Meditation on the Colors of the Futures

"The Future," 5 x 5 acrylic on canvas

As another year nears past tenses, we'll be spending more time thinking about futures.

While we dwell much on the past, or pondering the future, most of the wisdom writing of humans urges us to live in the present.

For that, we have the examples of the rest of living beings, who exist only in the present, we think. And then there's that mysterious saying in the Old Testament from Yahweh, "I am that I am." In Eternity, another name I have for God, or the Spirit, there is no past nor future, only present.

And if you believe we're created in the spiritual images of the Spirit (there are no other), and if you believe the Spirit is omni-present, that means we are part of that eternity.

Yet, we forget and rue the past and worry about the future. Those are lessons I've learned many hard ways.

So today's little painting almost mocks the idea of futures, with a gate opening on multiple paths and colors, and a grainy (textured) universe. 

Soon available @Inyoureyestudio&gallery at @PaseoArtsDistrict.

Tree wisdom and art

"Trees," 8 x 10 watercolor, 8 x 10 300 lb. d'Arches cold press paper

"Emerson, has beautifully named trees, 'rooted men.' In many ways they excel man. A tree seldom, or never encroaches upon the liberty of another tree, if it can be avoided. Usually 'both parties' settle equitably and without 'process.' A tree recognizes that its liberty ends where the next tree's liberty begins. a tree never wastes its growth in unnecessary cavortings of display, nor in frivolous waste of energy. If a tree is seen to twist and turn, it does so by reason of choice, tempered by necessity. These turns and twists are intimately connected or in rapport with, the turnings and twistings of some equally charitable neighbor. This it is that engenders that certain rhythm of flow of related lines in a wood." 

Those words, written 97 years ago in a chapter of painting trees Elementary Principles of Landscape Painting by John F. Carlson, are eerily of today's science, learning that trees talk to each other and support each other--see The Hidden Life of Trees, for instance.

He keeps going: "Every tree is a personality, and possesses within its specie a tremendous latitude of expression...A tree is a highlight of organized entity, which, when functioning in its realm, becomes beautiful."

"It is curious how one's feelings about trees change, in proportion to one's appreciation of their importance and dignity as living beings. We discover trees to be of royal blood, rather and apologetic parasites!" (Even Tolkien knew this, as in The Lord of the Rings.

Then he writes about trees in art:

"A tree reaches for light with its every leaf, ....."

"Trees are the most personal objects in a landscape. We feel distinctly related to them."

"To the artist, the woods is an asylum of peace; ...an eloquent silence made up of a myriad of pleasant sounds seems to hang on the air."

I read these words this weekend, after a walk in Hafer park, thinking  that's why I don't listen to music or anything else when walking in the woods.

 

Magic Metro Art

"Magic Metro," 4 x 4 acrylic

 I've donated paintings to two art organizations for fund raising this year, one has been purchased and here's your chance to buy "Metro Magic, at a bargain price.

Now you have an opportunity to buy an original, and help the Paseo Arts Association, with the annual 4 x 4 auction, also entitled "Magic Metro," also acrylic on canvas, bids starting at $25, or buy-it-now for $75 on line. Dec. 1 and 2.

The online only portion of the auction for two days the week before the in-person event. It will open Tuesday, December 1 and close Wednesday, December 2. Bidding will begin at $25 as usual, and if pieces are purchased at the Buy It Now $75 price, they will not be available for bidding at the in person event. If, for example, a piece gets up to $45 during the online auction, then the starting bid will be $45 at the in person event.

The in-person action will be First Friday, Dec. 4, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Paseo's new art and creativity center. 

The first fundraiser at Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition's 12 x 12 was held earlier this fall and successful. My 12 x 12 acrylic "Metro Magic", at left, sold  to an OKC resident.

It's been a tough year for the arts, everywhere, and these fund raisers are more crucial than ever. Support the arts. 

Story of a watercolor challenge

"Adobe Dawn," 10" x 30" watercolor, 300 lb. d'Arches cold press paper, ready to frame

Large watercolor paintings intimidate me. 
They challenge me because in landscapes, you have to plan ahead, with sketches and studies, and then paint quickly on still wet paper when attempting skies and other washes. That requires more skill and confidence than I have because watercolor can be unforgiving and mistakes show up quickly and are more apparent the larger your format.
This challenge began when friend Theresa Hurt at Pirates Alley Frame Shop in The Village gave me a frame and mat. I'd been wanting to attempt a long horizontal piece, and the gift was the challenge. 
But, as in chess or anything else, I guess, without challenges, life would be dull and there'd be no improvement.

