my corona journal

March 4th, 2020 - April 12th, 2021

in chronological order, this journal cataloged my thoughts about Artful experimentation & living in the time of corona. Below each image is a transcription of notes written on site followed by corona Notes

why i journal

There is no big objective here other than to make art, observe nature, be thoughtful and to process this extraordinary chapter where a tiny micro organism caused great loss of life, enormous suffering and shut down the global economy. I wanted it all to live somewhere together and not be lost into the caverns of my digital files or studio boxes. I would like to think it might be helpful to someone out there as it has been to me.

HoW this came to be

In early March of 2020, as the severity of the Corona Crisis began to dawn on us, I started writing notes on my water colors. It was not a plan. I noticed later that it was happening. I was newly experimenting with water media having gotten some for a trip to India in the fall. Was and still am clueless about how to work with them - one of the many parallels with Corona. It was all experimentation. It turned into this. Since then, occasional warmer days made it possible to be out with my field easel and oils, if still with frozen fingers. Eventually I realized this was a daily effort. That made it both harder and more rewarding, better too. I started posting this Journal April 22nd - barely squeaked over my self-imposed deadline- but needed to get it done and go back to work. Happy Earth Day! No idea how long the Corona lock-down will go on but I hope to keep at this. [2020-12-06 Update It now seems that there is an end in sight with Vaccines on the way. Perhaps another 3 - 6 months of isolation. 2021-09-28 Update I spoke too soon! We are still winding our way through Corona and the Delta variant. I stepped away from my journal for a time. More on that soon.]

I highly recommend the benefits of a creative activity to help reduce the stress of Corona - or any stress.

This is all super raw - an open door to my messy back room of experimentation. I write notes on the drawing as soon as I’ve called it quits. Keep it fresh/best I could do at the moment- same as my plein air work. I frequently wrap up oil paintings in the dark and run home to wash brushes before I can write, then jump on the keyboard with ideas that were hovering in the field. Thank goodness for guardrails (make/write/leave it). I use that uncomfortable roughness to make progress tomorrow. I would otherwise be endlessly revising and never get anything else done. My first note: Corona had begun and we had no comprehension of what was upon us.

Have I quit my day job? I’m still consulting and partnering on new food ideas, turn-arounds, start-ups. But I'm spending the extra, essentially freed-up Corona lock-down time painting & journaling.

21-04-12      Deciding when to push on and when to step off     Wallie’s View   Oil on gesso paper    9 x 12 inches      Was thinking about the unknown.  Can’t really explore a path without going there, taking it.  Then again, sometimes I don’t know where I am at all if I don’t pause long enough to understand it before moving on.   §  I need to set aside time to resupply myself with materials.  Was making do with the last drops of medium, digging for paint and had wrapped a piece of gesso paper over a panel.  Supplies shortage was freeing. First painting of the evening was in unknown territory.  I liked something that was happening and didn’t know why.  Set it aside.  Didn’t push forward.  Wanted to think. The evening was peaceful and there was still just a bit of light, so I started another quick effort with the idea that I’d go where I’d been meaning to go with the first.  Curious to see how I’d resolve the issues. I was looking through a plane of still-bare trees at the far view of the marsh and sky. Was 7:14.  Sunset at 7:21. Heavy clouds.  Darkening fast.  I worked feverishly with those trees.  But I was in a place I had been before. All that hard work was valuable processing .  The question was “where might I go that I haven’t been?”.  Started slashing with the pallet knife and eventually arrived at this fairly abstract version of the light.  Trees no longer important. Gone except for the filter effect they had on the distance.  Painting in this case was a mode of travel.  §  Travel has radically increased against the recommendation of the CDC. I had hoped to go to Texas to see Dimitri but I think I will hold off and not contribute to the increased risk. There are concerns about new more virulent strains not susceptible to the vaccines. The J&J vaccine distribution was halted today in the US due to concerns about blood clots in younger women. Talking with our first selectman they are seeing a decrease in the recent significant spike of infections among teens here. Small, affluent town. Educated population. Access to care. Manageable. Other communities not far away, not so much.

21-04-09     Cedar on Peter’s ledge    Pen on Paper    11 x 16 inches    This tree became so much more interesting when I paid attention to it.     §    Slowing down to get to know someone or some person tree.  I did more of it during Corona. Now the world is revving back up and I am feeling ambivalent.  Don’t want to lose touch with my new normal.   

21-04-06     Return to Pasture’s Edge - Leete Farm      Oil on Gesso Paper   9 x 12 inches   Yesterday I started earlier in the evening, same place. Went after a different moment. Well, to be honest, I think I chased moments all over the place.  Got back tonight just barely in time. Experimented and followed my nose.   §    I had no conscious thoughts of anything except trying to make the most of this moment with my paints.  But now I can see that it is the right painting for the beginning of my post-lockdown chapter of Corona. There is positive energy and optimism in this light.   §    I raced for the first time today with new teammates in England and Sweden.  How fitting was that?  Travel and meeting new people – wouldn’t have been virtual racing if not for Covid.    Earlier in the day when I stepped outside and heard Spring I was thinking about how universally appealing the chirping of birds is. Or beautiful moments of light like this. Same thing.  We all have these joys in common. Corona added a new connecting experience and commonality.

21-04-21  View I’ve Been Noticing       Leete Farm      Oil on Gesso Paper   9 x 12 inches   …Lovely thing happens with the light. Finally got here to paint. It got even better as I was wrapping up in the dark.  Back on the list. Tonight I had too much work and needed to get home but thought hard about setting up for a quick second take.  Maybe another evening soon before the leaves come out.   §     New Chapter. Wrote this Saturday but didn’t paint until today.  Too many commitments.  Painting time is scarce commodity.  Need to fix that.  Meanwhile here is the post:   Last weekend I shook Peter L.’s hand at the boatyard upon meeting him for the first time in person. I remarked on how great that felt and how much I have missed shaking hands. It was my first handshake in a year.  We wore our masks while on the boat at close quarters doing the inspection. Then I hugged Sam S. on the way out. It had been an emotional reunion of old & new friends and I think was also the moment that the quarantine was breaking in my circle.  I shook hands with a stranger today at the boatyard. I had stopped to admire the remarkable and wonderful color he chose for his Marshall ’22.  Then I stopped by the Granbery’s where Kim, Cam, Melinda and Doug were playing guitar and Gretchen was playing percussion.  I hugged everyone.  No masks.  Today it was clear that for those of us who are quarantined, isolation is over. Yet tomorrow is Easter Sunday and there is no family gathering.  We could have organized at the last minute but somehow, we had stopped organizing around the traditional moments of gathering and other plans were laid in. Riding home on my bicycle I was thinking about how strange it is that I’m not feeling much of a sense of loss or longing. Of course I am missing the kids.  I always do. But I’m not feeling the loss of what used to be a happy and close family day.  I have become accustomed to isolation and internalized the expectation that there will not be close contact with others, even family.  Curious to see what happens next.  I made some powerful new positive connections during the time of Corona.  It seems many of us have.  Many of us have also suffered extreme and life-changing loss. Man I hope we can double down on the good and learn from the bad in order to shape a better future.

21-03-31     Quarry Road Marsh Gray & Wet      Oil on Panel 12 x 18 inches    Love rainy gray days.  Got soaked. Was worth it. Had it rained harder for longer I would have stayed farther from the cliff of loosing the big idea in the details.  As I worked, I was thinking about the virtuosic plein air painters who take photos of their work on site to show the photo they just painted. Been seeing them on Instagram.  I get it but is not my thing. I am not yet capable of doing the THING I am after.  On a cold, wet day though, I get closer.    §     Tomorrow is April 1st.  It feels like we are all in a digesting/processing mode on what the heck happened with the last year of Corona.  We were in similar mode as we rolled into April a year ago thinking we were digesting the March of Corona.   It kept marching. We had no clue. Still don’t.  But now there are all these vast expanses of new what happened/what might happen territory which have opened up.   My life and my painting life are also running parallel explorations and possibilities.  What happened? What might happen? My 64th year is so unlike any of my imaginings. That’s one of the things I love about painting. It is full of discovery & possibility.

21-03-30    Better Than Nothing     Awkward Bic Pen on Paper   11 x 16 inches    I left my water colors & drawing materials back pack at home.  Darn.  Found this really awkward old pen and had this paper.  Wanted to draw cows but they weren’t cooperating.  The color of the evening was gorgeous and here I was with black and white.  Oh well, something good always comes from having to make do.  Once I gave in to the limitations, I enjoyed wrestling with this pen.  So much ground to cover quickly and no way to rub, wash, spread – just had to do it all with lines.  That was fun!.

21-03-22     Granberry’s Marsh Creek      Oil on Gesso Paper    9 x 12 inches       Been preoccupied.  Great to get out. Took a work call which lasted most of my session. Not sure what this tells me about what my brain needs to be doing while I’m painting but I had a good time.  The peepers are out.  And in the dark now lots of critters are making joyful Spring noises.  So simple.   §   The Atlanta shootings are front and center. Now Boulder. Lightning rods for the long and deep-seated drivers of violence. So complicated.   I hope we live to see all the Corona tragedies as catalysts of extraordinary positive change we are about to make as a species. Maybe we take an enormous leap forward. Right now when I listen to the radio I feel like we are all just peepers.  Making a lot of chatter and it sounds great.  But can we climb out of the muck and fix this? Meanwhile the AstraZeneca vaccine was approved. Article in the Atlantic posits that our fate is in the hands of the Vaccine-Hesitant.

2021-03-15 Hilltop Last Blast Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches Light & energy. I didn’t think I had the psychic energy to paint, but then I saw this thing happening with the light.

2021-03-12     March Marsh Late Light Oil on Panel     9 x 12 inches   Just enough time to quickly pull off an oil. Looked for a spot within a minute of the car.  Found this scraggly backwater of marsh with some puddles catching the light.   §    What would it look like if I had time and ability to paint full time? Or even a lot?  Might I waste my time and energy aspiring to bigger stuff and chasing my ego around? Scarcity certainly makes painting time intensely appreciated. A theme emerged over the past year.   I make progress when I am least expecting it and am not invested in product. Progress also comes just by doing. Getting out there, relentlessly, whenever I can.  Looking, learning, thinking, pushing, experimenting, letting go, hanging in there and, more frequently of late, just letting the painting steer.

2021-03-11   Found a use for my water colors. Happy Birthday Gretchen! And thank you for the inspiration. There is no lack of joy in the effort, but the pile of duds is growing. I had a half hour before my 6:30 zoom and the sunset was irresistible. Time only for another (likely feeble) experiment with water colors. Better though to use that short window artfully than grind away at the bottomless electronic to-do list.  §    This was the day when the WHO declared a global pandemic a year ago.  I distinctly remember hearing it on the news. Wondering what that would mean.  Assuming the US would be ready, even under the Trump administration.  The day before I had travelled by train to NYC for work, a quick visit with Eleanna in her office and lunch with grad school classmates. Awareness was dawning. I hesitated before I took the phone being handed around the table. Took it anyway. Several days later the husband of one of those classmates was in the ICU with Covid. On the train home a man emerged from the rest room for which I’d been waiting quite a long time.  He looked very unwell and unstable. He dropped his cane and held on to the doorframe of the rest room as the train jerked. Instinctively I bent over to pick it up and saw a foul mess on the floor behind him. I picked up the cane anyway, though there was another moment’s hesitation. I handed it to him and offered him assistance to his seat.  He declined. I returned to mine and regretted having no way to wash my hands.  Did not regret offering kindness to a stranger.

2021-03-010    Atop a Granite Knoll Charcoal on Paper     12 x 16 inches    Drawings are kind of like love-making, with their own natural cycle. Occurred to me while hiking home, happy and satisfied with my little outing. This one came to its own stopping point. There wasn’t enough time, warmth, psychic energy or light to start another involved drawing and I had no appetite for a quick study.    §    The sounds of people frolicking in the sunny late afternoon were floating up to my high perch. I assume many, like me, were taking advantage of Corona flexibility in their work schedules.  Another silver lining. The rules have changed. I think we also have a new sense of opportunity and power to change and to rethink the rules.

2021-03-08   At the Dyke     Oil on Panel     9 x 12 inches    Done too many scrape-offs lately. While setting up a passerby said she loved the scraped-off panel on my easel from last night.  I explained what it was.  She explained why she thought it was beautiful. Thinking about that. I took it off and put up a smaller fresh panel.  Started pretty.  Gorgeous orange-gold light streaking across the top of the marsh and the horizon beginning to color-up.  Dark foreground of the deep water beginning to swirl around the rocks and under the dyke I was standing on. Was chasing ideas. Also playing with puppies and visiting with hikers on the trail.  Time was up.  Scraped off the pretty part. Cropped the sky entirely out of my view. Very quickly now as the evening light speeding up and getting ready to leave.  Reworked the drawing. Too much going on.  Had to make a call. What’s the big thing here and what’s the big thing I haven’t tried to work with before? What am I afraid of?  It’s that dark water as the race begins to build. All those rocks.  Faced it.  Focused. Was rewarded by an unexpected sweep of that light coming back down into my view reflected in the water.  Making the rocks jump out.  Did my best.  Hiked home in the dark, gratified. Painting itch scratched. Back to work. I’m crediting Sophie, the 6 week old yellow lab who is the sweetest thing ever and a very quick learner.  Puppy-inspired session. Puppies know that life is wonderful and everything is possible.  §    Thinking about International Women’s Day. Progress yes, but you couldn’t have convinced the 18 year me that by now we wouldn’t be living in a radically more equitable society than what we’ve got.  Corona has, it seems, been tougher on women and minorities.  The usual thing.

2021-03-05   Cow Pasture View West     Pencil and Crayon Wash     12 x 16 inches    Friday night in the cow pasture.  Just needed a place to write some things down.  Received Moderna vaccine Wednesday when there was an extra dose at a local clinic and was able to get there within minutes.  This event triggered a tidal wave of memories and outreach to friends with whom I have lost touch. I understand it as an opening of emotional floodgates which wash back in memories in the same way a big tide brings in detritus long forgotten. Broken pieces for which there may no longer be joy, pain or connection - but exist in memory.   I don’t know why this was the thing that hit me. It also reminded me of the other transitions from one chapter to another in my life.  A friend apologized today for what a mess she had left when she quickly had to exit a prior context with which I am engaged. No need for apology.  I understand so well.  I have left parts of my life in tatters when survival was the goal or events just moved too quickly to keep pace.  Intentions were there but forgotten after the storm. Or perhaps not forgotten at all and remained just below the surface tugging at me. I think I could spend the rest of my life just cleaning up. But which list would I start with?  There are so many.    §    This feels like the day that my personal Corona journey moves to the next chapter. I find I am not ready to turn the page. While I think about what that means I am watching broken up pieces washing out to sea. Some of them are mine. Most are much, much bigger than me. We can’t even yet see the whole that they formed or why. So much to digest.

2021-03-01   Hubris and Humility. Not a total waste of a panel. Wanted too badly to create magic. The reflections in the long-reaching mud puddles were gorgeous. The sky! So many things going on. I chased most of them at one point or another. Tried too hard. Too hungry. Skipping steps and thinking it could work. Sometimes it does. Not this time. Still it was not a waste of time or materials. Is a good reminder of how easily a painting can go wrong and how remarkable it is on those occasions when I happen on a right path. Fine line between success and failure - in painting and life. Came home and started to scrape off. Instead gave myself 60 seconds to do something good with the knife and decide in the morning whether to take the panel back. But the morning was busy with work. The day passed and the paint began to harden. I decided to keep this one as a reminder of the dangers of hubris.    §   Talking with Dimitri I reflected on the many years in which I chose not to paint because I couldn’t devote enough time and energy to do it well. I had filtered that choice through the question of whether I was producing something useful with my time. Now I know that the doing of it is a wonderful use of my time.

2021-02-26  Experiment: Night Marsh Moon  Oil on Gesso Paper   9 x 12 inches       Another Covid Friday night. Embraced the darkness. Why is it so hard to paint the moon and not be cheap?  A first attempt.   In any case, it was impetus to stand quietly in the marsh as night swept in.  By chance, I was in the right spot and looking up at the sky when the moon did this. And I was still watching when it disappeared behind the clouds in a blink. §     Corona:  With the wave of vaccinations a collective exhale of relief is building, but also an increase of breath-holding anxiety for those who don’t yet have a place in line.  The death rate declined from recent highs in the US but still 2,000 people a day are dying. ** It is chance also which landed me on this planet in a demographic profile which is much less likely to be one of the last to die in the pandemic.

**About the same as leading cause of death, heart disease and ahead of 1600 daily from cancer. [reference].

2021-02-24     Tree in front of me    Oil on Gesso Paper     9 x 12 inches Stuck on an interminable tech support call.  Jumped in the car to get a start toward my 5:30 meeting, hoping to dispatch with it and catch a quick oil sketch en route. Pulled over to get info. My hour plus window was shortening into nearly nothing.  So I started drawing the tree in front of me while being transferred, prompted, tested.  Stress melted. Uninteresting tree became very interesting.  § Isn’t that the lesson of the day? Look up! Whatever is right there in front of me is of greater beauty and interest than I thought when I was in a rush to move beyond it. Also I had my painting gear but not my drawing bag. Had planned to paint.  Scrambled to find a pen, pencil and brush.  Used the gesso paper intended for oils. Made do.  Extremely limited time and tools removed all expectations. Such a great formula. § Great comments from two friends. “In your tree, I see strength and beauty; beauty and strength, woven together as one immutable force, reaching optimistically from earth to the sky…” RA. “There is still grace in the twisted trunk.” SP

2021-02-23  Another Quick Sketch of Sky Opening at Sunset   Oil on Gesso Paper    9 x 12 inches I got a Covid test yesterday because there is a home-testing study here which reached out for more participants.  Feeling under the weather. Short on sleep and exhausted. 99.99% confident I don’t have Covid.  But all the accommodations in daily life keep the threat front and center. Who knows?  Maybe I have run out of luck.  Which led me to musing on the passage of time. The passage of a year.  It wasn’t a lost year for me though it has been on many levels for many people.  On the other hand I have aged one year on the calendar - for sure! Time seemed so infinite until one day it reversed and now is becoming more finite.  § This morphed into thinking about the Corona time frame where the goal post keeps moving.  How much longer?  Kids aren’t expecting to get vaccines until Fall. My vaccine-eligible date was was “maybe summer”. Then the news broke yesterday that the 55+ group will open up March 1st here in CT!!    I could hardly believe the good news.  Then mixed emotions.  So many people don’t have it yet who need it more than I do.  News today on front line workers not being eligible - union suing the State. Could I give my slot to a grocery clerk?  No such vehicle exists.  And what of my protected time for painting? New demands on my time?  But good ones right? Or have I actually become a hermit? OK straighten up here.  Soon I can visit my children! § That set off a lightbulb about Mom.  As amazing a life as she had, her most extraordinary role was probably as grandmother.  New frame. Hadn’t seen it though it’s been right in front of me since my generation started producing the next generation.  She and Dad were the best as far as their grandchildren were concerned.  Off the charts.  Enormous legacy of joy and inspiration.  Who/what else matters? While musing on the passing of many things, the light of my possibly best chapter yet broke through.  On the other side of Corona (no pressure kids) there could be grandparenthood!  “Oh the places you’ll go!”, to quote one of Mom’s favorite authors.  Mine too. § None of this was in my conscious thoughts as I was setting up to use my short window of time, searching for a subject, then choosing the sky and wrestling with it. Watching the light break through. Stretching. Then quickly packing up to get home to climb on my bike for Tuesday night virtual racing.  It all came together in the shower.

2021-02-16 Two quick oil sketches of the sunset Oil on Gesso Paper 9 x 12 inches It can be a blessing to have only a small window of time and a fast-moving subject. Frees me up. By the time I was packed and leaving the clouds were all blown off by the cold front and the sky held a soft and gentle pink afterlight glow - as if all that cloud drama was a dream. § Meanwhile we await the vaccine in a very large window of time with a slow-moving subject. I feel un-free, though making excellent use of my confinement. Not complaining. When I learned yesterday that 81-year-old neighbor Bill received his second shot I was caught by a surprise rush of relief and celebration. One more person is safe. One that I know. We talked for a while about this momentous day for him — he had made it to the other side. I would tell you I don’t spend any energy on existential threats and worries. But in that moment I realized that just under the surface, I have the same general anxiety we all have about this malevolent presence and what it might morph into

2021-02-13    Holding up the Bluffs     Sculpture with Freshly Fallen Clay     Height 8 inches   Picked up this clay last Saturday on Block Island. The Bluffs are being ripped away by natural forces. The clay was so fresh that the ragged edge of separation had not yet been washed smooth by the first high tide it would have met.  I also chose a speckled, white, egglike-stone washed up from the ocean, all beautifully honed over how many hundreds or thousands of years?  I haven’t sculpted since I was a teenager but felt an irresistible urge to do something with that clay and that stone today as I listened to the closing arguments of Trump’s impeachment trial. I stripped down and without yet having articulated where I was going with it, intuitively explored poses where the figure was holding up a heavy weight.  I didn’t connect the poses with the falling bluffs until I was working with the clay.  The roll was called as I wrote this. I watched, with enormous sadness, the assembly of 34 votes needed to acquit.  I had listened to a great deal of all the arguments with the as much impartiality I could muster. The case for impeachment was overwhelmingly strong.  The defense was unbound by the facts and full of preposterous claims. I didn’t connect this sculpture with the principles and frailties of democracy until the vote was taken and I was concluding this entry.  McConnel is speaking now – making an argument to justify his vote, thread the needle. 

