Category Archives: Painting

Art and Culture, Family, Health, Painting, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Artistes

December 30, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter and the Future Moon

Monday gratefuls: (I like this practice, so I’m going to continue it for awhile. Maybe keep it here.) Being with Ruth yesterday. Going to Meininger’s Art Supply with her. The stuff in Meininger’s. Stanley Market Place. Maria’s Empanadas. Coming home to the mountains after driving in the city. The bare rock on Berrian Mountain. The flocked trees.

Took Ruth to Red Herring Art Supply. Again. Seoah was with us the last time. Like last time, it was closed. The holidays. We drove along Colfax, “the longest street in the U.S. that doesn’t turn into a highway,” she said. Makes me think of Lake Street. Colfax runs through several ethnically diverse neighborhoods and changes its character as it does. Near its ends, west and east, are old tourist motels now the cheaper equivalent of SRO’s.

We took it into downtown Denver, turned right at the State Capitol Building, and followed Broadway to Meininger’s, Colorado’s primary art supply store. Ruth educated me again. Explaining the use of mediums for oil paints, why she likes synthetic brushes, and a type of paper on which you can do oil painting.

We bought some of that paper, a small bottle of medium, and some brushes. The next time she comes we’ll cut up some of the paper into sizes she would like to use.

The ancientrail of art is not only for the gifted. Making things with our hands is a primary human act, from houses to Space Shuttles, quilts to sculptures. When creating objects that reflect our inner life, make the world beautiful, show and enhance our ability to see, we expand our own life.

We got Gabe a Chromebook for Hanukah, a very low end, yet still useful laptop. Jon predicted he would be, “very happy.” After he opened it up, Gabe said, “I’m so happy.” Sometimes grandparents are the wish genie.

We both have concerns about Jon. Still. He inherited depressive genes from the Johnson line, maybe the Olsons, too. Very bright, creatively gifted, incredibly self sabotaging. And, 51. I hope in this next decade he can find the traction he needs.

His art is wonderful, colorful and conceptual, using old smashed metal pieces he finds along the road as objects to print. His grasp of politics, of the workings of his school, of home renovation is keen. When he’s not down, he’s a lot of fun. He skis and makes his own skis.

Tough, very tough, situation.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Painting, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Merry, Merry Meet

December 25, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter and the Gratitude Moon, waning sliver

Christmas gratefuls: the silence on Black Mountain Drive. Black Mountain itself. The stars above Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. Our home. This loft, a gift from my Kate, now five years ago, and still wonderful. Kate and her increased health. The sacred side of Christmas. The pagan (also sacred) side of Christmas.

When I went out for the paper this morning, it was dead quiet. No dogs barking. No cars or trucks on the road. No mechanical noises. The sky was the deep black of the cosmic wilderness, lit only by bright lights: planets, stars, galaxies. Silent night, holy night.

Those shepherds out there tending their flock, sheep shuffling around. A baa and a bleat here and there. Visitors on camel back. All that singing. As imagined, probably not a quiet night.

Here though, this dark Christmas morn. The deer are asleep. The elk, too. Pine martens, fishers, foxes, mountain lions might be prowling, but part of their inheritance is silence. Black bears went to sleep long ago. Millions of insects are quiet, too. The microbes in the soil, the growing lodgepole pines, the aspen organisms, their clonal neighborhoods, bulbs, corms, rhizomes all alive, all quiet.

Silent night, holy night. Yes. Sacred night, holyday night. Yes.

I read this long essay on consciousness by the president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. In it he says this:

” Yes, there’s this ancient belief in panpsychism: “Pan” meaning “every,” “psyche” meaning “soul.”…basically it meant that everything is ensouled…if you take a more conceptual approach to consciousness, the evidence suggests there are many more systems that have consciousness—possibly all animals, all unicellular bacteria, and at some level maybe even individual cells that have an autonomous existence. We might be surrounded by consciousness everywhere and find it in places where we don’t expect it because our intuition says we’ll only see it in people and maybe monkeys and also dogs and cats. But we know our intuition is fallible…”

Even silence, since it presumes an awareness of noise, is a proof of consciousness. All that consciousness around us here on Shadow Mountain. The trees and wild animals, grasses and microbes, dogs and humans, all here, all experiencing a self.

