Storm a'coming on the Great Plains

Daily watercolor, 5.5 by 8.5--Stormy evening on the Great Plains

It's one of those evenings on the Great Plains. A storm is coming. You can see it, sense it, smell it, on the wind, in the air, in the color of light, in the rapidly changing skies and clouds.

Revelations, perceptions, realities and New Mexico

Morning dreaming of the high road to Truchas, 5" by 6" journal watercolor on back porch

Quiet time revelations after a walk

 in Hafer Park this morning

"Since perception is reality, therefore all art is reality. There are no false views, wrong expressions, when artists put down what they perceive."  -Terry M. Clark

Think about it--yes, some are better at perceiving than others--Mozart, Michelangelo, Cezanne, Picasso, Whitman, Conrad, Twain, Parker, Ansel Adams, McPhee, Prince, Mish, Jake Harms, and millions more in all the arts. Perhaps a few times, Clark?

"Above all, I want to make you see,"--Joseph Conrad. "When I'm on stage, I don't think, I feel,"--Keith Richards.

As an uptight first born journalist I began painting by trying to get every detail photographically right. Some freedom eventually came with more practice, and especially watching my grandchildren paint, for who there are no rules. Looking at early work, or at work now when I'm in a dry spell, I see this morning, that every angle is different, every color is different, every shape is different, depending on how I look at things, and knowing you will see them differently. Why have I not had this insight before on my work--whether watercolor or writing? 

It helps to attend the Oklahoma City Festival of the Arts and be bombarded with a multitude of perceptions and realities.

Thus home from the walk to take out my leather bound watercolor journal--art and perceptions of reality in its own right--from Mind's Eye Journals--bought last year, but renewed with a visit at the art show with owner Teresa Merriman and her husband of Colorado. 

The high road to Taos, at Truchas, New Mexico, painted from memory, because that perception, that reality,  is so deep within.

Unsettled skies

"Unsettled Oklahoma skies"...today's watercolor, 9 by 12

It's one of those days, and months for that matter, and the skies today captured my mood without my even knowing it, until I made myself paint, and then write about it...the first blog post this month. 
Unsettled skies and more...
Plenty to write about, plenty of books and people, and yet like the skies in the opening pages of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, the rain won't come. Part of the drought is an almost aversion to the computer and keyboard, part a "rain shadow" from the peaks of activity in   the past months, and probably, part just because of the years and miles.
 But at least, there are the skies of the Great Plains, and the promise of rain.