2021-02-05   Corner of the Marsh at Dusk   Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches   Left work for a quick grab of the light and back for a 5:30 conference.  How could I have been totally absorbed for 90 minutes in such a peaceful interaction with nature and make sense of that in the context of this moment in history?       §       Listening to the wrap now of today’s arguments in the impeachment trial as it was still running at 7 when I finished my call.  Stunning testimony, video and audio.  The policeman in desperate tone of voice, “we’ve lost the line”. Romney and Pence rushed to safety from Trump’s mob.  The mob trying to find Pelosi.  Reliving these events. Feeling again the emotions of that day.  It’s hard enough to understand how all of this happened, let alone understand the interplay of the political insanity with Corona.  Not separable. And my obsession to paint?  Is it a function of this extraordinary moment in history and will disappear into regular life?  After tromping around the site for quite a while, why did I choose the difficult and mysterious scene of the evening light reflecting on the marsh behind a barricade of trees? They are beautiful trees but I chose to just look at barricade-ness of them. There was a big view promising drama and beauty. I chose to look in the other direction.

2021-02-04    After light at Jordan’s Point     Oil on Panel     9 x 12 inches    No journal entry yet.  No time to think.   But I got grabbed this hour between conference calls.  Work from home has some serious advantages.

2021-02-03 Gray Sunset on Icy Great Harbor Oil on Panel 12 x 18 inches

2021-02-02    Boat Yard on Groundhog Day   Pen and Wash  11 x 16 inches    It’s February! Groundhog Day.  I’m sitting at Brown’s Boat Yard.  Checked the State of Connecticut web site today.  Vaccine supply is slow. They hope it will accelerate.  For now, every healthy person under 65 who is not an essential worker can expect to be vaccinated this summer.  Summer!  That got me thinking about boats.  Not that I am ready for winter to end.  We had a terrific northeaster yesterday.  I got out for an evening ski. Snow was deep. Winds were biting.  It was glorious.  Loved it.  But it is melting today which gets me back into a boatyard frame of mind. Ironically Brian W. texted to see if I was out painting in the snow.  Suggested I might check out the boat yards.  Good idea.  So here I am thinking more about how slowly ice melts and change comes when you really want it to go fast.  And how fast everything happens when you wan to savor the moment.  I am in both places.  Savoring the winter.  Savoring the Covid freedom.  And wanting time to fly so we can all have our vaccines and put our arms around each other again.  Be out messing around in boats.  Travelling to be with our F&F to be there for the important moments of their lives.  Return to regular problems.  OK artful hour is up.  Back to work!

2021-01-30    Frozen Seating Pen and Water Crayon on Paper   11 x 16 inches   Frozen woodland pond was calling out. Abandoned Saturday work plans and played Hookey Hockey. Derek and Eloise had sticks and I found one in the woods.  Never played hockey.  Didn’t know what I was missing.  Like so many things.  Plan was to draw trees at sunset but couldn’t leave the ice.  So I did this of Peter’s porch with my headlamp.  Turns out it’s possible with rearranged thinking.  Two wonderful discoveries in one day. Frolic.     §     Sobriety.  Just finished Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste -a  powerful accounting.  Corona has opened radical new ways to see/understand history and how it led to present realities. May we not waste this crisis. Rearranged thinking.

21-01-29 Bend in the road Pen and Wash 11 x 16 inches Plan was to work on the fabulous Moose Hill Road erratic. Light changed too fast. Or I was too slow. Then I noticed how gracefully the old road swerved around this massive boulder. Changed my focus. § Corona update. We’ve rejoined the WHO, Administration listening to scientists and experts to form policy. South African variant was confirmed to be in the US yesterday but case count continues to decrease. My work is intensifying. Flexibility for running out when the light is gorgeous seems to be diminishing in parallel. I am looking wistfully down this road. Am I coming or going?

21-01-26 Snowstorm Oil on Panel 12 x 24 inches So fun! A first for me. Faced into the wind to protect the panel but ice crystals mixed with medium and paint on my palette. Great texture but hard to work with, especially with my frozen claw of a hand in two layers of gloves plus a heat pack. Snapped the photo before I even had my gear off so I could quickly lay the panel on its back to melt in place instead of drool. Curious to see what happens. § Corona Factoid. I used the last box of tissues purchased back in March. That day, as for much of the Spring, the entire aisle of toilet paper and tissues was almost empty. Important news: The rate of current cases nationwide is coming down. It now appears to be a race between the vaccinations and the more virulent new mutations.

2021-01-24   Snuggling Boulders   Charcoal on Paper  11 x 16 inches  Quick and clumsy drawing with gloves.  Lovely long hike in Branford woods beginning to scope out the many erratics.  Leaves will be out soon enough and another year will have gone by without my making progress on this project.  But today is still winter.  Very cold.  Didn’t see a single other person or or even an animal.  Not so much as a squirrel.  Very cold.  Everyone was sheltering from the wind. Caught the last rays of sunlight shooting through the trees.  Got myself out before dark.   §   Were these two boulders deposited together, kissing like that, as the glacier receded?  Or was there somehow a time warp before they met?    §     Vaccine rolling out clumsily but the mood is hopeful. Clumsy is better than nothing.

2021-01-23   Boulder Road Leetes Island  Charcoal and Wash on Paper  11 x 16 inches  Went hunting for neighborhood erratics. Too cold and blowy to paint.  Had been talking with Rusty about wanting to connect their incomprehensible existence with their beauty and to find poetry and history about them.  Incomprehensible because they were dropped here by the receding glaciers, often perched in such a way that it is clear they only need a slight push to roll off. Except they haven’t for thousands of years. Beautiful in their ponderous presence.  Markers of nature’s mighty force. Reminders of how insignificant a space we humans occupy in planetary history.  I came home to some research from Rusty on erratics and related poetry including this.    §    Fire and Ice. Too many metaphors for this small space.  Let Frost and the erratic speak!  

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Life on earth will end as we know it by fire or ice, it doesn’t matter.  We humans will be a blink in the vast reach of time. The turf we are fighting over, land or ideas, is brand new.  It matters.  But only to us.  This erratic arrived on Leetes Island about 18,000 years ago. What we have is now.  Conversation with nephew Nick crystalized this just last night, then zooming with the kids today. 

Afterthought: Where would we be without poetry and art? How dismal life would be with only economics and politics.         

2021-01-20    New Weather System Blowing In     Water Color on Paper    11 x 16    2 of 3 largely unsuccessful observations. Sunset was epic.  Day was a good one – start of a new chapter for the US.   No time today but needed to just squeeze out a small something – a place to write.  Stole a few moments for this clumsy throw-away.   The other two efforts were even worse.  No matter.    §    When I first jotted notes about Corona on little sketches (which morphed into this journal) I understood Corona was a big deal. But I couldn’t have imagined how it would dovetail and spiral out of control with the already wild politics of 2020.  I thought the US had sophisticated preparedness plans. Assumed they would be deployed. Until last week I had the same assumption about security in the Capitol.  I watched today’s Inaugural with a hopeful heart.  Shed a few tears.  Complex emotions.  This evening I watched the sky in awe as the sunset was as incomprehensibly beautiful and dramatic as it ever is.  I am not religious or superstitious. But I am comfortable entertaining the idea that this was a good omen.

2021-01-19 After Light over the Sound   Oil on Panel  12 x 24 inches   Well I chased the fire in the sky and a hundred different ideas.  Settled on the embers.  I can’t translate what happens but it was thrilling to watch and good to try. Nature carries on in her magnificent way while we stumble and struggle. It is reassuring.    §    Corona death toll in the US surpassed 400,000 today.  The broader suffering is not measurable. The bitterness over the political divide is also almost beyond comprehension.  Today is the last day of Trump’s presidency.  There are more troops now in Washington, D.C. than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. More on the way. May the force be with us. 

2021-01-17    Another Sunset on Great Harbor Marsh     Oil on Panel   9 x 12 inches  I am infatuated with this place.  Couldn’t wait to get back and dying to paint.  But felt I should get uncomfortable again.  So I labored with my water crayons on something that would be impossible even with paint which is so much more pliable and forgiving a medium.  Was good. Made me think harder. Then, frozen, I packed up the car to head home for a meeting. But the light!  It was doing things.  I drank the last bit of hot tea and had a pack of Gu to hold me over and trudged back down with a small panel, painting gear and a half hour to indulge. Well into it I rethought and, casting safety away again, dove in.  Loose and fast. Better.      §     Am still in shock over the events of last week.  Thinking about how exhausting it all is for everyone.  I can escape daily to beautiful settings and creative outlets, or on my bike or the woods.  So many people don’t have these luxuries.  What an understatement!  Zooming with old friends today, who are my age and a decade older, the mood of the group was that comfortable and safe older people who aren’t in the workforce should just continue to keep themselves isolated and let the younger people and the workforce get the vaccines first. Ethicists and historians will be unwinding the events of the past 12 months for years to come. Longer.

2021-01-16    Sunset on Great Harbor Marsh     Oil on Panel   12 x 18 inches  Had a painting that was working but not well enough.  On my way out tonight, I was thinking that I have not been naked enough lately in my journal. Not posting the less successful experiments which inevitably becomes a mental barrier to braver experimentation.  So I made myself go after – and at that moment I didn’t have an idea yet – whatever would get the piece farther.  I don’t love letting go.  I do love being in flight and learning.  It’s kind of like going from being dry and comfortable to swimming. It is always such a good idea to dive in but that moment between dry and wet is hard for me – the colder and more unknown the waters, the harder to make the choice.  I can be a real wimp about getting wet. Then I find my resolve and the iciest mountain lake is swimmable.  I’m always happy with the choice. Anyway, I jumped in and came up with this.  It was progress. Less safe.  Better.    §    The Corona virus is swirling and the downstream pain and losses are mounting.  The politics in parallel with the virus only more horrifying in some ways.  But I took a news moratorium today so I could focus on work.  I was reflecting on how much of my time has gone into the crazy realities of this year.  This journal is one of the ways I convert negative energy into something positive.

2021-01-15    The Cedar Viewed from the Other Side of the Grass Path     Charcoal and Wash   11 x 16 inches   Went to the other end of the grass path on this stormy, windy, gray evening.  I enjoy this view daily but saw it differently from the opposite angle. I’m sure we all would benefit from doing more of that.     §    I’m following the difficult Corona and political news of course.  But I turned it off and listened to more of Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” while working out today. Such an interesting character.  I understand the controversy but find him so compelling.  I discovered we share a view that all people would benefit greatly from spending more time in nature and that this was one of his greatest joys and best methods for improving his thinking and understanding of the world.     §    If it were logistically possible to get all the extreme antagonists to spend time in the woods together, I think they could become more sympathetic to each other’s point of view.  That and trading places. 

2021-1-12    Northwest Perch on Great Harbor     Oil on Panel    12 x 24 inches   I was so excited about this new spot and the gorgeous light. I really struggled to settle down.    §    Hard to put together this previously unimaginable day in Washington with my escape to this peaceful place. Strange juxtaposition.  As I post this at 9:45 PM.  I’m listening to the debate in Congress.  There seems to be more bitterness, division and even resentment of new security measures than before the mob stormed the Capitol.  How can this be?     §    The great artist Charlie Chaplin foresaw this moment with his extraordinary speech in The Dictator.  In 1940 the US was still formally at peace with Germany.  He said later that he could not have made the film if he had known the true extent of the horrors of the concentration camps.  “The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.” 

2021-1-10  Tree at Sachem’s Head   Charcoal and Wash on Paper   14 x 20 inches  Very short window today and I was shooed  away from my first spot. Private property.  Settled on trying to understand this tree in the half hour left. It is gnarly and complicated and beautiful.  Hard to understand.  Felt good just to  think without having to battle the elements and wrestle with gear and work hard and fast and well enough that I wouldn’t feel I wasted a panel.  Understanding takes time.  Observation, experimentation, perspective, questioning assumptions, thinking about principles, trial and error, course corrections, perspective again, more observation, digesting learnings, trying a new approach, remembering why I am going after it.  Wash & repeat.   §    This tree quickly became a conscious metaphor for my musings about the state of our democracy. It is so imperfect.  Incomprehensible at a glance or on the surface.  So many, many small but important parts. Not observable in detail, only in the whole, the big effect. But all those individual parts matter critically. I feel sadness and hope. We are certainly in a state of madness but are we also experiencing the dawning of a new and better era having hit some kind of sad bottom? Or do we have farther to fall into this rabbit hole? How could so many good people hold such divergent and apparently, totally incompatible views?  How good will our root system prove to be in these heavy winds?  What will my role be in helping us move to a more civil, just, healthy and dare we hope, happy society?  How will the story of democracy be told by the generations to come? If I have grandchildren and great grandchildren, will they have something to be proud of me for?  What will I contribute?  Can I convert my good fortune to be a multiplier force toward a better democracy? How?  What is the thing I most need to do with my next 20 years on this planet, to plant those seeds? Will future generations enjoy these privileges which I do not take for granted?   §    Not until I wrote all these words and stepped back to look was I reminded of how large the gap is in the center of this tree.  I had noticed it, drawn it and gone back to check again that it was so.  From this angle it seems a perilous gap.  A large new branch needs to grow out of the void to stabilize the tree for the long run.  Or maybe it is just my angle of view.   §   I don’t go looking for metaphors. I go looking for things which I am inspired to paint or draw. We can pretty much always find what we are looking for in nature.

2021-01-08  Great Harbor Marsh Last Light    Oil on Panel    12 x 24 inches    A short but full immersion embrace of the winter marsh with my paints.  Rearranged my molecules.   Needed that.   §    Nature never fails me - especially when the human world is extra upside-down. 

2021-01-05     Gash in the Clouds     Oil on Panel    12 x 24 inches    What happened in the sky this evening was so much more intense and astounding than I can begin to convey.  The great joy of painting is that I am out there regularly to watch.      §    We await the outcome of the Georgia run-off election. Today’s news was abuzz with the Trump election interference antics.  Vaccine roll-out going very slowly, apparently because of poor planning in advance.

2021-01-02   Joy in the Sky   Oil on Panel   12 x 24 inches    Joy on the trails too.  Very fun exchanging New Year’s greetings with distanced, masked people.  Sunny and warm January 1.  Sense of positivity in the air.   Last couple days packed to the brim with racing, work, hiking, visiting and organizing for 2021.   Totally beat but just had to catch a corner of the sunset this afternoon.  Warm weather storm system replaced with windier cold front. Arrived with insufficient time and too few layers.  Plan was for quick experiment with new (small) substrate. Left it in the hall!  Forced to spend one of my precious last big panels or miss the moment.  Running low on all supplies.  Knowing it was a lost cause saved me.  Also Wallie, walking the beach, urged me on from afar. Maybe snagged a keeper and a bit of experimental progress simultaneously.  Still warming up.    §     Am reminded how successful my personal Corona strategy has been:  Exhaust myself cramming in all possible explorations within the forced limits (which turn out to be pathways to other places).  Grab best from bad.     §    Talking with Jean & John this evening. Seems we are all experiencing a fear of the virus unlike earlier when we knew less. More isolated. Taking fewer risks.  Can see the other side now but sort of have to slay the dragon to continue on our journey to the vaccines.  Meanwhile spiraling cases from new variants.

2020-12-31    My Pathway Out of 2020    Oil on Canvas     12 x 24     On this last evening of this extraordinary year I can’t find a way to sum it up. No words or concepts suffice.  But I went out and found this painting and it is enough.    §    The kids and I did not miss the holiday swirl of pre-Corona times. New wisdom for the future. Meanwhile the new and more contagious variant of Corona is showing up in the States. Today it was Florida with no traceable tie to other locations.    §   May 2021 bring the planet great leaps forward in justice and wellbeing for all.  And may there be an exceptional flourishing of the arts and sciences.  A genius cluster year.

2020-12-18   Peter’s Pond Again  12 x 24 inches   Different weather, slightly earlier, slightly different position.  Similarly rewarding experience.    §    Even though I know this as a painter and as a person, it still amazes me. Optics are radically dependent on context, timing, angle, conditions, preconceptions, expectations, temperature, etc.  What we choose to focus on determines what we see.  There is too much information to absorb.   We can only have a sense of what it is telling us and we are missing what we aren’t seeing.  As a painter, choice of subject/theme is the big challenge, then I start translating and shaping as best I can.   I tend to forget that I am constantly making these choices in the whorl of moving through life.  We all are shaping our views. No wonder we struggle to understand each other.  I listen to the news and wonder, “what are they thinking?”.  The answer is obvious.  They" are thinking of things from their point of view.   

2020-12-17 Peter’s Pond freezing & First Snow Oil on Panel 12 x 24 inches My first attempt at painting snow or ice. Very exciting. Painted from inside a closed-in space under renovation. I love snow and cold but my right hand needs to be warm enough to hold a brush.    §    The Thanksgiving spike has not yet peaked and now we have all the other holidays. Public health officials are begging people to stay home. There is no holiday-party season. It seems wrong to even go caroling though I think at a distance it should be fine. My kids have been tested and are quarantining so that we can have the small family pod together. We are heading to the White Mountains with hope of Nordic conditions being favorable. Bringing our own provisions. Will be quite isolated in a rustic lodge. I have to admit I rather love the simplicity of this plan. I also have guilt that we can do it.

2020-12-15      Quick Joshua Point Sunset     Water Crayon and Charcoal on Paper      12 x 24  inches     Got out for a half hour.  Needed something to write on.  How colorful and how much tonality and texture can I get with just brown and peach crayon and a charcoal pencil?  Saw a Corot yesterday which inspired me.    §    The vaccines are beginning to roll out. Such hopeful news.  It’s a kind of collective societal pregnancy.  Way too early to celebrate. Expectancy of better times ahead is HUGE. There will be Spring and normalcy – or new normalcy. Between now and then we have Winter in the war zone.  The casualties are tucked away, largely unseen, partially visible in the stats but many not yet counted or understood. Many haven’t happened yet.  What do we do with our vast intellectual, artistic and economic resources to squeeze more color, texture and positive tone out of our limited palette while we wait out the unrolling of the vaccine carpet and the reawakening of the locked down byways of commerce and society? How do we get better at this enough to not regret the choices we make now and to honor those who are irreparably damaged or simply do not get to come to the opening?    §    Today the Electoral College validated the election results.  Mitch McConnel congratulated Biden and urged Republicans to move on.

2020-12-12   Foggy View from my Window    Oil on Panel   9 x 12  inches   I had determined to use this foggy, rainy day to catch up and was in the middle of detailing my ambitious list when I looked out the window and realized I could paint from inside and I MUST paint that scene which I admire every day. The fog is one of my many, many favorite moments. Turned my kitchen into a plein air studio and off I went.  Didn’t have a small panel (another project – more panels!) so I painted over a very early still life of tulips.  I think that was my first effort at such and I remember so well setting up, oddly, in my then kitchen in Tenafly, NJ so many years ago.  Odd coincidence.  It only occurred to me at this moment. Those are the only two times I have painted in my kitchen other than the little touch-ups I sometimes do when I come home late and the attic studio is too hot or cold.  Sort of sad to throw away that bit of history but I took a pic. Surely no one else cares. What a joy it was to paint and be singing along and dancing to great music while I worked.  A memorable Covid-solo Saturday night.    §    Reading, thinking and hearing more about the ethics of Covid triage and Vaccine distribution.  So interesting.  It seems possible that we are handling these decisions with a different filter for social justice issues than we might have a year ago. Now that would be a serious Covid silver lining! A coming out of a moral fog?  Meanwhile the undermining of fact, law and the integrity of our elections continues. Heard a fascinating episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain (such a great series by Shankar Vedantam) titled The Conspiracy of Silence, looking at preference falsification – which is a misrepresentation of one’s wants and beliefs because of the perceptions of others.  It is a form of lying in order to disguise one’s true preference, and the information which underlies it. It plays in so many aspects of our lives, but of special importance today, it is a standard tool in the accumulation of power by authoritarian regimes.  We need to move beyond this. It would be a very long term project to remove this shroud which obscures truth. Truth. What is it? Too big a topic for my tiny brain and certainly for this modest journal. Just acknowledging here that it’s not as easy to agree on a definition as it is to agree for instance, that sunsets are beautiful to virtually all humans. A truth.

2020-12-11 Back to Trolley Path Oil on Panel 12 x 24 inches Read a post from friend Marc Lesser today about spaciousness and letting go of the need to achieve anything. I thought I’d try that on. Of course it had the inverse effect on me and though, as always, I was happy as a clam in the doing of it , the painting “thing” wasn’t working. I started to scrape off but that light was so irresistible. With darkness almost upon me, I had nothing to lose to go after it - fast and free. Back over the edge. It was already a scraper and I was happy in any case with my evening. Surprised now to be looking at this now and thinking that I got somewhere, pulled it back from the abyss. Was I spacious squared or totally missing the point?    §     New York is closing restaurants. CT and MA are leaving them open with restrictions. I picked up takeout in a local restaurant this week. Very rare event for me. It felt safe to get the takeout through a separate door. But there were plenty of diners inside eating and drinking. Of course no masks. I know these are tough decisions byt how can that make public health sense when cases are skyrocketing? Vaccine distribution priorities were announced in CT, NY and MA in the past couple days. Last group projected to be getting the vaccine in June. June. Six months from now. I’m no economist but wouldn’t the human AND socioeconomic costs be less if we just shut down until we shut the virus down? How? How is the question.

2020-12-09  Crabbing Hole South 2 of 2  Oil on Panel 7 x 12 inches  Boy that was fun.  I always mean to stay and work with the shapes at the end of daylight.  I usually run out of time.  Tonight I hung in. Fingers and toes gone but head in the game.

