Where is your cabin?

"Cabin Fever," 12 x 12 acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

Cabins have a long life in my memories, of people and places and photos and more.

Daydreaming of them all in the summer of heat that sapped my creativity,. I had to return to my roots.

Thus today’s painting, wondering “Where is your cabin?"

Journeys to Creation

"Journeys," 12 x 12 acrylic, gallery-wrapped canvas. Soon at In Your Eye Studio and Gallery

My current definition of "God" is "infinity." Eternal present spirit tense. "I am that I am,"--Genesis.

All art has stories, has histories, encounters with spirit, and so it is with this week's painting.

It began this when when a friend and fellow artist  Jim Resnicek in In Your Eye Gallery bought my 5 x 5 acrylic of a spiritual ladder, "Journeys." Here's the original blog post on it, from a year ago--"From Dust to Dust."

While we were talking, about art and ideas, I found this painting in my mind.

It comes from inspiration by my second daily readings, of

Chickasaw elder, Okie  and Episcopal priest Steve Charleston, whose daily meditations a read every day. You should follow him on Facebook for this calming words and insights into the infinity of "Spirit." His book, Ladder to the Light, drawing on New Mexico pueblo religions and cultures, of ladders from inside kivas, speaks to our struggle in this un-spiritual world. 

Two more readings begin my days. They also influenced a part of this painting. First there is the daily calendar of comments  and insights by the Catholic Trappist monk and mystic, Thomas Merton. Though he wrote and died in the 1960s, his imagery and insights seem to fit todays turmoils, evidence again of eternal spirit and present tense. See A Year With Thomas Merton.

The third daily reading is always Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who is in charge of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. His daily email  seems to always fit within the scope of these other two.

So this painting calls to me of our journeys to infinity, step by step, rung by rung up a ladder, across the spectrum of light and life.

Mountain monsoon moods

"Mountain monsoon," 8 x 12 watercolor, 140 lb. paper

How to escape the heat storm  hitting 111 degrees here tomorrow?

Only in my imagination of course. and I think of my favorite New Mexico Mountains, the Truchas peaks, and the blue and gray monsoon thunderheads towering up late in the morning and spreading into the afternoon.

You can see them building in the late morning, from far away, and then they dominate the sky and landscapes, bringing cool shade and weather and rain to the high country, and down into the valleys of the high desert.

So here's today's watercolor, painting the Truchas from memory, combined with thunderheads we saw on trips a few years ago--I'm always taking photos of them--fascinating infinite colors and shapes, changing every moment.

From my paintings this week, you can tell where my mind and heart are, hunkered down with memories, as the heat climbs.

The word "monsoon"

"Monsoon weather," 8 x 10 watercolor, 140 lb. paper

I love the word "monsoon," especially in the mountains and high deserts of New Mexico and the Southwest.

It means billowing thunderheads, blue-gray and infinite in shapes and power, especially over the mountains. bringing life and relief in July and August.

Today's watercolor tries to approximate that, as I long for rain and clouds and far vistas...water for this parched part of the Great Plains. I will keep trying...watercolor is perfect for these times.

I still have work to capture the beauty of them, more blue, more gray, but as I keep dreaming of rains and a break from the heat, here it is.

Here is the origin of the word, from the online etymology dictionary:

1580s, "alternating trade wind of the Indian Ocean," from Dutch monssoen, from Portuguese monçao, from Arabic mawsim "time of year, appropriate season" (for a voyage, pilgrimage, etc.), from wasama "he marked." The Arabic word, picked up by Portuguese sailors in the Indian Ocean, was used for anything that comes round every year (such as a festival), and was extended to the season of the year when the monsoon blows from the southwest (April through October) and the winds were right for voyages to the East Indies. In India, the summer monsoon is much stronger than the winter and was popularly spoken of emphatically as "the monsoon." It also brings heavy rain, hence the meaning "heavy episode of rainfall during the rainy season" (1747). Related: Monsoonal.

Dreaming of Rain

"Dreaming of Rain," 8 x 10 watercolor, 140 lb. paper

I dream of rain these days.

Unrelenting heat, and it's not even August yet. Much is still green, but if this "dome: doesn't dissipate (geen wanting to use that word), brown will be the dominate color across the Great Plains.

Can't do much about it, other than pay an air conditioning bill. 

Or, paint some of my dreams, in "water"color, of course, live giving fluid in a hot, arid land.

Today's small effort.