I Want to Go A-Walking

I Want to Go A-Walking

I want to go a-walking
all the live-long day
To hear the crickets chirping
and see the bales of hay.

To wrest the beauty hiding
in weeds along the way
To find my heartbeat’s rhythm
I lost in the busy fray.

To breathe the fresh air heaping
transforming work into play
To feel the wall-less space
my voice freed to say.

Though I only go a-walking
a small portion of my day
The weeds turn into flowers
and I know it will be okay.

-jpe

October 4, 2012

Other poems I’ve written about walking are here and here and here.

These autumn days are beautiful walking days! Especially down my favorite Silver Dapple Lane (above). 5″x 5″ pastel in My Little Black Book.

A Bale of Words

Available in My Etsy Shoppe

Another “sitting” out in my favorite field just after the baling. This time with my pastels in My Little Black Book.

Available in My Etsy Shoppe

And a different sort of “bale” here…words bundled together in a little poem I wrote several years ago:

**************************

I like you standing there…

Your presence brings comfort amid the recently ravaged landscape.

I walk beside my favorite field,

once filled with waves of grass and weed,

fern and vine, wildflower and morning glory.

I wince at the shearing—

too much is exposed.

But soon you are there.

All that I loved so is bound up in you.

Your solid cylinder a testimony to the weightiness of glory.

Your firm shadows welcome on the sun-blanched scalp.

I hope that you will remain,

that I might gain

some sense of solidity when I next pass by.

But alas, I hope in vain.

Another will come and lead you away to wait in shelter as fodder for animals.

I grieve the cycle, knowing it will begin again,

wondering if there will be an alternate end for me.

-jpe

upon her walk 9/23/08

Unlikely Lovely

So on Tuesday, I take my youngest, Maddie, to gymnastics at a place here in town called Flip Force.  On the way into the building, I notice a patch of tangly wilderness off to the side.  I had brought along my sketchbook and oil pastels.  “Must see what I can do with that” ran through my head as we walked in.

Once she was settled into her class, I returned to the spot and found a very dilapidated wooden picnic table to sit on and draw.  The natural area was one of those places where the mowed grass runs up to the edge and then everything else has been allowed to grow wild.  A jumble of brambles, weeds, briars, tall trees, scrub trees, underbrush, etc.  Even the green colors seemed “leftover” with its end-of-summer brownish tinge and not-yet-turned-color foliage.

Places like that attract me.  Perhaps it’s the wildness, the untamed, unkempt life-run-rampant that entices me to untangle it in pen, paint, or pastel.  I stayed long enough for two drawings: one began with a black pastel marking the outline and main tree shape.  I started the other with a brown pastel, thinking it would dictate a different set of colors throughout. And it did!

I continue to realize that the best way to make sense of a tangled patch (both visually and in your life) is to draw it! Loveliness in unlikely places…

An Itch to Scratch

I get an itch sometimes.  You know, like an itch to use multi-colored pens, or an itch to use thick paint, or an itch for abstraction.  This itch is for oil pastels…and I’m still scratching! So fun to glide the bold color on white paper. To rub the colors into each other. To watch a forested lane become a magical world of color!

Do you get these itches? Or is it just me?

Faces & Places!

In recent years, I have received commissions from friends near and far to paint and draw the beautiful faces and places in their lives.

 Daughters and sons, homes and land…all are special to the individuals who ask me to honor these things in paint, pastel, or charcoal.

I am always honored and humbled to be asked to paint a person or place that means so much to someone.

Do you have a home or place that holds a special spot in your memory?

Does the face of a loved one evoke your love and appreciation for who that individual is?

I would be honored to paint the beauty you have in your life.

The above are only a few examples of the commissioned work I’ve had the privilege of creating.   I will be expanding this page in the near future, offering commissioned work for folks near and far.  Please contact me if you would like to talk further about a commissioned portrait of a loved one or place.

A Big Day!

Today we take our oldest child to college. A small truck and a van are packed full of her things. And I’m wondering if it will all fit into her dorm room at Wingate! A host of emotions have been flurrying around our house and in my heart lately.  But this morning, I’m thankful.

Thankful for this beautiful daughter that we were given the privilege of parenting and watching her grow up into a young lady.

Thankful for the incredible opportunity she has to study the beauty of Music at Wingate University.

Thankful for family and friends who will be supporting her in their thoughts and prayers.

