Description:
Jawing with Javelinas: Complaining about the Weather and Painting on Location.. Through the Creosote Forest to a Ladies Luncheon (Big Bend Style).. GETTING OLD: Crumbling Adobe and A Contented Horse.. Here Be Mystery (the Marfa Lights and Things Unknown)..
Contents:
Jawing with Javelinas: Complaining about the Weather and Painting on Location
Whether I'm painting or not, I'm passionate about nature, time spent outdoors. Two hundred years ago, I would've enjoyed being a mountain man, except I wouldn't have been able to support myself because I wouldn't have had it in my heart to trap furry critters for hat material. Certainly, I could've followed Lewis and Clark across the country. My (very distant) Native American ancestors would be proud of tbe soft steps I take across leaves, of the instinctive prayers I whisper over dead things, of the reverence I feel when I stand atop a mountain.
I'd paint on location all the time but for one thing: I don't like being uncomfortable. Call me a woose, but I don't do temperature extremes, full sun, rain, snow, or (especially) wind. I admire more hardy plein air painters, those so dedicated to their art that they ignore gale force winds sandblasting dirt into their oil paints, pastelists with frostbitten fingers, watercolorists who cheerfully work raindrops into their washes. But I think if God had meant for me to be miserable when I paint, He would've staked me out in Houston or Dallas instead of steering me to the arid mountains of West Texas, where we scarcely even run our air conditioner. (Nothing against Houston, or even Dallas. If green is what turns you on, somewhere humid is the place for you-- our natural color out here is brown. I think brown is beautiful, but brown isn't becoming on everybody.) So I have a warm, dry studio, and I use it year-round. But whatever the season, I try not to let perfect painting days slip past without going out on location. Painting weather calls to me like a Siren to a sailor.
I keep a Soltek easel (I love this easel for plein air painting, and highly recommend it) packed with pastels and pads of Wallis pastel paper. All I have to do is grab it and go. Once I'm in the locale I want to paint, I search for shade, and for snakes. Once shaded in a snake-free zone, I seek a level spot. Shade is the most critical, though. I've set up on slopes so steep, I had to hang onto my easel as I painted, but at least I didn't have to fight the sun while dodging serpents. I'm not a total woose. Any other comfort, such as a rock to spread my paints on is gravy. I even handle biting insects pretty well, once I'm working. Once I'm working, I toughen up.
I hate the wind, though. And we've had wind constantly this spring. The old-timers say this is the windiest spring they've seen in twenty years, and that usually, a windy spring means a rainy summer. A rainy summer would be good, so I hate to complain too much about the wind. But it has seriously limited my plein air painting, and I've gotten a little claustrophobic in the studio.
Painting on location is an exercise in discipline. It challenges an artist to be extremely selective and very decisive. Like any discipline, it must be honed and practiced. The less I paint outdoors, the harder it is the next time. I hate the wind.
One afternoon, the wind calmed. I squared my shoulders, strapped my easel to my back and started hiking before the wind picked up, as forecast. I didn't have long to paint so I didn't hike far and didn't get too picky about a subject: I chose a scraggly tree. The tree was only just so interesting, and the wind was gathering steam, so I taped a 4" x 6' piece of paper to my easel. Not much time, not much interest, not much paper.
I whipped out a likeness, didn't like it, brushed it off and did another. And another. An hour later, I had nothing to show for my efforts but a stiff back, a smudgy scrap of paper and dirty fingers.
And I felt seriously wonderful, the way you feel when you spend quality time in fresh air and crunchy leaves with a wasp or two circling your head. I didn't even mind the gusty wind in my face.
I wriggled the easel, safe in its backpack now, onto my sore shoulders. Then, I trudged downhill, empty-handed and exhausted from my efforts. As I scanned for snakes along the gametrail I followed, a plate-sized crescent of white caught my attention. I bent to examine the sun-bleached mandible of a javelina, one of those hog-like creatures who snort through our world on a fairly regular basis. Tusks and teeth intact, the complete jawbone was a museum specimen. I wondered how the beast had died. Old age? Predator? Disease? Carefully, I carried the mandible home with me. I'm not sure why, but it seemed like that's what I should do with it.
It was a hugely successful painting day. The next day was very windy. I started a studio painting. As I worked on that complex landscape from photo references in the comfort of my studio, my fingers remembered painting that nondescript tree. That day's studio landscape ultimately turned out so nice, I entered it in a national competition. You can't convince me the teensy tree sketches that don't even exist anymore and the javelina mandible propped outside my door aren't integral to that exhibit-worthy studio pastel.
The thing about painting, any kind of painting, is this: Creating is a process, not a goal. It's about the journey, not the destination. That's easier to intuit when you're standing on a mountainside (watching for snakes). And if you happen across a javelina jaw as you stagger home under the weight of your easel?
Words just can't describe that kind of trip.
Check out some Lindy Severns paintings done on location. Visit Old Spanish Trail Studio.com now!
Through the Creosote Forest to a Ladies Luncheon (Big Bend Style)
For years, I had neither the time nor the inclination to plan my day (any day) around lunching with other ladies. Mainly, I had no time. Nor did my friends. We had, unwittingly sped straight from our starry-eyed, uncomplicated young lives to raising families; starting second or third careers; caring for aging parents; volunteering to do anything even remotely associated with garnering stars for our heavenly crowns. We, who as twenty-somethings enjoyed mornings of golf followed by white wine luncheons eventually found ourselves over-committed, over-worked and underpaid, slowly gaining weight while too frazzled by life to meet over salads at an appointed time and place. Taking an hour out of my day to socialize over lunch wasn't an option I considered sane.
Back then, I was flying all over the country, dining in five star restaurants--or, more often, scarfing down peanut butter crackers chased with lukewarm coffee and hoping that wasn't my meal for the day. A good, if rare day during those years involved being home at noon to open a can of soup then eat it on the sunporch with cats underfoot rubbing against my legs. Slowing down to a simpler life was inevitable, but old habits are hard broken. It's taken me half a decade to realize as long as I'm taking in the people and the places around me as I draw each breath, I'm hardly squandering my time.
My friend Roxa called (seems like it was about this time a year ago) one day to ask if I'd accompany her to lunch with one of her old girlfriends the next day. At her ranch "down the road". I'm always honored to be included in get-togethers among old friends willing to pull another chair up to the table. I'd met this friend, liked and admired her.
I accepted before Roxa listed her caveats: be ready to leave at 7 am (for lunch!? I'm normally still too sleepy to sip coffee at 7 am!); wear sturdy hiking shoes; bring a couple of warm jackets; I'd need a flashlight and at least a gallon of water. Oh, and a camera. And some food, too. In case. Just cheese and crackers, maybe a peanut butter sandwich. Nuts. Fruit. In case.
I mentally added a gun. And extra ammo. In case. My nimble mind had already leapt to the realization that if we needed survival gear, we wouldn't have cell phone service the whole way.
We left at 7. I took a thermos of coffee along. And toilet paper. In case.
Roxa explained that she didn't anticipate problems, but....
We headed south. We stopped, often, to take pictures. Roxa does a line of notecards with Big Bend cactus, flowers, landscapes which she markets through our online store at Old Spanish Trail Studio. I keep my Canon Digital Elph and my Canon SLR close and ready to capture the landscape of my next painting, and for photo references of specific plants, skies, rocks. We passed a lot of plants, skies, rocks. A lot. By 10:30, we'd stopped more times than a Greyhound bus taking the scenic route across the nation.
We hit the blooming ocotillo flats. I mean that literally. If you've ever come upon a sweep of tall, spindly ocotillo sprouting red blossoms ten feet above the white alkali desert, you'll understand what I'm saying. Every blessed ocotillo demanded its own photo from each of the three cameras on board. Past the ocotillo came the orangy-green creosote flats spotted with bravely blooming cactus and Indian paintbrush.
We arrived, late for lunch.
A leisurely tour of the ranch house and its surroundings, a luncheon of shrimp salad and homemade rolls, lingering long after over iced tea and conversation consumed a couple of enjoyable hours. Then, it was time to head back.
By now, it was mid-afternoon. We were tired, and there wasn't as much chatter in the truck, but the silence was companionable and introspective at the same time. Roxa pointed out the dry riverbed as we crossed it. That unassuming draw and its companion down the way, filled with runoff from a rain, would've stranded us until the water subsided. Maybe a day. Maybe less. It didn't rain. We didn't have a flat. Lunch was satisfying and the tea, cool. We didn't have to dip into our rations. We passed only one other vehicle the whole time we were off the main road and only a couple of trucks while on the main road. Those we passed, we knew. It wasn't necessary to shoot anybody. I didn't have to hike, but the shoes came in handy as I scrambled up and down rocks taking pictures. Roxa dropped me off at home at suppertime. It was a hard day, but a hard day to end, too.
The friendships I sustained during those busy years of work were and are valuable ones, no less so than the new ones I'm making during these days I call "my own". The difference is in the scenery, and in the silence, and in the sense of place that overrides the urgencies of time. Lunching at the newest, trendiest restaurant dictates conversation. Busy-ness. Hurry. Lunching at a ranch three hours from anywhere, being prepared to survive in transit, devoting a whole day to the adventure is different. You must like not only the conversation of friends--you must like yourself enough to appreciate the silence of an unhurried walk through a cresote forest.
SILENT WALK THRU A CREOSOTE FOREST 14" x 18" pastel by Lindy C Severns
about $1800, once framed available at Kiowa Gallery, Alpine TX April 2008
GETTING OLD: Crumbling Adobe and A Contented Horse
Not all southwestern architecture is adobe. Still, buildings made mud and straw brick define the southwest. You find old adobes in the most picturesque of settings. And the clay-like qualities of adobe brick allow the builder artistic license to create softly shaped meandering walls, rooms that defy a carpenter's square to constrain them into boring cubes. You don't see "perfect" adobes. That's one of the things that makes them so interesting. Adobe is a living, breathing thing, an elemental part of its surroundings, a landscape in itself.
I love to paint old adobes. For one, they generally occur in locales I love. You find old adobes in quiet places set back from the bustle of city life; you see them on protected hillsides or in remote corners, intuitively comfortable spots where someone once sculpted a retreat from long days likely spiced with hard work and no small dose of danger. Another aspect of adobe's appeal is that it's forever changing, trying its best to return to the earth from which it came. Cared for, adobe mellows gracefully. But it needs constant attention, loving, hands-on upkeep. These days, we're mostly too busy for that. Too modern. We like our corners square and our walls, permanent and invincible. Many strong, well-maintained adobes I passed as a child have since reduced themselves to crumbling walls surrounding tumbled roofs. Picturesque? Maybe. But also, sad.
