Inside or Outside?

Calla lilies in Delft vase 2013

Thursday was a painter’s day, to be sure. It started in the studio, finishing these calla lilies that are in full bloom here following the Christmas rains. Calla lilies have always seemed exotic to me; I’m not sure I ever saw one growing before I came to California, but I feel like they are associated with funerals. They grow like weeds in our garden, in thick, tall clumps, and then disappear completely in the dry season.

And then it was Ray Day, a painting tribute to Ray Strong, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 101. I was fortunate to meet him and to paint with him - he was an exceptional, exuberant person, a fantastic painter, and a larger-than-life character He lived an amazing life. There are some wonderful video clips of him here http://raystrong.posterous.com/. 


Anacapa Island from Camino Cielo 2013

The greatest thing in the world, he said, is to be a landscape painter. On a day like this, it’s hard to disagree. From the top of East Camino Cielo, more than 3,000 feet above Santa Barbara, we could see all the way to Catalina Island more than 100 miles away. It was a stunning day, and a fitting tribute to remember an artist who felt so strongly about sharing his gift with others. 

Photo by Ellen Easton

Ray was a founding member of the Oak Group, local plein air landscape painters whom I admire tremendously. In addition to being extraordinarily talented artists, they have dedicated themselves to the preservation of our environment here and have done phenomenal work painting to raise awareness and to raise funds to protect endangered areas of the central coast and valleys of California.

The legacy of landscape painting in California is daunting, and Ray was certainly a pillar of it for many decades.  Even though I love painting in the protected privacy of my studio, there is nothing better than being a landscape painter.



The little pond in the potager.

A New Year: Please Take a Look

People have been making resolutions, prayers, or promises for the new year since ancient times, when Babylonians vowed to repay debts and Romans swore to Janus (of January), whose two faces looked both backward and forward in time. Their dreams and desires were no doubt both similar to and different from ours; historians have noted that over the past century, American resolutions have evolved from resolving to do good works into supplications to be thinner and better attired.

Expressions of gratitude have become trendy of late. For me, gratitude is best when it’s internalized, not promoted as a lifestyle or publicized as a token of self-fulfillment. We live in a world filled with beauty, and yet we spend many of our days not noticing. As a painter, my job is to look. As a teacher, my job is to teach others to look, and to see, with uncluttered eyes. It is the easiest and quickest way to find that gratitude.

 

Most mornings I walk out in my garden, which is, in its own way, a work of wild art. If I look, I can always find beauty there. Overlooking weeds, slugs and snails, and my gopher-ravished vegetable bed, there is always the beauty of nature, and of nature altered by humans in our own attempt to create beauty. We have a little pond, with a little statue, just outside the dining room window, and it is often the first thing I really see in the morning. When the morning light shines through, it is something I find beautiful, along with whatever is growing in the potager - herbs, vegetables, and a few flowers.

I am hoping 2013 will be a year filled with beauty for all of us, and that we will take the time to look and make the effort to see. Bonne année et bonne santé – happy new year to you, and good health.