Category: Blitherings

A Sunday in the Sun, Wind and Rain

Weeks go by and it seems you go nowhere interesting.  A trip to the market, and then a walk around the neighborhood.  Oh, other things happen, like a phone call or a visit with a friend, but still, life seems uneventful.  Not that I want a lot of “events” – they don’t usually bring good news – but I do like a change of scenery.  So, when it happens, and the wind is up, the sun is out, the rain is falling on you, rainbows come and go, and you are pounding away on wet sand, head in the wind, life is pretty darn good.  Accompanied by the esposo and friends of yore, it makes for a wonderful day.  End it with someone’s excellent cooking, how can you complain?

A few weeks ago, our friends Doug and Sheelah, up in Carpinteria, invited us to visit.  I’ve been friends with them since before forever, and the town they live in is a small beach community north of us by about 50 miles.  I lived there when I was in college, on an avocado ranch where the laborers sang Spanish songs at 5:30 a.m. – a nice way to wake up, along with the clucking of chickens and the crowing of roosters.  The beauty of Carpinteria is that it is blessed with a wonderful state park that runs along much of the city itself, moving from wide flat beaches to bluffs which overlook a seal rookery, which is home to mothers, fathers, and newborn babies in the first part of each year.

Sunday afternoon was a windy, blustery day, with remnants of storm clouds gusting in from the north, white caps out to sea, and an occasional wild sprinkling of rain.  The sky, though blue, bore thick clouds, and the wind was fierce enough to blow fine sand in rivulets in front of you when your back was to the wind, and fill your eyes and mouth with grit when you were facing it.  The cold, too, was biting (for us thin-blooded Californians), and an insulated, windproof jacket, along with hats and hoods made you a lot more comfortable than not.  It was so cold, Sheelah went back home and changed from a down jacket to a windbreaker, hat, and long scarf.  We waited in the wind for her.

As always, a beach is a treasure chest.  Shells, rocks, driftwood, flotsam and jetsam.  Sheelah found a beauty of a stone, a jasper veined with white, and a clam shell.

The bluffs host a variety of things.  Ranches and small industry, railroad tracks, piers to launch boats for the oil rigs offshore, trails, and seals.  Here we began our ascent onto the bluffs.

From here, we continued along the pathways, weaving near the edge of the bluffs and inland, the Pacific on one side, the flat land on the other.  Trees vary from native Monterrey cypress (I think that is the correct name) to eucalyptus.  The trees at the edge are twisted and tormented by the winds.

A bit away from the shore, sunflowers are already in bloom beneath the old eucalyptus and other coastal trees.  The brilliant colors are so welcome after months of drought and brown, dried, dead plants.

The seal rookery, or sanctuary, was not very populated when we looked down at it.  The tide was out, so perhaps were the seals; as well, the storms of this season may have discouraged a lot of sex in the sand and babies on the beach.  

The Carpinteria Seal Sanctuary is observable from the bluffs.  Pupping season begins in December.  Above the sanctuary are benches and paths so the seals may be seen, but left undisturbed (one hopes) by humans. This video shows the seal sanctuary as I have seen it in earlier years.

As our earth changes and populations increase and resources lost, such sites are increasingly more important for wildlife.  Below is a view from the cliffs.  We saw about 4 or 5 seals, well disguised as rocks.  The sanctuary is an important area for wildlife.  I’ve been here in other years, and there are mothers and babies everywhere, fat and floppy on the sand.

All along the way, to and fro our 3.5 mile walk, there was much to see, whether on the phone lines or in the camping area of the state park.  People were out and about, running, bicycling, and just enjoying a brisk, beautiful day.

Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon!  Doug and Sheelah are wonderful people and great friends to spend time with.  We feel pretty lucky to live in such a beautiful area and have the blessing of wonderful friends and family nearby.

 

Time

Since I put in my resignation and applied for my retirement funds, an interesting shift in viewpoint or perspective has occurred.  I’ve been out on medical leave since last summer, and always had a return date for work.  First it was in January 2019, and then the last day of March 2019.  (Nothing fatal, just a health situation that is taking a bit longer to “fix” than originally thought, and as I was planning to retire in July of this year, I just moved things up.)

There were “return to work” dates in my head.  Having those dates is very different than having a seemingly infinite time that retirement provides.  No schedule, no obligations to a job – just my life.

I feel as if I am standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon – which I have done from different vantage points – and the experience is heady and scary!  The bottom of the Grand Canyon is a long way down – and the view to the other rim is miles and miles away.  The river is to be traveled.  The sky is vast and filled with stars and clouds and songbirds and ravens and raptors.  What adventures await?  That is up to me to decide as much as is in my power.

The freedom is the most exciting part – the freedom to choose to do something or not do something.  The freedom to be lazy, to read, to take a walk, to have lunch with a friend, to chat on the phone, to write, to paint, to draw, to do photography, to dig holes in the yard (that has to wait – too much rain!), to shop, to bake, to cook, to sew, to design, to think, to live, to wait, to plan, to anticipate.