The luckiest adobes have assumed second and third and fourth lives. Generations of family occupy many old adobes; laughing children run tiny hands along smooth, cool walls laboriously plastered by the hands of their great-grandmothers. Newcomers with time and energy and (mainly) money treasure the old adobes they purchase and repair.
And weary animals find shade in abandoned rooms that artists stop to paint.
GETTING OLD a 9" x 12" pastel by Lindy C Severns
available at Kiowa Gallery Alpine Tx March 15 2008 about $825 framed
I guess falling apart as we age can open new doors. Or windows. (Or an entire roof one day!)
Here Be Mystery (the Marfa Lights and Things Unknown)
Living in a tourist destination means we frequently get company, friends and relations who count on us to show them the sights. The trick, of course, is to intuit which sights they want to see. We recently hosted two sort-of-adult nephews in a month. Separately. (I cooked more than is my custom.) We wanted to show them around, but these six-footer-plus brothers are not so alike that the same Far West Texas tour would serve to satisfy both.
For wannabe writer Daniel, the elder of the two young men, hiking and the nature tour followed by lots of hearty food sufficed. Dan, a recent graduate of Texas A & M University was en route to Terlingua to report for temporary employment as a guide for river raft trips on the Rio Grande. (BBRT: Big Bend Raft Trips, pronounced "Be-Bert". Ask for Daniel Nammour, and please, tip him generously. Hurry, though. before he bails in search of new material to write about.)
We hadn't been around younger nephew Steven as much. What could we find to do with him? What would we even talk about? Steven (sometime actor, sometime scholar, still searching for his niche but rather convinced it he won't find it on the river or living in a tent outside Terlingua, TX like his brother) required structure. We hadn't been up to MacDonald Observatory in awhile. We did the day tour. No star party, but hey, we didn't expect to see stars at noon. They do a great sunspot and solar flare show, though, and the drive up Mount Locke is worth the time and diesel spent getting there.
That still left the evening to fill. We bundled man and beast into the truck, then drove the Scenic Loop into the sunset. Somewhere around the old Rockpile, it was getting dark so we U-turned back, then took 505 to Marfa. (Actors love Marfa.) Which inevitably led to, "Let's go see the Marfa Lights."
I've seen these unexplained "ghost lights" several times. When I was a girl, we'd all bundle up (the high desert gets pretty darn chilly after all those solar flares retire for the night) then drive the lonely highway between Marfa and Alpine to see if the lights felt like greeting us. Daddy always knew where to pull off the two-lane road. He'd park, then my sister and I would crane for a view out the car window. "There!" someone would say. And sure enough, colored lights would be dancing and floating across the dark mountains. They'd disappear. Or they'd split. Sometimes, lights approached as if to chase us. Ooooo.
Seeing the Marfa Lights wasn't a given. Sometimes, the night remained dark. On those instances, Daddy would finally, reluctantly turn the key in the ignition. But usually, there were lights. I don't know why they appear. I just know they do. So do many other people who've driven that road.
Native Americans reported the ghost lights of the Marfa plains long before highways and airplanes came into play as explanations. Today, it's important to remember there's nothing man-made out there. Lights appear, and just as mysteriously, disappear. And that stretches even a child's imagination: neither Mommy nor Daddy can explain away those lights. Nor can they summon them. We often saw the lights. We didn't know why they appeared or why they refused to. Where they came from. Where they went.
Scientists haven't been able to explain the Marfa Lights. But as a girl, I saw them more than a few times. I wasn't sure what I was seeing, but even as a kid, I never once thought the lights came from ghostly fires. (Why would ghosts need campfires? Do people think they toast s'mores out there, or what?) And I don't blame the mystery lights for never showing their colors on nights my favorite skeptic, Jim is along. (I think he's actually beginning to hope for a sighting now, but so far, no joy. He's never seen Big Foot, either.)
Since I've reached adulthood (a state of being which spans slightly more than one decade) The State of Texas, in all its wisdom, has alloted bags of money to build The Marfa Lights Viewing Station. It's lovely. There's this big wide pull-off, a motorhome mecca. And a building. Brick walls, a viewing scope, restrooms. The real kicker is the sign. It states (I kid you not) that the lights are better seen after dark.
Oh, my. What if they hadn't erected that sign? Picture multitudes of tourists crowding into the designated area (sticking to the brick walls, hovering near the rest rooms, dodging rattlesnakes), all shielding their sun-glassed eyes from those pesky solar flares. All hoping for a magnificent high noon light show.
Thank goodness for that sign. Heavens, that stretch of highway is 22 miles long. Without that sign, how would we know where to park to view something that doesn't always appear, a sometimes subtle phenomenon no one can explain?
Perhaps I'm being too hard on eager tourists and the helpful highway department. But we West Texans grow up assuming that lights can best be seen in the dark. And my Daddy, who wasn't even known for his navigational finesse, never needed a sign to find the best location to park and view the Marfa Lights. He didn't Google it. He spent a fair amount of time talking to other people and a few evenings, searching.
Perhaps, in our continuing, insatiable quest for definable truth and concrete knowledge, we are losing something valuable. We are wandering less on our own, seeking more adventures under bright lights and surrounded by crowds of strangers who read the same informative signs we do.
Are we losing our respect for mystery?
Far West Texas was originally mapped by Spanish explorers as "El Desplobado", the unexplored. This was the Texas map-maker's version of those charts of the deep Atlantic that noted "Here be Monsters". No one suggested the bravest of sailors shouldn't go there, just that they should keep their eyes open and accept that they might spy a sea monster or two. No one back then supposed that photographing or analyzing a sample of sea monster DNA was the determinate factor for confirming a monster sighting. You saw monsters, or you didn't. Who's to say why the monsters were or weren't swimming that day. It was a mystery. It remained a mystery.
Our highly educated friend and pastor Matt Miles (Fort Davis Presbyterian Church) frequently answers some of the intellectual puzzles we Presbyterians ponder by saying God is bigger and smarter than us (okay, Matt says it better but that's the gist of it). He sometimes assures us we don't have to know such and such. Or, possibly, aren't meant to know. Even, Can't know. (Ouch!) I find that freedom not to know both comforting and challenging. Take, for instance, the Marfa Lights. I know they exist. I vaguely want to know why. (What if there really are a bunch of ghosts out there toasting marshmallows over campfires?) But I also savor the mystery of not knowing, and of not caring why I don't know.
I don't need a sign to tell me there are lights out there anymore than I need someone to tell me there is a God.
Glimpsing mysterious lights, the mossy fins of sea monsters, the grace of God in daily life is what differentiates Life from all the tourist attractions we've constructed. Half the fun comes in learning just where to pull over and park. And then, the trick is to be very still and to watch for what happens next. Even if you don't see what you're looking for, you'll inevitably see something you didn't expect to see. Something that isn't on any sign.
We didn't see any lights that night. But we laughed a lot, and we got to know our nephew Steven a little better.
CATHEDRAL OF THE WEST a 12" x 18" pastel by Lindy C Severns $1900 SOLD at auction
donated to Museum of the Big Bend's Trappings of Texas Auction 2008
Another day: We pulled off the road at the Marfa Lights Viewing Station to take pictures.
It was daylight.
No lights appear in this painting, no matter how long you look at it. But I know they exist. There may also be fossilized sea monsters embedded in those cliffs, but I can't vouch for that. Maybe you should check it out for yourself? And bring marshmallows. Just in case.
Leaving Home
Our good friend and neighbor Boogie lives and ranches miles from the nearest paved road to anywhere. At eighty-something, she's still going strong, although she would dispute that statement, protesting that her eyesight isn't what it once was and that she can't lift bags of feed into her pickup anymore. She drinks beer on occasion, smokes every chance she gets, eats like one of those colorful, flitty little finches she reminds me of.
And she's taught me a lot.
Boog pulls no punches. She likes you, or she doesn't. She doesn't squander a great deal of the time that remains her on folks she doesn't like. If she doesn't want to do something, she tells you, straight out. No pussy-footing around your feelings, no glib excuses. "Yes" is an answer. "No" is another answer. There's a choice. She uses it. Wisely. Therein lies a lesson for those of us who tiptoe around the feelings of others, often to our own detriment.
This tough-as-Longhorn-jerky rancher-lady with sun-freckled skin lives in a nice house with a nice dog whose hobby is biting men who strike her as suspicious or downright shady. She loves children, but has none of her own so she offers support, love and encouragement to those of others. Petite, straight-spined, her hair styled in a cut that a twenty-something would covet, she wears campy hats, eyelet blouses, scuffed boots. She dresses "just darling", as my grandmother liked to say. I feel confident that since Boog doesn't indulge in the Internet, that statement about being darling won't get back to her. But she really is. Darling. With a mind that rivals the computer she doesn't use. I wish I shared some of her genes.
The cut-through to Marfa closed several years back. Now she drives forty minutes, one way, to get her mail. Most days, she spends alone. No one who knows her would consider her a hermit, a recluse, or the least bit "odd". She's simply Boogie, a woman who has made a success of her life and who continues to enrich the lives of all the folks she bothers with, not limited to but including even the few shady characters her dog doesn't bite.
Once, when we were planning a trip to Lubbock, Jim called to ask her if she needed anything from "The Land of Stores" (as cities are both affectionately and disdainfully referred to around here, according to how badly you need something from them). Boogie thought a minute. "You know," she said, "I can't think of a thing I can't get around here. And if I've done without it for three days, why would I need it?"
Talk about a lesson in consumerism.
When Boogie drives out to the highway on her dirt ranch road, her pickup disappears in a cloud of dust.
I hope the lifestyle she represents so elegantly never does.
LEAVING HOME a 14" x 18" pastel on archival Wallis pastel paper by Lindy C Severns
$1800 available at the Museum of the Big Bend's
TRAPPINGS OF TEXAS 2008 Invitational Cowboy Gear and Fine Western Art Show and Sale
opening February 28- April 2008 Alpine, TX
I thought a lot about Boogie as I painted this from several photos my husband Jim shot after visiting her.
Reaching the pavement isn't always what we should shoot for.
Painting at Point of Rocks: Autumn Marks the Overland Trail
En plein air: My easel set up at Point of Rocks on Texas Hwy 166 outside Fort Davis
Sometimes, the landscapes most familiar to an artist are neglected in favor of more exotic locales.
It's the artist's version of that ancient saw known to every cow. The one about the grass being significantly greener in the neighbor's field...the greater the distance away from the home pasture, the greener that grass.
