Back in our twenties when the cost of the ferry boat and a sack of spaghetti fixings was all we needed of adventure Lynn would invite a friend or two or three but never five or more to come along on a trip to camp.
Her homemade cloth carrying bags which could double as storm shelter if needed stuffed mostly with cookies and books were shoved under our feet for the crossing and if we stopped it was only to pee and usually for me.
My memories of these excursions drift further and further away from the smell of the sea air and the feel of winter cold sand beneath our feet but my mind’s eye can still see her Lynn reaching deep into those duffels for a handful of bulbs.
Was it every trip or just a few times. Did we all help or watch from rockers. I can see now here in my dotage her mother earth form kneeling on the bluff with a rusty shovel lit from behind by Camp Sunrises’ sunset.
Being there for the planting and plantings and more was all of the road I knew and all of the journey I needed until this spring… when all these decades and spaghetti suppers later I finally got to bend down with the salty spring air at my old lady back and to say hello for the first time to Lynn’s daffodils.
Shortly after we first took stewardship of this property a mighty wind took out the top of this maple tree. A couple of well meaning cousins climbed up and cleaned it out and she went on about the business of shading us.
When Sid came for a visit he took one look and said that’s an example of “…” some German word which apparently meant a tree poorly trimmed, mutated by the looks on Sid’s face.
Well that moaning maple has spent her dotage harboring hundreds of nesting and feeding animals from the tiniest tit mouse to the grand piliated gals.
Once Maggie came on the scene it became a refuge for the squirrels whom she chased up to that jagged leader’s tippy top only to sit watching below as they lined up in Monty Python manner like the french to throw insults and taunts at her and her elderberry smelling patriarch.
In every season and in every light the stalwart maiden has stood watch.
The easel window in my old studio had a glimpse of this tree and the barn just beyond. Designed around that tree my new studio view is just as you see it here.
Every morning so far, when the sun clears the woods out back it lights up her trunk like a rock show.
So it was fitting a couple day ago after another of those mighty winds blew through the holler that Maggie called me over on our walk to show me that the lowest branch which had taken hours and hours of time for my brushes to render had fallen to the ground.
It’s hard to see in this picture because the day was drawing nigh… but My Mulcher promises to make quick work of shredding this pile as the grand old dame continues her long walk home.
“You will have only one story. You’ll write your one story many ways.”
The twisty round about way I came to that quote from a character in Elizabeth Strout’s novel, My Name is Lucy Barton, was by catching on to it in a thread of conversation which Mary Chapin Carpenter was having with poet Sarah Kay in a podcast, One Story, where they had an in depth discussion of her album, The Dirt and The Stars.
There’s a basket full of accreditation in that last paragraph and I’m sure to have left out some of the weft, alas one’s weaving gets lacier after 65. I now know. But hearing MCC say those words in her smokey weathered road warrior timbre and in relation to the decades long trail of her song writing career…well… it clanged my bell.
Upon hearing that… that kernel of wisdom that we all have only one story…the totality of my own compositions snapped sharply into a perfectly ordered row.
I’ve only been telling the same story my one story in every painting all along the way.
I’ve reflected recently in these blog posts about the paintings and even the Painter’s Notes as being breadcrumbs. Notes left in the margins which I suppose could be used to follow my way back tracing milestones to find what…the origin? I appreciate knowing the trail is well lit and documented but right this second I’m not really interested in going back there thank you. It feels much more important now to think about what I’m picking up from where and who I’ve been and choosing what is worth tossing into that basket nestled on my aging shoulders moving forward.
Seeing those breadcrumbs collectively as my “One Story” helps me make sense of the feedback that has come from patrons and viewers along the way who tell me they felt a personal connection to the paintings. Because when it comes down to it, it is really “Our One Story” isn’t it.
To draw upon another overheard podcast conversation I listened to this week, Joni Mitchell told an interviewer that (years ago and I paraphrase) I never wanted people to see me in my songs. If they see themselves then I’ve done the thing I set out to do…or words to that affect.