All of this is sprawled out like a puddle of water, an ocean, moving into nooks and crannies that have been ignored in face of the 10-11 hour work day when the only options are get up, drink coffee, have breakfast, get washed and dressed, drive to work, work, shove lunch in my face while I work, work some more, drive home, have dinner, clean up after dinner, go to bed.

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed my job, but I was tired of the lack of time for myself, to be with family and friends, tired of feeling every moment in my life belonged to someone or something else (the job, my students, my responsibilities at work) or spent on the daily chores of living (dishes, cleaning, bills, budgeting).  To savor anything personal had a pressure on it to do it quickly and efficiently so there would still be time for another activity.  Personal relationships were nearly impossible to maintain, even at home.  I think my health also suffered because of 5 years of this crazy schedule – so I got to practice for retirement with medical leave and enjoy some time of my own.

And now, I own my time except for what my biological clock and fate has in store for me.  It’s something I treasure every day.

Style

Definition search result for STYLE (straight from Google search “definition style”):  1.  a manner of doing something.  2.  a distinctive appearance, typically determined by the principles according to which something is designed. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about style of late, as in style of music, clothing, politics, painting, drawing, writing.  Since we are all individuals, we all have ways of doing things that earmark them as our own.

I don’t particularly care for what I might consider my native way of drawing and painting.  I have a vision in my mind’s eye about how I want things to look as a finished product.  That doesn’t mean no happy accidents, but it does mean I have a certain vision of clarity with watercolor paints in particular.  I think a lot of what I paint seems labored – and maybe that is because I did the laboring?  My paints seem heavy and more opaque rather than utilizing the transparency of the medium.

Copying

Copying a master’s work is a time-honored tradition for art students, whether sitting in the Louvre and copying a Rembrandt (if they still let people do that, like they did in the 1800s), or a sumi-e student in training.

Today there seems to be a shunning of such, with more of an emphasis on “originality” coupled with a fear of lawsuits for copyright infringement.  If you think about it, nothing is really “original” but derivations of other’s works or our own creative minds, but someone before you or me probably had the same idea.  Forgers can make a bit of money by copying masters, and passing them off as the master’s, but with today’s technology, I expect that becomes a bit more difficult.  By the same token, can using a photograph as a springboard to a painting can be considered under some circumstances as copying – even if you have taken the same picture yourself?  It’s my understanding you cannot take pictures of the Eiffel Tower lit up at night because those photographs are copyrighted by the lighting of the tower!  That is how crazy this world can be.

Learning from Copying

What do you learn when you copy someone else’s work?  What do you have to do to “get” there?  You have to look, think, analyze, plan, and then look, think, analyze, and plan again.  After you do that, where do you go?  How can you apply what you have learned to make your newfound knowledge your own?  I struggle with this as there are artists I admire, whose work inspires me – how do I make what I have learned in the process of copying my own?  I am still trying to figure this out.

One thing I do not want to do is pass something off as original if I have copied it as a learning experience.  That is completely unethical.  I find it interesting that certain art instructors make it well known that, if you have taken a workshop with them, any work derived from learning in that workshop cannot be sold as “original.”  Does that mean their “style” is copyrighted?  Does this mean if you develop a style with your own subject matter which is similar to what you have learned that you can be sued for copyright infringement?  If such is the case, none of us can produce anything – this building is copyrighted, that tree is copyrighted, that person is subject to privacy laws, that color is copyrighted, that song sound is copyrighted, that rhythm is copyrighted.  If you do DNA testing, you may be signing away your rights to your own body’s chemical makeup.

So, What Happens Now?

Well, I know what I want to accomplish in my painting.  To list it:

  • clarity of color
  • economy of composition (meaning not overworking something) and simplicity
  • mastery

I prefer landscapes to portraits or animals.  I can do skies fairly well.  Trees, sometimes; mountains, sometimes.  Cityscapes?  Seascapes?  Challenges for sure.  What about painting cars – part of cityscapes!  Waves – part of seascapes.  Water?  Omigod!  It’s overwhelming.

Enough whining and pontificating – time to get out the brushes and color!

 

A Sunny Day in the Garden

A few miles up the road from me is the local botanical garden.  It’s located on a series of hills that cover several acres.  Trails wander through oak groves and chaparral.  Specific areas are planted for butterflies and birds, sage plants, California natives, rare fruit, cacti.  It’s always a pleasure to meander around in it as it changes with seasons.  Different times of day bring out different animals; as well, the light shifts and changes.  Early morning, sunset, high noon.  Benches  line the paths throughout the garden.  For a wilder walk, there are the trails along the creek.  I’ve seen squirrels, road runners, coyotes and hawks.  Critters like it as much as I do.  It’s even better when you are the only one there except the wildlife!

I went out to take pictures and to draw – it’s been several weeks since I was last there.  Rain and cold as well as being ill kept me home for a bit.  With today’s 70 F, it was hard to stay indoors.  I took a couple of cameras – one film, one digital – some paper and a pen.  I wanted to see the flowers in particular, especially the spring bulbs which come up at this time of year.  I wasn’t disappointed.The outing was soul-satisfying on a personal and artistic level. I’ll be back sooner rather than later!  There is little more satisfying than time spent in solitary and quiet appreciation of nature.