When I lived in Lubbock, I had an excuse for painting only scenes from our travels. Here in the wild Davis Mountains of Far West Texas, there's no excuse for wandering too far afield just to find a worthy painting subject. (The real problem here is narrowing down the landscape, condensing it into a finite number of paintings! It's a great problem to have.) So when I received my invitation to The Museum of the Big Bend's annual Trappings of Texas show, I decided to specialize in the familiar. This year, all three of my entries will feature landscapes within range of a rifle shot of a formation known around here as "Point of Rocks". And Point of Rocks is what I see from my living room window every sunrise.
Point of Rocks has quite a history. Indians built sheltered fires there. A landmark on the Old Spanish Trail (the geography-based name of my studio and website) later known as the Overland-Butterfield trail, Point of Rocks was one of the official stagecoach rest stops scattered along Texas Highway 166, now known as the Davis Mountain Scenic Loop. My family used to picnic there -- I'm fifteen years older than my brother, and Point of Rocks picnics are one of the few family vacation memories we share in common. Recognizable for its wall of towering, tumbling boulders, it's visible from a great distance.
The roadside park there makes it a convenient plein air painting site. (No hiking required, level ground, a stone wall to hold my pastel boxes, public access, shade.) We drove up in the truck, but it didn't stretch my imagination much to envision stepping out of a stagecoach or hobbling a Comanche pony there.
For about a week last November, I eyed the site for its potential as a pastel. (This was the first of my Trappings paintings, done between my husband's two hip replacement surgeries. I needed to get outside and paint something, anything! Jim needed fresh air and the dog needed to prowl new territory.) I pass Point of Rocks several times a week. There are lots of paintings to be found there. But what grabbed me that time was a solitary yellow sumac shouting color at the base of the rocks. (West Texas isn't exactly known for our fall color.) On closer inspection, I spied pockets of red oak lining dark boulders like sprinkles on cupcakes. It wasn't until I was unloading my easel and pastels that I saw the dried white stalks of sotol blooms marking the rock base just beyond the golden sumac. And I had my composition.
Because I'm at my core a risk-taker, I pick subjects rather intuitively, then hope for the best. So I make a lot of composition mistakes that I must later correct. (Better to paint and perish than never to paint at all.) In this case, the two areas that interested me vied for honors as my focal point. On one side of the squarish 12" x 16" paper I had with me were the white stalks, on the other, the brilliant sumac. I started my painting not knowing where I'd go with that. Also, the rocks ran straight up between the two foliage subjects, straight into a lone pinon that was solid in its greeness. Drawing the viewer's eye straight up the middle of the painting isn't as interesting as weaving it from one of the quadrants. Big blocks of anything solid aren't very interesting. And I had only two hours until the sun would go away, leaving me inspired but in the dark. I ignored all these left-brained concerns and got to painting, fast as my fingers would move.
Alcohol on Nupastel wash sketch on Kitty Wallis museum grade pastel paper
The fastest way I've found to get something workable on paper outdoors is to do a loose line sketch of the major shapes using Nupastel sticks. (Extremely hard pastels which don't fill the tooth of the surface.) I use the local color for each object, not that the color will show when I'm done but because it gives me a sort of color map that I use to keep my place in a complex landscape. I see a line of green and know its a tree shape; I see blue and know its a distant mountain. And so on.) We're talking minutes.
I then take a cheap brush dipped in rubbing alcohol and paint over the Nupastel, which turns the powdered pigment into paint which won't blend into subsequent layers of pastel and get lost. (It's my map, remember.) In this case, I also bleed alcohol-color into broad areas to indicate shadows I don't want to forget, and the yellow tree form. Alcohol dries almost immediately, so there's no waiting time before I switch to my usual soft pastels. It's only a map. But its someplace to start, and should a sudden storm blow in and send me packing, I have something on paper (canvas) that, adding a reference photo, I can work from, remembering the feel of the locale.
In the above stage, I follow my line sketch with a filled pastel sketch: the darkest darks and lightest lights are indicated as well as the object forms. My color palette emerges. I have a landscape I feel I could walk through.
(I finished the sky before I did the rest, then stuck with what I had there-- otherwise, the approaching sunset will change my palette again and again. The sky defines the ground for me.)
Because of the jumbled rocks in this painting, there was more drawing early on than I usually do. I smdged in the sky, danced sky colors through the rocks as shadow areas. Using Sennilier dark browns and violets, I indicate my darkest areas. I paint very heavily into my surface, so I don't like to use ultra-soft Sennilier pastels except as accents, as they fill my surface too quickly. But the darks are creamy and deep, and there is a place for that in rocky crevasses like these.
A detail of the block-in stage of my pastel. (Note the sotol stalks-- I don't want to forget those.)
I paint with bold, loose strokes. I can refine the painting later.
This is as far as I got before darkness drove me to pack it up and go home.
The main things I wanted to say in this painting are here: the sumac sings color, the rocks brood with shapes and shadows, the white stalks seem to mark the trail for the next guy to pass this way. There's unexpected color in this old place. I could stop here. I think about stopping here. But the painting is still a mish-mash that doesn't invite the viewer in, and the two sides still vie for the position as focal point. It's several objects on paper. Not a painting.
I finish this in my studio, blurring the background rocks, defining the foreground. The sotol wins out. I love the original color of the sumac, but for composition's sake, it mute it slightly, giving the sotol stalks center stage. Another day, I might've done the opposite. That's why art is called "creating".
Out of a perverse sense of place, I rebel at artistic composition and don't move the pine tree, even though it is almost dead center. It's a very old tree, and I want to image a Comanche would recognize this very spot on this ancient trail. Color marked the trail for me that day. I'll never see it quite the same again.
"AUTUMN MARKS THE OVERLAND TRAIL" a 12" x 16" pastel by Lindy C Severns
copyright 2007
A plein air painting on Kitty Wallis museum-grade pastel paper
Framed: $1500 On display and available for purchase at Trappings of Texas 2008
February 29 - April 30 2008 Museum of the Big Bend Alpine, Texas
What You Do With Your Time When There's Never Enough
My husband and I don't work real jobs anymore. We live on a ranch three hours from the nearest WalMart. (Unless you count that tiny token "big box" in Pecos, which, no one does--if you need to shop, you'd might as well drive the three hours north to Midland/Odessa or west to El Paso, because even Pecos is ninety minutes away, and when you get there, well, you're in Pecos.)
Out here, there's no fast food in sight (unless you're talking about crossing paths with a swift mule deer). A DSL line isn't even an option where we live-- Alltel assures us we're lucky to have phone service. So Jim and I pass a plodding data card back and forth between our laptops and dream of the day it will give us high speed Internet access right here in the comfort of our remote home.
We define a "neighbor" as any friendly soul we can reach by truck in less than the twenty-five minutes it takes us to get to town. (Actually, we can make it to town quicker than we can drive the unpaved ranch roads to some of our close "neighbors".) Neither of us operate on a fixed schedule. Our time is our own. Sort of.
So one of the first things gainfully employed city friends and relations ask us these days is What (on earth!) do you do with your time? Or, more diplomatically phrased, What (the hell!) is there to do way out there?
I accept these as valid questions, as they keep coming from intelligent beings, some of whom care deeply about Jim and me. I suspect the non-locals still regular in our acquaintance secretly anticipate the pain of watching us either lapsing into hermithood, declining into alcoholism, or becoming obese and addicted to TV reality shows. (We do have two TV's, a satellite dish, DVR and a subscription to Netflix. Neither of us watch much television. The parrot, however, is a sucker for PBS preschool programming; Jim knows the words to all the Sesame Street songs and can quote Mr. Rogers as accurately as he quotes the daily stock market averages.)
Several years ago, in preparation for our then-imminent retirement, I bought one of those mystery book/jigsaw puzzles by Nelson DeMille, a favorite author. (My husband and I are avid readers.) I think I'd enjoy keeping a puzzle on the table; Jim has never worked a jigsaw puzzle in his life, and has no plans to start that activity, but Jim has a long history of doing things I think he should enjoy. We also purchased a telescope, because forty years ago, when Jim was in the Air Force, he learned to use a sextant, and when I was a child in Houston, I liked to lie in our driveway and watch satellites arc overhead.
Several years into "retirement" the puzzle is still in the box and the telescope is in storage. The interest is there: We simply don't have time.
So what do we do?
A bunch of us (all five people--including instructor Maggie McCollum--who fit comfortably inside our local yoga studio) had this very conversation before class one morning. It's a question almost impossible to answer. Describing daily life in small town, rural Far West Texas to someone from Lubbock or Dallas or Houston is like trying to translate the nuances of being a fish into the foriegn language of a country without water -- the words don't exist. As a fish, the best thing you can do is to take the land-locked swimming. Which frightens them.
Even Mother, who really tries to understand and hopefully isn't concerned that I'll become an alcoholic, asks me what my normal daily routine is. The short answer: It isn't routine. But, it's mine.
Every morning, Jim and I wake to a new world. Living on land without man-made distractions, we're much more finely attuned to the weather, to the phases of the moon, to the exact moment of sunset than when we flew a jet all over the continent. Sometimes, the morning calls us to hike while the air is still crisp and the mountains swimming in fog. Sometimes we wake to deer camped in our yard; one of us will pour coffee while the other hurries outside to scatter a cupful of corn to keep them around a few minutes longer, and we'll drink the whole pot as we identify our favorites-- Notch Ear, Limpy, Rocky-Neck, Old George. We point to birds. We vow to look each of them up to identify. (One day.) I paint. I think about painting, then paint some more. Some days, Jim saws wood, or notches ears, or pumps water. Often, I go along for the ride, or just to be with him. We kick up interesting rocks.
Like city-dwellers, we check email, watch GMA, put away the last nights' dishes. We meet friends for lunch, go to dinner at houses an hour away from here. Once a week, I'll put in a load of laundry then head to the studio; I'll paint while it washes, change out a load, paint while the dryer runs, paint until I forget I'm also doing laundry, which means I must continue this routine the next day, too. Or I may bake bread, a luxury I couldn't enjoy when we were flying and always "on call". Some mornings, I hurry into town for yoga while Jim hits Baeza's with a grocery list. Monthly, there's the Wednesday Matinee Good Times Reader's book club; my cherished women's evening circle, session meetings at the church. Commitments I never would've found time for in the city. Every few days, we drive to Alpine to run errands or to deliver a painting to the gallery. We always go to the Drug Store for gossip and breakfast before the Presbyterians gather for Sunday School.
Regardless of where we're going, whenever the truck is in motion, we're tourists admiring the view of our own world. We take hundreds of photos, mentally mark locations to return to with my easel and paints. We exclaim over light hitting the mountains in unfamiliar ways, at clouds patterning the ground with shadow. We stop to smell wet pinon, fuschia cholla blossoms, musky javelina. (If we weren't so tired by bedtime each night, we'd learn to use that telescope.)
