cold and deep.

I was taking a run on the Jane Craig today, only second time skiing all year. Conditions were amazing and I was beginning to realize that skiing is much harder work than teaching dance - I was huffing and puffing working those bumps... and all that SNOW!  I had gotten out from behind that group of kids and was completely by myself, feeling the burn and also learning how uncoordinated I had become after two years of not doing this at all. 

Around another corner and still blissfully alone, I let my skis take me to the edge of the trail so I could catch my breath, watching the tips cut into the fresh powder beyond where any skis had touched, and then I looked up into the trees lining the trail. They were elegant, straight-trunked spruce trees, barren of branches until about eight feet up, then brandishing only broken sticks for another five feet or so and above that was a canopy of straggly branches all covered in heavy snow, the needles tipped with hoar-frost. 

I looked from one to another. All those straight trunks, receding into the distance in the deep snow and the quiet. So many of them, just living there. And there I was, trussed up in my ridiculous layers of winter gear, heart pounding and breathing hard, just amazed by their stalwart complacency. 

Just out there in the snow. On the side of a mountain. All winter.

And I asked them, how do you do it? 
              and as one, they said to me, We Just Do. 

The lesson was, it's not a struggle. It just is. 

the rhythm of life...

the camera can't capture the motion of the ripples, but
this is the spot and the morning light.

I'm sitting by the shore, gazing at the lake in early morning. The softest of smoothest ripples slowly move toward shore - only a breath of wind. And they are reflecting the slanting sunlight up on the overhanging birches, the white bark acting like a projection screen capturing their slow-motion rhythm. And as I study those delicate, linear reflections shimmering above me - amazingly - I discover that they move up the birch trunks the way a caterpillar's legs move: they spread out, come together, spread out, come together with a rhythmic start - stop kind of thing...  If you ever studied multi-legged insects, one leg will stop briefly while all the legs behind come closer together and then all the legs out in front spread apart; and if I track one ripple's reflection as it moves up the tree it goes start - stop, start - stop, with the lower ones catching up and then the upper ones spreading out, just like a caterpillar...
How can that be?
I study the ripples in the lake closely; they are seemingly even, moving toward shore in a steadied, regular pattern. Yet there is obviously some kind of start/stop pattern or quality that is undetectable on the water's surface, but made obvious - magnified - by their reflected light. Together. Away. Caterpillar legs. Waves. The movement pattern is shared, and is itself a reflection of the wave motion of all the energy that resonates throughout the universe.

Coherence

I stepped out onto the screened porch of a cabin on Belgrade Lake and I beheld an inspiration... a display of visual coherence. The cabin is just two feet of pine-needle-covered-path from where the bank drops to the water, and about half way down the bank a fern's fronds spread in the morning sun. The soft movement of leaves in an overhanging birch filter the sunlight and spatter the bank with quivering splashes of deep gold, and as the fern's fronds tremble in the slight breeze they shimmer rhythmically. The dual movement patterns of shifting light and fluttering foliage overlap, vibrating with morning's energy.

Looking just beyond the fern to the water's surface, alternating ultramarine and cerulean surface reflections move in a soft ripple pattern akin to patterns the flowing tide leaves in the sand. Gleaming through this blue surface pattern are gold strips of focused light moving across the rock shapes on the lake bottom; each individual ripple creates its own gold refraction line.  The gold lines merge and fluctuate like vibrating zebra stripes, passing from left to right as the waves respond to the slight breeze; their changing shapes illuminate the topography of the lake bed.

As I stood there transfixed, it was obvious to me that these patterns of movement were the same, juxtaposed for my benefit. The rhythm of the golden refraction pattern fluttering across the lake bottom danced with the same energy as the individual fern fronds vibrating in the breeze under the shifting sunlight. So different, but pulsing with coherence.  Energy and matter - essence and form; it is shimmering all around us.

deadlines

"At Rest" - 3" x 3" - very simple study of
wave action and evening light in
pinks and blues. And for not being a boat
person, I think the boat reads well.