2020-12-09  Crabbing Hole South 1 of 2  Oil on Panel 12 x 24 inches  Too cold yesterday and was stuck on laptop anyway.  Marginal temps again today but I have a new gear strategy and got out there. It started snowing as I set up my easel but my bigger problem was how quickly the tide came in.  Moved the easel as the water lapped at my boots and kept painting. So happy to be out.  Forgot my worries.  Just yesterday I was thinking the winter would shut me down and there is no option to move inside to a studio work with models.  I didn’t sleep well on that.     §     I grimly read the daily email from the Boston Globe on new MA infections and death toll. I open that email knowing it is will likely add a twist in my gut but hoping for better news. Today’s number was shocking.  89 deaths.  It’s the highest daily I remember since the Spring peak.  But 89 people die many, many, many times over, right here in the US and all around the planet, from avoidable, violent and horrible realities. About 2,200 daily just from suicide alone. Today NPR reported on Australia’s Covid count.  They are essentially at zero cases.  Zero.  Surely this is about choices we did not make in the US.  If it was a choice and we made it, is that not a form of violence?

2020-12-06   Afterlight in Stony Creek - looking across to a childhood paradise    Water Color on Paper    8 x 20 inches   Not only left my race nerves on the bicycle but my creative energy in the trunk. Just as in athletic training, where rest is needed to consolidate gains in fitness and form, so too, perhaps, the creative spirit.  This was soft and easy and a great break from work. And though it’s worthy of the senior citizen’s center Monday morning arts and crafts class it was still enormously satisfying. Just the state of observation and visual translation is restorative.  No other conscious thoughts on my brain.  More emptied out than when meditating.  §    Where did I run across data today finding that people who took up new hobbies are doing better in Covid, psychologically, than the general  population?  For sure this journal has been a source of great satisfaction, joy, learning, stimulation, motivation…and even a salve for loneliness. I’m resourceful and enjoy my time alone, but need and want WAY more interpersonal time, especially with loved ones.  Zoom is not an adequate substitute.  Just is not the same thing.  The hug-factor void is huge for everyone according to all my conversations and reading – and it already was.  World needs more hugs!  It feels physically difficult to refrain from shaking hands on the street – for sure a deprivation. I have a strong and friendly, affirming handshake.  It is an energy transfer.  I am giving and getting.  Vulcan mind melt.  Don’t have that transfer anymore.  Arm waves don’t remotely suffice. It’s not physical touch.  The reverse challenge that single people face, of being physically alone, certainly exists for the many people locked down in challenging and stressful relationships and overcrowded settings.  I have zero complaints.   §    Remarkably, it seems that we are all taking the spike more seriously than we did, collectively, during the lockdown in the Spring.    I am keeping farther distant, even from my F&F pod.   §    I was looking out as I drew this, to Lewis Island where we and another family rented a house for two weeks in the Thimbles every summer. One of many happy childhood memories. A very important one. As best as I can recall, it was pretty uncomplicated and truly wonderful, at least for the kids! It was the basis, no doubt, for many unconscious assumptions.  Very little of my adulthood looks the way I imagined it, except that I still am a New Englander and in my 60’s, am doing art. Most people must have been similarly surprised at the way life unfolded.  But I never imagined this scenario.  And if I had, I would have imagined I would be tucked in with family for the duration. Reflecting now on tonight’s scribbles, I wonder if the lonely poles, empty moorings and setting sun inspired this reflection on loneliness or if I was drawn to the subject because of what has been on my mind?

2020-12-06  Eastbound on the path from Pixie  Oil on Panel   12 x 24 inches    Hard to believe the light was really doing that if I hadn’t been there. Happened very quickly and I struggled to hang on to it in my mind’s eye.  Painted for two hours past sunset.  The afterlight looking west was gorgeous of course. I almost ran back for another panel but made myself hang in and wrestle this one down as best I could. 38 degrees and breezy.  Too cold.  Need better solution or I’ll have no fingers.     §    Left early enough Friday night to paint but got rained out.  Wasn’t prepared.  That turned into a Saturday nor’easter yesterday. Good for work productivity and also Zwift race in the Alps! Amazing technology. I had my window open and as they say IRL (in real life) real snow/sleet was blowing in as I approached the upper regions of the 3500 foot climb surrounded by snow and craggy outcroppings.  I was racing against the numbers on the right of the screen showing the stats of the rider behind me and talking to my other teammates on a separate audio channel while we gasped for breath. It’s another Corona silver lining – more fun on the trainer than I used to have on my own. Corona pushed me into virtual racing and this wonderful team. But what aren’t virtual are the pre-race performance nerves and surging adrenaline. I do not love starting lines. They are just something I have to do.  Lately, as I try to cram in time to paint and frequently wish I had a larger window, I have been experiencing a similar sensation.  Blank panel, lots of prep, lucky to be there, great opportunity, curious to see what happens, need to dig deep, all depends on what I do with what I’ve got.  It’s a kind of race.  Very parallel. My thought this evening was to leave the racing nerves on my bike.  No starting gun.   §    Meanwhile sober news. Thanksgiving spike of infections has not peaked, hospitals reaching capacity with staff shortages.  Some vaccines will start being available to high priority populations by the New Year, but it will be 3 to 6 months before possible return to normal interactions if all goes well.   The statisticians expect another quarter million people to die of Corona in the US.  We are behind on testing and apparently not as well organized as some third world countries.  But we have bought up supplies of the vaccines, squeezing others out.  That will be fixed right?    §     In related news this week the Secretary General of the UN on climate change: “Humanity is waging war on nature…we can avert climate cataclysm… Covid and climate have brought us to a threshold…we are in a race against time.”

20-12-02  Sunset   2 of 2   Water Color Crayon on Paper   6 x 12 inches  A few minutes.  Better.  More black helps. 

20-12-02  Sunset   1 of 2  Water Color Crayon on Paper   12 x 16 inches   Big weather system slowly moving through. Dramatic clouds and more wind all day. Took half hour respite from laptop. Turned out to be the very, very rare light effect that lasts long enough to think about and study.  Not just a flash.  There I was with only with my water colors. Acchh!  Should have been painting.  Was peaceful anyway listening to opera working out of the sunroof and not frozen to the bone. Three huge coyotes crossed the road in front of me just as I was leaving. At that moment I was also glad not to be working in the dark, alone and oblivious to my what might be happening around me.   §   Neighbor has Covid-19. The spike is terrible with the all time highest one day increase in new cases in MA, which I still follow daily as a longtime Globe subscriber. Ideating today with Scott C. on a bubble in which I can paint through the winter.

20-12-01  Painting as extreme sport  It was blowing and cold but I had something I was beginning to like on this one.  Then a gust picked up my easel and threw it at me, blowing meabout 10 feet! Took this shot while still down and trying to figure out what had happened. Micro burst? My boot was still holding down the precious aluminum palette cover Ken F. made for me. Painting face down in the dirt, easel collapsed, brushes and paints scattered everywhere. After reassembling I had to hang on to the easel to keep working. Packing up was also a one-handed affair with a couple near repeats of the blow away.  I should have left the painting as is along with sand, mud, marsh grasses.  Cleaned off the debris and tried to save it late last night after Zooms and Zwift Time Trial. What was I thinking?  Brain was done for the day.  Just made it muddy and cheap and it’s now a tosser.    Above photo of the painting is midway through attempting to salvage. I’m not posting where I landed. It is now is just a reminder of how fine a line there is between a piece almost working and the moment when I realized I have gone too far and it is too late to go back…

20-11-29    Joshua Point Sunset    Water Crayons on paper   12 x 25 inches    Working Sunday.  Last minute run down to water to exercise other half of my brain. Actually, drawing/painting sunsets hugely engages all of my brain all at once, joyfully.   Is wonderful and also really, really challenging. Took three quick runs at this.  Wrote a friend, “I worked hard but couldn’t get the light or the colors or anything quite right. Been in a learning spell of late.  Can’t wait to break through.” He wisely replied, “maybe there is no right or no other side to break through to, but rather different continuums in the eye of each beholder”.  Yes.   §   Oddly I was thinking exactly that about race and politics this evening having listened to a piece about black conservatives. The claims of right and wrong are too binary (except perhaps in the extreme) to help us solve problems. Policy is complicated.  Polarization doesn’t help us break through to better, however defined.  It gets in the way of good ideas and creativity. 

20-11-27 Keep trying Oil on panel 12 x 18 inches Jammed up with work. Watched the most biblical sky happen as the sun was going down and I was still setting up my easel. There was a hole in the blue-gray clouds shooting brilliant fiery pink-orange rays down to the water. I missed it but went to work on the afterlight and shifting clouds. Painted into the dark. Such a challenging subject. Fun to try. § Then off to work with a thoughtful group of local activists seeking to improve safety but preserve the scenic, historic, natural, rural and unique character of Route 146. Many challenges. This time of Corona, I think, affords us an especially high-quality crowd, intensely committed to preserving our natural places and available to work on it. Everyone is more focused than ever on how special this place is. There is a heightened sense of empowerment to rethink state engineering standards and federal rules. Imagine what would be the impact of all of us devoting a chunk of our lockdown time to solving community problems and doing public service. I get lists from my favorite news sources every day of delightful literature, art and other diversions for this time of Corona.

20-11-26  Thanksgiving Sunset over Great Island  water Crayons on Paper  8 x 20 inches  Had planned to have a relaxed painting session in the late afternoon before tiny family dinner. But we happily did other things and I got out very late to paint, only to discover I had everything except my palette (home in the freezer).  Ran down to the water to grab a few moments of the drama with water crayons. Half hour.  Work with what you’ve got and be grateful. I did and I am.   §   That’s the lesson of the moment and for all time.  Fractional Corona Thanksgiving. Family in small pods and separate places.  We did a big zoom. It was sweet and better than nothing. An hour of chaos instead of a day!

20-11-25  Never disappointed at Hoadley Creek   Oil on Panel    12 x 18 inches   Had fun going after this one.  Chased the light around until it settled down a bit. Followed the path up the creek. 

20-11-22  Upper Pasture Pond Gray Day   Water Crayons on Paper    14 x 20 inches Lovely gray day scene to relax into. Was sitting on top of the car. Cows wouldn’t let me set up my paints. That’s OK. This was fun and I already had such a good time drawing cows that anything on top of that would be a bonus. I originally wrote gravy instead of bonus, then paused, and realized what a poor choice of terminology that was. Just like other aspects of history, it’s useful to stop and think where our commonly held assumptions and habits come from, linguistic and otherwise. I am a flexitarian. Never buy red meat, originally for environmental reasons and then health and now the whole package. I do eat generally whatever I am served though. No judgement. § Trump insisting on recounts. His lawsuits mostly being thrown out. A few Republicans beginning to find their backbones as the outrage grows. Still the country is deeply divided and it seems that a very substantial portion of Trump’s base truly believes that it is impossible he could have lost the election. How do we go from believing one vote counts to believing that votes don’t count and must be rigged on the basis of accusations but no evidence? Our entire system would fall apart if it wasn’t evidence based and defensible or not, by law. Otherwise we have mob rule.

20-11-22 Curious Young Calf    Water Crayons on Paper   9 x 12 inches   Most fun and whacky day with the cows yet.  And a new solution. Before I had my easel out the cows came running over. Guess it has been a slow weekend for them too. I had to get back in the car. They pressed in.  Noses against the windows.  So curious.  Licking the car so aggressively that it was rocking.  Tried little sketches but everyone was moving around and it was a bit distracting. Then I had a brainstorm.  I opened the sunroof and climbed out with my drawing materials.  Got a quick study of this curious youngster. Then they all lost interest and left me to peacefully grab the last half  hour of light to think about the pond. Like human babies, this little one has such a different head shape than a mature adult. But rounded or elongated, they all have those eyes that seem to probe deeply into my soul. § Wish I could bring the stressed, angry or just plain tired people to this place - or send into their hearts this sense of calm and wonder from being here at the pond, in the beautiful upper pasture, surrounded by these simple and guileless creatures. Magic wand. Poof! If it was music it might have the power to translate . Alas all I have are these drawings to offer.

20-11-21 Old Brooklyn Quarry –Rushed start & Experimental Rework    Oil on Panel   12 x 18 inches    Sandwiched this between Saturday errands and paddle-boarding around the Thimble Islands at Sunset, which is now 4:30 PM.  Days are so short!  Started to scrape off but veered off to rework in the kitchen sitting on the floor listening to great music. Covid social life. Went after rearranging the paint as color study, letting go of all detail.  I was liking that but kept going as I remembered the scene and a particular moment of light I had gone after on site and then abandoned for something else.  Was an excellent experiment and I don’t know what to think of the piece itself.  Oddly, and happily, it didn’t occur to me to look back at the photo I’d taken before reworking.      §     We need a rework/rethink and a thoughtful pause to remember our history. My friend Diane B. sent me this wonderful 2 minute read from Hitendra Wadhwa about how Lincoln might guide us today. I’ll quote just a fragment of Lincoln’s 1863 call to the nation for a “soul-searching reflection on where they had gone wrong” in the midst of the Civil War, “… we have imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the need of redeeming and preserving grace…”

20-11-19   Overlay   Water Color & Crayons on Paper   12 x 24 inches (cropped in photo)  Had a short window of time before client call.  Got to Shell Beach just past sundown. Blasting wind and cold.  Working awkwardly from the car. Ridiculous inefficiency. Facing the bay. Arborvitae and sumac whipping in rearview mirror.  Mashed the two ideas very loosely together. Experimental. Hemmed in on all sides I like what happened. Hungry for a new POV.    §    Covid on a nasty spike.  F&F mostly in agreement to go into voluntary lockdown though bars and restaurants still open.  Schools shutting.  Thanksgiving with Lid, Lex and Nick assuming testing gives green light. Complicated arrangements for Christmas underway with kids. Winter is going to be long. Silver lining is more drawing/painting time.  Vaccines perhaps broadly available by Spring. All very hopeful but we still need to get across this river.  Business community beginning to demand transition cooperation from administration.  Republicans still hedging.  

20-11-19 Warm-up in the Barn Organized for oils.  Then decided it was too cold and windy. Not feeling well. Back inside to reshuffle and headed to the barn with drawing materials.  Couldn’t find an interior or open door view I had appetite for.  But light was gorgeous on the barn rubble and went after that with photos. Then the text came in: “Paint!”.  I looked out and saw the light. Rallied. Ran back to the house and hauled the oil setup out to the car. Down to the beach. Wind was too strong for easel and light was going fast so I pivoted one more time and went after it with water colors.     

20-11-14  Mustard Marsh Grass    Oil on Panel    12 x18 inches  Returned to the marsh where Judy and I walked yesterday.  Cold but geared up. Was it this colorful in my Old Lyme childhood?    §    Covid numbers are terrible.  The political landscape hangs suspended.  Yet despite the ongoing insanity there is hope.  Sort of like standing in the rubble watching the sunrise. Judy’s doing great work as always: https://sixnewrules.pubsitepro.com/ 

20-11-09 Sunset behind the Tree Line Oil on Panel 8.75 x 22 inches Went after this in an abstract and wild dash. I knew I only had minutes as the fiery sun was lowering to the horizon behind the tree line. I eventually walked it back to make more sense/be more descriptive. I like what I got but believe I should have stayed way out there in abstract land – even though it wasn’t working as a painting. I think I altered course partly because a friend stopped by and watched/talked for a bit while I was in flight. No judgement on his part but I let my brain go there. It took me a lifetime to comprehend how many of my actions and decisions were driven by cultural expectations – and I’m probably not done with that discovery process. As a painter, I don’t have time to waste with all that. Pushing myself to grow on a steeper learning curve and cast off whatever holds me back. Desire for approval is on the radar and the chopping block. § Covid has made weird office hours OK.  To catch the light I now leave work, run out and paint, and them come back to work after the sun is down. Daylight savings.

20-11-09  What’s Underneath?   Oil on Panel   12 x 28 inches  Stopped en route to Medlyn Farm when I saw a crazy beautiful thing happening.  Pulled over and started to paint on the panel I had intended to rework (20-06-10   Medlyn Farm   Oil on Panel  12 x 20 - hadn’t used the whole panel).  Never have reworked on sight and only a few times in the studio.  But I needed that big panel at the moment so abandoned the Medlyn plan.  The light went behind the trees so fast I was still thinking how to approach it before everything had utterly changed.  Decided to leave as is and come back tomorrow if I can get away and the weather is similar.   Now home, I’m thinking I may just leave as is.  I like the half-drawn beginning-ness of it.  I never work in layers separated by days, en plein air.  But in the studio I used to often think my underpaintings were better than the rest.  Perhaps that’s because I started drawing as a little girl and started painting so much later. Different levels of relative competence. I love drawing.  But painting fires me up in a way that is more addictive. Maybe in part because it is more like jumping off a cliff. This being a journal where I feel somewhat naked, showing awkward learning experiments, it seems appropriate to show the WIP underwear. § In the past two days I spent a total of 4.5 hours on the phone and computer to schedule Covid Test and get opinion from my Primary and others on when I should get it and what to tell people with whom I had been in contact. Another 5 hours of emailing and talking with F&F to share info. This is not a complaint. It is data. There was not a reliable guide to follow. All the local testing options were booked for the next three days. We are doing our own informal contact tracing because there is no system to use. There is much debate about whether the kind of exposure I had was dangerous to me or to others. What is the incubation period? How soon after exposure should we be tested? Is once enough to be sure I’m not an asymptomatic spreader? Where to go? How long to get results? Are all tests equally reliable? What if I get the wrong test? It seems the only news we’ve had is about these and other Covid issues, but at the moment I need it all distilled so I can take the best action, where is it? All this, it seems, is because we have not been focused, as a nation, on assimilating scholarship and information, building systems and capacity and developing standards. Instead we have been having a nasty election cycle and even debating whether the Covid Pandemic is some kind of hoax.

20-11-08  Tunnel of Light at the Knoll   Oil on Panel   9 x 12 inches  (short on panels I painted over 20-05-03 Last light at the culvert Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches)  Scrambled to get up there through the thorns so I wasn’t going to leave without a painting.  It took me a little while to realize what was happening and settle in.  It was so different than what I expected. I didn’t notice the sort of spiritual quality until I was home. Looking for the light.       §          Since I last journaled we survived the election and four mind-numbing days which seemed more like weeks, as the electoral process did its work. Democracy is hard. Half of us breathed a sigh of relief and half are very disappointed and perhaps not ready to accept this outcome.  How do we make progress from here with such a polarized electorate?  Very serious concern abides. I was out front painting new yard signs yesterday urging common ground. Peace. Love. Seriously.  People honked and hooted and gave me thumbs up. Many visitors.  Unseasonably warm and sunny November day.  I never changed out of cycling gear from morning ride.  Happily in flip flops with colorful paints dripped on my bare toes. Elated and soaking it all in. Trump has not addressed the American people but has continued to tweet assertions of electoral fraud.  No evidence. No concession speech. Legal strategy.  Then this morning Lid called with Covid positive results.  What?! Flip off that celebratory switch and back to sober and somber worries. She is doing well. I’ll be tested Tuesday. I have confidence that we will be fine.  But all will not be fine. Infections at an all time high daily and we are losing more people every week than we lost in 9/11.

20-10-25 Fire in the Woods Oil on Panel 12 x 15 inches Gray afternoon. Hiked in to the woods wearing my fluorescent vest. It was beautiful but soft. Then I got just a few moments of the light I’d been hoping for. It came blasting through, setting the trees on fire before the clouds closed back in and everything was soft again. Did my best to translate.   §      Out west real fires. Hoping not to have civic fires as well.

20-10-23  Gray evening at the Dyke    Oil on Panel    12 x 16 inches   Had a hard time deciding tonight. Eventually went for the long view.  Gray is an opportunity to see the simplicity of things, also the super-saturated color.  Hiking back out in the dark, the marsh was very still and quiet. So the screeching of the fisher cat was absolutely blood curdling.  Or maybe it was a fox.  Wasn’t the lone, large, roaming neighborhood coyote Wallie warned me about just today, urging me not to be in the woods at night. And make sure to wear my whistle! I took the extra-long way around and trudged across the freshly tilled cornfield so as not to go back into the woods once I was across the RR tracks.  Had dragged out not only my paints but my water colors backpack as well, just to have options. Expensive options.    §     Called Lid to discuss Birthday and Holiday plans once I was in the clear.  Holidays present many challenges this year.  Birthday?  She didn’t want a celebration as it’s right after the election.  Everything is on hold.  After some conversation we agreed it was smart to have a plan.  We will either be celebrating or really need company. 

20-10-22  Gray October Dusk at Upper Pasture Pond    Oil on Panel    12 x 24 inches  Grabbed the opportunity to paint in the upper pasture while the big bull is leased out. The young bull came to visit and I hadn’t expected that, but we made friends. At one point he was nosing in a bit too close and it made me nervous. So I pulled out one of my wooden yard signs (need to distribute the rest) to push in behind me. But I dropped it with a little clatter on my easel and it startled him and he leapt away. That’s quite a sight! The rest of the heard stayed down in the pond bathing (the air has been downright tropical). They left for the feed bins before I could work with them.  Though I’d expected to find fiery fall colors and drama up there all was quiet, grayish and the clouds had lowered in.  Three fluffy red foxes trotted through the pasture.  Peaceful.  Soft light.     §      Such a contrast with the chaos and agony in the country.   People are now speaking of the upcoming long, dark and difficult winter of Covid and the the certain heartache from the loss of RGB on the judicial front for those of us who want to protect the gains made toward a more just society for all. Even the Pope is softening while the US courts go more rigidly conservative. The Rocky Mountain National Forest has just been closed due to the fires. Just two years ago Dimitri and I were there enjoying the majesty of the place. We climbed up an ice waterfall and took a dip in the melted end of a frozen high mountain lake near Estes Park. Pure joy. Cold joy. Now burning in the lower elevations and threatening Boulder. While painting this evening I did a FT call with my close friends back in Boston – face masks, outside on the porch.  We all feel fear but still are hanging on to hope. I’m watching the Presidential debate while posting this entry. What to say? We need a better system.