Thankful for all the new friends and “family” at Wingate she will meet, and who will become her lifelong friends.

Thankful for the unbelievable miracle of provision for her to go to this marvelous school.

Thankful for endings…and for Beginnings.

We love you Catie!

Maybe I’m Just A Little Girl…

This is the refrain from one of my FAVORITE songs by one of my FAVORITE musician/singer/songwriters: Mindy Gledhill.

You just gotta listen to her music!

It’s the most wonderfulest!

Responding to Rutenberg: Drawing vs. Painting

ID #110

“Moments”

Brian Rutenberg, in his Studio Visit #18 , quotes a German artist, Walter Sickert, who said, “Drawing is about captivity. Painting is about freedom.”  This one little quote has stuck with me and caused all kinds of back & forth in my brain as I consider what’s being said here. I don’t think Rutenberg is in any way pitting the one against the other to somehow say that one is better than another.  He is merely putting forth a fundamental difference in the ACTION of or the RESULT of drawing & that of painting.

He says, “I’m really invested in that notion of capturing something and using that as a springboard into the process of abstraction.”

I love that.  Brian calls himself a Painter.  Every time I hear him say that, I find myself wanting to say…”And I am a Drawer.”  Which doesn’t mean that I do not paint…I do and love to paint! But fundamentally I love to capture the Beauty of the world around me whether it be recognizable things, places, people, or events which are inherently lovely OR whether it is something I’ve had to hunt for in the midst of the mundane in life, or even in the painful places of life.  I feel it is my job to look for and capture any hint of Beauty by drawing it in my sketchbook or on larger pieces of paper or canvases.

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE Brian Rutenberg’s drawings of trees (you can see a few of them in the documentaries).  They are exquisite.  I have done a fair amount of drawing/painting trees and they are some of my favorite works.  As I look at his “drawings” of trees, they seem very painterly to me.  This distinction between what is considered “drawing” and what is considered “painting” is not a black and white issue to me.  I believe one can paint with a pen, a pencil, and with charcoal…mediums that are typically associated with drawing.  And I believe one can draw with watercolor, acrylics, and oils…definitely paint substances.  Is it merely the presence of line which marks a drawing?  Is it the evidence of brushstrokes which denotes a painting? Or is it a massed-in approach (blocking in the large shapes before the smaller ones) which deems a work a painting?  Or…what?  I’ve settled on it being a fuzzy area and which really doesn’t need to be defined.

But if I go with Sickert’s definition here, I have to say that I am definitely a DRAWER.  My eyes are constantly on the lookout for things/people/events/places that I want to capture in my sketchbook or larger papers or canvases.  Yet even Sickert’s definition may be fluid.  As I capture these moments by drawing them, I experience a sense of freedom.  As if, the simple act of drawing (or painting:) sets me free to say “yes” to the moment, to accept where I am, and to fully inhabit the gamut of life’s beauties.

So…was I drawing or painting the first image?  How ’bout the tree…did I draw it or paint it?  It really doesn’t matter.  I was definitely capturing something, whether it was an idea about the tangle of creative thoughts or an assertion of the wisdom and experience of an old tree.  In capturing these, I was also freeing them to exist somewhere other than in that space and time AND freeing me to embrace all the wonder that life has to offer.  I do enjoy thinking about these things.  It seems that Mr. Rutenberg does also.

Thank you, once again, Brian.

And here’s a quote by Edgar Degas I came across recently…good stuff to think about:

“Drawing is the artist’s most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.”

(Edgar Degas)

Final Day

 

Wishing I could fly my kite all the way home from the beach, I’m enjoying the last full day here. There are so many drawings I’ve not been able to share with you…perhaps I can create some sort of video montage for you when I get back home.

But not before I fly a kite one last time at the beach.

My Makeover by Mia

With her palette of blushes, eye and lip colors, my 5 year old neice looked searchingly at my face and said, “Now let’s see…”

She commenced to giving me about 5 different layers of lip color and liner, two shades of blue and green blush which she carefully blended, and a trio of bright blue, purple and pink for my eyes. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, she placed both of her hands on either side of my face, assessing her work, and finally pronounced, “That’s just right!”

The tender exchange of of this young artist to my blank canvas face, made me wonder…If a child paints your face in rainbow colors…is it because she sees you this way, in bright happy colors?

I like to think so.

You never know what a trip to the beach with your husband’s family will bring.