#208 The Boatyard

There's something really satisfying about hanging out in a boatyard. You get to work outside near the water, breathe that invigorating salt air, rock out to the sound of halyards clanging, grinders grinding, polishers whirring, hammers hammering, and fellow sailors cursing.

And then there are the boats. You get to look at boats all day - all kinds of boats, and their bottoms, keels and props.

It's also a great comfort to be able to look around and discover you're among kindred spirits, that you're not the only sucker out there throwing your life's savings into the bottomless money pit that is owning a boat.

And finally, there are those confessions of harrowing stories that keep adrenaline junkies going back out there for another year, the stories that make you forget that feeling you felt of profound relief last fall, when you could haul your boat without having killed another vessel, critter, yourself or anyone else.

The Boatyard • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

SOLD - The Old Portland Company Buildings

I was walking back from town the other day along the river when this view of one of the Portland Company complex buildings in the late afternoon light stopped me in my tracks. I'll miss the complex the way it looks right now, and I'll miss this walk - I've been doing it since I moved here.

I've been thinking long and hard about those buildings. There's has always been something really comforting about them, even when the ruckus of an early evening rock and roll jam session bumped it's way through the alleyways from somewhere out in the back, or when I was spooked by the echo of my own footsteps as I'd slink through those eerie deserted canyons after the crews had gone home for the night.

I think it might be the color of the brick - the warm reds and browns that remind me that there was a time when buildings looked like they were literally constructed from the ground up.  More importantly however, these building are like the tracks they helped lay down from Portland to Montreal. They're not just a photo or an account-of in a history book, they're those tracks I can still walk in places, the glimpse of an immigrant worker standing in one of the upper windows, the screech of metal working against metal, and a blast of heat from furnaces that forged time along from the Civil War. We've all got a story somewhere in those bricks.

The Old Portland Company Buildings • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

SOLD - Spring Has Sprung

Contrary to advice from sages throughout history, it's time to stop stewing in the present, and start ruminating the future.

And so I will imagine for you a spectacularly beautiful day, warm and sunny, gently brushed by a soft little breeze that releases itself to afternoon and a night time sprinkle for the garden, the whole of which repeats itself because it is right.

Spring Has Sprung • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

SOLD - Faking Spring

When we were kids, my father planted a row of roses along the driveway, and a fairly good-sized patch of daffodils out in the backyard. The roses were hellish to maintain - an obstacle course of thorny branches to get to a non stop onslaught by Japanese beetles. The daffodils were easier, but dad had planted double bloomers. We had so many daffodils in bloom the first year, my father decided to send us kids door-to-door with a wagon full - a buck or two got you a dozen. It took us a while, but we got the job done. Believe it or not, people actually refused us. How could anyone refuse a couple of kids trying to sell a dozen daffodils for a buck or two?

I could care less about roses these days unless someone else is growing them, in which case I can get totally stupified by their addicting perfume. Daffodils don't excite me much, but are a nice splash of color in the spring when there is non to be seen out there anywhere.

I've also discovered that a dozen daffodils from the local greenhouse in March is a good cheap way to fake it 'til you make it - spring that is.

Faking Spring • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

#204 March

March - the month I start looking around for something to pound because it's time for spring, it's nowhere in site and I'm at my wits end. Isn't it wonderful then, that we have an alternative in the maple tree.

No one really knows who discovered maple syrup, but several legends have been handed down over the centuries. This legend comes from the Algonquian Indians.

Woksis, the Indian Chief, was going hunting one day early in March, the "Season of the Melting Snow." He yanked his tomahawk from a maple tree, in to which he had hurled it the night before, and went off for the day. The weather turned warm, and the gash in the tree dripped sap into a trough that was close to the trunk. Toward evening Woksis's wife (who has no name here but I will refer to as "She who should have been chief because she was so clever") needed water in which to boil dinner. She saw the trough full of sap and thought that might save her a trip to get water. She tasted the sap and found it good. She used the sap to cook venison for suppah later that night. The water eventually boiled down to syrup, which sweetened the meat. Woksis found the gravy delicious and spread the news how the Great Spirit had guided his wife in making a delicious new food he called Sinzibuckwud (meaning, "drawn from the wood" in the Algonquian tongue). Soon all the women were  "sugar-making" ("seensibaukwut"). From that point in time on, braves performed the "Sugar Dance,"  and maple sugar was produced and celebrated each spring in March  after the long, cold winter. My guess is The Great Spirit had redirected those people from pounding on one another after that long, cold winter, to pounding maple trees. It saved a few lives.

March • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

SOLD - Royal Robin

Robins have always been harbingers of spring for me - I was taught this somewhere along the line, and had added my own theory which was, the more I saw, the faster spring would arrive. It's what has kept me sane during the final obstacle called March all of these years.

Spring was certainly going to be early this year for sure - I saw so many. Unfortunately, and based on info gleaned from the internet plus what I witnessed this winter, robins aren't harbingers of spring because duh, they hang around year round.

Up here on the hill, and I have never seen this before, there has been a street gang of 25 or so robins flitting around the neighborhood all winter. They were startling to see with their bright orange breasts in an otherwise bland and bleached winter landscape a city can be. They reminded me of the older and enlarged Henry VIII, a little arrogant the way they puffed up their chests (to stay warm in this case, I later learned) over their twig-like legs.

While robins no longer represent harbingers of spring for me, they will become instead, a reminder of spring's inevitable, determined and colorful arrival in the face of all that seems otherwise.

Royal Robin • 8" X 8" framed to 12" X 12" • $200

SOLD - White Night

In the fifth century BC, Hippocrates , the father of medicine wrote, “one who is seized with terror, fright and madness during the night is being visited by the goddess of the moon," to which I would add ...in all of her blinging, glittering glory.

White Night • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200