Saturday, January 26, 2019

Entry - 1.26.19


                             At its best, life is completely unpredictable.
                                                                                           -Christopher Walken



So, as I stated earlier, with the arrival of warmer weather last spring, I intended to get outdoors and paint some landscapes.  I had spent the prior winter painting a series of not very successful self-portraits in gouache and looked forward to continuing my experimentation addressing a new subject matter under open skies.  I am almost exclusively a figurative painter, only on rare occasions venturing into other genres such as landscape or still life.  During my years of employment, I would usually attempt some plein air painting during my vacations, my inexperience with the subject matter bringing about some fairly inconsistent results.


Birches - Moosehead Lake, Maine - Oil on Canvas - 1987

Greece - Watercolor - 1988

Searsport, Maine - Oil on Canvas - 1991

Switzerland - Watercolor - 1992

Manomet, Massachusetts - Oil on Canvas - 1994

Narragansett, Rhode Island - Pen and Ink with Watercolor - 2002

Horseneck Beach, Massachusetts - Oil on Canvas - 2003

Lake Taghkanic, New York - Watercolor - 2006

East Sandwich, Cape Cod - Watercolor - 2007

Union Vale, New York - Watercolor - 2007

Lake Minnewaska, New York - Pen and Ink with Watercolor - 2009

Gertrude's Nose, New York - Watercolor - 2011

Cabin Interior - Gilbert Lake, New York - Watercolor - 2017

But now, being newly retired, I imagined myself driving or biking to various locales near my home, rambling into the “wilderness” with a backpack full of supplies and a picnic lunch to spend the day drawing and painting.  I was really quite excited at the prospect.

Of course, with the spring thaw, the ground became sodden and muddy.  Happens every year, and I anticipated that in a week or two the earth would firm up making some fantastic locations accessible.  It was definitely a wet spring but, in my opinion, nothing extraordinary.  However, by the start of summer, my mood was changing.  I was tired of the regular rains, the wet grass and the puddling of water throughout my yard and was eagerly awaiting some hot, dry weather.

It never materialized.  Well, to be honest, we did have a brief spell of a few days in early July when the rains abated and we actually had to water our flower gardens.  But it was a very brief spell.  Normally, during the summer months, the gardens must be watered every evening.  Occasionally, out of sheer laziness, we might skip a day, and the next morning the plants will look like hell, their fragile blossoms contracted into raggedy fists, their leaves brown edged and drooping like flags on a windless day.  Abstain from watering a second day and most of the plants, except for a few hardy succulents, will die.  This summer we stopped watering around Independence Day and never did so again - not through the summer months or the entire autumn.  Bare spots in the lawn which would usually turn an ashy tan stayed a rich, chocolaty brown throughout the season.  My knee high rubber boots, purchased mainly to keep the yard accessible in deep snows, were heaved on for routine outdoor chores.  I’d take the dog up the property for a few minutes, and we’d both return covered in mud.  Many times, I cooked out in the rain, stationed at the barbecue in waterproof gear, my boots sloshing in an ever-present puddle.  And there were always a couple inches of water in our basement’s boiler room, forestalling some critical repair work that needed to be done before the next heating season began.  I’m not exaggerating.  There was some precipitation most days, a major downpour coming on in about three day intervals.  By mid-autumn, hiking on natural trails became so unpleasant that I’d opted to get my exercise making half mile laps on the paved path around the perimeter of a nearby pond, and eventually even that artificial and manicured location became threatened as the pond’s waters spilled over its banks and crept ever closer to the walkway*.  By December’s end, the TV weathermen were excitedly informing us that 2018 would fall into the top ten wettest years for New York since such statistics were recorded.  Appropriately, rain was still coming down in torrents as revelers gathered in Times Square to celebrate the ushering in of a new year, and I’m still not sure if we ultimately ended up setting the record for the fourth or fifth wettest year.

*Note: As of this writing, the walkway is still traversable, but the waters are higher than I’ve ever seen them and will spill over the pavement shortly in several spots if current rainfall trends remain consistent.