5 x 7 studies

First were sketches, then small studies as I played with color. Next was an uptight failure. Then the stages you see below, till I finished today.
By the time I'm through, I'm already thinking I should have done such and such  or not done something else. And the longer I look at a new painting, I'm usually tempted to go back into it and make a few adjustments, which can lead to disaster.
Today's painting is no exception. First mistake was probably stretching it out over several days, which meant I was overthinking  it. But that's too late for this one, but there will be another.
This challenge began when Theresa Hurt at Pirates Alley gave me a frame and mat. I'd been wanting to attempt a long horizontal piece, and the gift was the challenge. I wanted to try to express the wide open vistas of the Southwest, of New Mexico, and the subject evolved into the beauty of adobe at dawn.
Here are the previous stages.

The power of painting

I believe in "places of power," places where some other writers have said the universe is "thin" between our physical word and eternity. I've written about them before.
If you're a believer, you can sense them when you get close, or are magnetically drawn to them. For me, some are located in New Mexico...the ruins of the mission at Pecos,  at Chaco Canyon, near the Truchas Peaks, and in the shadow of the Manzano Mountains. I have found one, actually more human made,  nearby these  last few years in Oklahoma--but that is secret. 
The Power of Pecos
I know there are other such places in the world for other peoples...Taos Mountain, Jerusalem, Mecca, Himalayan shrines come to mind. Many would use the word "sacred" to describe them, and I don't disagree. It seems to me if a place brings our earthly existence in contact with the spiritual, eternal existence, it is sacred, powerful.
It's interesting to me that I've tried to paint some of my sense of power in each of those.
Then a couple of years ago,   after reading books by several authors whose thoughts seemed to coincidentally overlap or echo, I found insight into painting  and power from a  conversation with another part of me.
I found it again this morning, searching for solitude and direction, which prompted these thoughts. Here it is.

"Good morning Terry Mike"

"Morning, Terry

"Beautiful day, good coffee,  smell of bacon frying. morning light on the Manzanos is beautiful--love the colors."

"Yes it is"

"This is one of those places of power, both to my Dad and now that I think about it, me, wanting to paint it too."

"Yes it is"

"I need to go to a place of power"

"You can create your own places of power, Terry"

"Wow. I need to finish that painting. I've tried several times and failed, started over. why am I so intimidated?"

"Maybe you don't paint enough."

"Yes, we've talked about that before--so I need to be painting more, i know"

"Did you notice all these worries disappeared when you were painting yesterday?"

"Yep. I keep thinking about someone  telling me she'd never seen me so happy as when I'm painting."

"Don't you know that when you are painting, you're in a place of power"

"Wow again"

…

"It's time to leave, but I don't want to,  but  time to go back to that other world--almost said 'real' world but didn't. Did you notice Terry Mike?"

"Yes, because this is also a real world--it's only a tangent to it"

Pianos and Paintings, a unique occurrence

"Mountain Cabin" and "Mountain Church"

"Prairie Throne"

Something unique has occurred in my creative life with watercolor painting this week, and it may be unique in Oklahoma City in music too.
Thanks to friends, contacts, new acquaintances and unusual circumstances, paintings and pianos are "paired" here in Edmond.
Sixteen of my watercolors are on display at Bruce Piano Gallery at 3722 N. Lincoln Blvd., just north of Memorial Road, and the store is open from 10 to 6 M-F, and 1-5 on Saturdays. 
Yes, they're all for sale as are all the beautiful pianos. And you could buy them together, of course.
The idea is the brainchild of Jordan Bruce, the store owner, who told a customer, my friend Ted Streuli, he would like art on the walls of his gallery. Ted mentioned it to me, and it has happened.
I'm  really stunned for a couple of reasons. First, that my art is good enough to be liked and shown in this setting of beautiful musical instruments, works of art themselves. And even more humbling is my obvious inferiority and ignorance about music, one of my life-long regrets. At least I've atoned for that somewhat because all my children have had musical training and ability.
So I know it's ironic that my art is on display here. 
I hope you'll drop in and see them. The pianos make it look better, classier, than it ever has. And Jordan is kind enough to say the paintings help the pianos. And just entering that gallery and walking among the beautiful pianos  makes me want to take piano lessons and buy a piano.

