The Cardinal.
So let’s take a closer look.

When I first walked down the hill, from where we parked out back of that distant shed, I noticed the gate.
I could do an entire series just of that gate.
I spent a lot of time walking around it, this way and that, asking the gate,
as master woodworker, George Nakashima was fond of asking a log…what might you want to become.

While I was carrying on that conversation, the cat,
who I have come to know, from Karl, is named Lioness,
was weaving through my legs and round and round the sketchbook,
which I had leaning against that stone wall. I thought she was dear, but…the gate.

I approached and retreated from this composition a dozen times during the day
to scope out how the changes in light angles,
and shadow play, might bring out the best in that rust.
On my final pass, coming in from behind it, I caught the tiniest glimpse of something red.
Up close and personal…it turned out to be a cardinal feather.
I brought it home in that envelope and let the muses play for a while.

It was their idea to let the hawk in.
I was rooting for the Lioness.