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Revisiting familiar places

Solitude by definition can be a quality of quiet remoteness or seclusion in places where human
Sketch- Suffolk Church Pews
activity is generally absent. There is a re-assurance to travelling a path surrounded by continuity and tradition. Back in Britain where I once went to art school, I have the added pleasure of revisiting once familiar places. Church is not a usual part of my Canadian life, yet to sit in a church built in 1453, restored in 1865, listening to a choral Anglican service reminds me of my childhood and brings to me the comfort and security found in the continuity of rituals of community. Because of this quiet contemplation in church and old graveyards where I once loved to draw, I have discovered a feast of art material in medieval, carved Suffolk pews. Perhaps revisiting familiar places works when we as artists go there with a mind ready for new discoveries.

Life changes

Thank you for the lift. We are in the process of letting go of a cabin that we believed was tied permanently in with our happiness and freedom. When we let go, there is a grieving, but we are moving forward to free up our time to explore more, to travel more. Thanks to my journaling and then reading your letter, I am reminded, "Sometimes you have to go through something else to find what you're looking for."

Local woodland treasures

Your walk through the woods let me see it and hear and feel it. I, too, have a small woods I walk
Kingfisher
watercolour through. It's at the edge of the Royal Kwantlen Park and covers, at most, 2 blocks. But there I've seen eagles, a horned owl, coyotes, rabbits, piliated woodpeckers and a host of smaller birds and beasts. I love to sample the seasonal berries, from the early salmon berries, to the juicy blackberries and my favourite huckleberries. My dog, Buffy, and I wander through and we have our favourite places. The twisting trails through the salmon berries, under the tall cedars and firs or the huge-leafed maples. Or else the twisting vine maples and the colourful red elderberry and mountain ash. I've spent my life wandering in the woods, both urban and wild, and there is so much to see. Most people don't realize how much there is to see in the smallest of local woodlands. In my park there is one species of orchid. There were two but someone mowed down the second and didn't even know it was there.

Last Child in the Woods

Although you are obviously speaking of walking with a canine companion, your current letter reminds
Cathy DeWitt Performing
me of a book that's been very popular here lately: Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods. It's about the need for nature, and the fact that American children are suffering from what he calls NDD or Nature Deprivation Disorder. It's very interesting.

(RG note) Thanks, Cathy. This subject came up last year in a forest of responses to my letter on Trees and also in a subsequent clickback Last Child in the Woods

An ordinary, special place

Indeed a place can be very ordinary and still be special. I painted last summer at a little wetland
Spirit and intimacy in nature, #5
plein air pastel reclamation area ten minutes from home, plein air, nearly every night, sometimes several paintings (they are small). The area is really not conventionally beautiful, neither in terms of classic plein air work, expectations of outdoor beauty or surrounding vista - those include a large commuter parking lot for a Big Ten university. The shape of the wet is cursed with the tyranny of the rectangle and is more functional in terms of the economics of digging it than any aesthetic appeal. I see tremendous life energy there and the tiny paintings cover a period from July to Sept and swings in weather. The dragonflies storm, ducks gaggle at bad jokes, the muskrat totters on his business. I love it! This year I feel a shift… Maybe I've exhausted the point of view that served so well last year, but I am still wowed and cowed by some of the complex patterns and speed with which beauty strikes and retreats.

House and home

There's something in us that animates, not necessarily anthropomorphizes, the things we live with.
Down Under
(Women in Water series)
oil on canvas Nature is often our closest friend, including sun, moon and stars (for me - constellations in particular), but a house, or furniture, can sometimes be a close second. Of course, these reflections perhaps make more sense in an "Old World" context, but when you think about it, a house or apartment can have a very long life of its own. There are houses in the French countryside (just ordinary farmhouses) which are very, very old and have housed generations of different people. How do they see us? I can get very, very attached to those old places, which have accreted so much experience and are marked by nature and time… and only superficially by the people who pass through them in a very slow stream.

And then there's furniture. Old furniture, valuable or ordinary, can last a very long time and serve many generations of people. I get very attached to my old furniture (and sometimes my new stuff, especially if I make it myself) but I can't help thinking about how, when I'm gone, it will be friendly with someone else, and I'm only a temporary relation.

Awe and wonder

Your parade of wonders immediately drew me to Mary Oliver's latest poem, Messenger:

"My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird---
Equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
Keep my mind on what matters
Which is my work,
Which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished…"

The poem goes on. I attend my parade in the city in my garden, however, I find myself being called to revisit the ever-changing seasonal parades of the Blue Ridge Mountains that continue to construct and anchor my interior paintings. It is the antiquity and newness of that ever-changing old growth forest that anchors me like no other parade. I feel at times as if the Internet allows some of us to live a little behind our retina of awe and wonder... yet another parade of wonders!

Appreciation from art historian

As a non-painter, but a friend to and admirer of many, it's more than academically interesting for me
Cobbled Shadows
by: Richard McDiarmid SFCA to receive your twice-weekly letters. Your sage words to other artists often provide inspiration to this layperson and I want to thank you again for them. You really do make a difference!

Also, your Painter's Keys Art Directory is a regular source of information to me as historian of people and things to do with the Federation of Canadian Artists. I continue to learn a lot from these references (and am careful to give credit to the right source).

Rocks in the head

I had watched a show about Japanese gardens and how they placed rocks in strategic ways to assume human-like emotions. I found this so fascinating that I sat down with a nice soft pencil and did a series of sketches, thinking all the time about human feelings. These concepts run anywhere from mother and child, to aggression to lovers. I do this also when I'm generating ideas for my large abstracts.

Getting in on the Vacation Workshop loop

I have been teaching art now for some 20 years, grades K-12. Now I am wishing to expand and teach
Untitled
watercolour by: Tony Van Hasselt adults. What would be your advice on how to enter the Painting Workshop Vacations loop? Is it almost necessary to buy an old house in France or Greece to renovate and then run the workshops myself? Or is there a way to find positions for painting/pastel instructor with some of the already established companies? I have picked up on a few companies but most are husband and wife teams and not looking for extra instructors. Is it best to actually just take part in one of the workshops and get known and then get a position that way?

(RG note) Thanks, Janine. Painting Workshop Vacations are big business and getting bigger. Having a great collection of truly spectacular paintings on line is a good place to start. Well thought out tutorials to go along with them would be useful too. Then it's a matter of hooking up with people like Phil Levine who run painting workshops in Brittany, Provence, and other places. There are several of these sorts of destinations and schools featured in our Studios Worldwide. To get an overview of what's possible I'd contact workshop pros like Stephen Quiller, Kiff Holland, Tony Van Hasselt, and others. Go to databases such as Yahoo's. Artists who are in this game often build a clientele over a period of years and take the same people again and again to different places of inspiration. Think what you can uniquely bring to the business.

Give some thought to giving the gift of the twice weekly letter. Andrew has set up a special place for this. You can send the letters to one special person or to as many friends as you wish. We will send these new people a card to inform them of your personal gift--and your good wishes. "The best things in life are free."