We live as many moments in awe as we do in activity. And that makes unopened puzzles last a lot longer.
From Whence Comes Inspiration
Many artists, including my mother, insist they can't paint until their lives are in order and they feel inspired. But order and inspiration of that sort is a luxury a professional artist can't afford. As it is, I must regularly claim time for creating -- time that could otherwise be spent hiking with my husband, lunching with friends, cleaning house, grooming the dog, learning Turkish. (Okay. So I don't obsess over a dusty house nor do I really plan to tour Turkey. But painting takes time that could, conceiveably, be spent on those tasks!) Having already stolen time from a full day, I'm not inclined to waste it seeking moments of grand inspiration. So, I follow a five-minutes to inspiration rule.
That doesn't mean I never feel inspired.
When I'm painting plein air, a certain amount of choice and planning has already occurred. Whether on foot or by truck, I travel to a preselected locale; I find a spot that will accommodate me and my Soltek easel; I then turn 360 degrees to familiarize myself with my surroundings. That done, I take five minutes to select a subject then distill a composition from that landscape. (If the landscape hadn't somehow summoned me back, I wouldn't be there.) I'm not picky. I believe art is a process, I enjoy being outdoors surrounded by nature, and I derive the same satisfaction from painting a lichen-covered rock as I do from painting a glacial lake beneath snow-capped Rockies. Sometimes, the inspiring moment is a quiet one. If I'm lucky, a potential focal point jumps out and grabs me. Regardless, I'm there, so I find something to paint. In five minutes or less.
If I'm starting a new painting in the studio, I've usually already lost a little sleep mulling over an idea, an image that whispers my name. Maybe I want to document a recent day trip to a familiar but yet-unpainted landmark. Sometimes, I see familiar territory from a different angle or under a different sky. I carry my Canon digital Elph everywhere I go -- getting groceries, walking the dog -- so when I see something that intrigues me, I photograph it. Because photo references can get out of hand, I try to immediately download all angles of that small inspiration into a location-specific, dated folder in my laptop. Months later, when I see a thunderstorm building in the distance and it triggers an artistic memory of Spanish daggers lining Highway 505 after a late afternoon storm, I can delve into my files, then print out half a dozen of those dagger shots. Photos in hand, I attack the studio with a plan, if not a composition. Five minutes in the studio, and I'm painting.
I keep a few "paint-me" photos printed out and filed in the studio for those inevitable days when the world sucks and nothing inspirational festers in the back of my mind, where nothing is waiting to be painted. On such days, I walk into the studio, pull a random photo from the Sucky Day folder and go to work. I don't let myself think too much. The five minute rule still applies. And fifteen minutes into painting, the world never seems so bad.
Once in a great while, I stumble upon a grand moment of inspiration. You can't plan it. It's a magnificence, a breath of life which fills the lungs and drives the artist to paint, regardless. Never mind comfort. Forget companionship. Who cares whether life is orderly or not, whether another painting is in progress or not. True inspiration demands immediate action.
I acted upon such inspiration two weeks ago. All afternoon (while Jim watched football playoffs) I'd been in the studio, unpacking a new set of Terry Ludwig dark pastels, plus, replenishing my favorite Rembrandt, Schmincke and Sennilier sticks. Getting all orderly for the new year. Thinking of the new year, I felt suddenly fat. I had the truck: Other than having partaken of too much holiday eating, I don't know what made me start walking, walking up a mountain I rarely hike, and in a direction I rarely go.
Here in the mountains, our sun vanishes early, bringing a dramatic drop in temperature. Heading eastward, I walked fast to ward off the chill, and in the fading light, my breath made clouds that I struggled to catch. I kicked up a chipped arrowhead, studied the ground for the missing piece. A hawk, giving chase to unseen prey cried out as he swooped overhead. As pilots encountering flying objects are prone to do, I looked up to follow the hawk's flight. What I saw stole my breath.
The familiar eastern sky was on fire with reflected light. The sky's fire melted down Blue Mountain, coated Point of Rocks, tickled toward the mountains near the Bloys encampment. That's all I could think: the sky is on fire, and the blue mountains are swimming in it.
I snapped a few shots, hiked a few steps higher to snap a few more. But already, the fire was dissolving into familiar pastel shades of sunset.
Oil painting, I thought, having not done an oil in almost a year, but knowing, intuitively, that oil this one should be. I raced back to the studio. Before darkness claimed the peaks to the east, I'd unwrapped a linen canvas that I'd been saving for who knows what, clamped it to my easel and whipped out my wooden box of oil paints so they'd be ready for my entrance the next morning. I drove home, called a time-out from TV football to announce I needed to start an oil painting. Because, I explained, still breathless, I'd serendipitously taken a spontaneous hike in the time when the sky catches fire.
I delivered the painting to Kiowa Gallery for framing last week. I then called museum curator Mary Bones to beg a change in my Trappings of Texas entries. Everyone agreed, this oil was right for that show. This piece is inspired.
Like a whispered breath, the spirit of creation is fragile, fleeting. Alive. I believe we artists are gifted with inspiration, but all people are gifted with the breath of life. Magnificent inspiration is a gift we shouldn't take lightly.
One day, the sky over the mountains I love best held fire for one fleeting moment. In that time, I was there. A hawk flew. And so, I looked up. Sharing that moment, that joy is both my gift and my duty. Hope you enjoy it.
IN THE TIME WHEN THE SKY CATCHES FIRE copyright Lindy C Severns 2008
24"x36" oil on archival Russian linen $3900 framed
The original will debut as an entry in the invitational Trappings of Texas 2008
at the Museum of the Big Bend, Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas
-on display and available for purchase February 29 thru April 30 2008-
New Year 's Eve in the Wild Wild West
A way out here in west Texas, we welcomed in the new year with more bass than bang, more fiddling than fireworks, a dash of drink and a dribble of dancing. Realize, please, that in doing so, Jim and I broke with recent tradition. Last year, we stayed home, using a six-inch snowfall as our excuse for being fuddy-duds; the year before, we went to bed at ten without even weather to excuse us. This year, we decided to go for broke and to celebrate at Sutler's Club, a small room upstairs in the historic Limpia Hotel in downtown Fort Davis where our good friend Jim Hall was scheduled to play his bass guitar with Todd Jagger and J.R. (whose surname I still don't know), a credible trio known far and wide as "the Border Blasters". A loyal bunch of Jim Hall groupies from the Presbyterian Church planned to attend; we coaxed our fellow fuddy-duds and cohorts in adventure, Nelda and Jerry Miles to accompany us on this one.
We honestly had no idea what to expect. For two weeks, I tried to discover the dinner menu (was there a buffet? a choice? a fixed selection? If so, would it be fancy and weird?). I inquired as to the cost, the time the band started playing. Stuff partygoers sometimes feel the need to know prior to the big event. No one could give me a glimmer of a hint. Likely this was partially due to the absence of the owners, Joe and Lanna Duncan (more friends, also members of Jim Hall's dedicated Presbyterian following) who, with son Malcolm, spent their holidays skiing in New England. But part of the charm of small town life is spontaneity. Had this been my first taste of local event scheduling, I might've panicked and cancelled our reservations. But here, things just have a way of working out without the constrictions of overplanning. I put my trust in history, then convinced Jim and the Miles that we'd have a good time, regardless of the details and any (unanticipated) large sum of money involved.
Lest you assume that we've never kicked up our heels on New Year's Eve before, let me be clear: This was not our first rodeo. We'll always smile, remembering dancing the night away with the Brands and the Bushes at that hundred-year-old, one-room schoolhouse somewhere near Richland Springs, deep in the heart of Texas. But that simple celebration was the exception. In over three decades of marriage, my husband and I have, on more than one occasion, royally celebrated the eve of the new year in Las Vegas, NV, first at the old Caesar's Palace, years later at the Bellagio, every time enjoying VIP guest status (through no merit of our own). We've celebrated at the tree-lit Polo Lounge while staying in a bungalow at the very pink Beverly Hills Hotel. (From this extravagant experience, I learned that I am not cut out to live in southern California, nor do I especially enjoy shopping on Rodeo Drive.) I can't remember if we were ever in Fort Lauderdale or in Manhattan for New Year's Eve. I block things like that out. Most years, we spent in Aspen, which is not a bad place to be except when everyone else and the Kennedys are in residence there.
Feeling envious? Don't! Being there, wherever there was, was how we earned our keep for a lot of years. Jim flew corporate jets for thirty-four years; for seventeen of those, I copiloted for him. We've seen our share of grand rooms strewn with drunken strangers swinging from chandeliers. The last New Year's eve we spent in Aspen, we cancelled our coveted dinner reservations at the last minute in favor of ordering pizza delivered to our hotel room--we didn't think we could stomach dining out again with the rude mob, however elegantly attired. So this year, with trepidation, we decided to risk officially celebrating New Year's Eve with friends and in our chosen location. No matter the menu, no matter the cost. (We knew the music and the company would be terrific!)
Jim wore jeans, but did change shirts. He kept his scuffed suede nerd shoes on because his hip was only four weeks our of surgery, and he was afraid if he wore boots, then asked me to remove them, I might pull his leg off. I wore velvet, not because there was a dress code but because there wasn't. Jerry came straight from work. Nelda had flown across Texas all day; she looked Texas-chic in a stunningly simple white blouse and turqoise choker. Our fellow partygoers wore sequined silk; casual sweaters; denim. Whatever they wanted to wear, worked. In Big Bend country, you are who you are. Clothes can't change that. (Just ask the elk in the picture below how much difference that festoon of confetti really makes in one's life.)
Nelda and Party Elk. (Her husband Jerry in the foreground.)
Dinner was both very reasonably priced ($30 per person) and also, delicious. There was a choice after all, and I chose herbed salmon. We had to buy a club membership to order drinks. That's standard in this area. We had to buy one because we so rarely go into town at night, unless it's to hike by starlight. No one at our table drank excessively... no one in the room drank excessively, although the rather senior citizen who spent so much time draping the much-younger gal over his body on the dance floor surely wished for some strong spirits on awakening the next morning. The Border Blasters played their brand of "Texas Music" at a volume conducive to both toe-tapping and the conversation that kept us all awake long after our usual bedtimes. We joked with Jan Hall (Jim Hall's long-legged blonde and chief groupie) while Jim's music played on.
Smokin' Jim Hall of the Border Blasters.
The small frame room held perhaps a dozen tables, plus the groupies' couch and the short bar on which the younger set (who haven't yet enjoyed hip replacements) leaned. There was room to spontaneously stand and two-step when the music called to you, and at the stroke of midnight, Jim and I pressed a little flesh and did a little slow-dancing, sans cane.