20-10-21  1 of 2   Back yard after Dusk    Water Color and Crayon on Paper  18 x 24 inches  The trees are suddenly on fire with color and yet the whole show is already almost over. I haven’t even gone after it yet.  October got away from me. I thought I would fix that tonight. No time to prep paints today though.  Got out late.  Ran out anyway hoping to find an angle.  Ended up in my back yard well after the sun was down. Talked myself into just doing the best I could with the moment I had.  So instead of going after the blazing fall colors I worked again with the dark.  My new friend. Super quick. Love the absence of expectations. Too late, too dark, too little time. Just do what you can. 2 of 2   6 x 12 inches  Blotter scrap.  Cleaning up - decided to rework it into drawing.  Sort of backwards.  New thing for me.  Fun.   §      Learned the term doomscrolling today.  Guess I’ve been doing a bit of that.

20-10-19     Tree at water line - Chittendon Park     Water crayon and brush on Paper    18 x 24 inches    Gray sky and late arrival make it easy to just sit down and draw what’s here.  In all my visits to this spot I’d never really seen this tree before. 

20-10-16   2 of 2  Darkness – still colorful     Water Color on Paper  18 x 24 inches Finished up first mad effort with the gaudy dusk [as best I could].  Just sat and watched.  The marsh and the Sound beyond were almost totally wrapped in darkness, almost monochrome.  Just the essential lay of the land and the water.  Then color began to reveal itself.  So soft.   Still there.  I went to work with a fresh sheet of paper. There is great freedom and joy painting in the dark.    Observing. Participating. 

20-10-16   1 of 2 Dusk from the Dyke looking toward Pixie.   Water color and crayons on paper  18 x 24 inches            It’s often when I’m packing up that the big stuff happens and I promise myself to come back in THAT light. I was happy as a clam sitting on the cold rocks wrestling with the gaudy colors of dusk.  Tying things.  Unable to keep pace with my brain. So fun.  Kept working with headlamp on. I never forget how lucky I am to be out here.  Things make sense. The power and beauty of nature is reassuring.       §      Concern about the election is escalating.  Was bad enough already.  Regardless of politics, Corona and isolation look to be here for some time to come, maybe through winter and Spring. I miss what used to be normal life. I was beginning to also miss, in anticipation, my Corona freedom. Guiltily so, as the suffering continues to be great for many.

20-10-11    Val & Robert’s Aqueduct    Charcoal and Wash    12 x 16 inches   Maybe the metaphor is not a climb but a tunneling through to the other side.  I sometimes lose sight of the absolute truth that there is always something interesting to draw, usually right in front of me.  I just have to look.  This one right next to a friendly glass of wine.      §    Dropped off my absentee ballot in the lockbox at town hall today. Photographed the evidence.  Chatted with someone who was terribly anxious about the tension in his neighborhood over the election.  He is concerned about hostilities. The specter of violence is more frequently mentioned in casual conversations.  It was already a stressful time and on a steady upward slope.  Increasingly so, with far-reaching consequences, many uncounted.  Tiny example: I spent two hours calling every optometrist in a 50-mile radius.  All booking in November and December! More serious example:  friends with life-threatening issues have been unable to schedule treatments.  On the upbeat side I visited a friend and terrific artist http://www.janinewong.com/artist-books who is using Covid powerfully. Blew my mind and opened new neural pathways!  Her Covid explorations are beautiful and brilliant.  So we can’t fix our eyes but maybe we are seeing more and differently.  Maybe this will work out for the planet though the on-the-ground casualties are incalculable.    

20-10-07 End of Storm - End of Light   Oil on Panel  12 x18 inches     Watched the insanely gorgeous stormy light and drama happening as I drove home from a meeting.  Ran into the house and got my gear. Been hoping to catch a storm.   Ran back out, frantically looking for a safe spot where the wind wouldn’t blow me over.  Ran to the little barn but the west door is small and I couldn’t see enough of the sky and the big effect which was quickly disappearing anyway. Ran to the corn crib but too restricted a view and now the rain was soaking. Carrying all my gear as I dashed about.  No time to scout and go back for paints.  Made my way into the dark recesses in the lower level of the big barn.   Found and pushed the huge doors open against the wind, revealing the gorgeous marsh and sky. Thinking about the tornado that blew through here last month.  Pinned the doors open with some big beams so the wind wouldn’t bang them closed or damage them in a gust.  50-60 mph forecast.  All the while, watching the sky close down as the sun settle below the horizon. Arrgghhh.  Timing is everything. It was too late but tried to work fast and use the opportunity to experiment and go to new places. Wildly.  Hopeless but plowed ahead trying to pound something worthwhile onto my panel. Something began to emerge.  Thought maybe I had caught a scrap of an idea of the last corner of it.  Just a scrap.  Couldn’t tell.  Painting blind.  Kept painting using my phone flashlight until it ran out of battery.  Ran back to the house for my headlamp and painted into the pitch black.  Am happy with it if only as an athletic challenge! §    Watching the Vice Presidential debates - wishing we had a better format.

20-10-06 Light on the Marsh Water Crayons and Wash on Paper  9 x 20 inches   Left late. Light almost gone. Just a slice of it catching on the edge of the marsh and a few tree trunks which happened to have the angle & exposure to reflect these last orange-gold moments. This light is so beautiful. This moment is so dark.  Went out to paint but a voice told me to draw.  Didn’t matter what. It dawned on me while wrapping up this quickie impression, that the whole purpose of the exercise was to have a place to write down these crazy facts within hours of them becoming reality, and to record something visual of this day on which it happened. Unconsciously I left this side of the paper open. I needed it.   §    The President of the United States has just recklessly encouraged the citizens of this country to endanger themselves and “not be afraid” of Covid 19 which has killed, sickened, disrupted, impoverished and destroyed millions of American lives (and globally of course) and caused unimagined (just 9 months ago) suffering and harm. He was actively exposing others to the disease as he moved through the last 24 hours of release from the hospital.  I have no noun, adjective or verb to capture the insanity of this moment.  And apparently we do not have an immediate mechanism to stop him.  It requires an election. Further, he instructed Congress to abandon negotiations on an economic relief package for all those who are suffering, and now will suffer more, in order to focus on placing his nominee on the Supreme Court where he has publicly stated that expects to bring his case for a contested election – an election which has not yet taken place. The Judiciary Committee has two Senators who were, apparently,  infected at the same event announcing his nominee.  This falls into the category of things which, just yesterday, I knew I could not imagine.         

20-10-05  I’ve been mostly away from this journal since July. I thought that after I’d wrapped up Wheels of Change I would have more evening time again. No sign of the lockdown lifting. But healing from my flight without wings, sailing down East, election work, RBG, visiting children, new work projects, more social life and birthday celebration all were priorities over my indulgent affair with paints. Today I’m in that hopeful mood again as the air chills, light changes and nature transforms to Fall. Maybe I can paint more now.  I squeezed in a sunrise on my birthday but no time to post.  That evening the moon rose up a fiery orange over the marsh, with a stunningly large aura - more like a sunrise.  Never seen it so colorful.  Must have been particulates blowing in from the CA wildfires.  Beautiful.  Epic.  Felt like an omen and I chose to think it was a very good one. Other friends not so sure.  We were gathered on the knoll in my back yard to paint yard signs, roast sausages in the fire pit and enjoy each other.  It was an unseasonably warm October 1st and the moon was just one day off full. Gorgeous.  We got some signs made, stayed safely distant but came together happily – all very much in need of community and a party.    §      I no longer have a measure of my expectations about the future.  So much is strange and incomprehensible, horrifying, sometimes hopeful, generally crazy and unthinkable. In the last two weeks we’ve had the trampling on RBG’s legacy, the hot mess Presidential debate, Trump’s contracting and wantonly spreading Covid, a surge in cases nationwide.  Schools and zip codes selectively RE-closing. The stock market is happy. The West Coast is burning.  The integrity of the elections seems in peril. Russian interference apparently ongoing.  White supremacists feeling validated and empowered.  The sense of an anti-racist awakening has receded.  It feels that we may be on the verge of violence on a larger scale.  We already have plenty of it.  I should not be surprised at whatever happens next.  I fear for the future in the near term. In the long term, a student of history can safely assume we humans will all be gone – or maybe moved to another galaxy far, far away.  On some days a global calamity feels possible.  For today though, I’m thinking about the new generations we are producing who have to contend with what we have wrought. And we’ll still be here.  Can we dig out of this or is the future more dystopian? I fervently hope for environmental and social progress around the world, more enlightened minds steering the ships of state, more justice and commitment to the common good.  Kindness, and intelligence shall reign in my telling of the future. Enough with self-interested privileged people taking care of themselves and preserving their good fortune (which largely is a function of where they were born on this planet)! Enough with our infatuation with the superficial, material celebrity culture and worshipping money and fame! Let’s raise up decency, scholarship and civil discourse. Let’s honor all work and all living things. And the arts!  Let’s use this upside-down moment to evolve into a more advanced species.  I don’t know what value there is for anyone else in the time I spend observing nature and trying to translate something about her beauty and power.  I need to find a way for it to help others. Meanwhile it helps me find my way.

20-10-01 Birthday Sunrise on the marsh 11 x 20 Oil on panel (Painted over lovely but weak early 90’s painting of Duck River in Old Lyme - it was well drawn but not powerfully painted.) I didn’t want to miss my shot looking for locations,so went to a close-by view of the marsh hoping for a good lighteffect to happen. It was there but I wrestled. Everything was kind of wrong. Rethought the painting and composition a few times. I SO wanted to make progress. No lovely but limp painting on this day. I eventually freed myself up from details and used the elements loosely to serve the big idea. Realized I had been tripping on the immediate foreground at the expense of the whole. I threw away what I had at a moment when there was really not enough time to reconstruct. But I could at least move in a better direction. Using the concepts but not a being a slave to the particulars was the breakthrough I needed for a better outcome than when I was twisted up in the details of what was before me. Instead I took a step toward explaining, visually, what was inspiring me and where I was trying to go. Good metaphor for choices I am making about my next chapter. Posting this on 20-10-05 as I’m doing some catch up with my journal.      §      Good metaphor and guideline as well for how we make our way through the current insanity. More thinking about values, less thinking about the details, the things we rely on for comfort. There is a big wave washing over us and maybe another bigger one right behind it. We may not have the choice to hang on to the those bits in the foreground. Life is changing. How do we reshape the future so that it is still wonderful but better for all? I’m reminded of Bob Dylan’s timeless lyrics. “so get out of the new road if you can’t lend a hand, for the times they are a changin’.”

20-09-30 A DIY home gallery. Last year on my birthday I took the whole day off from work and did 63 observations in pencil and pen (might call some of them drawings) ranging in complexity but 2 - 20 minutes a piece. It was a great idea and a joyful day. Then I had a terrific dinner with friends, sitting close and laughing, telling stories into the night. This year I used the motive of my upcoming birthday to clear some walls in the house and with sticky-velcro tape, mounted lots of my unframed Corona panels (tightly spaced and there are still piles of paintings). I then stood back and for the first time was able to view this large portion of my collection all at once. Until then the paintings had just been piling up and taking over my house. I didn’t curate, I just powered through the stacks and tried to get them level…ish. 80:20 rule. Then I readied my paint box for the morning and was up and out well before dawn.   §    While it’s an ongoing conversation, birthdays mark time in a unique way which prompt even more intense reflection. What just happened and how shall I attempt to shape the future given what I have learned? What’s my situation? What’s my vision? How do I help us get out of this mess? What will my contribution be?

20-09-27 Brightening of gray morning at Pixie 9 x 24 Oil on Panel It’s rare for me to paint in this light. I’d camped out and was up for the misty sunrise. But paints weren’t ready and I mixed and organized until it was too late to catch that magic. So I worked with what was in front of me. Posting this now as I clean up a bit on 10/5. Not sure what to make of it but experimentation is always good.

20-09-14 Granberry Lane Late Afternoon Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches Grabbed a quick, late-afternoon interior. Limited window. Not an easy concept but I jumped right in and followed my intuition. No barriers broken here artistically. However no struggle either. Therapeutic. I won’t make leaps forward this way. But I did get home in time for the wonderful meal the kids cooked up!    §      Corona has given me two weeks with Dimitri and Sara who are working remotely from Guilford. Such a joy to have them here and to experience their work life/space. The contrast of having people, let alone my own loved ones, here in my house for a normal rhythm of life and work, is radical. I have done well in solitary mode, with some human contact here and there within my pod. Eleanna was here for a bit after my accident but there was nothing normal about that time. I do remember being particularly delighted and impressed to listen, as a fly on the wall, to her work meetings through my concussion fog. Then and now have been “take your mother to work” days. I used to have the kids with me at work a lot of the time when I was building Dancing Deer. They were part of the landscape. How do I go back to solitary? It seems unlikely that any kind of vaccine or effective treatments will be circulating before February and even that seems optimistic.

20-09-05 Hammonasset Eastern Sky at Sunset Oil on Panel 9 x 24 inches Drove here looking for new material but good angles would be long hikes. Park closing at 7:30.  The lots are full. Eleanna called and I pulled over to talk on my way out. Then Dimitri too!  Light was beginning to get interesting. 45 minutes to sundown.  Decided to chance having the rangers clear me out.  Energy flowed. Had a good time.  As the park emptied people slowed to look, honked, call out encouragement.  Some stopped.  Didn’t feel like much of a painting.  Maybe looked good in headlights? But it was great to get that group hug.      §     Corona notes.  Jack explained the mechanics of vaccine testing and roll out.  No way it can be useful until February in the most optimistic scenario.  That’s what I’ve read but hearing from him was sobering (he developed the viral delivery platform for Ebola vaccine). Reminded me of how long I have been mostly alone, like this holiday weekend, and maybe we are only halfway. Meanwhile an unusual strong wind off the water tonight blowing crisp new air and a change of season.  I can hear the red bell clanging and the waves rolling into Shell Beach.  Most glorious Labor Day weather ever and plans with kids are upended because of Covid issues. It’s always a bittersweet moment anyway as the days grow short and summer is behind us. We’ve had Spring and Summer of Corona. Now it will be Fall and likely will hover over Winter as well. Four seasons of Corona.

20-09-04 After-light from Peter’s Knoll Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches Heading out last evening I realized how much I’d been looking forward to painting up in Maine. Change of scene. But my paints and I were separated by a lot of water. That worked out too. Now home, last night I ended up at the beach with my paint box but spent my time poking around in the rocks, zooming in on low tide critters and landscapes. That was also a change of scene. Ran out late tonight. Snagged this one.    §     While cleaning up I lucked into an interview with 86 year old Jane Goodall on NPR. Such an inspiration! She had so many important things to say. Won’t summarize here, but on Covid, she said it has been one of the most productive periods of her life. Was happy to see China actually take very quick action and outlaw the sale and consumption of wild animals. Sees many points of hope, especially young people. Her answer to the question “What gives her joy?”  Being out in nature with a dear friend. She feels too many of us are too disconnected from nature. Amen.

20-09-01  Corona Tree/Burls   4 Charcoal on Paper   14 x 11 inches 1 of 4 Corona was not in my thoughts at all.  Was excited about the burls and getting in a few quick sketches on my last evening on Bremen.  Now back in Guilford and there it is. 2 of 4. The heart burl. Racing along so I can squeeze one more in before guests arrive. 3 of 4.  Why do these trees seem so human with this extreme deformities? And naked? 4 of 4  Last one. Out of time.  I could have spent the week just studying burls.     §     There is an often unfelt/unknown Corona filter everywhere.

20-08-28  Stonington Harbor Just a few little observations.     §      It takes no effort at all to release the stress of the last five+ months. To make sense of it is really not even on my radar. Distance is not yielding clarity.  I’m glad, and feel lucky, to be away from those fraught conversations for a while.

20-08-20 After Light at Shell Beach Oil on Panel 9 x 24 inches Head thick again in the afternoon. Morning office work was low key. By 5:00 I was out of juice. Procrastinated with work that could wait but by 6:15 I’d talked myself out the door, unloaded my gear and watched the sun hit the tree line. Sunset was at 7:30. Couldn’t rally. Couldn’t see where to go with what I was looking at. Packed and moved. Same thing. Moved again to Shell Beach. Sat leaning my head on the steering wheel watching very little happen out there. Thought about how absurd it was to try to paint when I couldn’t talk myself into lifting my head. Sun was down. Decided to go home. Hated that idea. Told myself this an opportunity to have no expectations. Experiment. Take the half hour of light and find a half hour of energy. Rallied. I went to work and just then the sky got to work too. I was on a loose and fast experimental war path with my palette knife. That was good. Energy came flooding back in. Just facing down that blank panel, in itself, was therapeutic. I suppose science already knows creative activity can unblock concussion fog. Or maybe it’s joy that does the unblocking? Alas the painting was cheap and awful. Along came Wallie at the most embarrassing moment of confusion. “You need more gray.” I kept working on the first angle while we visited. Thought about gray. I’ve already been thinking a lot about gray. Clearly I’d be wiping off this panel, even if the time was well spent. So why not push on? I started scraping, pushing and shoving. She cheered as I trashed and thrashed. And then, freed of any hope of pulling it back together, I worked on pulling it together. All that dark mess in the sky now. Oy! I told her I have been trying to get the bass notes. Be bolder, stronger, darker, deeper. I am trying to get to the essence of the thing that happens. Usually nature uses a full range of values. She said I needed to get more black paint. I needed to buy a big tube of black! Loved that. I have plenty of black, just need to learn how to use it. She got excited from fifteen feet away. I agreed that everything looks better at a distance in the dark. I finished up in the dark alone. Felt I had made progress. Still felt that way as I washed my brushes and ate my avocado and quinoa leftover dinner sitting on the floor of the kitchen (eye level with the painting on the easel). I may still feel that way in the morning. It’s terribly late. Must get sleep.     §      Corona-commiserated with a friend for whom the lock-down created a tough relationship struggle when he and his partner moved in together. We agreed that we won’t really know the human cost, let alone the rest, of all this for some time to come. It seems now that this will be a much longer haul than we’d imagined. News boycott today except hearing that Steve Bannon was arrested just down the shoreline in a boat off Westbrook.

20-08-19 Back to the Crabbing Hole Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches It was beginning to take too long and I wasn’t bouncing back. Then a break in the clouds and a couple good days in a row. My parole officer let me out. Once I was working I forgot the head stuff and lost myself in the doing. Perhaps it was the sight of a snowy egret, a great egret and a great blue heron all sharing a small triangle of low-tide marsh mud across the causeway that emptied my brain even before I got going. They paused long enough for me to appreciate the gathering and then dispersed. I forgot I hadn’t been able to bar the thought of bringing home some kind of prize. Forgot that I had wrestled myself back to knowing that any effort at all would be a win. Forgot that I was lucky to be upright with a brain. Forgot the fear that I might not have painting energy ever again. Forgot that I was soberly reminded of how quickly a thing I take for granted can vanish. Forgot about whether I was pushing myself too hard too soon and that it might be a major milestone or another setback. And even forgot how joyful it is because I was busy observing, translating, thinking, problem solving and being astonished, one again, at what happens out there. I was intensely focused on trying to do something with it.     §      I am confused by what is happening in the world and especially here in the US. The planet has certainly had crazier, uglier, dumber, meaner, scarier, harder, more destructive, more greedy, less compassionate, more incomprehensible crises. Many! This is nothing. But I haven’t been there during the others. [Entering this on the 20th referencing notes I sent the kids last night. Was too tired to write.]

20-08-06  Speeding up and slowing WAY down I have been wondering what is next in this spiraling and mostly gloomy Corona & Socio-Economic storm. I wasn’t thinking I had a new personal challenge-chapter about to hit. I had been returning to a more normal work life and getting my life in order post WOC.  Got out a few times to paint but running low on violet and green.  Needed to set aside a major chunk of time to mix paints. I’ve been loving summer. Feeling so fortunate. Training hard and continuing to get faster – had achieved my stretch-goal power-level dream for this year.  All races are cancelled but still have the satisfaction of hitting those numbers. One can’t know if the stars would have aligned for the day of the Mt. Washington race, but I was ready. Hope to be again.

And then bam! A simple household fix resulted in a face-plant fall down the front stairwell from a high perch. The whole incident is too ridiculous to admit any further details publicly.  I wasn’t doing anything heroic.  The notable thing is that I’m so lucky it wasn’t uglier.  That was 10 days ago and I’ll be recuperating from minorly fractured bones and a concussion for a while.  Pretty much everything came to a halt.  I’m emerging from the fog, Still feeling fortunate.  Very. Eleanna was here to drive me to the Doc on the 4th. A tropical storm arrived at about the same moment.

It was a wild ride. We realized about halfway there we shouldn’t have gone though we’d checked the weather and with the doctor’s office.  The receptionist informed us, upon arrival, that there was a tornado watch and we needed to sit on the inner wall of the waiting room away from the windows!  It all happened so fast. It was not expected to be that big a deal here.  But after a torrential but very brief lashing rain, it was a mighty windstorm.  Trees and lines were coming down as we drove home.  Missed them all.  Eleanna navigated the debris and detours while I searched the web for what to do in a car in a tornado.  One useful factoid: don’t go to an underpass! Counter intuitive until you think about the acceleration effect of forcing a current through a small space.  The story will get better in the retelling. Of course power and water went out. Still out.

