"In The Shrubbery at Ebey Island," acrylic on 20"x24" canvas
This painting will be donated to a Silent Auction & Benefit taking place in March for a young lady who was diagnosed with Stage 4 Colon Cancer. Thankfully, they’ve already reached 3/4 of their goal of $25,000 for the medical bills. With all of the things people are donating, we should be able to push the goal over the top!
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I ordered a Latte Grande and found a small table by the counter facing the door. I didn’t like the table–it was too close to the counter and set in the middle of the room. But all of the wall tables were taken and I couldn’t hold a hot drink on my lap in a big, comfy chair. So I sufficed in spite of the old guy whose motorcycle helmet was perched next to him. He faced into the aisle and sat sideways on his chair as if living the rebel life even in a benign, genial atmosphere. He had no compunction about puffing his chest toward the room and stretching his legs into the walkway instead of tucking them under the table. Across from him sat an Asian man, immersed in his computer, smiling, and typing at a feverish pace.
From my table I could only see the motorcycle guy and a large, green, logo, which hung on the window and faced in. It was a graphic image of a woman with long, flowing hair and a star atop her head as if the coffee had just given her a great idea. She pointed to her head with crustacean-like hands to emphasize that fact. She could have been a mermaid. She was vintage and modern and mythical all at once, and I found myself continually looking back to figure her out.
As I sipped the aromatic espresso with thick, milk foam, customers began filtering into the shop, walking past, and forming a line in back of me. I found that when I looked at the logo lady, I didn’t mind the crowds nearly as much.
The logo, I found out later, had been in effect since May 2011. She wore a crown–a coffee queen, I mused. She represented a multitude of women, having been drawn with a nebulous collection of features so that every race and ethnicity was represented in some way. Layers of ripples cascaded into long, flowing locks of hair that fell to her sides and construed her figure as thin to heavy depending upon your desire or imagination. Her eyes were neither round nor almond but in between. Her nasal openings were visible but the bridge was missing, so she could have had a flat nose or a pointed one. Her lips were of medium fullness. She represented every woman. Even me, I reckoned.
The man with the motorcycle helmet continued to face the man on the computer who’d been smiling. I wondered if he was still smiling, but he was around the corner and out of my view. I looked at the logo lady instead and sipped my coffee. The motorcycle man was not drinking coffee, a notion I grew uncomfortable with–that he would sit there staring out in such an assertive manner without a cup of something; meanwhile, I was expending reams of energy to avoid him and his gaze. It didn’t seem right. What did the coffee queen think? Before glancing at the coffee queen’s image, I looked up to the ceiling and was surprised to find that it was two stories high; its exposed pipes and lumber were all painted with matte black. They went to a great deal of effort to do that–as they apparently did to create the perfect logo. Then I put the lid on my coffee and left.
[Photo: Zemanta]
© J Reynolds Dail 2012
"Snow Robin" Acrylic on 20"x24" canvas
“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
–Lou Holtz
Three Ducks II
Watercolour pencils and pen on 12″x18″ paper
© 2011 All Rights Reserved
“A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.”
Joyce A. Myers
"Dad at La Conner"
Acrylic on canvas 11″x14″
© 2011 All Rights Reserved
“Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.”
Marsha Norman
‘“Three Ducks on a Walk”
Acrylic on 11″x14″ canvas
© 2011 All Rights Reserved
“If you keep your feathers well oiled
the water of criticism will run off as from a duck’s back.”
Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards
"Pink Rose"
Acrylic on canvas 11″x14″
© 2011 All Rights Reserved
“Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.”
W. Somerset Maugham
I know right where to find you and when. You quietly nibble something from the ground that has mesmerized you–something so tiny it’s practically invisible to my naked eye. I hoist the dog under my arm for tranquility’s sake, but you remain tethered to the grass, pecking, unappreciative of my efforts. Creeping through your midst, I take 30 photos while you remain oblivious to us in your drunken patch. My dog’s nose and eyebrows wiggle as he breathes in your feathers and excrement. This is his poppy field. So long for today, my dover of ducks.
I haven’t written much in a few months. In fact, ever since I took that acrylic painting workshop a few months ago, it seems that all I want to do is paint and not write. I still write snippets but my heart is in painting. I don’t think it’s a phase, but then again I never know these things in advance. It’s just that it hit me so hard. I’ve even built myself a “Like’ page on Facebook, and I never did that as a writer.
I want to improve and be able to paint hands. So far, I have had to cover up two pairs of hands in two different portraits because I couldn’t get it right. In one, I placed a blanket over part of the hand, and in the other, I painted gloves where the hands should have been. It was believable only in that it was an outdoor shot and the person was already bundled up in overcoat and scarf.
Oils might be easier, because you can massage the oils for days to get it just right. With acrylics they dry in a few minutes, then you’re stuck. When you go over it, it becomes thick and overdone. I am on the look out for a portraiture workshop where I can concentrate on faces, hands, and feet.
I majored in Art in college in the early ’80s, because I followed my heart. I then proceeded to kick myself for decades afterward when I could never make a proper living. The Graphics field had only just begun. Prior to that, in my junior college, I majored in Advertising Art, pre-Graphics, where you worked with a T-square, cut and paste, and hand-drawn illustration. But I didn’t have a plan as to how I would really make ends meet once I got out of school.
It recently dawned on me, after taking the painting workshop, that since the time of art college, I’d been forcing my brain to work on the side that it didn’t particularly enjoy, the left side. My stint in Nursing school during my mid-40s crisis was the breaking point. Having never studied Chemistry or advanced Maths, I found myself in a constant state of high stress, trying to memorize everything on short-term memory. It took me ages to get over the fact that I didn’t pass the third quarter of the two-year accelerated RN program.
Needless to say, no other job that I’ve taken has been artsy enough to give me a sense of pleasure in my work. So when I started painting again, a joy that had lain dormant was reawakened, and I began to channel myself as that 20-year-old art student, living from the correct, right side of her brain where things clicked. As I drew, painted, viewed art pieces, and wandered through art stores, a feeling of sheer happiness came over me. The world was right. In time that contentment became a chronic state. And how I welcomed it.
I tried not to lament of the time I’d spent not syncing with my brain, not doing the things I should have done over the last 30-something years. But maybe I really did do everything I was supposed to do after all.
The rituals of the leaves
Between two rows of trees losing orange-pink leaves,
In haste I stepped on the fallen.
I sidestepped with the balls of my feet,
When I realized that it was no ordinary street.
Pastels spiraled down to their fate,
A bed of soft gnashing grass or concrete,
Atop one another with outstretched arms.
Heaved sighs or curled up in surrender.
Billowy fluff on a drainage pipe waited,
Increasing discomfort in numbers ill-fated.
Sidewalk buffers they were trampled, crushed, and soiled,
In sacrificial plumes on Saturday.
The leaves fell all night mounting into the ‘morn,
Two hundred twenty-seven from 2:00 until 1:00.
Then another 274 fell from 1:00 until 2:00,
And I counted them all in mourning.
I should have enjoyed the extra hour’s sleep,
But instead was besieged by the rituals of the leaves.
So to avoid further grief under shedding trees with leaves,
I shall instead count merry, woolly sheep.
© 2011
~~
FALLBACK – by m.medler copyright 2011
