Daring all the rainchecks and warrantees of the heart
This time of year with spring so close at hand, I seem to run into thoughts along the path to Old Port Clyde that are like ghost notes left in trees and bushes for me to forage out and fathom through. I'll read them like the signs they are as I come across them; put them in my pocket and take 'em home to kindle a fire later that evening as I sit and go over them again at the end of the day. Notes, & signs, mostly notes from the muse to say I'm on the right track. It's when I don't get those little notes I know I have to re-trace my steps 'til I do get back on again. In essence these little notes are my little reminders for me to keep in the attitude of gratitude. Keep an open mind and heart.
And follow.
Yesterday as I sat by the sea at Marshall Point Light while the sun set on the day, I got into a deeply grateful place inside of myself that I can only externally express ever so slightly through any amount of writing or painting pictures about it. I'm just another human being going about my business who sometimes has a low threshold for beauty, that's all. It's quite beautiful here along this part and parcel of the coastline and it doesn't matter how cold it is, or how it seems the weight of the world gets a little too heavy to shoulder sometimes, and you want it all to slip away for a little while. Take a walk, look around, be thankful to live in such a beautiful place with all it's changing light in the mornings, during the day, or in the evening. I know I never tire of it. I can look back over the day and say I had a great day painting. I got lost in it from time to time, which is the absolute best I can ask for. That and I learned a lot about how I'm going to proceed from here with the picture I'm working on, and in the next few I want to get started on here shortly. I am grateful I am supported to be able to do this; a lot of artists aren't in their lifetimes, most, really, that's just a fact.
So what's below is a poem I wrote to go with a picture I painted in a not-so-long-ago-once-upon-a-time that had my mother in it scuttling along in a winter flurry of snow and beating feet for home from the "Port Clyde General". It all came from a wisp of a memory fetched out of the slipstream. Not too long after I painted it, it got sold, and in a one-of-a-kind way that paintings "are", can never be re-captured again. Of course like a grocer, an artist needs to sell his artwork to put bread on the table and keep the home fires burning. Still, selling your paintings is an odd business sometimes, and no matter how many years I've been doing this it seems sometimes between painting them and exhibiting them I never get to quite live with some of them "long enough". I don't have time to go into it here, but there have been many times where I've lived with them "raising them" them like a child and watching them develop and progress, and then I SELL THEM! Mein Gott! I've SOLD MY Fricken' CHILD! Now THERE'S a feelin' for ya!
At any rate in the painting, my mother's back is to the viewer as she's headed in between the white Baptist church and the Balano tenement where we used to live in Port Clyde. She's only a few steps from pulling open that storm door and putting the groceries down on the counter in the kitchen as she comes in, and closes the cold out. I think of the "doors" of things often, the way they open to things, or close out other things. I've done a lot of paintings of doors and windows, and being on the "outside looking in".
And follow.
Yesterday as I sat by the sea at Marshall Point Light while the sun set on the day, I got into a deeply grateful place inside of myself that I can only externally express ever so slightly through any amount of writing or painting pictures about it. I'm just another human being going about my business who sometimes has a low threshold for beauty, that's all. It's quite beautiful here along this part and parcel of the coastline and it doesn't matter how cold it is, or how it seems the weight of the world gets a little too heavy to shoulder sometimes, and you want it all to slip away for a little while. Take a walk, look around, be thankful to live in such a beautiful place with all it's changing light in the mornings, during the day, or in the evening. I know I never tire of it. I can look back over the day and say I had a great day painting. I got lost in it from time to time, which is the absolute best I can ask for. That and I learned a lot about how I'm going to proceed from here with the picture I'm working on, and in the next few I want to get started on here shortly. I am grateful I am supported to be able to do this; a lot of artists aren't in their lifetimes, most, really, that's just a fact.
So what's below is a poem I wrote to go with a picture I painted in a not-so-long-ago-once-upon-a-time that had my mother in it scuttling along in a winter flurry of snow and beating feet for home from the "Port Clyde General". It all came from a wisp of a memory fetched out of the slipstream. Not too long after I painted it, it got sold, and in a one-of-a-kind way that paintings "are", can never be re-captured again. Of course like a grocer, an artist needs to sell his artwork to put bread on the table and keep the home fires burning. Still, selling your paintings is an odd business sometimes, and no matter how many years I've been doing this it seems sometimes between painting them and exhibiting them I never get to quite live with some of them "long enough". I don't have time to go into it here, but there have been many times where I've lived with them "raising them" them like a child and watching them develop and progress, and then I SELL THEM! Mein Gott! I've SOLD MY Fricken' CHILD! Now THERE'S a feelin' for ya!
At any rate in the painting, my mother's back is to the viewer as she's headed in between the white Baptist church and the Balano tenement where we used to live in Port Clyde. She's only a few steps from pulling open that storm door and putting the groceries down on the counter in the kitchen as she comes in, and closes the cold out. I think of the "doors" of things often, the way they open to things, or close out other things. I've done a lot of paintings of doors and windows, and being on the "outside looking in".
A Port Clyde Memoir
A penny for your thoughts:
Daylight savings time comes around
Dark as a pocket before 4 o'clock by Christmas.
Snow and sleet mix --- stings the face
driven by the wind.
A plow truck goes rattling by
keeping the way clear for what little traffic comes through.
Port Clyde, main st.
My mother comes home from the store. . .
Balano tenement years ---
grocery bags sopping wet.
("Nealy's," we called it then, after Nealy Morse who owned it).
My mother would walk down through the village main st.,
puffing on her Camel cigarette. . .
she'd stand in the lee of the Advent Church
half way to and from "Nealy's".
Just another shadow now amongst many,
mixed with sleet and snow and the smell of salt sea air
on a winter's night.
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