The storm cleared all the way through to blue sky that evening as the winds subsided.  It was magical light. The wind shifted to the south and major rollers crashed across the fetch of the bay toward my little Shell Beach.  The neighborhood of Leetes Island came out to marvel and enjoy, survey the damage.  Just like the wizard of Oz once the wicked witch was dead. That evening a glowy, golden, nearly-full moon came up in the dark sky.  It is dark still.  And so quiet.  Slower.  Beautiful.  An already Covid-weary local population discovered a new chapter of shut down.  It’s like finding out you can stretch a muscle even further on the next breath, and further still on the next.  Way farther than you thought was possible until you get how it works and keep trying.  Nature is stretching us. I will be painting soon again. The time with Eleanna was a gift.

I wash dishes at Shell Beach at the end of the grass path. Sea water is now the preferred method for toilet flushing. I violated the no-driving rule yesterday just to refill all my jugs down at the Leetes Island well. Local gathering place. It might be many days before power is back. Derek’s generator, just around the corner, provides periodic recharges and I indulged in one hot shower.  My phone’s hot spot is rarely working but he got it to connect. He is seeing a lot of his neighbors!

20-07-25 From the old trolley bridge in Stony Creek looking Northwest Oil on Panel 9 x 24 inches Scouted this last night with Peter. We hiked off trail down along the marsh’s edge until we found some big rocks we could sit on and look back to draw the bridge. Nicely nestled at the mosquito level of things but I went to work at digesting the complex structure with pencil. Good exercise. Then took five minutes to play with color - a mess but fun. Walking back realized there was a way to get down on to the footings of the bridge with just enough room to set up my easel looking back to where we’d been. Couldn’t wait to return tonight. Late arrival as usual and worked until the light was gone and the moon was bright. At the front end I met a lovely person walking her dogs and we discovered a lot of small world connections. Helped snap me out of my fatigue and dive into this scene. Decided to work with brushes and not worry about all the things I get tripped up on. Happily didn’t fall off the precarious spot while I was forgetting about so many things. Had been in a bit of a traffic jam in my head that wasn’t feeling wonderful. Life is complicated. Also Peter’s admonition to not think so much was on my mind. I am not sure he’s right about not thinking. I’m thinking about that. Trying on different mind sets is always a good idea.

20-07-21 Returning to this Journal after weeks away from it.  It should be some major thoughtful entry but there is no time!  I worked late, squeezed in a short recovery ride, visited with neighbors briefly and then painted. I have been consumed by Wheels of Change (WOC) which launched this weekend - beautifully. Far exceeded our original and not so modest hopes. I also had Eleanna and Mike here last weekend - seeing them for the first time since Christmas. We had so such a wonderful time, relaxing as well except that I burned the early and late candles to keep up with WOC while trying not to let all that impose on our precious time together. Hard balance to strike but the kids were accommodating and supportive. Truth is I raised them somewhat in that mode. They survived and thrived anyway.   §     I’m breaking form and mixing up art, politics and my cycling life a bit here this evening, by including the entry that I just posted on Strava here:

Strava Activity Post 7/2 1/2020 #WOCBLM  Simple joy ride in the neighborhood this evening. A mere half hour of recovery and reflection.  Still marveling at the 800+ brave souls who put themselves out there publicly.  It is brave to embrace a concept for its evident goodness, knowing that some may use it as a divisive weapon, or for cover, to justify violence or other political or economic agendas.  And it’s brave of course, to face angry people who hurl expletives and snarl "white lives matter". But it’s not just those frightening moments for which one needs to summon up backbone.  It’s also needed for engaging in uncomfortable conversations with friends and colleagues, or suffering the losses attached to conversations which don’t take place.  There is risk in choosing to be vocal. There are less risky ways to help.  But neutrality doesn't exist in my view. Doing, thinking, saying nothing is a vote for the status quo.  This is an enormously complex subject. It is fraught. There are good people, advocating different strategies, trying to make sense of it and find a path forward. Many fear greater conflict and don't think calling out BLM will help everyone come together. In my view of history and present society, black lives have not mattered as much as white lives for 400 years.  Structural and attitudinal change is necessary to put it behind us.  This is not a zero sum game.  We can raise everyone up. To decide to take this stand was not hard for me.  But for many the decision was not easy to make. It is their courage I most admire. I don’t know how we build a just and equitable society without courageous people of good will engaging in thoughtful, peaceful, open-minded, well-informed conversations with others who hold a different point of view, or had a different life experience. We are all learning.  I believe the vast majority of Americans share, in their hearts, a desire for a better future for all. It is the essence of the American ideal is it not?  How do we line up our hearts, our minds and our actions?

20-07-20 Painting in the dark - last light at Leetes Island Beach Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches Last night I visited and painted at Pixie, shaking off the cobwebs in my painter brain and taking a small respite from the non-stop intensity of WOC. I don’t know if I’ll post that little painting. Maybe tomorrow. And I did “blind drawings” with the kids last weekend which I will photograph and post. Very fun. My new favorite party game. So back to this evening’s reflections, I’m only managing to post the text message I sent to Gretchen & Kim: Inspired by the light last night as we watched the last pthalo blue-green sky to the west before the stars came out, I decided to go out [at that hour] tonight and paint in that almost dark moment.  I wanted to go really dark.  I’m always pitching things slightly too high.  Trying to develop my baritone.  Sky still had light but I could only guess where things stood on the panel.  The darks didn’t seem dark enough and the light, of course, as always, did not seem light enough.  Struggling to hit the right values. I  kept at it almost blind.  In fact I indeed was half blind because I had run out the door wearing my computer glasses that are not much good beyond 18”!  And I think the answer is that half blind is better than the false notion that I’m ever really seeing what’s going on. Seriously.  Not trying to be poetic here. I think I actually see more when my visibility is extremely compromised and I have to look harder and think better and make do as well as possible with very limited means. Of course I already knew that.  I had just forgotten and I needed to haul my gear down to the water and be sure to have donated enough blood to the local mosquito population in order to have the experience of remembering that - in paint!  Thank you for the inspiration.  Love.  T (Oh and the color/tone is quite different than what the iPhone captures and I think that I actually like the real thing better than the photo.  Have you ever heard me say that before?)

Additional thought I could make this a triple play and write about the powerful breakthrough I made in my thinking about romance and relationships this evening, while scrubbing off bug spray, turpentine, bicycle grease, sweat and sunscreen in the shower. But I think I’ll keep the insight to my private journal other than to remark that I have had so many powerful moments of insight while showering that I think I ought to collect them all into a little Shower Insights pamphlet to pass on to the next generation. It will need a cheap pun for a title so no-one needs put off reading it for fear of somber preachiness about Wisdom.

Corona Thought It is a scary time. The US does not have the virus under control and our numbers are among the worst in the world, while most countries have controlled it and are more safely returning to normalcy, many states here are asserting normalcy in the context of spiking infection rates. The economy is in a mess and kids need school and schoolmates. We all need and want social interaction - but at what price? We are all half blind. I wish we were all looking really hard and seeking truth and good solutions rather than trying to use what we do see through our blind spots to raise up the embattlements. OK it’s 1:00 AM. Must sleep.

20-07-01 Upper Pasture by the Marsh Leetes Island Oil on panel 9 x 24 Locked down on phone and computer all day - squeezed in a quick painting for escape. Couldn’t bear to miss out on the incredible atmosphere and gaudy sunsets from the recent period of unstable weather and high humidity. So beautiful. As soon as I was on site the stress melted away. Cows and I had a good time again. Here is a sweet one taking a refreshing swim in the lovely green water. It was very hot and humid and I was in long pants, turtleneck, boots and a parka - my method for surviving the flies and mosquitoes (plus stinky natural herbal stuff smeared everywhere). I can’t think when bugs are chewing on me. Posting this on the July 2nd. No time for painting today, still in critical launch of WOC.     §      Larger context is sharp rise in US cases and sober warnings from Fauci. Still everyone seems to be out and about. Relaxing standards. Even I forgot yesterday. Had a lifetime first. A double pinch-flat both front and back tire on an interval workout during a passing thunderstorm. Meant to get out before the storms but couldn’t hit deadlines. Had one spare tube, two cartridges, one patch kit. Should have been OK but couldn’t find the leak on the second tube I needed to patch. I was a rain-soaked, grease covered mess. But eventually a good Samaritan stopped anyway, a local carpenter. He drove me all the way home. It didn’t occur to me to take my face mask out of my back pocket. I don’t wear it anymore while riding on the bike. Just keep it handy. As we introduced ourselves I shook his hand. At that moment I remembered which reality we live in.

20-06-30 Sunset from Leetes Island Community Beach Oil on Panel 9 x 12 Another quick run down the grass path tothe beach. Another pale reminder. Best I could do with it. Try not to beat myself up. So wonderful to be out trying anyway. No time. Still buried in work.    §     Launching https://wheelsofchange.us/index.html Enormous effort. Coming together and may actually make an impact! I feel really good about giving up so much work, personal and most of all, painting time to make this thing happen. In the last few weeks I had forgotten how useless I felt for much of the lock-down and then the George Floyd killing. How could I be out there just painting in the evenings? What good for anyone else was my painting? What could I do to help? And then it came to me June 7th in response to Phil Stern’s question to our club, the Winchester Rippers. He wrote, “JFK said. 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' The Rippers are good people. What will we do?”. The light bulb went on. We should do Strava Art and write Black Lives Matter across New England. Three weeks later we are launching the site. 1500 miles of Giant letters traveled by large numbers of people helping to abolish racism.

20-06-27 Sunset from Leetes Island Community Beach Oil on Panel 9 x 12 Have been buried in work. Squeezed this one out. Didn’t do my usual thing of searching for the right spot. Parked myself and went after it. Of course you can’t paint that!! At best is a pale reminder of the power of nature and what happens in the sky.

20-06-25  Don’t be Afraid  Oil on Panel  9 x 12 inches   I wasn’t going to paint tonight, just find a quiet, comfortable place to draw in the small window of time I had. But I couldn’t resist once I was back outside looking at the light.  I thought I’d do something quick and very abstract.  Wanted to go way out on the spectrum.  But I got sucked into the lovely scene. I knew what I had to do.  Snapped a photo and started the rework.  A mess for a while, then it began to emerge.  Had a deadline and got it this far before I ran out of time.     §     On the roads today for a training ride the traffic was madness.  I guess I have become even more allergic to cars during Corona.  But it seems so much more intense.  The lockdown is over.  In New England the infection rates have been declining (not so elsewhere in the US).  So curious to see what happens with the way people behave in the grocery store.  Will the nice-ness, the seeing of each other in a new way, the concern – will it all last?

20-06-23  No painting tonight.  Instead, an inspiring tour of my neighbor/artist’s collection and location – just across the marsh from me on Leete’s Island.  I was reminded it is as important to look & think as to do. An evening talking with Wallie, a kindred spirit, about her lifetime of art, is an evening well spent.  She showed me pastures I hadn’t known how to get to which were much more beautiful than I had even imagined. Right there. Right here!! I’ve been looking across to them not realizing what a treasure they are.  And one more gift - Wallie has done wonderful sculpture with found wood. It triggered a memory that hasn’t surfaced in many years.  When I was in High School I used to make wire sculptures mounted on driftwood and sold some locally in tourist shops.  I don’t have a single photo or any scrap left in my “can’t throw away” boxes.  Just sweet memories which had settled to the recesses of my brain.  What else is hiding there!?     §     We have both used our Corona time well and discovered, among other things, that we spend more time with our important connections, and also made new discoveries as a result of the world turning upside down.

20-06-22  Last Light  Oil on Panel  9 x 12 inches  Set up as sun was closing in on the horizon  behind the tree line to the southwest. I was looking northeast at the reflected light in the haze.  Worked quickly. Just a sketch. Thinking about how lovely everything is in that hazy light, even the dark rubber-like algae now covering much of the backed-up salt marsh hay fields and the bright yellow algae on my side near the invasive phragmites that are so gorgeous when they catch the light.  Unclear what, if anything, the DEP is going to rule about the broken sluice. A colorful mash up of human wants and the rest of nature.  I cleaned off my palette and put away paints with the help of fireflies while batting away mosquitoes.  Was in the backyard so safe inside by 9:10. Picked 10 or so gnats out of the sky with tweezers and snapped this bad photo in the kitchen. Need to do better photography but when? The gnats in the grass and trees get to stay - add texture. But they seem to prefer the sky. Had been thinking that I’ve almost forgotten, if I ever knew anything, about what to do with brushes while I’ve been scraping and pushing with my palette knife searching for essentials. So I didn’t let myself use the palette knife at all tonight. Now to wash brushes, eat something, clean up, send a few emails, brush teeth, do stretches and off to bed!

20-06-21  Path from the Small Barn Again Charcoal on Paper 12 x 16 inches Sat on top of the tractor inside the small barn.  Bucket tilted too far up to be useful as a seat this time.  Opened the doors wide and looked out to the small field where new calves and their mothers are grazing these days.  Had two hours of Zooms scheduled – Kids and WOC (Wheels of Change) team.  Hoped to get out earlier in the day to paint an interior but still recovering from last week’s hit and run. Noodled this quiet scene while engaged in those conversations.     §     Eleanna & Mike now planning visits with parents next month.  Radical new world.  Will be so wonderful to be together again.  Still no way to see Dimitri without airplanes.   Wheels of Change group is smart, fun, focused, productive and determined to have an impact.  Terrific people. I stumbled into that good luck - maybe made a bit of it.  Indulged my urge/need do something big. I haven’t figured out how to make my art count.  Maybe some day that can happen.  But for now I can do this.  Didn’t spend a lot of time weighing pros and cons and calculating time investment.  Just had to raise my hand.

20-06-20    Solstice Sunset    Oil on panel     9 x 24 inches  I have been trying to paint more powerfully.  But tonight I realized that’s not the right frame. I am trying to get more to the essentials which are powerful, beautiful, inspiring and humbling.  The essentials are so obvious once you see them - elusive until the moment of reveal. Then so hard to translate. I was lost for most of the evening solving the wrong problems. You can detect the markings still of the radical scraping off. I had given up on this one. The light was almost done. Then I went back in after it and made a tiny bit of progress. Why, why does it take me so long to get to the realization that I’m on the wrong path? Sometimes it is a function of having been looking long enough to begin to see.     §     As this chapter is closing, I am wondering if the gift of time has been a tease or a transformation.  The answer lies in what I do next.  I am thinking the same thing about the world.  Last week I stumbled into the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu’s Book of Joy. These are not new concepts mostly.  But giving myself the processing time to focus on them is really useful in the context of all this other Corona-time processing - from life values to painterly values.

20-06-19  Northeast side of the Dyke  Charcoal on Paper  8 x 20 inches  I fell behind in the past few weeks. More social life, the economy reopening, work heating up,  Black Lives Matter Wheels of Change project launching, panel making, travel to VT for uphill training, the occasional row and in general, the glorious weather. Totally distracting. Summer is here.  I love every season and all the crazy weather of New England. Every single moment of it. It’s hard to convince me ever to leave. I’m happy with the soggiest, cold gray day in March when Spring is just a distant promise and there is no winter to brace up to and ski out on.  Camelot’s, “If ever I would leave you” is my theme song when it comes to traveling away.  But summer is the season that feels the most bittersweet when it leaves me! It marks the passage of time like nothing else. At the front end I am drunk with it. We haven’t even gotten to the solstice yet but I’m fighting now to regain my sobriety – against all my natural urges.  I am discovering there is no back-filling my journal. I can’t make it up. Can’t remember where I was let alone what I was thinking.  That turns out to be the genius of this thing. It marked the pages of Corona.  I knew which one I was on.  We are now in an entirely new chapter.     §      All that said, I prefer to paint in a hailstorm and freeze off my fingers than to feed my beloved New England’s mosquito population! So getting out to the dyke was a battle but worth it for the open air and steady breeze tonight.  I love this spot where the tide boils in and out, surrounded by marshes and outcroppings of granite. I love swimming here in the race or picnicking on the dyke with the wildlife and water all rushing around me. I could not possibly have worked tonight without the breeze. Was nearly eaten alive hiking here through the woods. And on my way out I kept pausing to take photos of the wildflowers and toads but slowing down to notice was a life-threatening decision.   I have spent the last three days being intensely aware of how lucky I am to be alive. Funny that slowing down to smell the roses seems to be as dangerous as riding a bicycle!

20-06-18 Blind Drawings with Peter, Monika and Marc Arrived late to dinner having left way late for what I hoped would be a quick catch of some soft light . A lot of moisture in the air. Suddenly tropical. So much atmosphere. Itching to paint. Yesterday clear, bright and brisk. But I veered off for food and company. Today was a recuperative day after being hit by a car yesterday on my bike. Elderly person who was frightened and confused. Lucky to be alive. Managed not to go down when I was hit. Unscathed really but not untouched. Some day I hope to be very elderly and very on my game. Still painting and doing creative work even if blind. Not running over cyclists. So many things to be grateful for. So. Many. BIG. Things.     §     Four people drawing blind is more than 2x the fun of two. Two minute time limit. Don’t look away from your subject. Do not look at your drawing. Corona inspired escape from inhibitions and valuation. Very restorative.

20-06-16 Return to Medlyn Cornfield 1 & 2 of 2   Oil on Panel 6 x 12 inches  Default position -short on time I hiked toward the dyke knowing I’d find something.  There was that new cornfield again.  Earlier in the evening and came in from different route. Different weather. Dry and cool. Still - there was that magical blast of light around the corner. Decided to take another crack at it. While wrapping up I saw the last light streaming through the trees over to the north and west end of the field. Had a scrap of panel in my box and decided to go after that action with the minutes available. I was warmed up.  Big challenge was how to carry home two wet panels in the dark.     §     Made the first effort while talking with Eleanna about life choices she and Mike are making in the context of Corona. How to advise my children? My own parents guided us having grown up in the Depression and coming to age during WWII. A Greek immigrant from the mountains outside Sparta and an old line New England WASP - joined by their US Army experience. Anything was possible and progress seemed certain. Work hard and do the right thing. Good will conquer evil and adversity. Is it any different now? I am pretty certain the sun will keep blasting around that corner. Of what else am I certain?

20-06-10   Medlyn Farm     Oil on Panel  12 x 20   Another day where I was so tired but dragged myself out and sprang back to life.  Looking for a site, hiking in, picking a spot, thinking about what to do with it and setting up while on a call with cycling friends – a new diversity committee puzzling what/how to do the right thing.  Make impact. Spread the joy of cycling. Then worked, scraped away, worked some more.  I can never do justice to such a moment. Not with paints.  At this spot tonight on the farm, the luscious pinky orange setting sunlight was blasting in over the red soil of the new growth cornfield where it makes a big sweeping turn around a stand of trees. The little corn stalks aren’t 10 inches high yet and the intensity of the new green growth is only visible if you get down at their level and look across their tops.  A layer back of that, the light was also blasting through the hole in the trees formed by the railroad line. I’d never seen that before. Double helix.  One has to be there at just the right moment, on the right day of the year with the weather cooperating. I got caught up in the marvel of it and maybe the painting is extra cheap and amateurish.  Doesn’t take anything away from the experience of wrestling with the wonders and challenges. I tend to lose track of everything else when I’m in that zone.      §    But these days when I’m out there something is different. Today, among other musings, I was reflecting that when I was my children’s age, I was certain that the future was amazing, the possibilities endless and that we, the human race, would make huge progress toward justice, peace, healthy plant, love… I don’t think, and of course I hope I’m wrong, that such confidence in the future is the experience of this new generation – and for good reason. There is a battle raging between the genetic optimist that I am, and the rational being I have learned to be.  While packing up Rusty called and told me a remarkable, race related-story from his business day that tore many layers off the onion in one motion.  New awareness and, I think, progress, on many fronts.  It just wouldn’t have happened if the George Floyd killing had not pushed the US - and it seems the world – past the tipping point. The skids were greased by Corona and the increased empathy most of us are experiencing, opening our eyes to what has always been right in front of us. We are all in learning and exploration mode.  It is so radically beneficial. Boy I hope it lasts long enough to make serious structural and emotional progress.  We have seen too many outrageous facts spark outrage and then watched the lights go dim while nothing happens.

20-06-09  Granberry Lane     Oil on Panel  15 x 12   I don’t understand how I could be utterly exhausted and then have my energy come barreling back as I begin to problem solve an approach to a gorgeous light effect in a terribly challenging setting.  But it happens all the time.  Painting is so hard.  So futile in so many ways. Yet joyful – simultaneously. A mystery to me.      §     I am aware, increasingly so as I feel the chapter drawing to a close, how lucky I am to be able to do this - also how little I am contributing, while painting and drawing, to solving the urgent problems of the day. 

20-06-08   Path back to Peter’s Pond   Color Crayon on Paper   12 x 18 inches  Into the woods.  Light too blasting bright.  Needed an interior to be on time for a late dinner.  Didn’t manage to mix paints this afternoon – kept being one more phone call. One more email.  Down to scraps.  So I went with water crayons and labored on this scene. Worked so hard, learned a little, but couldn’t get it to sing. Already late but stole another 5 minutes for a quick monochrome drawing of the structure of the path [coming to the pond] and veering left.  The canopy of trees, mostly maples, opens an arch to the sky over the water. Actually not quite monochrome, used a little gray.   What I managed [well at least made progress toward in this one] and am always after, is the simplicity and essence of the idea.  My ability to see is always benefited by more time looking.  Tenacity, hanging in there to find the good in something – and the better stuff in myself, paid off this evening. [Modest a thing as this is, it is way more presentable than the overwrought mess that preceded it.]      §     Justice for all.  Healthy planet.  Common ground.  Can’t we all see the essential goodness of these ideas in the big picture, long run? A path forward?