And, during the summer months, when it wasn’t raining, it was very hot, very humid and, subsequently, very buggy, making outdoor activity far from appealing.  But I was determined to get out and paint as I had planned.  I would conscientiously study the week’s weather forecasts and select the optimal days on which to make my forays into nature, yet, even then, something inevitably went wrong.  On one occasion, I persuaded my wife and son to join me in a day of painting at a lake located about twenty miles from our home.  The day I selected turned out to be one of the hottest of the year, and little did I realize that the walk from the parking area to the lake would involve hiking through miles of rolling, mosquito infested woods.  Each of us bore a heavy backpack loaded with art supplies and water, and, as our hike proceeded without any sign of a lake, we were surprised at how far we were required to walk.  Every now and then, we’d stop along the trail, convinced that we must have made a wrong turn, only to come across some fellow hikers who assured us that we were on the right path.  Eventually, my companions were griping vociferously, demanding that we turn back at once, when a lone wayfarer appeared out of the brush and assured us that the lake was just minutes away.  Sure enough, a little further exertion brought us to the edge of a scenic lake, its serene waters providing a mirror image of the sky and surrounding forest.  It would probably have been an ideal location at which to paint, except that by then we were exhausted, overheated, drenched in sweat and covered with mosquito bites.  After studying the view of the lake for a few minutes, a consensus was reached with barely a word between us; we pulled our backpacks on again and began the long hike back to the car.


Nuclear Lake - Pawling, New York


On another occasion, after securing an exceptionally rosy forecast from my favorite weather sites, I left my home on a beautiful, sunny day and made a twenty minute drive to a nearby park.  When I exited my car, I immediately recognized that the weather had undergone a change.  The sky had grayed a bit, and a steady breeze was blowing from the northwest.  Thinking that the front would pass quickly, I loaded my supplies on my back and headed out to the spot at which I had chosen to paint that day.  During the fifteen minute walk there, conditions worsened, but I persisted, hoping still for a quick recovery.  However, by the time I arrived at my intended location and had to decide if I should construct my easel and prepare my paints, the clouds had thickened considerably and the sky had darkened to such an extent that I felt like I was experiencing a total eclipse of the sun.  I sat down a while, peering into the murky heavens and considering my options. Reluctantly, I called it a day and retreated.  A minute or two after arriving back at my car, the downpour hit.



In early July, I had planned for my youngest son and me a ten mile bike ride on a nearby rail trail to a spot I thought would be perfect for painting.  We set off at midmorning, our supplies and lunch stowed in our backpacks.  About halfway to our destination, my son let out an anguished cry and I turned back to see him far off in the distance, standing beside his bike.  Unbeknownst to me, he had been struggling with his gear settings since we started out, causing him regularly to fall behind me.  Now his pedal had fallen off.  Not a problem, I thought, I’ll have the bike fixed in a minute or two.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to thread the pedal back onto the crank arm.  Frustrated that a task so apparently simple could not be accomplished, my son and I alternately went at it to no avail.  Of course, it was a sweltering day, and the prospect of walking our bikes home wasn’t very appetizing.  As we sat on the pavement beside our bikes, two sheriffs on ATVs pulled up beside us and inquired if we needed help.  I asked if they happened to have any tools in their vehicles, which prompted a fruitless search of each ATV’s cargo trunk.  One of the sheriffs was kind enough to attempt to thread the pedal himself, but after numerous attacks he had no better luck than we had had.  Finally, he threw in the towel and advised me that he believed there was a bike rental location in a small shopping center off the trail about a mile back.  I thanked him gratefully before we started back, our bikes beside us.  The officer’s information was offered with many caveats and ambiguities, so I wasn’t particularly optimistic of our chances of success as we started out; but, at least, we were heading toward home.  In about a half hour, we found to my surprise the bike rental shop exactly as described.  I entered the store, explained to a worker our situation and asked if I could borrow a wrench.  He didn’t answer me, just picked up a number of tools and lumbered toward the door, his foot swaddled in a compression cast.  He examined the bike, shook his head and declared that the crank arm was stripped.  Well, that’s that, I thought and steeled myself for the long walk home.  But he was undeterred.  He forced the pedal into the opening and, using a bizarre looking tool, began to feed it into the damaged grooves.  Progress was so slow and he was obviously exerting himself so strenuously, sweat literally beading up on his brow, that I encouraged him to quit several times. However, he persevered and ultimately reattached the pedal to the bike.  I insisted on paying him for his efforts, but he refused, stating, “If I wasn’t doing that, I’d just be doing something else.”  I thanked this second Good Samaritan appreciatively, and my son and I continued on our way.  We did arrive at our destination, which proved to be not nearly as scenic as it appeared from high on the rail trail, and, after a late lunch, we determined that we were rather exhausted, the day was pretty much shot and painting really wasn’t in the cards.  We pedaled home, stopping to convalesce several times along the way.