 
My man Jim, ex-jet pilot wears his party favor. Bookfeller Jerry wears his party favor.
I didn't say no one drank. I said no one drank excessively.
 
Fellow Musician & Hall groupie Margie Ferguson
Nelda Miles crowned with official hat by her honey Jerry.
New Year's Eve 2008 at Sutler's Bar in the Limpia Hotel was a far cry from the martini bar at the Bellagio, or from the cigar bar at the Hotel Jerome, my favorite Aspen hangout except that I can't take the smoke. (Sutlers was smoke-free.) I even ignored my aversion to bodily contact with strangers to let that AARP-aged dance floor contortonist give me a midnight hug. We all wished each other well and went home into the sub-freezing night illuminated by a Dipper so big and bright, it will surely pour good things all year.
Chief Groupie Jan Hall toasting with her music man Jim.
Having temporarily lost possession of the camera, I wish everyone a happy 2008.
We wouldn't have stayed in and ordered pizza for all the world.
Portrait of a Ranch Christmas
We had such a wonderful Christmas, I'd like to share parts of it with you!
Mother and Child at our doorstep Christmas 2007
Watching the fire, solving the problems of the world. It takes all afternoon to prepare the fire in the authentic horno (oven) Roxa and her son Bill Max Robison made. The fire burns down, and the horno is ready when Bill Max can hold his hand in it for five seconds. The baking happens fast after that!
The pizza assembly line at Crows Nest Ranch, directed by Besa Martin (in the apron).
Painted gourd ornaments on the tree in front of "Sunset on a Way of Life" an unfinished 8' x20' mural by Lindy Severns and Roxa Robison on a wall in the ranch kitchen. The figures in the mural are portraits of Roxa Medley Robison's relatives and ancestors from old family snapshots. That chuckwagon served many meals for the Medley cowboys, and we enjoyed inviting them to step on out for Christmas dinner with us.
Putting the pizza in the oven by light of the full moon. Mars is too faint to show in this photo, but it was there!
Lindy on our family Christmas eve hike near Brown Mountain-- Jim's first uphill run since surgery last month!
The calm before Christmas dinner
Now we're all full. Jim Severns (with his new hiking pole) and Danielle Matthews
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from inside First Presbyterian Church, Fort Davis, Texas
Negative Space: Zen and the Art of Christmas
If you regularly follow this blog, you will have noticed the scarcity of entries lately. With Jim's two hip replacement surgeries only six weeks apart, the related rehab, plus travel to and from Lubbock, I've had to (gladly, mind you!) temporarily pick up slack for him. Whining all the way, I keep getting bogged down in tasks Jim regularly accomplishes with more competence and less effort than I.
We've spent a lot of sleepless nights as he tries to get comfortable on two tender, freshly sliced buns. Even the dog has lost sleep. Added to my nursing duties, I had to get through Gallery Night, Alpine's annual show.
But now Jim's rehabing, gradually weaning off his cane and hiking the mountains; I made it thru Gallery Night without a meltdown. Life is returning to normal, and life is normally good.
Now I advocate painting regularly, not just when you're inspired or "in the mood". But in the past month, I haven't painted at all; I've scarcely had time to plan the four pastels I'm doing for Trappings of Texas. (Trappings is the Museum of the Big Bend's annual invitational custom western gear and art show and sale, opening in Alpine February 29, 2008. More on that in a future blog entry.) I'm behind on everything I'm doing, can only spell my last name on a good day and then only after three cups of expresso. I'm constantly praying I haven't forgotten to pay anybody who expects money from us in a timely manner.
And wouldn't you know it? Along comes Christmas. I wasn't prepared for Christmas season. It came, anyway.
We spent the first (crazy) part of the holiday season in noisy, bright and bustling Lubbock. Mom lives at Ransom Canyon, a small community so artistically lit every Christmas, you can barely get to her house after dark because of bumper-to-bumper sight-seers idling through the neighborhood. My dad loved stringing Christmas lights across the eaves, the windows, the trees. His sense of holiday well-being depended on displaying zillions of lights, which he religiously lit at the stroke of dusk each night. Daddy criticized any neighbor who refrained from doubling his December electric bill...one year, when the guy next-door installed more lights than Daddy, we adult kids seriously discussed giving Daddy an extra, dedicated circuit for outdoor lighting. Falling not far from the tree, my landscape architect brother Kelly Cook delights in constructing extravagant light displays in his Midland yard. His crowning achievement to date is an impressive string of life-sized flying reindeer tautly secured by rebar. Usually tautly secured. There's yet another untold story...apparently there's no brain damage, but ask Kelly about that scar on his nose. Happily, no reindeer were injured.
And any city Christmas season worth its salt includes a plethora of street corner Santas jingling annoying little bells designed to instill guilt at we who hurry past them, our arms laden with an abundance of essential groceries including freshly made macaroons, smoked salmon and brie. Tamales. Shrimp. Asparagus for the infamous, much-corrupted traditional family casserole, an artery-clogging dish taken from a recipe my 97-year-old great-aunt got from the lady who ran the boarding house my great-uncle lived in before they married. Stores hawk tree-sized poinsettias, fake trees, frosted trees, fresh trees and already-failing trees painted green to attract those who don't know the difference. Everywhere, holiday music blares, squeezing conscious thought from the far recesses of the stressed-out brain. Women parade around in gaudy Christmas sweaters a gal wouldn't be caught dead in any other month of the year. Lots of wine and liquor, candy, pie and cake is gifted and regifted. (I confess: I've never re-gifted wine or liquor. Or, fudge.) Annually, I religiously refuse to visit a mall after November 15, so I can't report on the shopping frenzy that must surely have been in progress while we were there.
Mid-December, we returned home to Fort Davis. I felt like I'd stepped from sparkling, shining, singing chaos into the Void. (Stay with me here, okay? I'm lapsing a little metaphysical now, but I'll get back to holiday basics, honest.)
In martial arts, an ultimate (rarely attainable) experience comes of entering a mindless state known as "the Void". Empty Mind. Sounds bad. Is good. Empty the mind, and the spirit emerges, each breath one with the universe. You simply are. Spar an opponent while flirting even on the outskirts of the Void and you'll win, regardless of the match's physical outcome. I didn't go there often, or stay there long, but I've felt it. The Void draws from and defines the fullness that surrounds it, and thus, the Void is the ultimate fullness.
Similarly, in fine art, the area surrounding an image is known as "negative space". I know this sounds bad. Empty. Negative. But negative space is essential. Without negative space, a drawing is nothing but a clutter of line, an indefinable shapelessness. Think about that famous black and white image of faces or vases. You see two black profiles facing each other. Or, you see a single white vase in the center. Which is it meant to be? Because the one defines the other. Similarly, you can look at a cast shadow and immediately know the shape of the unseen object casting that shadow.
I'm not musical, but I'm told it's the pauses--the negative space, the void--between the notes that makes for magic.
So here we are, Jim and I, alone on our thirty-third Christmas together. We're deep in the remote mountains of Far West Texas with one string of tiny white lights on a tabletop Norfolk pine and a dinner plate-sized poinsettia that can only be described as "cute". Our families are away, celebrating in their own special ways. We did precious little shopping this year. Instead of the expensive gifts we usually give each other, we will hike the mountain, as far as Jim's new hips agree to go. I haven't even hunted up our Christmas CD's, so we listen, contentedly, to the cacophany of silence in this semi-wilderness we call home.
Last night, we joined friends for pizza baked in the ranch's horno oven, and as we shivered around the warm adobe oven, Roxa Robison marveled at how Mars looked like a necklace hung around the moon. This morning, the non-English-speaking housekeeper for the ranch brought us a gift from Chihuahua, an act of unexected generosity that brought tears to my eyes and a self-conscious "Feliz Navidad" to Jim's non-Spanish-speaking lips. Tonight we'll attend candlelight communion service at the historic Fort Davis Presbyterian Church; I will read verse while Jim lights the Christ candle. Tomorrow we'll dine with close friends, and we'll call our distant and near families and tell them thanks for the generous gifts they sent. The week continues with a host of wine and cheese socials, lunches with friends, more ranch dinners. We're busy, but we're not harried. There is time to be still.
We are celebrating in the Void this year, feasting in negative space. It is warm space. Uncluttered space. Daddy isn't around to string lights, but his garish displays illuminate our hearts under these dark Davis Mountain skies as surely as when he'd march outside at dusk to plug in his nightly show. I doubt we'll drink eggnog because I forgot to buy extra eggs. But my great-grandmother's recipe is sweet on my tongue, the bourbon burning as it goes down my throat. Mother didn't send one of those fruitcakes baked with so much love, I ate them anyway, but I imagine her now, up to her elbows in brightly colored candied fruit. Which makes me think of those pickup truck, motorhome, limosine tours of Christmas lights, all of us, nieces, nephews, a dog and a parrot jammed into one vehicle, all joining my father in exclaiming ohh and ah at appropriate times. I do wish I still had one of the long Victorian dresses I sewed for my sister and I to prance around in on Christmas eve, or the old stocking Mother sewed with sequins when they probably didn't have money for felt. But at the time, some of those joyous and not so joyous Christmases had so many lines, such a tangle of shapes, so much noise, such confusion that the focal point went unnoticed.
We are alone this year, thankfully taking stock of our lives in a void far removed from the hustle and bustle, the glitter and bows. We are alone, yet all those who have loved us and whom we have loved are here with us, casting giant shadows that define who we are. And that is one great gift.
All the fear and frustrations, the hurt and the healing of the past year, all the remembrances of Christmases past compose the negative space shaping this ultimate fullness that Jim and I feel today.
Today, we give thanks. Today, we have Time. Love. Reverence. Hope.
For one brief moment, we pause between the notes of our lives to breathe at one with God.
(And now, I must make an asparagus casserole to take to Christmas dinner tomorrow. Likely I'm missing some ingredient, so I'll have to alter the sacred boardinghouse recipe one more time. Merry Christmas!)