20-06-07   Last light at the crabbing hole - Super quickie!   Oil on Panel    12 x 18 inches   In principle I had time this evening.  But I spent a very ridiculous amount of it looking for a spot/light I could work with (creeping goal line). Also did a little photo essay on drainage issues in the marsh behind the farm which seems to be losing a battle for survival. Many distractions.  Finally settled on a spot with less than an hour before the sun was down. Scrambling to understand what was happening and what idea to chase – and how to do it rough and quick but make it count. Called Angelique as I was setting up. Thank goodness. The evening was salvaged with or without a painting.  My Corona escape-away to pencils & paints [nearly] every evening has been enlightening, rewarding, uncomfortable, indulgent, luxurious, joyful, exhausting and exhilarating.  I know these precious days are numbered.  I think my indecision tonight was founded on that intensifying awareness.  Also it was an emotional and exhausting day.  On the painting front, I have leapt into unknown territory and deconstructed old patterns and assumptions. Broke away.  I knew that I knew nothing.  Initially I was just grateful and happy to be out working.  But now I have glimmers of what it is I would really like to know, as a painter, and a sense about the place I would like to break through to.  I have deconstructed but not yet managed a coming together.  With time I could get there.     §     I whipped up this sign before my ride today and got 53 miles on it, stopping to participate in rallies in Old Saybrook, Clinton and Madison. Surprised at how few drivers registered any notice or reaction at all.  I wish I could have talked to everyone who drove by me on (super busy) Route 1 to understand what their experience is and what they thought, if anything, when they read my body poster. Did I have any positive impact? There were the occasional enthusiastic toots and thumbs up but fewer than I hoped. I was really after the folks who aren’t already on board. They wouldn’t have tooted but were they noticing the sea change? Can there be a sea change without them? The Saybrook rally filled two long blocks. It also filled me with emotion - a powerful punch of it. I felt the intensity of today against the backdrop of my own history with that place and the 400 years of history. The crowd was chanting. Signs ranged across the social justice spectrum of demands. No justice, no peace. I can’t breath. Say their names. I thought of the wealth and power derived from shipping and trade, slave trade included, and then industrialization that built more wealth and more sea walls and more barriers to access. I am sure I haven’t seen that many people in Old Saybrook since GramPa Roger, an Army Colonel and veteran of several wars, used to lead the Memorial Day Parade.  I had no idea what that meant.  My right arm for a chance to talk with him and other departed family, Mom & Dad at the top of the list, about current events and their life experiences now that I have logged so many years of my own and have a way to even begin to comprehend.

20-06-06  No image today or yesterday.  Squeezed out by work and an indulgent interlude of messing around in little boats and spending time with some dear friends.  I have been missing them.  At the same moment, I was missing my visual/verbal journaling time – all of which may just be a cover for my addiction to being out in nature and watching the light.  Being in it.  Doing something with it however inadequate. Awareness of my inadequacy does not hold me back from trying again. Nor does frequent failure dampen my enthusiasm. On the contrary it sucks me deeper in. Surely a powerful drug.

20-06-04  Cloud study [worth trying - and trying again and again – may get somewhere, someday]  Oil on panel  12 x 18 inches  Thinking as I set up tonight, that I had no clue how I was going to make something of the spot I chose and was wondering what would happen.      §     This led me to the same question about the extreme uncertainties of the world today.  This evening I eventually abandoned the marshy, hazy, gray-day horizon scene all together, and looked up.  For most of my life, once I hit the part that was supposed to go as planned, I’ve found myself astounded and intensely curious about how the present, totally unexpected chapter, would close.  Over time there is even less predictability, driven somewhat by my nature, about how my life will unfold. But I do keep looking up.  Also with the passage of time, this has proven to be a good choice.

20-06-03 Woods  Charcoal on Paper  14 x 20 inches    What drew me deep into these woods when I only had 90 minutes?  Thinking I may need my  compass to get out. Had an ambitious idea to capture the light streaking through the canopy. Then it went flat anyway.  Changed course. Did what I could.      §     Apt metaphor for this horrifying, confusing, perilous and hopeful time.

20-06-02 Road to end of Old Quarry Oil on Panel 15 x 17.5 inches Pulled the fat from the fire on this one at home. Second time in my life doing that. Instead of the studio I set up in the kitchen so I could burn a piece of fish and have a little protein while burning through the gray matter trying to problem solve. Nothing like a deadline, self imposed or real. Ruined a batch of gesso today - 4 lbs of marble dust and time. Oh well. Returned to last night’s spot. Was so tired after work I sat in the car for half an hour convincing myself to set up the easel and take a run at this scene. Was rewarded with a lovely evening - listened to the sound of a fly fisherman casting just about 50 yards from where I was working. He got two stripers. Not another soul anywhere in sight. Both of us deep in our worlds. Still, packing up in the dark I knew I had fallen in to my usual traps and had a mess of a painting on my hands. Was itching to rework and went after obvious issues once home. I’ll know in the morning whether it’s a pity that I painted over an early effort (1992! painting - chasing the mist rising off the Lieutenant River in Old Lyme).     §     No Corona comment today other than to say I think my brain fog may have been partly a response to the incomprehensible news front.

20-06-01   Road to End of Old Quarry  Charcoal on Paper   14 x 20 inches   This little drawing was of a placid, peaceful scene.  Not long after I started, the sky was suddenly on fire just west of this view.  Our world seems to be on fire.    Early evening business group Zoom discussing plans, perils and hopes for next economic chapter. One topic – new for this group - where social justice fits in? They didn’t previously think that was their turf – it didn’t play a role in building business, in their view. Had an earlier email correspondence, with a different group of business colleagues, about what actions to take to do all we can to end the structural foundations of racism.  A third call, all in the same day, helping with a large-scale pro-bono intervention organized by major corporations, to help minority and women-owned business survive. And on the same topic, many exchanges with Dimitri and others about a powerful piece he had published this weekend about what white people can do to help. In between, in my turn-around consulting world, working with client on a cash plan to the other side – wherever and whenever that is. So many unknowns.     §     It was a gray evening and I was late. Opted to draw. Darn. The front moved through and blazing orange sunlight blasted through the clouds putting on a humbling fire and light show. I put down my charcoal and just watched in wonder.  It was so gaudy it would have seemed only possible in Hollywood make believe if one wasn’t in the middle of it.  Same with current conditions.  Surreal.   Post Script: The President used military support to clear the way to an Episcopal Church where he threatened martial law this evening.  [Further thought: Moments of great opportunity. Be ready to recognize them and to act. Might be a sunset or a turning of the tide of human history.]

20-05-31  Experiment at the RR bridge   Water Crayons & Charcoal on Paper.  Doesn’t matter what size    I keep going after new ideas and that’s great.  What’s not great is that I rarely have time to explore more than one idea an evening [or redeploy an insight before packing up].  Posting daily has consequences. I do not allow myself to simply deep six the embarrassing evidence.  Especially short on time now while making gesso panels.  After calling it quits at the RR bridge (favorite spot that has an extreme S curve opening to a view of the marshes on the other side - breathtaking) I drove home and saw 10 ideas that I was desperate to paint but wanted to get home to Zoom with the kids.     §     Radically more important - topic of conversation this evening was what role we each can play in building a more just society. 

20-05-29  Quarry Road Marsh   Oil on panel   11 x 14 inches  I’ve had a wrestling match going on in my brain recently. Several! It would have been so nice to have one of those [totally rare] evenings when everything comes magically together, and I make a leap forward.  Oddly, I started off feeling like I had a solid idea what I was doing.  But no.  Ended up wrestling mightily with this as well.  At one point I took a picture as proof that I’d made the effort. I was not only resigned but even a bit discouraged.  What the heck am I doing?  How do I justify all the energy I put into trying to be a better painter?  But I pushed and shoved and made myself think really hard, dig deeper, keep trying to figure it out.  I won’t know until morning whether I merely salvaged a panel in order to be able to post tonight, or whether I made progress.     §     Beyond my own piddling issues I’m heartbroken/demoralized by the latent racist malignancy that produces such horrors as the George Floyd killing and its broader context.  As it happens, I’ve been reading Chernow’s biography of U.S. Grant, which is helping me better understand how we got here.  Studying history and being self-reflective is not the m.o. in the White House where our President (absurd reality) is fanning the flames of hatred and violence and debasing us all.  It is beyond, way beyond, my wildest imaginings.  It feels like part of the mal wave that is circulating the globe. Maybe the wave is just clearing away the nice cover ups that prevent us from seeing who we really are and noticing the consequences are of our choices. Corona has been part of this reveal, a catalyst for exposing inequities in the structure of our economy.

20-05-28    Soft Rain on the Marsh    Water Crayons on Paper   8 x 20 inches   Lot of talk these days about new values, needs and wants – gear shift post Corona. I hope!  I fear the forces of gravity and habit will be strong.  In my little world - been focusing on friendship and assumptions.  Am I wiser, take less for granted, more open to new input/alternative realities?  My plan, every day, is to be wiser, kinder and better – always refining that definition.  Corona has delivered new challenges and inspirations to figure in – which of these will stick?      §     Meanwhile, thank the gods for my small gift of artful observation, or the compulsion of it.  One thing I never take for granted is nature and my great good fortune to live in this gorgeous natural place.

20-05-27  The day disappeared into business challenges – no mental space for art.  Oh well.  I’ve had an amazing run of artful evenings.

20-05-26  Blind 4 minute sketches (Peter’s of me left, mine of him right)  Pen on Paper   Peter read about this in NYT Magazine.  For fun, try drawing another person.  May NOT look at the drawing – only the subject - do simultaneously with a timer.  So fun! We laughed and laughed.  Did a bunch. Had planned to also paint but can’t improve on that. I called it a day.      §     Another Corona silver lining.

20-05-25  Low Tide, Low Light, Low Clouds – all soft and quiet    Water crayons and Charcoal on Paper   8 x 16 inches  My big creative Memorial Day effort was garden-making on Pixie. We were all happy as clams clearing deadwood & briars.  Tree climbing!  Late in the day this little study was all I could undertake – a vacation as well.     §     Must have been the quietest Memorial Day in the Thimbles in modern times.  Back on land.  Nancy Gibbs (Shorenstein) on the test we are about to take opening up the economy - a character test. Powerful point.

20-05-24   Magic at Pixie Island  Oil on Panel  11 x 14 inches    I was split between  equally compelling options of social time with Kim & Gretchen (co-quarantine buddies) or my paints. Also feeling indecisive about subject matter. So many options on Pixie. Chose this challenging interior near camp.  Had a concept and was struggling to make it work.  Stumped and almost out of time I did a completely unusual thing. I sat done for cocktails!  That was so smart.  Ran back and radically reworked – now nothing to lose - cut the cord with prior effort and light was almost gone. Caution to the wind.  Rough but getting somewhere.  Called it a wrap. Didn’t know what I had until off the island and catching up with journal.     §     Life speeding up around me. It’s as if the sun is setting on this interlude where time stood still.  There is always the possibility, but post lockdown, will I come up with some radical new way of thinking and organizing my priorities?

20-05-23  Little Brooklyn Quarry in the Rain    Oil on panel    9 x 18 inches   Major scramble to get to this spot on the other side of the quarry which I had observed Monday.  Climbing, descending. Rubber boots (two sizes too big - Bean boots need restitching but workshop closed due to Covid). Tired legs from major training ride.  That spot seemed so close - but was SO not.  Pouring rain.  I was good with that – fun expedition. Set up under a tree to help my umbrella stability. No way to step back and get perspective on this piece.  Despite full gear, was still very cold. More crazy weather. Worked fast.  Hard problems to solve. Though a gray day (light is constant) the rain was a total wild card.  And the wind. Sometimes placid and sometimes rough water. I worked from the in-between moments when the granite face was reflecting but blurry with light rain.  Once again, making art imitates life.      §     Hard to get perspective in the moment but rewarded for making the best of difficult conditions. I know I only have a sliver of awareness right now of what we will eventually make of this Corona Chapter, or where it will go, though trying hard to make sense of it.

20- 05-22 Nephew Nick’s tree house built 20 year’s ago  Charcoal on Paper   11 x 14 inches   Wasn’t going to even include it.  Was interested in the light on the pair of massive maple trees.  What is important, in drawing and life, often doesn’t reveal itself until one stops, pays attention, observes and thinks.      §      Dinner with Lid & Lex at the fire pit, roasting sausage on fresh-cut bamboo shoots, with a couple neighbors.  Good conversation about the usual current topics.  I asked the group whether they thought human beings had an innate, instinctual sense about dishonesty, right and wrong – basic stuff.  We were talking about having mostly gotten better, with time, about staying away from people and deals that didn’t quite feel right. Lid had said that at her first job in Investment Banking, the firm advised the newbies that if someone or something made them queasy, just do not do it. Good advice. Why did half of the voting population not feel queasy about any number of self-admitted Trump violaions of more decency in his own history? Or did they and vote anyway? I am sure that’s the case with some as I have had those conversations first hand. How many of them are suffering unnecessary Corona loss of some kind because of Trump’s failure to act and failure to listen to well-informed advisers?

20-05-21  Figure Study – Me – Not published here   Charcoal on Paper    By the time I’d dealt with my dead car battery issues the light was almost gone. Painting window was shot. Maybe it’s a figure study moment.  I stripped down and went to work. It resembled my recent self-hair cut experience.  But really, was I going to post this even if the drawing was wonderful? Possibly not.  This journal keeps me right at the experimental edge.     §      In Corona news, the first sidewalk dining options are open on the Guilford Green.  Tried it with a friend.  Bright sunshine. Perfectly warm. Breezy. Crisp.  The rare day I never take for granted.  Especially rare in our time of Corona & the Polar Vortex inversion.

20-05-20 Light happening behind Bishops  Charcoal & Water Crayon on Paper   14 x 20 inches   Light was intense and gorgeous but I was weary. Punted with charcoal. Then found myself experimenting with bringing in just one tonality of color- Spring greens.  Energy snapped back. Where does it come from? Driving home nearly went off the road. 100 different amazing moments of light. Gretchen & Kim excited about what I chose/did.  Helped me ideate systems for storing all these pieces.  Where to put them all? In another life I had a studio.     §     Gas warning light came on.  Realized I haven’t gassed up since the start of all this!  Is that possible?  Ten weeks? Ten months? Clerk at gas mart so enthusiastic about her display of bleach cleaners, gloves and sanitizers - I bought some of each.  Drove back later to give her the gloves.  XL. No XS in stock.  New friend.

20-05-19 Peter’s Ridge Line Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches Chose an interior scene so I could finish up in time to be fed an amazing dinner. Normal life, I assume, will soon be crowding out my painting life.     §     But then again, Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine. Things could get even whackier. It’s his choice to self-destruct but what additional havoc will he wreak on his way down? Underlying assumptions about our civil society, which gave me comfort my entire adult life, are proving unreliable. However, nature is reliable and I have never been disappointed in her. I don’t think she will betray me. It’s my responsibility to stay clear of and prepared for her gales and plagues. It’s the humans in whom I am disappointed.

20-05-18   Little Brooklyn Quarry   Oil on Panel   15 x 18 inches    The bull frogs, painted turtles, ducks and I had a lovely time at the front end of this.  While setting up, a boy returning from a fishing expedition stopped to chat.  He was very excited to see someone painting. Finn, 11 years old, is the sweetest boy I have met in a long time.  I think by the end of our delightful conversation I had convinced him to keep making art and drop that idea that he wasn’t any good at it. Tried to explain that it doesn’t matter. He draws from ideas in his head!  What a gift.  I have never had such inspiration. I draw from what I observe in nature.  So plodding.  He and his family arrived recently to live here, leaving their Fairfield county home.  Corona has been a boon for local real estate.  There was a great rush of families out of the city.  No idea if that was why Finn is in the neighborhood. But I’m glad he is here. Maybe I can introduce him to playmates when it is all possible again.  Then I dialed in to a call with my foursome of woman friends – Sara, Susanna and Karen, who have hung together from way, way back - child-bearing/rearing years. We always stay in touch but “see” each other more often now.  Such a joy. It’s a wonder I got any painting done.  Packed up in the dark. The bull frogs cranked up again and the peepers were now part of the chorus. Found my way back down the path.  Happy to have been out. Chatted with Eleanna on the way home and while cleaning brushes and rustling up a little food.  I gave myself the day off yesterday. Needed to catch up with life and day job.  Also decided to break the streak.  I felt I was painting not only because I wanted to (true) but also because I was putting pressure on myself to perform/produce.  For me, art cannot be performance.  It just doesn’t work.  Maybe I don’t have the chops and will grow them?  But for now, it is a sure disaster and undermines the feint hope that I might ever figure out how to use this medium powerfully – and get out of my head while using it. Even the hope for that undermines its promise. Happily, I tend to forget it all while I’m painting and eventually settle in to the flow of problem solving and wonderment. [Post script: I had a hard time packing up. Was perched on the edge of the quarry. Could’nt move around to the other side of the easel to understand the issues. Eventually got the job done but was thinking about how often, in times like this when I’m wrapping up in the dark, branches and debris will brush the wet paint. And my thought was, especially after struggling to make any sense of this one, that the branch scratches, more often than not, are an improvement!! I didn’t notice until posting this photo (quickly shot in the kitchen - standard practice) that there is a nice big scratch here and I don’t mind it even though it makes no sense. Perhaps in the morning I’ll change my mind and brush it out.]

20-05-16  Late Light Shooting Through Water Crayons & Gouache on Paper (color removed!) 14 x 20 inches Cars are back on the roads. Big time. Just yesterday it was still placid. No more. Economy starting to reopen. I don’t think anything has really has changed in the underlying epidemic conditions.  [No increased testing.  No vaccine of course.  Death & infection rate plateau in NE. But everyone is running out of money and patience.  I understand that.  Also we have hospital capacity. That is a more dark reality.  No-one is saying this – or I haven’t heard or read.  But we may have come to the point where the calculus has changed with regard to the economy vs mortality question. …  Meanwhile major ride today and afterward I happily lost track of time with outside projects.  Was a gorgeous summer day. Exhausted but wanting to do something I ran down the street with water colors. Very late.] Really wrestled with this one. Should have rallied for oil as I found a wonderful light effect and might have had a fighting chance. It was beyond my capabilities in this medium.  Worked hard at it. [Did have some fun in the studio trying to understand and fix the issues once home - burned some matches on that. Then I had the genius notion to turn it into a black & white study with my camera. Presto.  Color issues resolved. It would have been a better drawing had I just started in gray scale. But I’d have missed the character building opportunity derived both from the effort and the reveal… ]

20-05-15 Stony Creek Marsh Light Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches Suddenly found myself up to my hips in mud and sinking, my heavy travelling studio on my back. Unable to pull out and nothing to grab. I felt the marsh was pulling me down and in.  Typical! How many times have I gone just a step too far – and still wiggled free? I didn’t  think I would disappear without a trace but… it was a moment. Fought my way out. Soaking wet. Sloshing inside my rubber boots.  Had been chasing a spot with a good view of the gorgeous light shooting behind the dark pines. Thought I knew where the bottom was. I was wrong.  Eventually found a spot and some logs to create a perch.  At 6:59 I checked the tide chart and it was high at 6:58.  Great. I won’t get any wetter. Let’s paint. Weather turned today. Last weekend a hailstorm, winter persisted all week and now, out of nowhere, we have 68 degrees and the smell of summer. Soaked but warm enough to paint I couldn’t pull it together. It’s always preferable to snag one but it’s never a failure to go out in nature and think about what is happening and what is important.  If, as today, I didn’t translate it into something lovely or powerful, it’s OK.  I was thinking about the maxim that it’s necessary to have darkness to show light and to experience failure (lots of it) to appreciate success.  The darker and the more failure, the brighter the light, sweeter the moment of breakthrough. … NYT had a photo essay today about Covid in Mumbai. Intense. Very tough.  I had just sent a message to friends who live there, one of whom has severe COPD.  Still well, thankfully.  I also received a message from the lovely man who drove me around the Golden Triangle of Rajasthan in November.  It’s India day for me. He was wishing us all safety, good health and the idea that we would meet on the other end of the rainbow.  Loved that. Just called Dimitri to drag out his saxophone and play the song.  It’s 10:30 and I’m trying to wrap up and get to bed. He was already in bed! But he indulged me. Beautiful and moving.  Gets me every time! Anything can happen right now. Conditions could suddenly grow radically worse or turn into something remarkable.  No path will avoid more failure, darkness and loss.  We may not have hit bottom yet. But some path could get us to a better place than we imagined.

20-05-14  The tractor in the back yard   Pen on paper   11 x 15 inches  I live on a farm.  And yes, I would generally say I am only interested in drawing natural phenomena.  But work was stressful today and I ran out late with my water colors to the back yard thinking I would catch the sunset on the marsh.  But there was the tractor.  What is better than a 1956 international Harvester?  We are the same age.  It is sitting between the corn crib and the lower barn.  So I sat there too.  20 minute of drawing and I feel like an utterly different person.  [Stress disappeared. Nature has that effect on me. I think it does generally on people and we would all be better off if everyone could be (had the opportunity to be) closer to it.] Wildlife still busy in the marsh. Osprey back on the nest.  Turned around to watch the last light over the water as I write. Eleanna said she loves the drawings I write on so I’m glad to re-up on that tonight.  Pen & ink so I’d be quick and no do-overs. The big brush hog is still in the barn.  This little one will be plowing down phragmites tomorrow.  …. Things, I think, actually were simpler when the tractor & I were born, before everyone was buzzing about the globe and we were all connected on the world wide web.  [For sure we were less aware of, and certainly less exposed to the carnage of war, famine and plague if we were lucky to live on another part of the planet.] Now the WHO says we may be facing an endemic, not just a pandemic.  It could go on for years.  A few months ago WHO thought it wasn’t even a pandemic. Post script  {Selfie of with neighbor Bill & his tractor. I was drawing by myself, mask-less. And I don't think I've ever seen him with a mask. We keep our distance but that selfie was spontaneous and...I forgot!] Bill came out to check on the drawing.  He said I did a real good job except that the tires aren’t that crooked. Today he found a mouse nest in the alternator box (or something like that), so was able to get it running. Also I took a new photo and added the note “Whoops! This one got too close to dinner! “ I usually am trying to transcribe, warm-up and feed myself - always a scramble to get it done quickly and get on to other things or off to sleep. Sleep is not easy in the time of Corona. First off there is the reality and concern of it all - big picture and close to home. Also, practically speaking with regard to this paining/writing jag I am on, the later the light, the later I work. The better I work the more stimulated I am. The more stimulated by my work, the bigger the wave of ideas… one can see how this all gets rolling. I perhaps should switch my schedule to dawn and get out before work. That has its own challenges and inefficiencies. Different light too. Optimally I would mix both in. But I can’t manage that schedule right now. It’s one or the other.