I remember in middle school we were put through a series of interest tests - like career aptitude stuff, and many of the questions would get into the basics of working conditions, like whether you were happier working outside even if it meant being in cold weather, or if clean, office-y conditions were preferable even if it meant being stuck inside all day. I remember there were a bunch of questions regarding work pressure - like your ability to work in groups, or a preference for working alone, or working under a deadline. And I remember at the time thinking that that word, DEADLINE, just seemed dreadful. I obviously had no idea how to translate "deadline" into what it would mean in a working environment - I thought it meant that if you did not get your work done by the "deadline", then punishment (and as a twelve-year-old I assumed corporal punishment or general humiliation) would follow - and it seemed like a working condition definitely to be avoided. I also remember that most of the art based jobs, like anything in the creative field: fashion design, graphic artist, illustrator etc, seemed to be linked to the concept of deadlines. I remember thinking very clearly that even tho I loved being creative - because of this whole "deadline" thing, a real career in the creative fields probably wouldn't be for me.

"Ghostly" - 5" x 5" - the gray/green foggy color was achieved
by mixing Cerulean Blue and Yellow Ochre. 

Just slightly later in my development years, "deadlines" were more clearly explained to me, thank goodness, by some helpful guidance person. And NOW of course, I am painfully aware that without deadlines, NOTHING in my entire life would EVER get done. I am completely deadline driven. For instance, all winter long (also known as painting season) I have been telling myself that I gotta get some ocean scenes painted - I am going to be on the coast five different times this summer: twice in Bar Harbor, twice in Southwest Harbor, and in Belfast. It doesn't take a marketing degree to know that ocean scenes sell on the coast... so: "get 'r done!"  - but... when is the "deadline?"  :)

"Ocean Sunset" 3" x 3"- a quick study of
a classic view on Route 3 in Bar Harbor.

"Ocean Cliffs" - 3" x 3" - a familiar
scene near Sand Beach, 

Sooo... as I write this I am in a motel in Bar Harbor with the alarm set for 5:45 a.m. so I can get set up for my first show of the year. About about twelve days ago I set up six coastal paintings. Yesterday I finished and found frames for four of them. They are safely tucked into my transport boxes and ready to hang  - how's that for meeting the deadline? 

ten minutes for me.

ten minutes - that's all. 
This past Sunday, our minister spoke of the word "abide" and how in the gospel, Jesus tells us to "abide in him" -  he took the time to speak of the word: abide means wait, stay, with a hint of stillness, if only inner stillness... also patience, and consistency, be-ness. Then he related that to a simple period of quiet at the beginning of the day - like a short meditation, but he didn't use that word so to not muddy his meaning with other religious viewpoints. Personally, I lean toward Pantheism - the omnipresent "god" - the universe or the creative force in the universe is god - so to me, abiding with "god" really means just being still with myself with no intent... letting everything "in." I mean, I'm often still when pondering colors or next steps or zoning out to let the point of what I'm creating come back to me... but just to be, that's different. 

Here's the first page in my handmade paper blank book. Loose and
fast - this came together very quickly. I did find, however, that I need
better quality brushes to go with my little half-pan set. Next time...
May 14, 2012

So, it being the first day of the rest of my life, and a Monday, which is just a good time to start new things, I took those ten minutes. I just sat in the front window on the cedar chest - which has a cushion on it for just that, but I don't sit there and just look out very often - and opened up to the colors: the yellow greens of May, the fog over the hilltops across the lake, I watched the birds - crows, chickadees - I didn't try to stop thinking or focus or edit, I just drifted.  I also didn't time myself - just allowed it end organically... And at the end, I remembered something I've been wanting to do for months that I just never remember to do. At Christmas I was given this lovely handmade paper book  - beautiful, blank, textured square pages - and I've been wanting to be more instantaneous with my art, so I have this travel watercolor kit and I brought it upstairs months ago and put it all together and placed it underneath my coffee table just awaiting my inspiration - and there it has sat since January! So I picked it up and sat right there and painted the green/grays of a foggy May day. Just for me.

as easy as breathing...