These Rocks Weren't As Steep Forty Years Ago (Touring Mitre Peak with a Pro)
Gallery Night weekend has successfully come and gone. The largest pastel I've ever done, "Broken Sky Over Blue Mountain" found a new home. So I'm now happily interviewing landscapes for my next mega-painting. But for me, the highlight of that weekend was spending a few precious days with my little sis, Kathy Nammour.  Kathy Cook Nammour with her furry niece and feathered nephew 2007The grownup version of my baby sister now resides in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. During our Midland years, however,she spent every childhood summer at Camp Mitre Peak. (Back then, my idea of immersing myself in the Great Outdoors involved sunning around the pool, bicycling around the Tall City with girlfriends, or on really adventurous days, driving golf carts into water traps at the ol' country club.) Kat, who has traveled and lived all over the world, vows Far West Texas remains one of the places most dear to her heart. So it's ironic that I'm the one who now traipses around rocky mountainscapes with an easel on my back, that I'm the one who calls Big Bend Country "home". So it was special to finally share this place we love in common, a land she knew as a child and that I only truly learned as an adult. In Alpine, we spent the requisite time shopping (we are, first and foremost, female). Jim graciously wined and dined us. We drank a lot of coffee, marveled that once again, we'd unwittingly had our hair cut alike. And one morning, we spent hiking around Mitre Peak, revisiting Kathy's former haunts.  MITRE PEAK SKY 9" x 12" pastel by Lindy Cook Severns c 2006 private collectionIn Big Bend country, you don't trespass. It isn't polite and it isn't prudent. Folks who live thirty miles from nowhere take responsibility for their own safety and they (we) don't like surprise visits from strangers. Also, in cattle country, fences and gates have a purpose. You never know what's going on on the other side. We always ask permission or don't tread private property. (I haven't actually heard about any recent shootings, but way out West, you never know. Last year's bodies might all be buried.) Anyway, my law-abiding husband felt reassured when Kathy knocked on the caretaker's door, introduced herself, then asked if she could show me around. Jim was facing his second hip surgery (he had it the Monday after Thanksgiving and is already doing half a mile a day on a cane) so he couldn't accompany us. The loyal dog stayed in the truck with him. The parrot, a dedicated hiker, set out with Kathy and me. Past rock landmarks like Frankenstein and the monkey's head. (I apparently have less imagination than generations of young scouts.) Past a roadrunner staking out a bush. Across oak leaves so thick, a rattler hidden beneath that leafy carpet wouldn't have felt us walking on him, or so I told myself. Kat pointed out the mess hall, cabins she once occupied, the place she killed her first rattlesnake, the place one camper's foolish mother had teased one of the resident serpents until it had struck her. (Kathy knew of only two bite incidents in all those years. Both involved childish parents playing with snakes.) The infirmary. The pool. I'd been to Mitre several times, either to leave my sister or to pick her up, but this time, the place looked different. This was my VIP tour, and with a poignancy so strong it stung, I suddenly imagined my sister there, summer after summer, first as a camper, later, a counselor. Mitre Peak had been her special world. The sister I know so well had experienced things those Mitre summers that I can never share. I felt jealousy for Ginger and Lisa, her childhood scouting friends who called each other by silly nicknames that have stuck into middle age; I wished I had been there to hike the ten miles into Alpine with them. I realized I've seldom walked in my sister's footprints. Arrogantly, we presume to know the worlds of those we are closest to, when the terrain that shaped them is, by definition, beyond our knowing. As I mused on the different paths our lives have taken and marveled at the scenery, Kathy led me up a boulder path between oaks and madrone. We hadn't planned to hike so far. I wore ballet flats, Kathy, street shoes. As we scrambled over an especially treacherous rock, Kat observed that she used to be much taller and the rocks, less steep. We laughed, discussed turning back, continued on. "This is a baby hike," she confided. "Where we'd take the campers their first year." Abruptly, we came to a narrow cleft in towering rock. "Daphie's Cave," she announced smugly. She explained the story: A young ranch girl (Daphie, I presume) would retreat to this cave to draw, to write, to dream. Later, hundreds of tender scouts explored her secret world in turn. And now, my sister was sharing it with me, a baby to that hidden place. Charged with the enthusiasm that comes with discovery, we continued upward, around more boulders, happily planting our scuffed street slippers through a squeeze of rock that separates the not-skinny-but-thin-enough from the unthin while praying we wouldn't get stuck. "Do you hear it?" she whispered. I did. Water. Tricking, gurgling, running water teasing through the arid mountains. I smiled. She said, "This is the first pool." She might have been opening a safety deposit box and pointing to a string of nine diamonds. The parrot cooed. We lingered, took pictures. Enjoyed. Shared the moment in that place where my sister had skinny-dipped on hot August afternoons past.  Going back down, the boulders weren't as steep. Whenever our parrot does something surprising, I'm humbled, reminded that the world of humans isn't the only amazing world out there. There is much in nature we cannot know, muchless understand. Likewise, hiking Camp Mitre Peak with my little sis, I felt humility. Kathrine D'Cook Nammour is her own person; a part, but only a part of her is the known world I call "sister'. We are who we are, and no one, not even those closest to us can presume to know all our caves and pools. That's why it's such a treasure when someone we already love shares the route to one of theirs with us. I don't know if a scene from that morning will ever become a painting or not. But I fit through that rock squeeze; like countless Brownies, I've seen Daphie's cave; I know how to find the first pool in my sister's soul. As for me skinny-dipping? I refer you back to the passage about trespassing in Big Bend country. It isn't from lack of will that I shall refrain.
Falling Trees, Gallery Art, and Paint-Smudged Palms
If an artist paints, then if no one ever sees that painting, is it still art? This Question of the Weekend relates to the old "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it" dilemma.  This is Alpine Artwalk's Gallery Night. So we're here, in little Alpine, Texas. Big times. Food, drink, music, art, friends. Family. (My sister Kathy flew down from Calgary to share the weekend with us.) This small West Texas town decks the halls; businesses open their doors for the 14th annual event. Artists seek display space like bulls charging into a rodeo arena, Alpine being a cornerstone of the growing Big Bend art market. This isn't Manhattan or Santa Fe, but some of the art here is just as good. Some is better. And there's no traffic.  Sisters Lindy Cook Severns & Kathy Cook Nammour looking twinsy for Gallery Night
(I'm the short, round-faced one.)
For a nominal fee, any local business can participate and display the work of an area artist, jeweler, photographer, potter, or other artisan this weekend. (Making space for more than one artist is, of course, even better.) Folks who come to Artwalk then follow the signs to the next location as they walk the intimate downtown area while listening to corner musicians, visiting, nibbling and perhaps imbibing along the way. I dearly love people who drink bubbly while shopping for art. Paintings by aspiring amateurs and polished professionals line the walls of Front Street Books, Bread and Breakfast, the Holland Hotel, Quetzal Gifts. Trans-Pecos Bank (one of my collectors of both oil and pastel) and West Texas National Bank (which really should buy a piece of my work so as to keep up with their discriminating neighbor) provide not only wall space but big donor funds. Alpine's full time galleries--my favorite jewelers, Susanna and David at Mi Tesoro; the new Catch Light Gallery, an artists' coop; big guy on the block and exclusive home to my framed creations, Kiowa Gallery all urge their resident artists to unfold new art at the event. (In my case, only two of the fifteen 2006 paintings I took to Kiowa for last fall's Gallery Night remain unsold. Unfolding new pieces wasn't the issue-- I had to produce a whole new collection for this year's event! A good problem to have, but, whew!!!) Collectors, designers, art lovers fly in to browse new regional art. Holiday shopping commences, and sales of unique gift items are brisk.  Jim & Lindy Severns and MONSOON SEASON (30" x 40" oil)
collection of Trans Pecos Banks, Alpine, TXSome fine art walks out during Gallery Night weekend. But the event's thrust is acquainting people with the work and faces of area artists and introducing visitors to our charming and friendly area businesses. Gallery Night puts faces behind paintings, promotes art, and brings folks back to Alpine again, and again. In the days leading to the official event, energy and excitement float through Alpine's streets like colorful leaves on a mountain breeze. Serious repeat collectors and savvy shoppers arrive to preview the offerings. There is the smell of money in the air. (Three of my pieces have already sold. And for that, I'm thankful, but I wish my sister could've seen them, first! ) I'm a professional artist, so I don't pretend the money isn't an issue. When I sell a painting, I shout whoopdeedoo. But having ten or fifteen thousand strangers plus a few friends viewing the paintings I've been doing since last spring is heady. I can't be humble about that. I paint, and I absolutely love people admiring what I paint. The viewer is as much a part of the creative process as a stick of pastel. So, do I paint to have my work admired? If no one but me would ever see a painting, would I still pour my soul into creating it? You bet I would. Without an audience, would that unseen painting still be art?  Only for the birds.....
My audience while painting BROKEN SKY OVER BLUE MOUNTAIN would've just as soon made confetti of it
If a tree falls in a deserted forest, the earth surely feels the thunder from that living thing it has long and lovingly nourished. Who cares if anybody hears the tree fall. The earth was involved with that tree from the get-go. The earth remembers the sapling's roots sucking water from the soil, its trunk flowing with life, branching, leafing. The sound the tree makes when it falls may be mighty, but to the earth it came from, sound is the least part of its quiet creation. I'm thrilled when a painting sells. I delight in having my work prominently displayed in a prestigious gallery. I want my husband, my sister, my friends to admire what I spend my time on. But ultimately, I paint for myself. Once I dirty my hands, creating, that painting becomes forever part of me. After reproducing a physical landscape on canvas, I never see that terrain the same again. It edges into my soul to claim a niche. Whether anyone ever sees my creation changes nothing. I paint because I paint. And all the rest is gravy. (This weekend, I think I'll enjoy a fine Merlot with all that gravy!)  BROKEN SKY OVER BLUE MOUNTAIN, a 20" x 50" pastel , the centerpiece of my Gallery Night 2007 collection
Feeling vs Seeing a Painting (RESPITE IN WALT GONSKE'S GARDEN)
 one corner of artist Walt Gonske's secluded Taos, NM garden 2007 photo by Jim SevernsJim says I see things differently than other people. When he's talking about the family budget I bristle when he says that . Bless his heart. My dear husband and all those "other people" can't help it if they don't see these things correctly. But when we're on location and I'm painting, I suspect he's right. I do see things differently-- I "see" a painting subject with all my senses. That's one of the things that makes plein air painting a fuller experience than studio painting. Regardless, I try to carry the smell of musty earth, the taste of smoke on the wind, the prickle of the western wind on my skin into the studio with me. Remembering the cawing of crows on a distant cliff can be as important to a painting as the color of the sky that day. But there's no substitute for being there. An example: This past June, I spent a week in Northeastern New Mexico, painting with Albert Handell. His paint-alongs are just that--he chooses two locations a day, tells the small cluster of registered participants where he'll be painting next, and then everyone scrambles to their cars to follow Albert or get lost along the way. (Jim became a popular alternate lead driver. Old pilot trick: he programed each new location into our GPS.) Once at the designated locale, everyone chooses a subject then has at it. (Albert limited our time at each spot to 3 hours, never to return.) Often we spread so far apart, I never saw the others until we broke up for a critique. Rarely did any two of our ten participants choose the same spot. The exception was the morning we clustered in plein air oil landscape painter Walt Gonske's garden, Walt having kindly agreed to host his friend Albert's group. Now for a confession: I hate heat. Ever since a bad experience at taekwondo instructors' camp in the Arkansas hills one August, I haven't processed heat well. Then there's the whole skin cancer issue. Heat makes me grumpy and mean, and standing in full sun between mid-morning and mid-afternoon is something I avoid like melanoma. The week of Albert's long-anticipated mentoring workshop, Taos experience a record heat wave. Five days in the mid-nineties at 7200 feet became a weather nightmare for several of us less heat-tolerant artists. Then we painted in Walt Gonske's wonderfully lush garden. It still wasn't cool, but it contained patches of actual shade. New friend Mary Winter of Santa Fe and I dashed to claim a spot where the shade promised to hold awhile. My only subject criteria at that moment was that I be at least partially shaded most of the morning. (Mary, sporting more of a plan, wanted to paint flowers.)  Heat wimps Lindy Severns (front) and Mary Winter paint in Gonske's shady Taos garden. Photo by Jim Severns 2007
Once set up, the sun at my back, I started thinking about compostition. Honestly, I do generally think about that rather important element before setting up. But only when I'm not worried about heat stroke. I wiped the sweat from my eyes and found myself facing a gate in the adobe wall surrounding the intimate garden. Poppies and delphinium and daisies added fragrant (the sense of smell) spots of color to the dominant green masses. I don't like to paint green masses very much, (it's a desert-dweller thing) so I immediately mentally zeroed in on the flowers. Flowers aren't really my thing either, but they sit with me better than green masses.
