In our discussions regarding our final landing spot, Mr. F and I have an ongoing dilemma. He is drawn to the drama of being surrounded by super high mountain peaks, while I feel most at home among the trees.
These paintings by Australian artist Shannon Smiley bring to mind the lushness of the forest canopies I am so drawn to.
The art world, like so many others, has its own language. It’s spoken by curators, gallerists, and art writers everywhere. As artist Raul Cordero puts it in describing his Transient Poetry series, it is “A language taught in art schools, heard at intellectual theoretical events or commercial art fairs; which many learn how to speak as a matter of survival..”
When we begin our journey as artists, all we want is to create, to express ourselves. We often simply pour out what is inside without a thought of how to explain it. Then we need to write an artist statement for a gallery, a grant proposal or website text and we find ourselves searching for a way to describe intellectually what is an emotional journey. Words often fail.
Mr. F and I have settled into our new spot for the next three months– Idaho Falls, Idaho. While it’s a huge change from living outside of San Francisco, you may be surprised at how excited we are to be here. The little town may not offer as much as we’ve had in Marin County, but we are less than two hours from Yellowstone & The Grand Tetons, which makes our little mountain loving hearts go pitter patter for sure!
Living in Northern California for the last year, we’ve found ourselves missing the impressive grandeur of tall, rocky peaks. Eastern Oregon artist James Lavadour captures the abstract grandeur of the mountainous landscapes we love so dearly.
We’ve talked to many people in our travels who feel a strong connection to the ocean, who feel the need to be near it always. The ocean has its undeniable beauty, for certain, but for us, it is in the mountains that our souls feel at home. To hike a ridge trail, looking out over endless peaks and valleys, to be above the clouds, watching birds soaring below and our spirits soaring with them. Lavadour’s paintings reveal in color and light that mysterious enchantment to be found among the mountains. I can’t wait to get out and feel their presence this weekend!
After spending too much time parked in front of the laptop this morning, I took a little break in our backyard. Just looking out the window, the landscape seems silent and still. But one step outside and the realization washes over me that every moment is teeming with sound and movement and life.
It’s happening just like that. We are so often caught up in our own microcosm that we forget there is a macro world happening all around us, in full sound, color, and light. As I type, the branches are softly swaying, acorn shells are dropping from a hungry squirrel’s mouth, clouds slowly pass, the neighbor’s chickens clucks are heard loudly through our little valley.
We’re so self-involved, it’s easy to let opportunities to see and relish the world around us pass by. Staring at our phones, working, going to the gym instead of going for a walk. These paintings by Australian artist Michael Muir drive home for me what a beautifully colorful world is awaiting. We just need to open our eyes to see it.
Mr. F and I are purists when it comes to spending time in the outdoors. We like to keep things simple and spend as much time exploring outside of camp as possible. For us, it isn’t about hanging out around a campground, it is about abiding in the wild and quiet places. Yosemite National Park is an incredible example of a scenic sanctuary, but with nearly 4 million visitors a year, it can be anything but quiet.
Yosemite is comprised of nearly 1200 square miles of wilderness so it just takes a bit of effort to escape the crowds and find some peace. Our last full day in Yosemite, we awoke long before sunrise, packed up for the day and headed out from Glacier Point to hike ten miles to Nevada Falls. Beginning in the mist and fog, we had the trail to ourselves for much of the morning. It is in those moments of solitude that we can truly appreciate the beauty and splendor that surrounds us. These are our favorite memories of wild places.
In her Yosemite series, Seattle artist Susanna Bluhm creates paintings based on her own experiences of the park, first from the eyes of a child, then through the eyes of an adult and mother.
We see the marks of human hand in Bluhm’s landscapes, graffiti-like marks and geometrics reminding us that we are ever encroaching on these wild temples. There is a reason, though, that we continue to return. These pristine spaces call to us, call to the untamed spirit that dwells deep inside, the one buried beneath the worries and wires of modern life.
Our time here in the Bay Area is getting short. As of today, we have less than a month left in Marin County. We’ve tried to take full advantage of the area’s beauties, but every time we venture out for some peace and quiet, something gets in our way. All the other humans.
These paintings by Melbourne artist Kate Shaw, with their layers of ink, glitter, and powder, speak to the way we as humans are corrupting the natural world we claim to love and appreciate so much.