I take panpsychism a bit further than Koch with the kabbalistic idea of ohr, the divine spark, resident in every piece of the universe and the process metaphysical view of a vitalist universe creatively moving toward greater complexity.

This waking up mornin’ we can see the baby Jesus as an in your face message that, yes, of course we are holy. Yes, of course the universe sings to us from the depths of the sea, the top of the redwoods, and the person or animal across from us this morning. And, to get downright personal, from within the deep of our own soul.

Aging, Art and Culture, Family, Feelings, Friends, Memories, Painting, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

December 13, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Friday gratefuls. Deb and Dave at On the Move Fitness. Seoah’s life joy. The inventor of kettlebells. Treadmills. dumbbells. Television. The transformer. The circuit board. The CPU. Software. Sputnik. Laika. Koko. Any random elephant, giraffe, lion, hyena, rhino, cheetah, zebra, hippo. All of them.

Back to the future. New workout from On the Move. Stepup. TRX pushup. TRX row. Kettlebell one arm shoulder press. Quadraped with a three second hold. Reverse crunch circles. Bridge hold. Step and hold, balance. Deb recommended high intensity cardio for the COPD. Did them up until the radiation started in June. I’ll get back to them, slowly.

She pointed out that the COPD will make me feel fatigued. Oh, yeah. Sarcopenia from aging and sarcopenia from lupron, too. No wonder I’m feeling like that guy on the back of the comic book. You know, the one getting sand kicked in his face? Not much to do but keep exercising, wait for the lupron to drop away. Maybe June of next year.

The Mayans considered the last 5 days of the year as useless days. I used to take that week and do a research project on something of interest to me. Now I’m going to expand that time to December and this year I choose painting. I will poke around in color theory, mixing paints, continuing to paint using shades of intense blue as background. Composition, too. I’ll take Ruth to Meiningers art supply store. Might pick up some new Princeton brushes, some new Williamsburg paints.

Then, there’s the issue of the next decade. The 20’s. Whoa. I’ve lived well into the future. But. Where’s my time traveling Delorian? My transport portal? My brain implants? Why haven’t I met a cyborg yet? You know, like from this year’s Blade Runner.

For the first time I’ve considered whether I’ll live out the decade. Hardly impossible. I’d just have to reach 83 and I know two guys that have already made that or very close to it. Frank’s already there. Bill will be on April 8th. But, who knows? Of course, dying is always possible, but with cancer and copd, my clock may have sped up.

If I knew I would die in the next decade, what would I do differently? Anything? Not sure. I’d like to travel more. See more of Colorado. Make it to Taipei and see the National Museum. Paint more. Write more books. But I already do those things. Love more. Laugh more. Again, not new. Maybe it will be the proportion of those things. Or, maybe something new will appear. Whatever happens, it will be the 2020’s! Buck Rogers time.

Art and Culture, Friends, Judaism, Mussar, Painting, Third Phase

Monet

November 23, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Samain and the Fallow Moon

Kate and I went to see the Monet exhibit at the Denver Museum of Art. First outing for Kate in quite a while. Lesley, a fellow mussarite, architect and art historian, led the tour as a DMA docent.

Christoph Heinrich, director of the DMA, wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Monet and used his scholarly contacts as well as his museum world contacts to organize this show with a fellow Monet scholar from Potsdam, Germany. It has 120 paintings by Monet that show the development of his unique, impressionist style over a period of years.

Leslie had a knowledgeable presentation, for which she had many notecards. The exhibit draws big crowds and the museum supplied ear pieces and a receiver. Leslie stood back and spoke to us through her headset while we looked at the paintings. Could have used this technology in several exhibits at the MIA.

The DMA has a different docent style than the MIA. The docent explains, gives facts and interpretations. The way it used to be everywhere, I believe. The MIA requires the docent to engage tour participants with questions about each work, questions that help them draw their own conclusions, that force them to look and learn for themselves. There’s a place for both styles, imo.

There were some beautiful pieces, some ordinary works that showed Monet working out what he wanted to paint, many showing early experimentation with putting colors next to each other and letting the eye merge them into the color Monet saw as he painted. There were no real show stoppers in the exhibit however. I imagine the cost of getting several haystacks, several Rouen cathedrals (there were none), and the large water-lilly works like hang at the Chicago Art Institute was too much.