20-05-12 Roots and Rocks near the Dyke Charcoal on Paper 15 x 11 inches   Meant to draw the scrub pines but was drawn to the intersection of their roots and the embankment of rocks. Got out late.  Friend came along and entertained.  So this was a recovery drawing much like my low-key recovery ride this morning with a friend (masks and all) after intense intervals yesterday. Both more social events. Wasn’t as focused as usual when I’m working or riding, and of course there is a place for that.  Feels like the tide is turning. [Clearly I am swimming with it - all this social life!] Was thinking I will miss the intense focus and productivity, discovery and growth from this period of isolation, while on the other hand I am starving for social interaction – real time, no screens, electronics or masks [real touch]. We will have more choices again. ….  Interesting commentary today about how rapidly we may abandon acting collectively for the benefit of the common good. While there may be a new normal, it is not likely to be as mutually supportive and thoughtful about the consequences of our actions as we have been during Corona. I hope I am wrong. I feel there is a kindness in the air that wasn’t there a few months ago.  It took me a fraction of a second to connect that with this drawing.  Cheeky of me maybe, but what will we each and all decide we are really rooted to? What makes us stronger and better? Will we return to the superficial, materialistic, self-centered celebrity culture that has dominated of late? Or will this be a great turning point?  I was thinking as I drew these roots, as I always do, how Nature is so unfailingly magnificent. Man-made environment is only occasionally so.

20-05-12  Big Brooklyn Quarry  Water crayons on Paper   12 x 24 inches   Drawing with Peter. Hadn’t known about this place.  Magic.   I labored a couple hours studying the beautiful, beautiful granite, overhanging greens and aspens growing magically out of the stone and reflections in the dark quarry pond, using charcoal and wash.  Big effort, not beautiful.  Insufficient though a solid effort.  Then flipped the paper over and did this in 10 minutes. Brought in some color.  Better.  Had expected a mess.  Expectations not in the way.  …  Have become addicted to painting/drawing after work & journaling. The whole adventure - materials, prep, location scouting, set up, working, clean-up, writing, uploading – is hours daily.  Find myself either avoiding evening social zooms or dialing in from the art trail.  Psychic reward is immense and sufficient.  Yet I find expectations surfacing.  Beyond the joy and utility to me, is there value to anyone else in all this?  And is it good enough?   I don’t know.  But I am sure that it is always better when my hopes are high and expectations low.  That said, new Corona filters in my brain are game changers.

[Editor’s note - morning after: I have been directly transcribing what I write on my drawings and resisting the urge to edit. My idea was that the words are as essentially “plein air” as the image. The primary benefit being the reveal of what my best intuitive response is to all of what I am processing and trying to accomplish at a moment in time. Not the cleaned-up version which might leave out or gloss over or be self conscious and perhaps all the way to pretentious or apologetic. Either direction is bad. But it vexes me to read a sentence where I have not well articulated the point I thought I was making, or inelegantly repeat words when an alternate would read better. They can be like a hot spot or hole in a painting, and distract from the harmony of the whole. In this case, the repeat of “magic”, “sufficient” , “find” and “expectations” - though I’m sure that the repeat of such powerful words has its own revealing value. Words and images are different forms. Perhaps they need different standards. I' am inclined to clean up the language a little as I transcribe while staying true to the ideas. After all, the plein air words are still there on the page. But would this change in the rule book be a step down the slippery slope of writing for someone else and losing the value of being able to reflect and benefit, in the future, from my raw, if rough and inarticulate, impressions and thoughts when I am still in the creative flow of that moment? Where does naked honesty end and self deception being? Where does it serve and when should it be tucked away and cleaned up to save oneself and others time, trouble and heartache? ]  

20-05-11  Crazy Storm Sky over Bishops Orchards Oil on Panel 9 x 24 inches Coverage today about the downstream environmental impact of enormous quantities of disposable gloves and masks being tossed. Bad.  On a lighter note, positive Covid tests in White House staff.  Everyone except Trump required to wear a mask. You can’t make this stuff up.  …  Couldn’t settle on a subject today.  Blew 90 minutes hunting.  Found some spots to return to in different light and weather.  Landed back in the neighborhood with an idea and a big long view.  Then the sky went absolutely bonkers wild and I chased that instead. Colors I don’t think I’ve seen before in clouds. Drama that was as gaudy and beyond credible as our current affairs. It kept going and changing radically in ever more exotic and magnificent ways. I made a mess trying to make some sense of it, grab a corner of it. Soaked to the bone again I was scraping off to save the panel but rallied midway. Went after a more extreme abstraction. Interesting adventure for me. Glad I opened that door.  I am on the road to somewhere new. Destination unknown. 

20-05-10 Path to the upper Pasture - Leetes Island Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches It’s Mother’s Day. Just wrapped a lovely visit with kids and godparents. First video visit ever for John and Billie. Feels like we all held hands and jumped through the looking glass. It was a solid marker in time. The weeks and holidays tick by. It is getting harder to remember the order of activities. Details of daily life float around the week as if there was nothing like gravity pinning them to the time when they happened. We are approaching the halfway point of the year, though only two months in lock-down. I proposed to buy tickets for the December trip we had planned when we were last all together, at Christmas. Cancel-able of course. It seems so unlikely. My dream of Patagonia is now out because of the likely trajectory of the virus toward the Southern Hemisphere. Really, a gathering of all of us, together, any old where, will be amazing. … Today I was exhausted and regressed a bit with this bucolic scene on the farm. Simple. No backpacking in to the woods or trudging across the marsh in a storm. No major experiments or discoveries other than how quickly my energy came back once I got to work. Had fully intended to punt with a little drawing of the path but the light streaking across the lush green pasture made me itch to get out the paints. Weather sunny & windy, beautiful, not warm. But it wasn’t hailing or raining buckets.

20-05-09 Hailstorm evening on Hoadley Creek Oil on Panel 5.5 x 24 inches In Corona news we seem to be in a plateau of deaths and infections though “we” are going forward with the soft reopening.  I think it’s a mistake.  Also, on the home front I gave myself a haircut. All my adult life, once I chopped off the enormous braid and went modern, I’ve asked my hair cutters to make sure I’m NOT tidy or suburban looking. Please keep me messy and edgy and wild-ish.  I think I managed to land the worst mash up of these two ideas.  And while I started with caution, once I got rolling I abandoned it.  Went way too far. There were the inevitable additional cuts made in vain to even things up.  Eventually I insisted that I put down the weapons and let the damage settle.  Still, it felt great to lighten up.  Funny looking as I now am, it feels better! I do have new appreciation for my wonderful hair cutter. … OK Painting. Got out late again and was still cold and recovering from my ride in which I hardly felt my fingers. Snow squalls, apple blossoms and relentless winds gusting over 30 mph. But I had to paint - especially because my easel was newly restored. Excited to try it out. So cold and windy. Light was crazy dramatic and moving fast. Something mind boggling from every direction from where I stood on the marsh. And as I was setting up, the pthalo blue-green sky with dramatic intense pink blasting in from the west went suddenly dark gray and I was in a hailstorm. Walking home in the almost dark I could still make out the hail stone shapes. It was cold enough that hail stones landing on wet, low-tide marsh grasses did not melt! Another wintry painting session and frozen stubs of fingers just barely able to clutch my palette knife. I had grabbed a scrap of a panel knowing that I was tired, it was late, temperature was dropping, wind still fierce. Was just going to go out and make some quick observation, which is what I did. But OMG I should have gotten out there earlier.

20-05-09 Cycling & Hubris Note. This journal is not about my cycling nor about my professional or personal life.  It’s only about making art in the time of Corona.  But today I am going slightly off course to thank the gods for reminding me how fine a line there can be between good and bad ideas, success and failure. AND how extremely lucky I am.  I was having an epic ride and had already bagged a major PR.  I wanted another one, too much, and made a marginally bad choice combined with being a fraction off on execution.  The result was a radically near miss disaster avoided.  Coming around a corner I was trying to hold my power level and banked slightly too hard.  Pedal hit the pavement and bike went skidding out of control.  I don’t know how I stayed upright.  Defied gravity and reason. There was an oncoming car.  I knew in that instant that it could be worse than ugly.  Somehow I wrestled it back.  I was humbled.  The previous moment hubris had taken over my brain. Hubris always brings me down. Early in the ride, oddly, I had noticed, a fraction of a second too late, that the black shadow in the road was a black snake. Dead already I think.  But it was a big one and it felt awful to run it over.  Earlier than that there had been too close an encounter with a pedestrian. That’s a lot for one ride.  Excellent, excellent prophylactic reminder of what I always am thinking except for those really rare moments when safety is not the absolute top thing on my mind, though it should be. I can and do hammer and also focus on safety. In fact the latter is an absolute requirement if you are doing the former. But if I let my brain go to stupid places everything is in peril. There is a Corona connection here. Hubris is costing this nation and this planet much more suffering than necessary.

20-05-08 Hoadley Creek East Oil on Panel 9 x 24 Painted at Kim & Gretchen’s happily in the 40 degree rainy evening. They came out to check on me and loved it right as is. I was also feeling that it was unfinished but done. Perhaps my judgement was somewhat influenced by conditions. I was cold and soaked, light was about to disappear and water was pooling on my palette. Zoom in and you can see the water beads on top of the oil. Had to use my pliers on the wing nuts to pack up the easel it was so swollen and my fingers were too stiff with cold. Kim is fixing my easel. I’ve been wobbling along with it on the edge of disaster for longer than I should admit. Just another Corona Friday night. Lots of “what do we think is going to happen/should happen” conversations today but took a news moratorium.

20-05-07 Exposure at the Culvert Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches I would have given up tonight, or worse, been satisfied with my original effort, had I not started this Corona journal. My commitment to do this gets me out the door. Like my first marathon in 1979 - no idea if I could run one but announced it so I couldn’t back out. Investing all this time here instead of elsewhere intensifies my determination to make it count. This frequently backfires on me (expectations get in my way) but eventually yields rewards. Knowing I’m going to expose my evening’s effort, pushes me to dig deeper and move beyond where I’ve been, resulting in a lot of experimentation which has thrown me off balance - productively. This jag is joyful, yes. It is also exhausting. It is possible because of my privileged life, which drives me to make this bigger than myself (WIP). At a minimum,I hope exposing my process is useful to someone who is struggling. Tonight I had a late work call and so was late with the necessary paint mixing project. Set up at at 7:15. Worked intensely but it wasn’t worth the panel - stuck in old ways. Resolved to use a photo of mixing paints on which to hang a journal entry. Started to scrape off. Decided that was cowardly. Temperature had radically dropped and the wind was whipping. Darkness setting in. Under dressed, I almost packed up to go home and defrost. But I rallied and tried a quick radical rework. Hopes but no expectations. Made a break through. My teacher, a fearless and powerful painter, Frank Mason, always encouraged us to not be afraid, not fall in love with a part that doesn’t work for the whole. Let it go. If you did it once you can do it again. Where can you go that you haven’t been yet? With my brushes in his hand, he would make a few breathtaking instructive strokes and open the way forward. What would he say now to me, 30 years later? …. The context of Corona is challenging me to go beyond my limitations - somehow. I know the path to breaking barriers on my bike from years of riding and great coaches. In this, I am on my own and making it up as I go. Corona is my teacher and coach, pushing me to dig deeper, think better, re-think, risk more, aim higher, expand my vision, connect with the powerful & beautiful forces of nature. I think Corona is doing that for many people. I have hope for all of us.

20-05-06 Experimental & unsuccessful water-color outing. Took me an indecisive hour of driving around in the rain, stopping, framing , thinking, then changing my mind and moving on again many times, looking for a subject. However it’s OK because I am not President of the USA.  Yesterday Trump announced he was winding down the Corona Task Force and today reversed that. Said he had no idea how popular the task force is. Got calls from very respected people.  Really?  One might hope that he will learn to seek informed opinion. … [Outing not a success in the sense that I didn’t snag a keeper. Did learn a little and I always enjoy being out, regardless of output. ] Word from daughter in NYC is that her very large employer is expecting to be working remotely until September or later, and even then only partial and alternating teams - 30% of workforce. We tried to make a plan to visit - at a distance - on Mother’s day but there are no rental cars, train is not an option, my driving down and walking around Hoboken in their opinion is too dangerous for me.

20-05-05 Beech Tree/s Charcoal and wash on paper 11 x 15 inches Love those roots! Complicated interconnection. One living organism really. Like us. Hard to pull apart cause from effect or one from another. Is there ever a moment when one of these trees feels distanced from the other, right there in the same space, misunderstood or misunderstanding? Or is it all harmony and common ground?   …  I’ve been in a bit of a fog lately and fighting it.  Cognoscenti article on brain fog – turns out it’s a thing.  Defense mechanism. Related theme – [spirituality] friend sent me a Corona updated version of Chekhov’s “The Bet” today. Perhaps we can lower our defenses and increase our inter connectedness and empathy. Big opportunity.

20-05-04 Wild sky over Quarry Road Oil on panel 7.5 x 10 inches Did the grocery ordeal this morning. Couldn’t put it off any longer. I will not miss washing down groceries with bleach and detergent. Seems like madness. Morning was summery. Two teenagers at the store had almost as much cloth covering their faces as on various other parts. But I so understood! It’s been a long cold Spring. Epidemiologists say we are only at the beginning of this crisis. Too much of the world has yet to be infected and until there are vaccines it will continue on in waves. In other news, forecasts of probable jobs saved vs resulting loss of life from re-opening the US. … Felt lousy today and even checked my temp. Normal. Not having corona today but maybe I should lay low. Then a blustery cold front came storming in from the NW late afternoon. Temperature was dropping fast and my Garmin was sending gale warning alerts, light was irresistible. Another late start. It was 7:30 by the time I found a spot down the street and set up. Not a total failure but didn’t do justice to the drama. Also too precious and careful. Values wrong. Wwith minutes of after light left, started slashing harshly with my palette knife, then reworked a bit - nothing to lose. Back home I judged it courageous but not a keeper and was mid-flight to scrape it off, palette knife on the paint, when I changed my mind. Let this one live to morning. It was the stormiest image I’ve ever created.

20-05-03 Last light at the culvert Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches Despite severe warnings, I sense that people are relaxing the rules. Do they think it’s safe now or is everyone just exhausted and wishing it to be over? Three beautiful, sunny, warm, irresistible days in a row. Who could stay inside? Three boats came into Great Harbor together while I painted. Ten guys rafted up and appeared to have three well-stocked coolers of beer. All housemates? Less time tonight but dragged out the oils and tried again to grab the light. This time on the north side of the culvert looking NW, vs yesterday on the south side looking SW. In every direction - something gorgeous. Almost out of panels so I have been harvesting my beginners box. It’s time to cull. There are cows grazing in the heavy mist of early morning in Stow, VT beneath this fiery sunset in Guilford, CT. That was in June some thirty years ago. So much has changed in the human world, yet nature abides.

20-05-02 Last light at Great Harbor Water crayon on paper 8 x 8 and 4 x 12 inches Gardened with neighbor Bill too late into the afternoon to have time for oils. So I ran out for a quick water color.  Did four as the light changed and my hopes persisted.  Couldn’t pull it together.  Chopped out sections of two which were less unsuccessful than the rest. Sometimes have to remind myself that it’s process not product. Thank goodness I don’t paint for a living! Not a wasted evening in any way.  Learned more about what does not work with this medium.  Also, we made huge progress on saving the peonies from the honeysuckle and I learned more of the farm’s history.

20-05-01 Lost Lake Last Light Oil on Panel 9 x 24 inches May Day. Storm cleared through and the sun came out late. Started three different ideas on same panel.  Couldn’t settle.  Had made terrible mistake of looking at George Inness landscapes while searching for a book for sister Jean.  Three great ones from her shelf arrived today.  I literally picked up the easel and turned it around, scraped off and started again three times!  Of course ran out of time and light on the last one. Stayed with it.  As I was problem solving I forgot how utterly insufficient it was going to be.  I was in my zone. Yay.  News and conversations were like that too.  Positive, negative, unsettled.  180 degree different perspectives on many fronts but many points of intense focus. Intense news. One can spin the dial and hear a convincing doomsday scenario or go all the way to a delightful new viral fairy tale called “The Great Realisation”.  I want to believe in that one - is already my narrative.  Optimistic gene pool.   Day started with group of amazing women leaders in Boston who deserve a whole journal. Short version: they make the right stuff happen. I miss being in the middle of that. Still I worked hard today and made some yardage. Mostly had Corona brain. On my way out the door to paint the UPS guy was just arriving.  Lovely conversation.  He sees too many people glued to their TVs and it worries him.  Believes it’s unhealthy to spend that much time absorbing bad news.  They should go outside or do something else.  But he is fine.  Has a good route.  Doesn’t feel threatened.  Hiked home in the dark while zooming with the kids but I had to disconnect because the peepers were so loud!  Also the trail was uncertain, muddy, treacherous and my battery was low.  I generally intend not to put myself harm’s way but forget that when I’m not ready to wrap a painting. Called in once safely back at the car. Oh and not to worry, Trump says our testing is “the best”.  I wonder if he really believes his stuff and lives in his own dystopic & insane but rose-colored fairy tale?

20-04-30 Bishops Orchard late on a stormy evening Water color on paper 12 x 24 inches Last day in April. Don’t understand how this could have happened. I am certain that just yesterday it was the middle of March.  Busy day yesterday – whatever month it was. Ran out of time and never got out with paints.  Not so much as a pencil to paper.  First headline I read this morning was about research showing a clear correlation between long-term exposure to air pollution and Covid mortality rates. What is new?  After work I ran out the door.  Just another detail of my comfortable life that I can pop over to a gorgeous orchard on a ridge line with a long view and big sky.  Grabbed the bag of water colors.  Oils too complicated.  There is a LOT going on in an orchard.  Needed my oils (so much better for massing) and more time.  Made two messy attempts at a big view and then a 5 minute ink drawing of an apple tree. Severely pruned.  Light was gone.  It was visible only because it was silhouetted against the sky. On my way over, there was a news piece about Wall Street being happy today with the hopeful signs of the economy restarting.  So as I wrestled with the big orchard view and then really focused on the heavily pruned tree, I was connecting the dots.  Air pollution, poor communities, economic pressures, pruning.   Pruning.  All those cuts result in more fruit, more productivity.  It works on a large scale and is very beautiful (this evening’s mess not representative).  The closer you get, the more uncomfortable the tree appears to be.  When the U.S. first started taking Corona seriously & began shutting down, I thought maybe humanity was evolving, valuing life over wealth.  But it was really just the same old story. Which life?  Corona threatened everyone regardless of their station.  Now it seems we are deciding it’s OK to go back to normal because really, it’s mostly the poor & minorities and the elderly who are bearing the brunt of this.  The rest of us are in our orchards. 

20-04-28 Granite Outcrop on North Quarry Pond Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches CEO’s planning for Post Corona restart, when possible – say they will proceed cautiously with trial and error. Learn as they go. There can be no return to the past. We will be inventing the new normal.  Gut sense – it’s going to take longer with more false starts and tough setbacks than we would all hope for.   …..   After work I loaded up my 45 lb backpack easel and paints and climbed over a promising ridge line, down to a quiet pond with a gorgeous outcropping of granite at the water’s edge. Mostly covered in a light blue-greenish lichen.  Got all the way there and realized how low the light is deep in that ravine.  It was bright above and behind me and just shooting through the tops of the trees on the far side.  I could have gone for a peaceful easy scene of the trees reflecting in the water or chased the color works in the sky.  It was moving fast though. Instead I sucked it up and went after the unique challenge - the granite.  Knew it was impossible.  Got a smidge more life out of it than I texpected.  But decided it wasn’t worth a panel (I’m running low). Back in the studio I started scraping.  I knew I could go back and eventually make sense of it.  Right moment of light. Enough time. Trial. Error. Rethink. Take a different angle. But wait.  As I started scraping I thought, “just try reworking it!”  Rethink it NOW, make the best of what you have already got right here in the studio instead of hoping for the better moment or the (never coming) bolt of insight. This, is where I ended up.  Never done that before. I only work from natural light in actual setting.  Maybe not new normal as being out in nature is my great joy.  But I removed a rule from my head.  Replaced it with discovery.

20-04-27 Below the waterfall on the trail behind Old Quarry Rd Oil on Panel 16 x 11.5 inches Frozen to the bone. What a privilege. Just home. Feet still stubs. Was raining lightly. 42 degrees. … Listened to part of public radio interview on the way home with largest Food Bank here in New Haven area. If I heard correctly, they had doubled volume in last couple weeks and were anticipating similar increase next week. Trump speaking of the “hunger” to get our country back. New program for small business loans opened today and the website crashed.