I certainly didn’t start out all those decades ago to tell anybody anything. Still not my thing. But like all lovers of mysteries, I enjoy connecting up a row of dots. And I have learned above all to listen to the Muses. They seem to have been throwing the voices of coveted musicians and story tellers in my path of late. It has lead to some wonderfully nostalgic evenings in the cavernous studio where sounds and whispers love to climb into the moonlight filled vault and dance.
Stopping here for a bit of reflection, I’m gathering those newly connected dots and I’m folding them all in origami fashion along crisp clean lines into a tiny paper crane. Light of weight and simple of beauty it will fit nicely into my basket. Leaving room for new paintings of old stories going forward and the promise of grace in the spaces in between.
In that context dear readers…here is the very next painting to be put into our basket…
The Contractor – 33 x 24
Sitting in the new studio loft with Paul Winters’ joyful clarinet dancing in the rafters and Maggie asleep in the sun…
I am writing these notes roughly a year after coming upon this tool belt…
It makes my heart soar to remember back to that time last year when a tired but smiling Dan and Skippy were closing the latch at the back gate after a week of celebrating the first walls going up.
I had turned to unclip Maggie’s harness and she was free to make her daily inspection.
Each afternoon she would roam the construction site and find one piece of wood which, when properly gnawed, became that nights’ symbol of a job well done.
I had followed her to step for the first time “into” my new studio only to once again step aside as the Muses broke loose and flooded the scene with their favorite light.
Dan had set up a new work table to lay out the plans which had been folded and refolded and sat upon and mulled over a thousand times already as each new stick of wood went in and each new tradesman looked for direction.
But for the first time with the walls up and a roof on it was safe to leave the loose sheets open with his trusty toolbelt to keep the summer winds at bay.
With the windows and doors yet to go in and just outside the Ruth Stout garden fallow for the season only the wren’s song was in the air to remind us of harvests to come.
Today it is in a full blossomed mess of glory with potatoes under that blanket of hay dozens of tomatoes finally ripening one or two last peas hanging on for Maggie
and this artist’s heart is wild with delight to realize that this glorious new studio was built right in the middle of her garden.
My most favorite part of this painting was Dan’s reaction when I first showed it to him “Hey, that’s really my handwriting !” Yes it is Dan, you have left your mark all over this magnificent building …and our hearts.
If you are reading this today you will know something of the road we have been on…together… for the last couple of years.
See the smile in my heart then as I now open the doors for you to the first of the paintings created in the new studio.
A Freshening Horizon – 24 x 26
Here are the actual doors… to the studio I mean…
Just days after the marvelous crew of friends moved everything “studio” from the old building to the new I was sitting in the early morning library listening…
When the Muses popped up… and raked this new angle of light across the old props in the new corner.
Just for fun… here is a pic of the actual interior and that bold wash of light and everything between here and there which I decided to edit out.
You can probably imagine that while they never actually left crashing right back in with their typically dramatic entrances was a welcome jolt to begin my new chapter here.
Wasting no time my constant muses threw open the great big windows to welcome in a freshening horizon.
The first of the New Paintings for this year’s Granary Gallery show is ready for the reveal…
Hands down the happiest part of our lives right now is Maggie. She’s an amazingly fun addition to our tiny family and she certainly keeps we two old ladies on our toes and in our cups with laughter and life.
The Painter’s Notes tell the story behind the friendship between dog and sparrow and Maggie always has a favorite stick nearby. Part Tigger, part mountain goat, her joyous and helpful spirit is my constant shadow and her youthful exuberant spirit is tamed by Herself’s calming nightly massages. So it is only fitting that the first painting up on the blog should be this bright light of a companion. She sets the tone for our brighter horizons.
My New Muse – 24 x 18
This is our Maggie.
The happiest wiggliest friendliest most curious most lovable thing in our lives.
Seven wonderful months old as I write this today… she was two months younger when we sat together early one morning in the studio kitchen watching out the door to see what would become of our day.
What was that ?
We both turned our heads towards a flicker of white.
Well Maggie was the first to see it.
What caught my attention was that she kept turning from me to the porch back to me until finally I got up to go see what it was that she could see.