While a docent at the MIA, I became friends with the registrar, a position little know outside the museum world. The registrar crew handles the art works, moving them, hanging them, indexing them with the museums cataloging protocols. From him I learned about the intricacies of putting an exhibit together.

Most museums require that works over a certain value, I believe it was two-hundred and fifty thousand at the MIA, are never out of sight of one of their employees. An employee travels on the plane with them, observing them be loaded and removed.

I remember he told me (can’t recall his name) a story about a painting being flown to Australia for an exhibition there. He agreed to go with the painting, but due to his workload, he flew there with it, watched it get unloaded and shipped to the museum, then turned around and got back on a plane to Minneapolis. A long, long time in the air.

Given Monet’s prices at auction I would guess most, if not all, of his many paintings exceed the value limit of the MIA. That would be a lot of insurance, shipping, and travel costs.

Found myself fascinated with his brushwork, color choices. I’ve not spent much in museums or galleries since I started painting. Made me want to start going again to inform my own work.

Judaism, Painting, Writing

What To Do?

March 2, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

relax My birthday month passed in a blur of illness and caregiving. February, my seventy-scond February, got underway two days after a difficult day, a full day. I felt exhausted around noon and had several more places to go. Like moving through jello, thick jello on the way home.

The next two weeks was a symptom buffet. Somebody was spinning a large wheel and where it stopped? That was the new insult. Hit me like a freight train. My memory of those days is absent, therapeutically so, I think. Pneumonia came after that. And after pneumonia, recovery from three weeks of misery. Mostly back to normal now, just a bit of stamina to regain.

However. A month, a whole month, even if it’s a short one, mostly erased. No painting. No writing. No visits to CBE. No exercise. Having to rethink life. Again. Home now, no more regular CBE obligations. Being available for Kate’s needs is top of my list. Doesn’t consume all of my time, not even close, so I’m beginning to itch, to want some fruitful self-directed activity.

A new novel? That one I’ve been mentioning? More painting? Reading about art, astrology. Judaism. I need a focus, an outlet for my own work. Nothing sticks right now. Guess I’ll just mosey along like I have been, see what comes. Maybe I’ll try some free writing a la Natalie Goldberg. Painting equivalent.

No big deal here, trying to get myself reoriented, start the engine. Sputtering. Too much choke.

Art and Culture, Astrology, Colorado, Cooking, Family, Health, Kabbalah, Mountains, Painting, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

So Beautiful

January 29, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

Our snowpack. Needed for the trees and our well — Our snowpack beside the front door. Needed for the trees and our well

Another 6 or 8 inches of snow yesterday. Snowiest January since 1993. The northern half and eastern quadrant of Colorado watersheds have above average snowpack. Critically, the Colorado Headwaters area is at 116%. The south western quadrant of the state though is below average in two spots, including the Durango area where the big fires burned last summer.

So beautiful. The lodgepoles carry snowy covers on their branches. The deer, rabbits, fox that come through our yard leave their tracks.The rising sun colors the snow on Black Mountain, right now a light flush pink. Bright blue sky behind the mountain.

Not so good for those of us animals who need carapaces and wheels. This is the google traffic map from yesterday. Rush hour. Add in altitude and you get a real mess. This is when commuting to Denver from Conifer separates the brave from the foolish.

metro roads 1 28

Kate’s initiated a get-out of the house plan. She said last week that she felt isolated and alone, so we’re going to go somewhere each day. Yesterday we went to the post office. Today, the King Sooper Starbucks for Kate while I pick up some groceries. Tomorrow? Who knows?

Last week I painted the creation of the universe, the shattering of the ohr. Followed it with the creation of the waters. Next up: land. I tried to show an island in my first attempt. Not so good. I like the first two, I’m starting over today on land. I’m going to get somehow to Eden and humans and that tree. Will take awhile. Hard to say in the abstract paint language I’m using. But, that’s part of the fun.

Astrological learning has been on hold. Painting, exercise, and Kate have gotten my focus along with CBE. Gonna get back to it, though. Probably a reading with Elisa’s astrologer, John, to kick off the next phase of my learning.

