Don't Fence Me In--5 days 'til Christmas

"Come unto me," 5 x 7 watercolor card

When I first painted this Christmas card, I was thinking of the West and great Plains where I grew up and have spent most of my life. 
I can't remember not living where I've always seen barbed wire and taken it for granted. It had no negative connotations, and for the most part, in the U.S. and other agricultural areas, it does not. I even helped string some of it in New Mexico once, that that's a different story.
But now as I sit down to write about this image, other thoughts come to mind. This process of writing about a painting--every painting has at least one story--prompts stream of consciousness associations.
First I thought about Jesus beckoning people:
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls..."(Matthew 11:28-3)
In this painting  the beckoning star, and Jesus, is fenced off by that wire, which has become in many places a symbol of oppression and denial of freedom and even violence.
It didn't begin that way. An American invention in agricultural Illinois in the 1870s, it provided low cost fencing as the country expanded westward and the cattle industry exploded. It has even been credited with being the wire that "tamed" the West.
But conflict soon followed, especially in Texas, where ranchers wanted open range for cattle and led to confrontation with farmers protecting crops. 
Within a few years, it became a weapon of war, most notably in the trench warfare of WWI. In the next war, Germany and Japan used it brutally in concentration and POW camps,  and America in Asian internment caps.
After the war, it became part of East Germany's famous border of which the Berlin Wall was a portion, called "Mauer und Stacheldraht" ("wall and barbed wire"). Today Amnesty International has barbed wire in its symbol.
All a long way from Illinois, but these thoughts keep coming, as American politicians try to build a wall on our southern border.
I thought of Robert Frost's fitting thoughts in the poem, "Mending Wall."
   "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
     What I was walling in or walling out, 
   And to whom I was like to give offense. 
   Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
   That wants it down."
Ironically, Americans used to claim that East Germany had the wall up to keep people in. Russians would point to our barriers on our southern border saying the same thing about us. 
I didn't mean this to be political as an article when I painted the card, but the fact is barbed wire has been political for a long while, as has Jesus, from his birth to his death and ever since.
Then I thought of the romantic Western song, "Don't Fence Me In." Yes, it's political, but it speaks to me more positively about the spirit of the West and Great Plains, and being free.
"Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
  Don't fence me in
  Let me ride through the wild open country that I love
  Don't fence me in
"Let me be by myself in the evening breeze
  Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
  Send me off forever, but I ask you please
  Don't fence me in
"Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
  Underneath the western skies
  On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder
  Till I see the mountains rise
"I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
  And gaze at the moon until I lose my senses
  I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences
  Don't fence me in"
Oh, and just a thought--if there had been barbed wire fencing everything in Jesus day, his parents probably wouldn't have been able to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem because there would not have been any "open range."
So I guess, if I painted this again, it'd just be a wire fence with an open gate.
Heavy thoughts this morning perhaps with only five days until Christmas, but it seems appropriate, if it emphasizes the spirit of Jesus is of peace and love and open arms and freedom.

Barn stories--6 days 'til Christmas

"Stories of life," 5 x 7 watercolor card

Anytime you see a barn, no matter the size, shape, version, there are stories. The more you know of rural life, the more stories you know of families, farms, lives, loves, worries, work, decay and death.
They always catch my attention, even when they're not the huge iconic upper Midwest structures central to agriculture, in many ways the most important buildings on the farms.
Long ago, I was on a paint crew that spent the summers painting farm buildings in Iowa, annual tasks because of the winter weather. You didn't see many neglected or abandoned farms then.
In Oklahoma, and elsewhere, as rural populations have declined, you see more and more derelict barns, and more and more replaced with sterile metal buildings that lack the individuality, character, and memories of their living predecessors.
I know, there's a fanciful side to those images, just as I've always had of the Christmas story of the manger. As a kid, I always thought it was a stable, essentially a small barn. I could imagine a cold starry night, the warmth of hay and livestock, ripe with the odor of life.
I've learned that a manger could have been just a rack or trough for fodder, a feeder used to hold food for animals. 
For the record, the word comes from the French "manger" ("to eat"), from Latin "mandere" ("to chew"). That perhaps implies inside a barn or stable, but they could also be next to or perhaps in farmhouses, where poorer rural people shared quarters with their livestock. That's not far-fetched. Have you been to Maine where you'll see barns attached to farmhouses, because of the brutal winters?
Luke: "So it came to pass that Jesus was born in Bethlehem; and since there was nowhere for them to stay in the town, the infant was laid in a manger...." 
It's not my favorite Christmas carol, but the carol "Away in a Manger,'' added to my youthful images of this season:
"Away in a manger

No crib for His bed
The little Lord Jesus
Lay down His sweet head

"The stars in the sky
Look down where He lay
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay"

But no matter, fanciful or not, it seems deep down accurate a story of poor people resorting to bringing forth life, in a place redolent and ripe with the odors, the sights, the sounds, the touch of lives, adding to the stories of barns forever after.

Think for a minute about the memories Mary and Joseph had ever time they saw such a barn. And the stories they told their first child, and those thereafter...one that has lasted centuries. 

Thus a fanciful Christmas card.

Desert Sentinels--7 days 'til Christmas

"Desert Sentinels," 5 x 7 watercolor card

In lands of far horizons like deserts, the Great Plains (once called the Great American Desert), where you can see "a far off," landmarks grow in importance and sacredness.
It's no accident that astrology began ages ago among the ancients in the Americas and elsewhere, such as Arabia, where people needed guides, land--"marks"-- not otherwise available to prevent being lost.
To me, another Sentinel of the deserts, of arid country, of wide open spaces, is the yucca. Many consider it just a cactus, but it is more--not just the state flower of New Mexico, but a sentinel of survival, of life, of hope...just as are stars, as was a star celebrated this season of the year.

Franciscan star, of earth and faith--8 days 'til Christmas

St. Francis Mission, Ranchos de Taos, 5 x 7 watercolor card 

St. Francis is everywhere in Northern New Mexico, settled, not always peacefully, almost 500 years ago by Spanish conquerers and Franciscan priests.
An icon of that time, when missions were built by faith from earth, looking to the heavens, is the church of St. Francis in Ranchos de Taos. It's been painted and photographed innumerable times by innumerable people, including me, in watercolor and oil.
My attempts, in these cards, remembers the continuing faith of the followers of St. Francis, still very much alive as the holy season  nears its climax...under the bright stars over the Sangre de Christo Mountains.

The iconic buttresses of the church, facing west, 5 x 7 card

Starlight--9 days 'til Christmas

"Starlight," 5 x 7 watercolor card

Those who live in rural areas, especially the mountains and deserts, the thinly populated areas of the planet, following the stars is a way of life.
You're closer to them high up, and where the sky is not polluted with light or moisture or noise  and people.
As one ranger said at Chaco Canyon, in the clear, dry northwestern New Mexico desert when I last camped there, talking about watching the night sky for hours, "It's like you can feel the earth move under your feet."
You  can actually see and feel time as it moves over you.
You're more aware of how small and remote we are in the vastness of the universe. And you notice changes, and portents, Starlight matters.
No wonder rural people noticed a star beckoning them  to the birth of Jesus so long ago. 

Ten years ago at Chaco: 
Where you can see time