"Oklahoma Barn" and "Oklahoma November"

"Thirsty Country," "Taos Pueblo" and "Oklahoma Skyscrapers"

"Oklahoma Skies" and "Rainy Day"

"Mountain Home" and "Homestead Morning"

"Winter Solstice" and "Waiting for Rain"

"Gate to High Lonesome"

"Santa Fe Window"

Why I paint

Art...I've been around it all my life, and it seems I've only recently began painting. Glancing back through old black and white photos makes me realize that's not so. 
I remember getting in trouble in grade school in New Mexico for drawing in class rather than paying attention. But it's only natural, growing up in the home of my Dad Terrence Miller Clark, who was an uncanny portrait artist from Oklahoma who could draw anyone and anything, and a landscape painter. His work hung all over our house when we grew up, and my brother and I still have much of it hanging on our walls or in storage.
I still have his old metal paintbox, with some aged oil paints, out in the garage and Susan has been urging me to try oils rather than just watercolors. I suppose that is in the near future. I do so love the smell of oil paint.
But I know I chose watercolors a few years ago because the opportunity arose to take lessons, I needed therapy, and I wasn't in "competition" with my Dad's work.
Still, I'm sorry it took me so long to "come back" to art...getting away from the type-A career-oriented workaholic I was. 
I found this 3" by 4" photo, dated 1947, of me with watercolors at age three and four in Fort Worth, Texas, , painting. And then here's Susan's 4.5" by 6.5" sketch of that. They both hang on the wall in front of me when I paint. 
I guess that's why I paint.

"Unfinished" journals--blank pages

Last night's journal thoughts

Lots of blank pages left in a journal,
After noble beginnings of dates, trips, titles, first inspirations
But after  a few pages
A few pages into the new year
Blank pages--pages that say "unfinished."
But maybe not.
Maybe they are finished
All that needed to be written was--
the purpose of the journal changed
the trip ended
life intruded
So that the journal is finished, served its purpose
No matter how many blank pages.
Some with fancy covers, others cheap spiral binders, carrying stories, photos, receipts, flowers, maps, insights.

Dad's unfinished oil cowboys

gambling 24 by 30

An "unfinished" painting of my dad's hangs on the wall, drawing complete, base paint and tones in place After he's been dead 40 years, it is still him.
Used journals accumulate, on shelves, or boxes or closets.
there for picking up and browsing when the mood arouses
Or when you're looking for some blank pages 
to write something like these words on
as a pondered life's passing last night.
But you don't spoil the older journals, 
They belong to an earlier present tense, to different people.
any more than you'd try to finish someone else's painting

Journals accumulate, including the bulging Paris journal

You search until you find
one that somehow is unwritten in.
Unlike a diary there's no daily pressure, 
Just the urge, the need, to write about who and where you are.
Journals are present tense
Read them years later and
the memories are alive
even if the handwriting is harder to read or fades with years.
When you quit writing, you have recorded your present
It becomes a mirror of who you are at that time
Besides, you will start and "finish" other journals
--blank pages are just the future.

(We have almost 30 previous journals in the house, some bulging like my Paris journal from 10 years ago, Some barely written in. Most about trips, but also about new years, and resolutions, and pain and milestones in life. I started searching for a blank one last night, and found this one falling apart, wherein the above poem appeared

The most important thing in the world...to be loved

Revelation...I am very slow to learn, though I have had multiple examples throughout my life... .

It hit me tonight when I heard how my granddaughter Katherine Clark took our painting to her class to show, and "beamed," said her mother Kerin.

The most important thing in the world is ...

To be loved

That means giving love. That means the worst sin is not loving, or destroying love...I plead guilty

And the only forgiveness, and living, is loving...and I am guilty.

No wonder, "God is love." 

Love is a verb.  That's means, I have known God.
Why did it take me so long to learn, what Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians:

If I speak in the languages of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can understand all secrets and every form of knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains but have no love, I am nothing. Even if I give away everything that I have and sacrifice myself,  but have no love, I gain nothing. Love is always patient; love is always kind; love is never envious or arrogant with pride. Nor is she conceited, and she is never rude; she never thinks just of herself or ever gets annoyed. She never is resentful; is never glad with sin; she’s always glad to side with truth, and pleased that truth will win.b She bears up under everything; believes the best in all; there is no limit to her hope, and never will she fall. Love never fails. Right now, three things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Unfinished pages in a drought

Hoping for rain, 8 by 10 watercolor

Drought. It sneaks up on you, and then dries up more than just the physical landscape--your mind, your soul, your creativity.
Just because you start a book, doesn't mean you have to finish it. That excuse helped me a little early this month when I was feeling sorry for myself for not reading enough during the last half of last year. I pride myself on trying to have read at least a book a month, but it seemed my mental drought of the last six months of the year matched the drought Oklahoma and the country is in. My reading, blogging, writing and painting dried up.
Scrounging through the house this week for books soothed my parched air somewhat as I counted nine unfinished books.
I got bogged down in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!  I shouldn't feel too bad--I mean page long sentences just war me out.
Then there were Stephen Hawkin'gs Illustrated Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. I tried, really tried, but I just can't keep up with that level of thinking. Some of it made sense, and I could read a few pages at a time. But then he'd write something that I just couldn't understand.
There were a couple of sorta New Age books, Counter Clockwise and On Becoming an Artist by Ellen Langer. Some good ideas, but somewhat dry and a little too out-there for this skeptical journalist. One paperback book  I picked up was L.L. Barkat's Rumors of Water, thoughts on creativity and writing. I scanned a few pages, underlined a few passages, and thought "Nothing new here. I've wasted my money."