"d'Archangel III", 8" x 10", gouache on black paper.
Copyright Pamela Jo Ellis, 2012

I attended a conference once where one of the presenters was telling us to find the things in our lives that are as "easy as breathing" - that if we put our energies toward these things, then we would find our "bliss." It was put forth as a way to find fulfillment in your daily life and work, as well as greater financial independence. !! Well, coming up with that list was a challenge - I mean, what comes absolutely naturally?  ummmm... reading? talking with friends - laughing with my children? then I went deeper - dancing - I'm always dancing... mostly in my kitchen... and, even tho I don't do it just for fun very often, I do love to draw. It's one step removed from "breathing" because you have to first pick up utensils and substrate (paper and pencil or whatever is at hand) but it does comes easily - always has. It's as if the image just comes in through my eyes and out through my hand onto the paper - and I don't have to think about it. I relate it to MY amazement when I see a pianist (like Sue or Andrea or Terry) just open a book, look at the music, and the music just flows through her eyes to her fingers onto the keyboard and into our ears. Drawing is like that for me - it just flows. Not that it didn't take her studying key signatures - music theory - and actual practice time playing, and not that I didn't have to learn about perspective and color - value - line and practice drawing, but I never felt I wasn't getting it - that I couldn't do it. I always could. 

"d'Archangel IV", 8" x 10", gouache on black paper.
Copyright Pamela Jo Ellis, 2012

Dancing.  Drawing.  When I was in college I applied for a big grant that would have taken me to Paris and Kiev to draw dancers at the ballet companies there. I didn't get the grant but only because the Ballet companies wrote back to me and told me my presence would be too intrusive, so they wouldn't grant me permission to sit in on classes. (I think the grant committee liked my proposal though...) After all these years, the urge to combine my two interests is still running in the background. So I set up a photo shoot with one of my mature dancers, and here are my first forays into the two things combined.  It is a new direction I want to take my art; an entirely new type of imagery. (But yes, I will continue with my landscapes, as I do continue to desire to eat.) These first few are just getting me started; I actually want to experiment with more movement and less visual accuracy, however, I was satisfied with the tonality and freshness of this first set. I expect at first that the time I'm devoting to these two things that "are as easy as breathing" may actually contribute to more strife (financial, that is) if people don't respond to this new set of images, but I've always felt that if you paint what you love, people will see/feel that and respond in kind. Well, I can hope for that anyway :) 

some day...

     Some days were not meant to be filled with accomplishments, however, under pressure and time constraints, amazing things can happen. I had a day filled with meetings and classes, with small time slots in between, and as I was sitting there trying desperately to make headway on the big commission I was working on in the 45 minutes available, I had to make a change: scrub out the location of the apple tree stump and move it because I had changed the proportions from the original drawing and needed to re-center the stump. So, the normal way I do this is to wet the area and painstakingly "scrub" off the color with the tip of a firm brush. I had bought this "scrubber" brush from Cheap Joes decided to give it a try - it's a very short, hard-bristle brush - it worked amazingly well: in just a few strokes, the color was gone right back to the white of the paper, leaving it easily reparable to be painted over with the blue of the water. I couldn't believe how quickly and completely it removed the color from the paper, and I just sat there a minute and had this inspiration come to me. How about an image that starts with dark, and you use the scrubber to lift areas of paint - like a reverse watercolor - the way a mezzotint print is crafted: starting with a dark tone and lightening areas. 

A quick trial of lifting paint off Yupo -
just to see if it worked. 

     So I imagined a dark gray winter scene with the white snow on the branches lifted off, kind of in a foggy misty kind of way. So I grabbed a small watercolor block and mixed up a mess of payne's gray and ultramarine blue, and laid down this deep color wash, leaving the lower edge white for snow. Then I set it aside (it would have to dry for me to attempt the lifting of color) and got back to work on the foreground grass texture on my commission. 

     

My second attempt - utilizing the unique qualities of Yupo
to add clouds and background tree texture.

     When it dried and I tried it, it didn't actually work as sweetly as I had imagined; it was too much work to get the effect I wanted on Arches paper. But then I tried the same thing with Yupo paper - and it worked perfectly! It's more of a graphic statement/sketch of a winter scene than my normal painstaking level of detail, but it is still works and the result is fresh... and it's FUN.