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It’s not often that I get to go outside here in Minnesota and paint in January, the coldest month, and actually feel overdressed.  But such was the case this past week while painting above the Minnesota horizon.  We have this thing about dressing in layers when it gets cold here.  This method traps the heat in between the successive layers and also allows you to peel away layer by layer until you feel, just right.  With the warmth we’ve been having this season, you almost want to just put on a T shirt.

I personally make it a habit to overdress when out painting.  I am speaking of course about the layers, not the notion of apparel refinement.  None that know me would make this mistake.  But dressing warmer than you think you should especially here on the tundra allows you to place your mind on things such as drawing, values, color and the like, instead of matters like-are my fingers still attached?

So when you get a day like this and you’re grabbing the gear to head out and paint, don’t get fooled, overdress!  Remember being ” hot” is not an estimation from a passing observer commenting on your wardrobe, no, it’s a fundamental understanding that by standing in one spot and painting at this time of the year you’re bound to be painting squiggly lines while shivering before the work is done.

Whoa!  Its 50 dddegrees colder today than yesterday.  Whats up with that?

Ok, I know things can change fast,..or not…I was rooting for the Vikings, but I’m just not ready for this atmospheric slap in the face.   Its 50 degrees colder today than yesterday,  but the truth is, what is today, may not be tomorrow. 

I was reminded of this just the other day.  I visited a lovely tea shop on Lyndale Ave here in Minneapolis, “La Societe du The”.    A market, which shall remain unnamed, is displacing this tea shop in the not too distant future.   I guess if I want to remember this image of the tea shop solidly in my mind I will need to paint it.   For some of us, painting an image tends to lock it in your mind.

“November Cedars”, the painting pictured above is yet another example of the ephemeral face of nature.  This sketch was done as a preliminary study for a planned larger work.  Actually, these cedars located on a ridge in Eden Prairie were a favorite of mine and have been depicted in several previous paintings.  Oh well, yet another Eden vanishes.  I went to check on my friends, these dear cedars, the other day and “they took paradise to put up a parking lot”….that’s part of a song from the last century by Joni Mitchell.   My plans were to paint a large, I mean really large painting of the Cedars as they would sit nestled in freshly fallen snow and lit by the soft moonlight.  I can see that in my mind’s eye and will now have to go the tea shop and extract the details necessary to commit the image to canvas instead of paint it right from nature.  I better hurry though!  What’s up with that?

Around the Bend

It’s a new year.  We are already five days deep into 2012 and I haven’t quite wrapped that fact around my head yet.  Although the calendar is drawing a line in the sand and the journal entry pages are clean and untouched, I haven’t felt a bump or change…something to say that I’ve stepped over into a fresh clean year.   Rather I feel the continuation of the past uninterrupted.  Mind you that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Nature cycles.  The sun rises, and sets, and so it did today…again.  That’s a good thing.

Today’s forecast was for sunny skies and mild temperatures.  We got the mild temps.  The sunny skies, well nope, it was cloudy all day.  I headed down into the ravine to paint something before the forecasted colder temperatures arrive next week.   I wasn’t far into my pilgrimage before finding a possible candidate...  Talk about uninterrupted sameness, this scene I had walked by innumerable times.  For whatever reason it spoke to me today.  Pretty plain stuff…let’s see, a path in the woods and …a bend ahead…and…well, that’s about it.

I stood in the silence for a minute or two thinking.  Or was I listening, maybe that’s more like the way it is….or should have been.  “Speak to me…do you want me to paint you?”  “Speak now…I’m waiting….paint….P –A-I-N…”    "Alright, like it or not I am going to paint you, so there"!   The dialogue between me and nature went something like that.  I don’t know most of the time if it’s speaking to me or I am just moved to depict the thing before me, but the result you end up with usually speaks loud and clear as to whether you heard or saw anything there.

But now I wonder, is this more than a painting, Perhaps it’s a picture for me.  The path looks like an everyday path, sameness, familiarity, and slightly uphill.  Hmmh, uphill…arduous…I must work, harder.   But there lies a mystery ahead, a bend I cannot see what is around the bend.   Maybe this pictures my year ahead, the everydayness will change, and the sun will come out and…and…

Tomorrow’s forecast is sunny skies.  I’m going back to the path tomorrow…to peek...you know...around the bend.  Is that cheating?