Just entered the Chicken soup cookoff at CBE. Gonna get some practice today, picking up soup supplies during the grocery shopping at King Sooper. Taking some to a friend, leaving some behind for Kate and me. Kate loves my chicken soup. My heirloom recipe came off the Golden Plump packages when I bought chickens in Minnesota. Here, I do it from memory.

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Painting, Poetry, Third Phase, Writing

On Working at Your Best

January 22, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

20181214_081606 Painting. A long, long ancientrail. Walked by so many. A few well, more journeypersons, and the rest of us.

Mediocre. An interesting idea, mediocre. If you’re working to your best capacity, your work is wonderful. Mediocre arrives on your doorstep when you begin comparing your work to others. I’m a writer of wonderful novels and short stories. I create wonderful paintings. Am I going to be hung in the National Gallery? No. Any gallery? Probably not. Am I going to make the NYT times best seller list? Unlikely. Have I done less than my best? No.

Success, I’m gradually beginning to learn, is not about the other. It is about yourself. If Michelangelo painted like me, he’d be mediocre because he had the skill to paint well. If Tolstoy wrote like me, same. Where do I fit? Hell if I know. I’ve had the chance to work at my best level in two fields where criticism is a given. I’ve learned to quiet my inner critic, to stay away from sweeping generalizations about my books, my paintings. Now you may read them, look at them, and say, “He’s no Song Dynasty landscape artist.” Or, “He’s no Marquez.” And you would be right. I’m just and only me.

breathe thich-nhat-hanh-calligraphy This does not mean I’m uninterested in the quality of my work. Hardly. I want it to be the best I can do. Do I always work at my best level? Of course not. But I do as often as I can. Which is most of the time. I’ll leave the judging to others. I did write that novel. Several, in fact. I did create that painting. Several, in fact. Enough for me. Could I have done this without Kate? No. But Kate is in my life and I in hers. Both of us have sought the best for each other, have sought to create a home environment that encouraged our best work.

Quilting, making clothing, writing novels, and painting are not the only things we’ve done. Kate healed children. I worked hard at social justice, at following a small r religious path. Both of us have raised kids, learned how to be grandparents. Grew much of our own food, our own flowers, our own fruit, our own honey. There is no accounting, no form of critique that can measure these things. They are past. And we don’t live then. We live forward, on the ancientrail that leads into the time beyond this moment. What we have done is not what matters anymore. What matters now is what we do today, right now. As my buddy Bill Schmidt says, “Show up.”

crane2 Life allows no do overs. We can reconsider, reframe, reevaluate, remember, but we cannot change yesterday, or any yesterday. We can make choices right now.

Today I chose to use turpentine to wipe out, literally, work I did yesterday. And, I’ll do new work on that painting today. I’m not doing over what I did yesterday. I’m going in a new direction today.

It feels to me like I’m beginning to get this, to accept the truth of the past, of my intentions, and to find a path with no attention to results. Not sure why but this excites me. A form of liberation, I guess. Not giving up, just going forward. Working at my best. Nothing else is possible, except apathy. And that’s not me.

Art and Culture, Cooking, Dogs, Family, Friends, Judaism, Painting, Third Phase, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

The Left Behind

January 21, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

A Basin. Ski maps are a Colorado art form

Gabe came up and spent the night on Saturday. He was his usual self, watching TV, playing with the dogs, building some contraptions with a new construction toy he got. Ruth and Jon went to A-Basin, skied in great powder and got here around 5 pm. When they left for the day, it was the first time since Christmas eve that Kate and I, Gertie, Rigel, and Kepler were without guests.

Murdoch, SeoAh, and Murdoch’s daddy left at 10 am headed through Kansas and on into Missouri, then back south to central Georgia. We have products with the Korean language in our refrigerator, frozen rice cakes and dumplings, hoisin sauce, and our pantry has rice cakes, a specialty soy sauce, sesame seeds and sesame oil. She left her tea kettle and a vacuum, too. I think she’s going to be back. She’s an unusual guest; her presence is unobtrusive and helpful.

20190121_065343 (2) I finished the creation of the waters yesterday. Some gold flake to give continuity with the first one, not finished yet because I’m waiting on some Elmer’s glue for the gold leaf.