Just beyond the porch perched on the wire statue of Beatrice… who used to watch over us on the log cabin porch… was this little sparrow.
And, as you can see, in her beak was the craziest white and wild feather almost twice the size of the bird.
I was almost as excited as Maggie was.
And with her persistence I snapped a pic just so I could remember the proportion of bird to feather and feather to bird.
Then I gave her a big pat on that tiny furry white head and nodded a thank you to the chorus of Muses watching from behind my shoulder as they gave their new apprentice a proud and raucous round of applause.
Here we are with half a year flown by… The solstice has come and gone The daisies are in their second bloom Herself is up swimming at her lake Maggie is happily chomping on a new bone A batch of new paintings lean in between piles of boxes and bags And the Granary Gallery Show is almost here !
It has been a wild and crazy ride since last year’s flood. As Billy Collins would say…A freaky blast…which is my new favorite way of looking at the world.
With the help of some dear friends and short controlled bursts of “freakishly” hard work we have new paintings and exciting prospects on the horizon.
Last month, in a moment of particular exhaustion after a day of navigating roadblocks and jumping through hoops that kept rolling on through I opened that dinner’s proverbial fortune cookie and read this…
Whoever put that into the tiny folded cookie could never have known how prescient the sentiment was or how much we needed to hear it at that very moment.
So I taped it up on the easel in order to keep the focus in the midst of the chaos on the CHILL.
Soon, very very soon dear patrons and followers I will be able to reveal both the new paintings and that new big project which is indeed coming our way.
This painting is by way of walking backwards in a circle.
Retracing steps along my path to here.
I have it in mind to make my way back to the beginning.
When I first met the island.
Which was by way of the gift of Lynn.
You can find most of the breadcrumbs I’ve been leaving sprinkled throughout my paintings.
It’s all there if you know where to look.
Some of the signposts I’ve left are bolder than others.
This one is positively screaming at the top of her joyful lungs…
I was here.
Reduced slowly and with a wild patience like the simmering of a fine balsamic glaze the essence of camp, for me, will always be Lynn’s spirit.
And like the foundation of the island itself the embodiment of her soul, for me, is that Chilmark wall.
She was its tender caretaker.
It was her mission and her meditation to clear it every year of the entwining vegetation.
Whose mission it was every year to further obscure those rugged faces.
Those ancient maplines of New England.
So as I work my way back I’ve begun to reach out and to play around the edges.
I’ve been dancing around this idea that in order to tell the story to do justice to the monumental opening in the fabric of my time which was her introducing me to the Vineyard I would need to paint her wall.
I want it to be big bigger than life like Lynn’s life always was.
But the muses seem to want me to come in sideways.
Gently gently.
So this year I made a start.
The wall in Jane’s Crow is a little sliver.
And this one the next only a little bit more substantial and with a sidestep which the Muses threw in my path by way of Krista Tippet and an episode of OnBeing.
She was interviewing the nature writer Robert MacFarlane primarily about his new book, Underland, A deep time journey, and the conversation wound its way to the image of “the ghost hand”.
I knew instantly when I heard his description that I had my way into this painting.
Actually, until that moment I had no idea that this WAS going to be a painting.
It literally sprang onto the easel.
When it happens like that I jump right the way over and let it flow.
I’m still circling but this is an important pebble on that road.
The oft painted line of white rocks has been fortified with one single stone left to keep us safe on that bluff.
The sea still rises beyond but viewed only through the lacy openings like those of the ancient laid Celtic Ceide.
I’m going to transcribe the original quoted conversation here and let you sit with it for a spell
A hand … reaching across time… and into the future.
OnBeing – ep. 962 Recorded in 2019 Robert MacFarlane
“There is one image at the heart as it were of Underland, and OF THE Underland, which is the hand. The open palm, the stretched fingers, and that we know first, is in a way the first mark of art. The maker would place their hand on the cave wall and then take a mouthful of ochre, red ochre often, and then spit the dust against the hand and then pull the hand away and so you leave the ghost print. And, for me, (it is) that hand, that open hand, that is reaching across time, that is pressing against rock, but leaning also into the future, but also the hand of help and collaboration…and I found it everywhere.”