Saturday, March 30, 2019

#344 • Last Wintah Painting Again


I think I've whined about winter's staying power in the past. Here in Maine the first day of spring will often pass us by like a cruise ship heading south vibrating with Jimmy Buffet music and fans.

The southern part of the state can be springlike for a minute when suddenly a sea breeze kicks in like a frigid vortex dipping its way south - a hand stretching down from the north pole cupping us back to winter. The western mountains and north too still have big filthy snowbanks, bitter gales that howl through your bones like a freon syringe, and a lot of worn out rotator cuffs.

So I have decided that this is it for winter paintings from me. I'm throwing in the towel. I'm fed up. This wintah is ova for me, O-V-A, ova!

Last Wintah Painting Again • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

Thursday, March 21, 2019

#343 • Waiting For The Weather to Cop a Better Attitude

 
This year's first day of spring was a corker! It was such an incredibly beautiful day yesterday that I soaked it all up and in skiing instead of working. Today I pay the price with a double work load, and weather-wise, a reminder of similar situation last summer.

After a stunning sail across the bay to North Haven - sunshine, a favorable breeze and following sea, we woke up the next morning to gray and fog, and decided to delay our cruise a bit to see if the weather might cop a better attitude. So we rowed to the public landing, walked over to the community building to check our email, and ate something chocolate because there was chocolate sitting there on the counter to be eaten.

We then took a stroll up and around the village to stretch our sea legs, came back to the landing and rowed back out to the boat where we prepared to let go. The weather hadn't changed moods, but it never makes much sense hanging around in a cozy cabin with our noses stuck in good books when we could be freezing our kahunahs and kahunohs off in a potential downpour looking for adventure in pea soup fog instead. One does not spend a kazillion dollars to keep a sailboat afloat simply to float nowhere.

Waiting For the Weather To Cop a Better Attitude • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12"• $250

Monday, March 11, 2019

#342 • Route 27 Through Those Moody Mountains



Years ago I was working with a Buddhist practitioner who wisely concluded that I was, among other things, a dysfunctional workaholic. My first assignment was to find five things I like to do other than work, and then go out and actually do them. Whoa - tough one!

I put hiking on the list because I was surrounded by mountains and miles and miles of hiking trails including the Appalachian.  I bought myself some decent leather Raichle boots, figuring that if I spent a goodly amount of money I would be forced to carry out the assignment and like it, whether I liked it or not.

I struck out on my inaugural solo-soul-searching-sojourn up in to Avery Peak - one of those bumps in the background of this painting that make up the Longfellow Range in Carrabassett Valley. Sauntering along, I'd periodically stop and ask myself if I liked this hiking thing. I honestly didn't know, so I just kept putting one expensive boot in front of the other, asking, climbing, asking, and climbing until I eventually, and to my surprise, summited.

Looking west along the spine of the range, I was riding a gigantic sea serpent cutting through an ocean of undulating green swells that were the many ridges below. The stunted trees were like druids riding along, grooming the patches of pale green, blue and lavender moss growing in and around the bold rock that was the mighty beast's hide. And then I sat down and smoked a cigarette. It was heaven.

I got hooked on hiking and eventually unhooked from smoking, and continued to solo up into those mountains over many many years. I witnessed the mountains morph from green and lush in the summer, to colorful show offs in the fall, and then hauntingly dark and moody in the winter. At some point I realized I did the same thing. It was a hard-earned Zen truistic-mystical-moment.

Those Moody Mountains • 10" or so x 8" acrylic framed to whatever • $250