20-04-26 No Image just an idea. Another dramatic cold, windy, stormy wet day.  Confluence of 6 weeks of unstable weather pattern roughly overlapping the Corona lock-down.  Mother Nature is perhaps reminding us to stop screwing around. …. Took a break today and lost myself to inspiring art including the global from-home Metropolitan Opera Gala which brought me to tears. No surprise. But really, how could the most hardened hard not weep at the beauty and the humanity of all of this?  Thought for the day: While newly focused on how heavily we depend upon [underpaid & marginal] essential workers, how about the arts?  Largely unsupported and so essential.  Will we be a society which more fairly distributes wealth and more highly values and encourages the arts? Can this moment catalyze humanity’s further evolution toward enlightenment?

20-04-25 Last light over Sound from Hoadley Creek Oil on panel 7.5 x 18 inches   Ignored news except morning skim of headlines.  Trump calling back West Point Cadets for graduation speech. Surprise to all!  Dad, who graduated 13th, class of 1947, would be speechLESS at the selfishness and inane disregard for science.  I was born while he taught Physics there after the Korean War.  The vanity of such a move is a breathtaking insult. Really another high crime.  Breaks my heart. Happen to be reading biography of Ulysses S. Grant.  What would he & Robert E. Lee have made of this?   … Painted while I zoomed with ski club mates. Call over, realized I’d fallen into uninspired safety zone. Started scraping off with my pallet knife. Swung around to sky/marsh Southern view – storm front moving in.  Started with a new idea. Worked feverishly with only minutes until light was gone.  No time for islands but this wasn’t about them anyway. Simple.  More brave, more alive.  Less vain.  Rough. Hiked out in the dark. On my last look around for dropped brushes or rags I looked out to the Thimbles in view. Many lights on. Summer crowd has moved in months ahead of schedule.

20-04-24 Five Minute Color study looking out the window Water crayon on Paper 11 x 15 inches I’m boiling this rambling scrawl down to two things. Madness and Niceness. Madness: Trump suggested today that imbibing disinfectants might be helpful. I think he should definitely try that!! Niceness: In all my racing around, and even with all my good intentions, I didn’t spend much time chatting with lonely elderly neighbors or the guy who collects the trash or the folks in the grocery store. I am spending more energy just going out of my way to be nice. More important, often, than productive. Another Corona insight.

20-04-22 3/3 Earth Day on Leetes Island Water crayons on paper 9 x 12 inches Earth Day. Crystal clear, cold & very windy. I loaded all my Corona journal drawings to the web. Had been almost obsessed with it. Don’t fully understand why. Needed to get it done so I could go back to work. Now I feel a bit exposed. I knew that would happen but didn’t care. Thinking of Mom & Dad and their inspired/crazy drive to make recycling a reality. Save the planet. Presently the EPA is lifting environmental standards and penalties during the Corona crisis. Singapore, praised for its effective virus management - emulated by many, is having a relapse. Trump has suspended green card applications. Food supply experts warn of regional famines. NYT reports conservatives nurturing protests.

20-04-21 2 /2 One of the afternoon’s hundred crazy gorgeous moments of light. Looking out the back window after the storm. No time to suit up and go out with the oils. Just enough to grab a shred of it. Water color crayons on paper 12 x 16 inches I have totally lost myself into the Corona Journal. The making, the writing and now the posting. I feel possessed. Did no other work today. Deep in this place. And everything I look at is begging me to look more closely and do something with it. Peter & I had a drawing session scheduled. Total surprise when he arrived. Oblivious to time. And then we got to work. The light was mind blowing. Earlier a powerful storm blew through with dark sky, lashing rain and wind. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but of all the time I have spend out in nature observing, I can’t remember a stretch of time with such a run of crazy weather and outrageous light. Just this afternoon. Just right here on the farm. If I could stop time and go after every amazing moment I could fill a lifetime. Time has slowed, warped, arched, swung upside down. But it hasn’t stopped. When that brilliant beam of pink light hits the forsythia and sets it on fire, if I don’t catch it, it’s gone. There is no making that up.

20-04-20 Light doing its thing on the marsh behind the barns - Corona Question for the planet Oil on panel 12 x 18" inches Message that I painted wet into wet: Nature just keeps doing her thing. Can we notice & respond to the rapidly repairing air & water? Today - happier critters. More breathable air. Tomorrow - when we remove our face masks, can we make better choices? Can we decide to live more peacefully with the planet & with each other? Can health, community & justice be at least as important as monetary wealth? Can we emerge from Corona wiser & kinder?

Message I typed: Spent hour looking for a spot, digging for psychic energy. Journal performance anxiety!  Rallied in my own back yard. The Wizard of Oz effect…which led to this solution.  Light gorgeous, trees on fire against dark clouds, for one brief moment.  Tried to catch it but missed.  Zoomed with sisters while wrapping up.  Moral support. Conversation about how ageist next economic chapter is likely to be. Hadn’t occurred to me. Other Corona news, small bands of anti-shutdown protestors vs health care workers in masks.  Oil prices now below zero-trying to keep production.  Small businesses mostly missed out on PPE rescue (like me).  Nature doesn’t care.  Exceptionally cold, windy Spring days but greening up fast anyway. Seems like too good a crisis to waste.

20-04-19 Exhausted myself - this little color study helped me spring back 9 x 12 inches Thinking about nature and Earth Day coming up Wednesday. Trump has been chipping away at environmental protections while we are all distracted with Corona. Huge tragedy. Makes me so sad. Meanwhile the rapid recovery of the air & water, its resilience, is powerful evidence. I fervently hope that Corona will be the catalyst to turn the tide. Change our ways. Have a global Corona Spring Stop the selfish Madness.

20-04-18 Self portrait effort Pencil on paper 9 x 12 inches Corona is increasingly revealing who we are. It is helping me reveal who I am. Exploration, investigation, examination and eventually, the uncovering of truth whether scientific or emotional. I think the US is moving toward naked. I am getting there too. Naked honesty always an underlying goal though I sometimes forget that and get distracted. It is the best place to start when making big decisions, any decisions!

I never did a self portrait that met the mark though I did use myself as a model [from the moment] I discovered my love for drawing as a little girl. Haven’t done portrait work in almost 30 years. Today I ran out of time. Was actually working on posting my corona journal. Then zooming with Drifters. Cleaning house and cycling. Busy Saturday. So at bedtime I decided this was my artful challenge of the day. I jumped in. Started with loose pen and ink gesture drawings. Wasn’t getting off that easy. No two minute adequate solution. Struggling. Gradually morphed to charcoal then graphite. Sitting on my bed using my bedside lamp and a propped up mirror. Very sub optimal. No natural light when you let other things get in the way all day. Still, really enjoyed it – filled me with childhood sensations. I am not embarrassed by this piece. It was brave and it was a start. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back in the world of portraiture in which I did some of my best work. Few things more satisfying or more nearly impossible for me to meet my own expectations. But as with other things I have tried lately, it is stretching my brain in ways that thrill and hurt but also reveal capabilities and new perspectives. I am testing and thinking about what I want to keep from my life, what I discard and what I create new going forward. It is what I hope we do as a society.

About this drawing. I vaguely recognize this person. So not successful as a portrait. Slightly less of a failure as a drawing. But it reminded me so much of Mom and the pastel portrait of her that used to hang in the dining room. Where is that piece!!! Must never have been unpacked from my studio boxes. A new item for my to-do list. Also I had never looked quite so honestly at the sagging jowls. I know they are there. The light was soft on my eyes. They are more tired than that. John Singer Sargent said, “A portrait is a painting of someone with something wrong with the mouth.” So true. So apt.

02-04-17 Back to the mud tracks behind the barn - more cow conversations Water crayons on Paper 12 x 24 inches News moratorium today except for conversations with friends. Big video social life today. Visited with Olga who is in London trying to do tele-health with her practice in Boston. Hoping to be ale to come home soon. Diane an her farm in NC and Alex down in Charleston. Some optimism about change that could come from all of this. Kids are all working hard in in good spirits. New fun thing on our call - animal emoji’s that take on your facial expressions. Goldman Sachs and Marsh are assuming lock down indefinitely and no earlier release than 5/15. Kids in good spirits. Whoops! That’s always a danger when writing free hand with no delete button. I guess is also is a reminder of the fundamentals. How are my loved ones doing? Did my zoom with Alex and Diane sitting in the bucket loader of the tractor in the barn. Cows joined the call. PS [plan ahead] Also video chatted with Rusty early, then Lid & Lex called while I was still working on this drawing so I got to walk them over to meet the three curious boys. Sweet & skittish now. When do they become bulls?

20-04-16 1/1 Mud puddle tractor tracks Oil on Panel 12 x 18 inches Made a mess. Tried something totally new with my oils and it was a useful experiment. Not a keeper except that I feel I have to keep at least one effort from each day, so I have something to attach my notes to. This was my only effort so it’s the one. Maybe this should go on even after the lockdown. A good new habit. Very time consuming. Very rewarding. Today I was painting over an old beginner’s dud panel. Down to the dregs. Need to make new panels. But it releases me somewhat from the obligation to make great use of a whole fresh panel. Recycling frees the spirit! In addition to the benefits of freewheeling experimentation, today’s adventure revealed a wonderful new painting spot for a cold/windy day. Went across the street to check out the young cows who were gathering near the road. Took my paints just in case and went through the little barn door on the west to discover the big doors were wide open facing East. Hurriedly set up my easel. I was interested in the mud puddle tractor tracks that cut through the bright spring grass. Will go back. In a moment, the curious little ones were right there with me, helping set up. They came down from the hill. Violating social distance rules! Literally tried to lick the easel. We talked over the health risks and they eventually were bored and went away. The scene was so bucolic. So at odds with the big reality. But then again, while I was painting I was reading (Audible) The Splendid and the Vile. Larson was giving colorful examples of the way life, and the dance, carried on in London during the bombing. And in the big country houses and the fields. There were cows. News today is mostly of the battle between Trump and the Governors. Absolute madness. As is his threat to fire Fauci. We have fallen even farther down an even crazier rabbit hole!! The Jabberwoky is my poem of the moment. Thank you Lewis Carroll. As I struggled with the muddy pallet knife mess on the panel which was poorly translating the muddy beauty of the scene before me, I was also thinking about the difference between the kind of suffering, bloodshed, loss of life, economic disruption, of WWII vs this crisis. Couldn’t find a resting place. Different scale. I hope.

20-04-15 Two Minute sketch out the west window of reflected tree in the marsh Ink on paper 9 x 12 inches Another hugely busy day and a major workout. Got through the day and hoped to go out to paint the beautiful light but landed on the couch. Totally wiped out and unable to get warm though the house was cozy. I rallied an hour and a half later but only with strength enough to sit in front of the west facing window. One can’t help thinking Corona, but in my case I was 95% sure it was the super intense workout. Listening to the radio. Press beginning to cover the food supply chain and help the public comprehend its issues. Another Corona benefit. Today I made a leap forward on a food system advancement investment idea. PS Just noticed that this drawing is about a parallel reality. And the news also affected the ideas which occupied my workday.

20-04-14 Gesture drawing of Marian Pen on paper (fire-lit in the dark) 9 x 12 inches Marian Chertow’s Birthday! No time for painting today so I caught this 2 min gesture drawing as we all sat around the fire pit at dusk or later actually. Light was gone. We walked talked, prepped a super simple dinner grilled on the open fire. All agreed it opened our awareness to/reminded us that we spend too much time inside and are missing the fun and wonder. Beautiful evening. High 40’s but just perfect. If not for Corona we’d have had an indoor dinner party and missed the better option. Admittedly we violated by a foot or two, occasionally, the 6’ rule but not by much and the breeze was moving the air away. Time has slowed and warped. In the space created new, no not new, previously overlooked or pushed aside possibilities sprout up.

20-04-13 Path by Shell Beach during the storm Monochrome color crayon with water brush 12 x 16 inches Crazy big storm today. 50 mph winds. One million already locked down people (mostly) without power. I worked from the desk in the yellow room looking down to the grass path to Shell Beach. Dying to get out there. But I hung tough and was super productive churning through my spreadsheet of tasks. We could have been surfing the rollers coming in thanks to the South wind. So unusual. Ran down at 4:30, high time, in the car with my water colors. Made the mistake of admitting out loud to friends that I was going down there to channel Turner. Tried to be loose and catch the power of the waves and the richness of the gray sky and angry sea! Just came out with a cheap mess. Then set aside the colors to draw the quiet scene on the side which is there every single day. Enjoyed that enormously while on a zoom call with Susanna, Karen and Sara. No crashing waves. No drama but still a small adventure. I hadn’t yet tried a monochrome with my water pencils. Then raced back for family zoom Birthday Party for Mike which was fun and sweet. It’s awful to admit that Corona has some spin-off benefits. Other than two graduations and a wedding [and two funerals], Ayis and I haven’t been in the same room in 20 years. And I am on some drawing jag that I can’t, and don’t want, to turn off. We are all mostly, adapting well. Very human of us. The news today was of the beginning of planning for post Corona. NE governors to coordinate. And it occurs to me, literally at this moment, that I bombed on the Turner channeling and chose instead to settle in to a simple drawing of a pathway. Pathway forward? Unbearably trite. But an innocent and uncalculated response to my intuition. I know I should think less & trust myself more.

20-04-10 Afternoon light in the back yard, below the phragmites Oil on panel 9 x 12 inches Hard to comprehend how bad things are when nature offers up a day like today.  But then again, there is always plenty of suffering in the world.  I lead a life of privilege. Imagine! I can walk into a back yard like this and paint. I have good health, back-up systems, resources.  The mainstream news is beginning to cover the higher death rates in communities of color and poverty. Ironic. We shut down the economy because this plague knows no boundaries of class, race, etc.  With $2 or $3 Trillion we might have made some serious headway on public safety, health and equity.  But right now, to reduce death toll we are doubling down on the suffering of the disadvantaged. 

20-04-10 3/3 Sunset out my bedroom window Water crayon on paper. 6 x 8 inches Kept working with the scene as the light changed. #2 of 3 was a gaudy mess. Then I went back to working with crayons to try to get the values right/closer anyway. Never give up. [PS Still a gaudy mess but a happier one]

20-04-10 1/3 Sunset happening behind the trees. Crazy beautiful sky. Not translatable. Water color on paper 8 x 20 inches Beginning to hear more reports of closer circle falling ill & worse. Wall Street is happy because the Fed is pumping money. But are we about to take our foot off the brakes and have a new surge? The anxiety of uncertainty and knowledge of certain suffering is palpable in the atmosphere. Today was gorgeous, cold and blowy. Beautiful light. I exhausted myself on my bike & had a chill so I painted from my bedroom window. Another hard subject which I don’t have the skill set to translate. Why did I pick it? And this was almost all block color with brushes - just a bit of crayon. I seem to have an increasing compulsion to paint/draw every day & increasing abandon of my known limitations. WTH embrace risk. Is it the roaring 20’s. Meanwhile more & more Opera!

20-04-09 Storm clearing out over the salt marsh hay fields. Oil on Panel 9 x 12 inches Really was desperate to get out the oils. Listened to myself from yesterday’s notes. Just went out into the backyard and looked up. I knew the light was going to be high drama. Storm clearing through. High winds. So cold. Crazy clouds. I rarely take them on for many reasons but intimidation is on the list. I got over it and just put my best into it without judgement. Lots of exchanges with friends today. Head swimming. Emotional. We are all connecting more. It’s wonderful but also exacerbates my focus issue. Happily it was a small breakthrough day on a couple business projects. Bit of progress. Bit of joy. Lots of connection. I was feeling stronger. Yesterday I wasn’t. My emotional state dramatically impacts my psychic energy, which is the well I draw on to go after something as impossible as clouds. This is supposed to be the beginning of the peak of Corona deaths. I am still healthy. Carpe diem.

20-04-08 Might as well try the clouds. Water color and crayons on paper 8 x 20 inches. Today I counted my “next chapter & keep busy & productive during Corona” projects. 23+. Too many. Wrestling with it. Also had a setback on one of the major ones. In the back yard the osprey seemed focused on their work and happy. Ran out at 6 to catch a drawing. Fishing analogy is very apt. Light was gorgeous. I walked to the dyke past 50 moments I could happily have drawn or painted - could’t decide/focus. Should have stopped at the first one but wanted to just check on the next… and the next. Eventually sat down in front of a brilliant moment of light on the tall grasses at a bend in the marsh. Beautifully reflecting in the water. Went delicate. Utter failure. Out of time, I looked up at the dramatic clouds. Went bold and fast and tried to be powerful. I don’t know how to work well yet in this medium that way. So challenge is good! Missing my oils but recognize that all this experimentation must eventually pay off. Must keep expectations in line to not be discouraged by these messes. Just also learn to pick my targets better. Don’t over optimize. Sit down and get to work. Find my way by doing & thinking. Not overthinking & under doing. Keep at it. Don’t let Corona knock me off balance. Use it to propel myself forward.

20-04-07 3/3 Five minute catch of the western sky leaving Stony Creek Water crayons on paper 6 x 8 inches. Stopped the car while driving out of Stony Creek. A tiny piece of paper, quickly setting sun and only minutes - takes all the pressure off. Had some fun whereas I had been wrestling with myself the prior hour.

20-04-07 2/3 Gesture drawing of Cood drawing on Jonathan’s dock Pen on paper 12 x 11 inches Peter, Cood, Jonathan & I gathered at Jonathan’s dock to draw. We all had our face masks. Stayed 6’ apart. All found a spot and we were very separate - so we kind of lost the community effect. Just nearby but not really together. A lot like life in general. I labored on the big scene of Cood sitting on a boat, in front of lobster traps and across from another boat - a Whitehall upside down on blocks. I could’t make anything work. Eventually came back and did this quick pen sketch. His mask was made of stretch gray underwear. We were all so cold, despite the bright late sun, that we hardly visited and did not look at each other’s work. That might have been my fault. I was not having a “hey look what I came up with!” kind of day. I went home and washed the storm windows I had removed today. Cleaning my office. Hoping that making it brighter will help my productivity. Drove away a bit discouraged. Looked at the sky as I was driving away. Had to stop & work with the colors. Tiny little 5 min thing while I was talking with Eleanna on the phone. She had an overwhelming day too. SO much uncertainty. Very challenging & we have it good. SO much suffering.

20-04-06 Behind the dyke Water crayons on paper. 8 x 20 inches. Predicted to be a week of terrible increase in deaths. Still the Osprey and all the critters were a riot of activity and the sun comes blasting across the marsh. 12 year old Eloise Streeter came with me and shared my paints - budding you artist. [sat at a distance with her materials]. Joyful to share that moment. Many walkers passed the dyke. Some were indignant that we chose to sit so close to the path. Others delighted. Maybe nothing changes. But I keep hoping that what we learn from the time of Corona is how to be a wiser, kinder, more just species.

20-04-04 Granite outcrop I've been meaning to explore but not paint Oil on panel 12 x 18 inches First oil of the season up here. Corona Saturday. Lonely context. Needed to make the most of it or I’d feel worse. Marginal energy but rose to the moment. Knew there was a payoff for just hanging in there. Went to a spot I’ve been thinking about since I got here. But the water vista (safe place) was just not going to work. Turned around and faced this wall of granite. Impossible. But why not. I took it on. Knew it was going to be a mess. That freed me to keep at it. Derek and Eloise happened to drive by and saw me. I waved them in and they parked and hiked over. That was such a joy. We kept our 10 foot distance – no face masks. But I was happy to talk with 12 year old Eloise about painting rocks and whether or not to try to paint in trees even with the light almost gone. Her grandmother was a painter who died tragically young of a brain aneurism. I feel like I’m kind of a stand in. And she and her Dad are neighbors/family to me – especially important as I am now disconnected from my own. Missing the contact. Particularly missing my kids. I know they are safe but I’d know it better if I could put my arms around them. I find myself occasionally quite emotional these days. Conquering (in a sense) that granite – at least wrestling honorably with it, gave me strength and stabilized my emotions. That granite has been there for how long? Did they/it know dinosaurs? I think so.

20-04-03 Trees by the Cider Mill Pen on paper 12 x 16 inches Feeling a tad lonely today. Also put away my skis. Sad. No Tuckerman’s or Wildcat Trail this year with Drifters friends. Went out to paint the sky and the marsh but found this group of trees. Immediately drawn to them though I’d never really taken note before and have painted in that spot often. Partway into the drawing it dawned on me that I was observing the interconnectedness of living things. Made me smile - lifted the melancholy of the day. Then I shopped, washed groceries in bleach & the kids and I zoomed. All was well.

Post Script. In this case I had to run to the grocery before it closed and then get on a family zoom with the kids, in which I was encouraged to crack open a stout. We had a frolicsome visit. I then wrote the below notes and you’ll notice that I it was still very freehand – so much so that when I was done writing I noticed how off kilter I had gone. Good. I thought. It is the right angle. After I wrote the “all is well” line I paused and wondered if I could fit in a qualifier because of course all is not well. So really NOT WELL. I meant for that moment, in my tiny little space of this planet, with my children healthy and happy, it all felt almost normal and my own melancholy was lifted and I stopped the constant engagement with the almost overwhelming issues of the day and the suffering of so many, the beating on my self to find a lever. But there was no room to write all of that!! That’s the unfiltered, uncomposed, no planning-ahead downside. So instead I put in two lines of dots that helped me feel better about the kilter of the page. I liked the angle of it but liked it better with the dots.

20-03-31 2/2 Painting behind the RR tracks with Peter Water Color and crayons on paper 8 x 20 inches Anti-Corona cabin fever & anxiety. Old RR repair ruins. So powerfully positive, no matter what the outcome, to lose ourselves in our drawings. [Peter in his car and me in mine - very cold and windy. Apart but keeping company of a sort.]