When Mark was here, I asked him a question that’s been on my mind. “How do you know when to stop?” He laughed and said that was every artist’s question. Too often, he said, we wish we could go back to an earlier version. Oils are a bit more forgiving in that regard than, say, watercolor, or, as Tom suggested, sculpture.

Mark then added, “The next problem is storage.” So true. I have all my paintings now resting on bookshelves, blocking access to certain volumes. Gotta get a different solution. In this case oils are less forgiving. Oils dry very slowly, like taking years to completely dry. That makes putting them against each other even in a vertical file impossible. Hmmm.

Gertie and Kep are happy to have the house all to themselves. No more long stints in the sewing room while Murdoch got his downstairs time.

Snow coming tonight and tomorrow. May it continue.

Art and Culture, Family, Friends, Health, Kabbalah, Mountains, Painting, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

shhh

January 20, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

20190120_104200 Shhh. Don’t tell anybody or you might jinx it, but I think Kate’s starting to gain weight. She’s at 84, past the 82 pound barrier that seemed so intractable. yay. shhh.

SeoAh and Murdoch are on their way today. Back to the warmer climes of Peach and Pecan country. Gonna miss her though she needs to get back and we need to settle in again to our own rhythms. SeoAh loves pho so I took her to the pho place near Evergreen’s King Sooper yesterday. A going away present. We had a long talk about her life in Seoul. She sold clothing and cosmetics door-to-door for a good while. What a tough way to make a living.

In that conversation she made an interesting point about American culture, one that wouldn’t have occurred to me. In Korea women expect each other to dress well, to the point of putting on make-up even when going to the store for groceries. And, they’re unforgiving of those who don’t. “Most Asian women are like this,” she said. “But, I love American culture.” We don’t have the same blanket expectation for women. (not saying it doesn’t exist here, but it’s not everywhere.) That makes a big difference to SeoAh.

20190101_103345 Went out to DIA late last night and picked up SeoAh’s husband. Got back here about 11:00 pm, well past my sell by date in terms of sleep. The dogs didn’t get fed until 7:30 am. Gabe’s here, too. Jon brought him up last night. Jon and Ruth will go skiing today at A-Basin, then pick Gabe up on their way home. It’s been a very family oriented Christmas and New Years and January. Friends, too.

We’re expecting snow again tomorrow evening. Hopefully the pace will pick up.

Got some gold leaf yesterday for a painting I’m working on portraying the ohr penetrating the ein sof. Considering a series on Genesis with this being the first of them.

Family, GeekWorld, Health, Judaism, Painting, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Akeda

January 16, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

Big excitement this morning. Into Stevinson Toyota for a Rav4 oil change. Last oil change came on the Monday of Kate’s no good, very bad, horrible weekend at the end of September. That oil has degraded over the whole twilight circus of events since then. This fresh oil comes as the news begins to look better. It will degrade as the Waxing Moon works and puts the unhappy last quarter of 2018 to rest. Looking for a better story in the first quarter of 2019.

Painted some yesterday. Both sumi-e and oil painting have put me back in a tactile world gardening occupied in Minnesota.

Here’s my latest, akeda. Akeda means binding in Hebrew and in Jewish tradition evokes the binding of Isaac by Abraham.

Yesterday morning I created a lesson plan for the religious school. Yirah. The akeda could be used as an example of yirah. How terrible, how frightening. Sacrifice the son whom Sarah bore in her 90’s. Isaac means, he laughed, to remember Abraham and Sarah’s response to the news that she would bear a child. Not only was Isaac the improbable son of Sarah’s old age, he was also the son who would fulfill the covenant God made with Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the “stars in the sky.” Killing him as a sacrifice would mean the end of Sarah’s miracle and the promise of God. Yet, he went ahead with the akeda.

A friend of mine in Minnesota, a Sierra club activist, was in an accident on January 14th. Her 18 year old son, Henry, a freshman at Bowdoin college, drove. She was in the passenger seat. A pickup truck drifted into their lane. The wreck killed Henry. Sarah survived with non-life threatening injuries. Since her brief announcement on facebook, “Devastating news. We lost Henry in a car accident. Only 18. So much potential,” I’ve been cycling through imagining the awful pain of losing a child.