'When you're in a drought you have to keep looking for water, or you won't find it.'

I started rereading and old paperback of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, and I will probably finish it, when the mood strikes, some dark and stormy night.
At year's end, I was reading Bernard DeVoto's Across the Wild Missouri, about the American fur trade, and I will finish it. It's a old hardback 1947 First Edition that my Dad owned, and I'd just never picked it up. Lots of photographs of the art of the time, showing and telling about a short time in the rapidly disappearing frontier American West.
The lessons are--some books you just can't read, some are too deep, some are not worth reading, some are just too far-fetched to devote serious time to. And two are worth finishing.
When you're in a drought you have to keep looking for water, or you won't find it..
+++
For the record, I did read six books the last half of the year, adding to the 12 I read the first half. I'll tell you about those soon. Here's the link on two I wrote about in the middle of my drought-stricken October, refreshed only by a trip to the aquifer of New Mexico:
http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/10/an-oasis-for-spirit-in-lifes-desert.html. Here's the link to the watershed of 12 read during the first half of 2012:
http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/06/turning-pages-of-first-half-of-2012.html

Painting Saturday

Next Saturday, afternoon, Adelante Gallery, Paseo, I'll be painting watercolors. come visit, see, talk,.http://www.cynthiadanielwolf.com/featured_artists/terry_clark/terry_clark.html

Pages from beyond death

I opened a book I'd never opened before this month.

I was reducing clutter and rearranging  in my studio room, and that meant moving my art book bookcase to a different wall. First step, dump the books on the floor.

On the shelves were my collection of watercolor books including books about certain artists (Homer, Sergeant, Ranson, et. al.). But also were my Dad's aging books--largely about oil painting, and three from my favorite aunt Sissie--Mom's sister who also painted.

After a morning of getting rid of old magazines, trashing useless paper stuff, and rearranging tables and easels, it was time to sort  the books.

Since I needed more room, I found a few that were to be relegated to the garage. Those were easy. Then on the bottom shelf went my Dad's art notebooks, some over-sized books, and some old family albums--all laid on their sides.

Then started going through Dad's books. He never stopped studying art, and was an avid reader. While they are books on oil painting and drawing that I'll probably never use, I have to keep them. They're my heritage, and they're old, and they reek art. thumb through them and you'll see Dad's meticulous underlining of sections. It's like he'd just seem them, and I'm sharing.

Sitting on the floor amid the books,  I picked up this thick volume, faded black cover with yellowed pages, "Elementary Principals of Landscape Painting," by John F. Carlson.

Now that I'm painting landscapes, I was immediately interested  even if it was about oil painting. Besides after a rush of early year reading, the turmoil of fall had brought me to standstill. I needed something to read.

So I opened the cover, and stopped.

There on the page facing me was a personal inscription from Dad, from way back in  1969.

I read it twice before I noted that he called me "an artist," which from him was a real compliment. I hadn't done much art then, and he breathed artist. And then on the inside front cover was his first inscription. He bought it in Dallas 11months before I was born.

I just sat there, turning the stiff pages, finding his underlined passages. I can't figure out when and how he gave it to me unless it came in the mail, because we were in Iowa  and he was in Texas.

But it doesn't matter--I've since read most of it, except for the author's wordy and lengthy forward, but I have added marks and underlines of my own.

Three of them:

• "We do not paint 'exact colors'; we paint them as they impress us; differently every day."
• "A too-real reality in a picture is always a disappointment to the imaginative soul."
• "The sky is the key to the landscape."

That last is from the chapter on clouds, and my favorite.

Dad's underlines in red; mine in black

This book has been in boxes or on bookshelves for years, unopened. And when my artist self needed it most, there it was. A gift from beyond the grave--pages of December and a blessing from Dad.

The treasure shelf--personal reference on top; second shelf, Dad's books erect; watercolor books on the sides; bottom, notebooks, albums, over-sized books.

Summer heat and paintings

My first two oils...so much to learn. I'm still captivated by skies and obviously storms are in my life.. Both are 8 by 10s.

And now back to watercolor...I call this Oklahoma August. It's 8 by 11 on 300 # d'Arches cold pressed paper. Can you feel the heat?