I very much like painting adobe. Adobe is alive, with its irregular texture and the intrinsic soft shadows and color variations that play across that surface. Notice I'm speaking sensually now, in terms of touch. I stood on soft grass looking at a wall sculpted from mud and straw, plastered over by hand. And the sculpted arch of the gate hosted a strong cast shadow. The wall looked hot, like the unshaded parts of me. The gate, with its nice shadow, looked cooler, and cast shadow makes a good design element. Still not sketching, I mentally included the hot and cold gate in my composition.
As for my sense of sight, the sky that morning was typical Taos turquoise blue. I prefer clouds, but the pink adobe wall contrasted interestingly against it, and I knew I could bounce that blue into the shadowy foreground instead of using so much green. So I widened my imaginary compostion out to include the sky.
 As birds in the willow behind me sang and twittered, (the sense of hearing) I realized much of the charm of Walt's delightful garden came from feeling enclosed in a protected space. We'd temporarily escaped the sun burning the surrounding sagebrush flats, the traffic that has stolen much of Taos's historic magic. Intuitively, I tilted my composition to recreate this impression of seclusion in a protected world. I didn't want the viewer to go thru the gate.
All these thoughts and sensations occured in less than a minute or two. There are some analytical thoughts that go into a piece, but I don't like to think a painting to death before adding paint to paper.
Starting on the actual painting, I used Nupastels to draw in the only unforgiving design element, the wall and gate. (The vegetation masses can be moved and changed at will. You can't go terribly wrong with vegetation shapes.) Using rubbing alcohol and a cheap brush, I washed over this Nupastel. This lightly fixing of pigment into my Wallis paper gives a watercolor wash-like base to add pastel onto. For something like adobe, this gives me an interesting headstart on color/texture variances. And with the time limitations on any plein air painting, the Nupastel wash affords a valuable timesaving shortcut to massing in color and value. For that reason, I also Nupasteled in my sky and splashed sky color into the foreground and the adobe. Just because I think it's fun to do that.
The rest of the three-hour morning, I spent getting to know Mary in the way of brief swatches of conversation used by seriously working artists, moving into the ever-vanishing shade, and layering soft pastel strokes over my Nupastel washes. I tried Albert's technique of blending those hateful vegetation greens into a soft mass, then adding distinct strokes over that for definition. Adjusted the poppies into a compostitional dance to keep the viewer inside the painting. This is as far as I got in three hours:
"Respite" an unfinished plein air pastel 9" x 12" on Wallis museum paper Lindy Severns 2007
I put the unfinished pastel aside, painted other things in New Mexico. When I finally returned to my studio, I put "Respite" on my easel and spent an hour more finishing it. Adding, emphasizing, adjusting values. Highlighting. Trying not to lose the feeling I'd had when I'd first walked across soft cool grass and "seen" it. Without having been in Walt Gonske's wonderful garden and stealing that one morning in the shade, it would've been a different painting. For sure it would've been different if Jim had done it.
RESPITE IN WALT GONSKE'S GARDEN a plein air pastel by Lindy Cook Severns 2007 9" x12" on Wallis museum grade paper
For price and availability, please visit my website, OldSpanishTrailStudio.com
A Soft Summer Night in Fort Davis
We live just far enough from town, town being a few streets and an old fort, that we don't go in but a couple of times a week, and hardly ever at night. It's a treat when we do. We say to the animals, "Do you want to go to town?" and the animals start jumping and flapping. (We really should get out more.) Because we aren't in town every night, Fort Davis at dusk always seems a little magical to us. Darkness. Silence. History. Darkness around here means Very Dark. There are no street lights. Most Fort Davis streets are two lanes of packed dirt past dwellings that house people who know precisely where they live. So why would anybody need lights to find their way? And because McDonald Observatory is just around the corner, pointing to the skies over Mount Locke, astronomically astute residents take every measure to keep our skies the darkest in North America. Also, as the sun sets behind old Blue and Livermore and Sawtooth and the western Davis Mountains, light bounces and tints our volcanic rock formations with an inner glow. It's hard to describe. You have to see it. Think, lava lamp. Added to this absence of artificial light and glowing rock is the Silence. This is not a place where traffic roars above the sound of crickets. If a cricket chirps within a hundred yards and if you're not munching potato chips or sitting on the porch, talking, you'll hear that cricket. If this town were a novel, Silence would be a leading character. Then there's the history. There's so much history around here you must be selective in what you want to remember. History is especially haunting in and around the old restored fort. At dusk, if you stand just past the parking lot and toward the faintly rutted old road linking San Antone to El Paso, you can feel a sense of the past.  "SOFT SUMMER NIGHT IN FORT DAVIS" 4" x 6' pastel on Wallis museum grade paper by Lindy C Severns 2007
It isn't just reminders of the cavalry troops, the Buffalo soldiers that once manned this frontier outpost...Indians roamed that land long before the Old Spanish Trail ran past the rocks beneath Sleeping Lion Mountain. Then came the settlers. The ranchers. The preachers (our historic Presbyterian Church is just around the corner behind the mountain overlooking the fort). The Butterfield/Overland Stage route ran through there. And now Baeza's Grocery, the old Caboose (think: ice cream), Along the Trail Antiques flank the fort grounds. Of course, at dusk and after, you have to know they're there--they, too, respect the astronomers and don't advertise in bold neon lights. (And if you need groceries much past dark, you aren't much of a planner, are you?) But what I notice most about Fort Davis at nightfall is the sweeping sky. Sky here is always dramatic. Davis Mountain skies are always bigger than life, but especially magnificent at dusk. I painted this view from the old fort in miniature. A large canvas would never hold it in, anyway. And now, I think we'll pack up the animals and head to town. If we start right now, we'll be there for dusk.
Hip-Hip Hooray!
My husband Jim's fall project is getting two new hips. This is one of his better home-improvement projects, and I look forward to hiking the mountains again with my soon-to-be pain-free bionic mate, Titanium Man. But installing a new toilet was a snap compared to hip surgery. With the toilet, all I had to do was select the style and color I wanted, then go to Lowe's.com and print out instructions for Jim to follow. At which time I left the room until I heard the first happy flush. At which time I delivered a cold, celebratory beer to the bathroom. Piece of cake.
This hip thing is tough, and very much a team effort. I participate in and coach him through physical therapy sessions. (I once taught martial arts. I can be cruel. But he's improving faster than I can say "only thirty more leg lifts to go".) We share sleepless nights as six-footer Jim tosses in our queen-sized bed, always trying not to disturb the dog. He tries to get comfortable with a seven-inch gash on his left side and a thirteen-pound terrier stretched sideways across the down comforter. (Hip replacement surely must be easier on short people with cats.) We're past dressing the wound (not for the squeamish) but now that he's out and about comes our daily ritual of getting socks on his size 12 feet. Even before that, we share morning delight in donning those delightful thigh-high, white anti-embolism stockings which stick like Velcro to Jim's hairy legs. All I ask is that today, they slide on in time for the evening news.
The Joint Ranch program at Lubbock's Covenant Hospital is an orthopedic exercise in tough love, but man, does it work. Dr. Jim Burke and his team want their patients to get back to doing whatever it is they do, and quickly. Jim, of course, won the horse race for who could walk the farthest during their stay. Friends and family cheerlead events such as this with their prayers, their calls, their food-laden visits, their balloons and stuffed animals. Cooks the Ranch Dog loves the stuffed animals, by the way. And the parrot absolutely hates balloons. We all enjoy roast beef, Mom. During Jim's Lubbock hospitalization, we stood happily reminded we're connected to more worlds than one. While our Lubbock ties did all sorts of leg work for us (no pun intended), visited us, fed us, Fort Davis folks emailed, called, listened, sent our mail and the thin weekly local paper. Friends and family scattered elsewhere across the continent sympathized and let us know they cared. We felt very loved. No one yet has offered to come pull the white stockings on for us, but I'll bet you're out there, just waiting to help. (You know who you are. And we need to get started on those stockings by nine a.m. at the latest.)
Little surprises, small pleasures crossed our stumbling paths when we most needed distractions. We didn't need big things. But when you're facing life head-on, the tiniest of serendipities bring joy into your day. Little things get you through to tomorrow.
We're one hip down, three hard weeks into a twelve week plan, three short weeks away from hip #2. There's been some grumbling and grinching on both our parts, a few tears and frustrations, those mostly mine. But this really hasn't been as bad as we'd imagined. Parts of it have actually been fun. Or at least entertaining. (Jim's take on this may vary slightly from mine, but he was on drugs for awhile there and can't be trusted.) We're looking forward to Jim being able to walk without pain for the first time in years. To get there faster, we're trying to eat healthier foods than usual, rest a lot, laugh every chance we get. We're trying to appreciate each sunrise without dwelling on how lucky we are to see it together. But we know we are. And hip-hip-hooray for that.