Why, when things go wrong, is the father always the one who gets the blame?
Feeling dissatisfied with the small number of outdoor sessions I was able to realize, I continued my plein air painting late into the autumn, clearly recognizing at times that conditions were less than perfect.  Once I went out in early November, hoping to capture the reflection of the intensely pigmented foliage on the water of a nearby pond.  Temperatures were brisk, but the air was completely still.  I’m sure that my reader can already predict that, once I was set up to paint, the winds picked up.  At first this wasn’t too challenging a problem; I simply steadied my easel whenever a gust broke upon me.  But soon the winds became constant.  Now, I’ve painted in high winds before with a weighted easel and a carefully secured canvas, but I had left the house completely unprepared for these conditions.  So now I was painting with my right hand holding a brush and the other gripping the leg of my easel.  I know this sounds extremely wimpy, but eventually my left hand grew numb and painfully cold.  I still painted on, hoping to complete the work before conditions became untenable.  Only after the wind had torn the pad off my easel and sent it tumbling into the lakeside brush several times did I concede that further effort was impossible and yielded my ground.

These are just a few examples of some of the many hindrances that thwarted my efforts to paint outdoors during the warmer weather.  I particularly recall being forestalled from an afternoon’s activity by a dead car battery and squandering two perfect days waiting at home for the oil burner repairmen to arrive.  Another time, I was on a remote rocky ledge, preparing to get my painting supplies out, when a hiker startled the hell out of me, pretty much appearing out of nowhere.  He informed me that he was an avid hiker, and he told me how important it was for him to get away now and then from his girlfriend and kid, escape into the wilderness and spend some alone time communing with nature.  I would say that he certainly wasn’t “communing” much that day because an hour and a half later he was still blathering away, even though I would only respond to his discourses with a few polite words or mere grunts.  Soon I recognized that my window had passed and opted to spend the day hiking and taking photographs.  By autumn, this weird pattern had played out so many times that I felt something uncanny was going on and would sullenly grumble each time my plans to paint fell through.  When I started to whine about being jinxed, an unsettling assertion to be put forth in a pragmatic household of skeptics, my wife’s brow furrowed with concern.  But she bore my grousing stoically, and shortly, to her relief, the change of seasons rendered all thought of outdoor painting impossible. 

Well, in spite of any supernatural influences, I did manage to get out for some painting on several occasions in 2018.  A couple of times, I admit I did concede defeat and submitted to painting in the backyard.  But there were also days when the weather cooperated and I could set up my easel in some secluded location, fill my palette with a small array of gouache colors and paint for hours.  While in that hyperfocused trance that comes with hours of undisturbed effort, I’d find that distractions would evaporate, minor discomfits like heat, bug bites or the strain of an awkward perch could easily be ignored and the day would slip into evening in the blink of an eye.  At those times when everything worked out, I’d be filled with a sense of wellbeing, feeling grateful to be so privileged as to pursue, without the restrictions of employment, my personal inclinations.

Me, Painting at Poets' Walk - Red Hook, New York
Below you’ll find the artwork that resulted from those sporadic occasions when all the stars aligned for me.

Backyard Gazebo - Sharpie and Gouache - 2018

Poets' Walk - Red Hook, New York - Charcoal and Gouache - 2018

Lake Minnewaska, New York - Charcoal and Gouache - 2018

Backyard Picnic Table and Pergola - Charcoal and Gouache - 2018

Keith's Pond - Gouache - 2018

Keith's Pond - Graphite and Gouache - 2018

Tymor in Autumn - Gouache - 2018

So, after hearing of my many trials and tribulations, you should not be surprised to learn that my experiences have helped me understand a little better what artists before me have suffered in the pursuit of their craft.  Now I can more fully appreciate the tremendous physical torture Michelangelo must have withstood while painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling… or the frustration a marriage with the unfaithful Diego Rivera had inflicted upon Frida Kahlo… or the anguish Vincent Van Gogh endured struggling to establish his artistic vision while contending with severe mental illness.  Well… maybe not.   

No. But I have gained a profound respect for those artists who chose to paint landscapes on location.  I’m particularly impressed with those who opted to record winter scenes.  Claude Monet, Ferdinand Hodler and Harald Sohlberg come readily to mind, though I am sure there are many others.  After my brief foray into plein air painting during the most clement months of the year, I can’t fathom how they pulled it off.

As always, I encourage readers to comment here.  If you would prefer to comment privately, you can email me at gerardwickham@gmail.com.