Mr. F and I don’t want to come off as crotchety old so-and-so’s ( although, maybe we are! ), perhaps it’s just that our expectations of what it means to spend a day in wilderness areas are a bit high. We want to see and experience renowned beauty, but in places that are so heavily populated, the enjoyment seems to come with a price. The best thing about these places is that they should be refuges of peace, but it’s hard to commune with your thoughts as Rhianna is blasted down the trail. While Shaw’s work deals more perhaps with chemical devastation and destruction, I feel like there is a spiritual decimation happening, too. Or maybe we just need to find a cabin in the woods for a while.
We have a tendency to make snap judgements, to see in monochromes. You believe “A”, so you must be “B”. We quickly demonize and categorize without knowing the full story.
In her monochromatic pastel and ink drawings, artist Mila Libman finishes with what is so often our beginning, a distillation of an impression.
How often do we refuse to see past our initial perception, to give another the opportunity to be understood and appreciated? Social media these days is a firestorm of quick judgements often based on very little truth. Perhaps we have only ourselves to blame, selves that are so wrapped up in our surfaces that we fail to allow our depths to be explored.
Very early tomorrow morning, I’ll be at the San Francisco airport. I’ll board a flight that will take me home. I’m going back to Florida to see my mom, for what I really hope isn’t, but could very well be, the last time. She’s losing her battle with cancer and all treatments have been halted. We don’t know how long she has– could be as little as two months or as much as a year. Every time I go back to Florida, it feels less and less like home to me. And once she isn’t there, I suspect that feeling might just be gone for good.
Since marrying Mr. F and leaving Florida, my heart has been torn between here and there. But home has shifted now. It isn’t my hometown, it isn’t even where my family is. It is wherever I’m making a life with my husband. And these days, that is wherever we happen to be. In each place we find ourselves, I put a lot of energy into making it feel less like a temporary landing spot and more like a home. It’s something I learned from my mom, this nesting thing.
When I think about her back in Florida, I picture her at home, surrounded by her favorite things– the teapots she collects, my grandmother’s paintings. Her home, the house she’s lived in for over twenty years with my stepfather, felt like my home, not just because I lived there for eight years but because she was there. Once she is gone, it will just be a house again, filled with her things.
The goodbye is coming, but it won’t be forever. I take comfort in knowing that she’ll be free of pain and in my belief that we’ll see each other again. But in the mean time, I’ll go home to her and then I’ll bring her back home with me in my heart.
Edited to add– I won’t be posting to the blog while I’m in Florida. Freelance work has kept me super busy the last two weeks and my spare time has been spent with Mr. F. I’ll be posting daily quotes on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram, as well as sharing a quick art find that resonates for me that day. Will be back blogging in a few weeks! Catch up on miles of artsy finds in the archives!
The paintings featured today are by Philadelphia artist Anne Canfield. To see more of her work, please visit her website.
Before Mr. F and I began to travel, I rarely gave thought to the energy found in certain places. Sure I knew the intensity of Manhattan was vastly different from the quiet pace of life in the Smoky Mountains. But once we started traveling, I became much more sensitive to each place’s energy. In his photographs, LA artist David Benjamin Sherry seems to distill the aura of each place down to color.
As a painter, it’s something that I’ve given a lot of thought to. While each new place definitely has a different pace and feel, it’s interesting to me to think about how that might translate into color. You may think well, that’s easy, trees and water = green and blue. But there can be an underlying feeling to a place, whether a warmth or mystery, that might make it feel differently than it presents visually. I haven’t decided yet the colors of the Bay Area.. give me a few more months, ha! What color is your landscape?
Mr. F and I have an ongoing difference of opinion. When we’re hiking, he is all about big, open, impressive views. I like hikes that take me deep into the forest where the light does magical things among a myriad of textures. But no matter the view, the point is to get out and just see! These paintings by Christopher Ryan Russell take us down both paths towards divine prospects.
On occasion, Mr. F and I both get what we want– a journey that takes us deep down into the forest and then up and out into an amazing landscape view. Russell’s work well represents that dichotomous marriage between what lies beneath and what is to be found above. One would not be nearly as thrilling without the journey to or from the other.