Unpack Your Paints and Pass the Munchies, Please
Painting can be a lesson in solitude. My dog doesn't even like to accompany me to the studio, where I lose all sense of time. We enjoy lively conversation on our walk down to the studio: "Okay, you can come with me. But Heel!"...Tail wags as the terrier bounds into tall grass after a grasshopper. "Watch for snakes!"...Tail wags as she sniffs, circling. "My, that must smell interesting--is that coyote poop on that bush?"...Tail wags double-time. But once in the studio, I lose my ability to speak Dog. Or English. Soon Cooks the Ranch Dog languishes, bored in a sunny window. annoyed with the whole concept of creation. You'd think I'd staked her on a bed of red ants for our play date as she waits, morosely for Jim to rescue her. My husband is actually afraid to enter the studio. Apparently, when I'm lost in "that world I go to" where I don't hear anything he says, I tend toward curt and evil my reponses. As an antidote to right-brainitis, he often brings iced tea, to which I am addicted. If I get really lost and paint past suppertime, he brings single malt, then delicately inquires as to my plans for dinner. If I paint that late, there aren't any plans for dinner. But, he can hope. At least the Glenlivit makes me appreciate whatever he cooks. Roxa Robison, my studio partner is fine company. I can cuss under my breath with Roxa there and she simply chuckles instead of trying to fix whatever unhappy accident I just created. We laugh at ourselves and our attempts at art in the midst of our crazy, busy lives. We intuit when to speak, when not to. And she isn't offended if I break off a thought mid-sentence, paint awhile, then pick up where I left off half-an-hour later. Or never finish that thought at all. Days we're at the studio together are too rare, though. Often, I'm showing up at the studio as she's leaving to fix lunch. I suspect Tom misses fewer meals than Jim misses. As Jim recovered (in Lubbock) from his first hip replacement surgery (he's back home, doing terrific, thank you, but I'm glad he doesn't have three legs) I took time off nursing to paint with Mom and her neighborhood clan of watercolorists. To qualify for a home at Ransom Canyon, TX, you must first demonstrate an interest in painting in watercolor once, preferably twice weekly. Never painted before? Doesn't matter. They'll bring you up to speed. I don't do watercolor. Lugging my pastels and trusty Soltek easel, I joined the Splash team for lunch, followed by an afternoon of painting. As they gathered tidily around a big kitchen table, I threw plastic sheeting on the floor to collect the dust I'd inevitably produce, erected my easel. This takes like, two minutes, during which time I begin planning my painting. Normally, this is where I lapse into that nonverbal twilight zone and morph into Zombie Artist. Before I could secure my canvas, our talented hostess Joyce Runyon passed me iced tea, (how did she know?) then showed me through her home, which she's decorated with her colorful abstracts. Nothing like what I do. I loved seeing her free-spirited, design-inspired work. I found myself torn between itching to paint and enjoying the view. Done touring, I pulled out a photo and a small pre-mounted piece of Wallis paper. I keep both in my plein air easel pack. That way, I'm always ready to paint without much thought, on location or in someone's kitchen. Mom passed me munchies. Joyce refilled my iced tea. I decided to use Nupastels. Not as much mess. I donned my apron-smock. The watercolorists wore real clothes. I'd trash real clothes in a heartbeat. Debra Clark passed around professional-quality photos she'd taken. We admired them, agreeing that building a resource photo-library of inspiration-rich food for an artist was an art form in itself. Sherry Crawford, knitting her brows sketched and adjusted, sketched and resketched an Indian woman until finally, she captured the likeness. (We've all been there! They were trying to figure out how to transfer her sketch for watercoloring when I left.) Mom, Bettye Cook, reworked a stack of old watercolors, stuff she'd been dissatisfied with. Ellen, six weeks out of hip replacement herself, layered lilac washes on a floral detail and exclaimed how good it felt to be out again and painting. Kayla came late, set up and got to work. Another Sherry, another Joyce. The Splash group is very rich in Joyces and Sherrys. There are others. It's an informal gathering to which all are invited. Someone piled another handful of trail mix munchies on the TV tray beside my easel. I figured eating with pastel-dusted fingers once probably wouldn't kill me. (I'm still here.) Eight or nine women, aged early forties to early eighties painted all afternoon. They (we) talked about workshops and art supplies. Travels. Halloween. Aging parents. Pets. Life. Art. Someone asked me when I'd realized I was so good. (Now that's a hard one to answer gracefully, even if your proud mother is in the room.) Ellen asked questions about pastel technique. Somewhere in all this, I realized I'd lost my focal point. If I'd ever had one. I'll look for it tomorrow, in my studio. Alone. That painting session was about belonging, not about focus. I'll crash these watercolorists' kitchen paint-a-long again when we return for hip #2. Maybe this time, I'll supply the refreshments. (I'm sure Jim won't mind baking cookies while on a cane.)  An afternoon's play Unfinished pastel miniature 5" X 6" by Lindy C Severns check Lindy' Gallery on my website next week to see if I found my focus again! oldspanishtrailstudio.com
Canvas Mirrors and Empty Walls
Eyes are the windows of the soul, right? The way we spend our hard-earned money speaks, sometimes embarrassingly, to the truth of our values. And a body of paintings reveals the heart of an artist. Or the heart of someone (a kindred spirit?) who admires or collects the work of that artist. Until this past summer, I'd never thought much about how my paintings looked all lined up together, or about what they said about me. Then I participated in Albert Handell's and his wife Anita Louise West's Taos Mentoring Workshop. (A plein air pastel marathon, a story in itself.) On the last day, Albert had each of the 10 of us line all the work we had with us up on the wall. Then he went through the line, tossing and culling work that didn't "fit", "fit" meaning each included work made all the other paintings look better. Like a good marriage makes each individual a better person. Incredible, how each cluster of work looked better than the individual pieces. And, minus the misfits.  "Water Lace" near Comales Campground, Sipapu, NM 9"x12" plein air pastel
by Lindy Severns before the workshop started
I didn't agree with all his selections. Albert tossed out all my half-finished landscapes and complex skies. He raved about my running water scenes. I would've done the opposite. This made me think. Thinking can be hard for an artist. Oh, sure we think-- some of us quite elegantly. But not necessarily while creating. Albert and I go way back. As student/teacher, we harken to a time when neither of us had wrinkles and each had lungs not yet coated in pastel dust. I'm not a workshop junkie. Albert is the reason I'm a pastelist. He is my TEACHER. So when he told me I should be doing running water, intensively painting running water, I tried to listen. This though I live in the desert. But then he said that thing about my busy skies, my complex, multi-hued, multi-valued skies. That's when I realized the master of the pioneer modern pastelists advised not me, but the student I'd been twenty- five years ago. Twenty-five years ago I did still lifes, portraits, animals, florals, architecture, and some landscapes. I did martial arts figures. Heck, I even did golfers, pets and self-portraits. Back then, I was exploring a world I wasn't sure I belonged in. Today, I know who I am. Where I am. What I belong to. And I love my place in the universe. I am a landscape painter who, for many years, taught taekwondo and flew a jet. I paint the Southwest, especially the high desert skies. The Southern Rockies. Mountain skies. Skies are my home. I paint my home, my soul, the mirror I look into when I place an empty canvas on my easel. I paint as if I'm sparring with a worthy opponent, learning as I parry his kicks and counter his punches. I paint as if fire burned in the twin engines mounted on my wings. Okay. I'm weird. But I know it. And that makes art. In all the years we lived in Lubbock, I never once painted a cotton field. I have no paintings of our huge and beautiful yard there. I painted no local landmarks, none of the interesting, wind-hardened faces who boldly carved the South Plains. (Once, back when I still did commissions without being held in an arm lock, I painted a windmill at sunset, but I don't remember it as being especially noteworthy. Call me eccentric, but I don't like goats, Starbucks, or defoliated cotton. I have the ultimate respect for those of you who do, however.) Which brings me, in the round-about way I think, to my point: I hold a fourth-degree black belt in taekwondo, and had I been more politically malleable, I'd hold a fifth-degree black belt. That takes a lot of determination, a lot of perseverance, a lot of sweat. I had all that. But if the only martial arts classes had been held at six in the morning, I'd still have functioning knees and I'd still be a couch potato. Morning isn't who I am. By the same token, if cotton fields were the only subject I had to paint, I wouldn't be an artist. (Who knows? Maybe I'd raise goats, or pour lattes at Starbucks.) For sure, if all I'd known to paint had been cotton fields, the walls of our Lubbock home would've been empty. But I have itchy soles. I've hiked the Rockies, not tip-to-tip but many points between. The American Rockies flow into the American deserts. See where I'm going? I belong to the desert. So, that's where I live now, and that's what I paint. I can still do portraits, windmills, still lifes. But I don't. I'm all grown up now, and I paint what's inside me. Complex skies. Succulent-crowded hard-pack. Dessicated cactus pods and craggy peaks. And a few times a year, Albert, I do return to Northeastern New Mexico; while there, I try to capture the hard magic in running water, water being something transient, something to be revered. For every desert plant to blossom, snow must eventually cover one of those craggy peaks. About snow. Snow falls from multi-hued, murky-valued complex skies. Like water, I hope my mature work, like my rich life, runs full-cycle. Nature is its own mystery. All I know is, I have no empty walls, only canvas mirrors. May you say the same about your own life's collection. That's the best wish I can send you.
Those Aren't Your Footprints? Traveling Special Roads
 "CRESTING WILD ROSE PASS" 9' x 25" pastel on Wallis museum-grade paper
$1500 by Lindy Cook Severns 2007
available October 15 2007 at Kiowa Gallery, 105 E Holland Ave. Alpine, TX (432) 837-3067 framed under museum glass
We once had a Patagonian conure, a pigeon-sized parrot with a scream several decibles above that of a smoke detector with fresh batteries. A worthy traveler, Pepper happily accompanied us on vacations. The first time we took her to the Davis Mountains, she shared her obvious delight at the increasingly awe-inspiring scenery we passed through. Her coos and clucks and happy chatter amused us, and we wondered if the palisading cliffs and ever-closing-in mountains reminded her of her former rocky home at the tip of South America. As we began the long climb past Star Mountain and up Wild Rose Pass, the premature dusk experienced wherever mountains swallow the setting sun descended on the highway, throwing our route into sudden shadow. Pepper screamed. And screamed. Panicked, she waddled to the corner of her travel cage, where she continued her screaming. With that sometimes embarrassing insight gifted to people who share their lives with companion animals, we realized she was warning us not to continue in the dark. A journey once delightful to her had become instinctively dangerous. Having headlights, we soothed her as best we could, and we continued into Davis Mountain State Park to set up camp.
Pepper had a terrific vacation, especially once we settled her into the motorhome and hooked up cable TV for her viewing pleasure. But ev |
