Magic Moments-green and gold

There is so little time and so much to do. But i mustn’t fret over all I’ve missed for now the sun is giving warmth and i am gaining faith in each day bringing a new day that can be filled with hope. And with hope comes life, and joy, and a willingness to take risks. Next week I’ll be out at the Isles of Shoals (painting of course) and then up to Vermont and Montreal. I ‘m pretty disgusted with my work. There’s a stack of quarter sheet paintings from the last week and a half and they would make great kindling. Still i believe in my New Day and there will be a tomorrow.

So yesterday i tried to paint the little guest cottage. It was pretty hot even with the breeze off the West Meadow-

And today my drive home up the lane felt like entering a stage so i painted this.

There is so much green and gold. Just this evening while studying the routes into Montreal on Google i looked up and was transported by the golds and greens in the treetops beyond the North lawn back-lit by the setting sun. I really want to paint that but I’ve got to pack and get some sleep too.

Holly

Magic Moments-The internet

Re-blogged from an earlier post-here is a poem that i wrote shortly after I had started up my blog, Magic Moments. It seems appropriate to the moment.

I wish we could all meet on my west porch (or anywhere real) for a cup of tea or glass of wine this evening. Virtual life just doesn’t make it!

Holly (Angel in the Dust)

 

The Internet

 

This is a dangerous place to be

 

Thoughts and ideas swirl, overwhelm.

Too much intellectual input without order

Raw emotion writes unfinished poetry

Hungry hearts beat out their lives in space

Entangled in the web of empty fulfillment

 

While the orb weaver sits gorged on lost souls

Hours devoured before the blue-green screen

Fingers stumbling on the keys search for connection

When all that is needed is the touch, the real touch

Of your hand warm against mine

 And a soft kiss to brush my hair.

 

Early morning hours drive me

 To the center of the web

Magic Moments-revisited

Today my friend and I hit the HB trail for our tri-weekly morning walk. Finally after weeks of rain the weather was sunny and cool. This is a very special area with a micro climate that favors a vast array of spring ephemeral flowers. They had struggled into rapid bloom early in the season trying to survive the extreme drought which we were experiencing for the third year in a row in New England.

Now following weeks of rain everything has greened up beautifully and the water table is approaching normal levels.  Only the hemlocks are gone due to the adelgid and one can hear a steady rain of chips from the canopy high overhead as the gypsy moth caterpillars defoliate the oaks. But, somehow nature always seems to spring back-don’t we all?

So although I promised myself only to post watercolors-here goes- I’m going to post photos from our walk this morning. It was so much fun to find colonies of the plants now doing well which although no longer in flower felt like old friends. Of course there were new flowers to identify too, and a few that I have yet to catch in flower. One tree, a giant forest Tulip, dropped a flower at my feet. I hope to paint that soon.

now huge leaves of wake robin

herb Robert in seed

viburnum gone to seed

dead hemlock

colony of stemless yellow violet

curious fruit of the bear berry

y

holly

 

 

 

Magic Moments-Here we go

a few little watercolors from some of my recent walks. they are each about 10×14 and are done on really ghastly school grade paper. The important point is I did them.

Roraback wildlife area 170530

Shady Brook 170605

aitd

Holly

The Wind and the Lake

i love to go on a walk (virtual albeit) with Hanna. You come too!
Share with us the love of nature on this my day, June 5th.
Holly

HANNA'S WALK

Windy weather is lovely. It freshens up the air, it’s excellent when you surf, a kite loves the wind and it’s brilliant when to dry your clothes.
I wanted to see the big lake, Furesøen in the fresh weather, and I was not disappointed, but my hairdresser might have been 🙂

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Christina Rossetti

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Spéir

Add discipline to creativity and finish it off with a passion for life and one can share beauty. This is a beautiful post from Owen-enjoy!

Consolation's Many Forms

I started piano lessons at the age of 11; I’ve never stopped playing since. I’ve continued to perform in public at least weekly for most of that time; often, I perform music I myself have written, such as the simple piece attached here.

We had books of old Scottish and Irish folk songs in our house when I was a teen, and my mother could sometimes be prevailed upon to sing if I ever played them. No one in my family really liked singing solos, so these were rare and memorable events. There was a connection to the old countries in this music, for her, and for me, and they make for some of my fondest memories.

I wrote this piece as a tribute to that music, trying to capture the feel of it rather than anything specific.

“Spéir,” by the way, is the Gaelic word for “Heaven”.

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Magic Moments-from the heart

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.
— Marc Chagall

(re-quoted from Jane Hannah’s blog)

But….

My Artist has fled. And for the past several weeks i have given up chasing it. Instead I’ve been focusing on people and places. I am hopeful that with time i will heal. i know i need to paint and i continue to see in watercolors. For those of you who also do this you know what i mean, otherwise you probably would consider me crazy. Basically i look and see everything as though i were rendering it in watercolor as though it were a watercolor! Gradually i am also seeing my emotions in watercolor as well. This could get interesting if i am ever able to paint again. Now i don’t mean ply the brush; i mean paint as with baited breath. So i keep dabbling. See my plein-air blog;  for the moment that’s all I have to show.

https://litchfieldhillspleinairsketchersandpainters.wordpress.com/blog/

I’m spinning a new thread of hope, the old one having given way. Soon like the spider in the  Navajo legend i’ll pull my world back together and be able to enjoy working with the many images that just now live only in my head. It just takes time. And, yes, as in the legend a full moon will help.

Holly (aitd)

 

Magic Moments-watching movement

The swift flight of the blue jay in silhouette against the sun, coopers hawk,  flicker each a different shape, the swinging flight of tree swallows and stealthy flight of the black billed coo coo (who yes, landed 15 feet from me and sang to me so I know that it was he) the flitting nervousness of veery, towhee, and oven bird in the under-story, the zig-zag of black and white warbler and jigging of yellow rump, yellow, and yellow throat warblers high in the tree tops, the swooping of nuthatch and tumbling of oriole, the flit of redstart and chestnut sided warblers, a bobbing sandpiper in the brook, and an eruption of Blue heron huge above our canoe, while two families of Canada geese smoothly shepherd their balls of fluff safely past us and the turtles slide into the water.

And now there is only one

Ah well, you get the picture; just now I am not painting but simply observing and truly enjoying the journey. I am also working hard at learning the songs of the birds as well as learning to recognize their movement. Not having a legitimate set of binoculars or any kind of scope or fancy camera I have to stay sharp to participate on these birding walks. Of course I can always take snap shots of the birders themselves and do. Here are a few:

People watching is fascinating: after all I have loved painting them as well as birds so why not! Here are some I took of people in the Matisse exhibit at the MFA a couple of weeks ago. Look how the birders lean backwards and the museum goers are intently leaning forward as though somehow we might connect with the object of our interest.

Notice the predominate color of the museum -goers  “feathers” too. It’s a strange world.

aitd

Magic Moments- within

Depression can take a terrible tole on one’s life and on ones loved ones too. The last post i made included a painting of a nuthatch in our red-bud. I actually had begun this painting  almost 2 years ago and was only recently able to return to it and finish it by painting in the tree branches. For over a year i have struggled to return to the intense happiness that painting used to bring. i don’t know yet where my story will end but i can say that it is so important to have people who care and believe in you. If you know of someone suffering from depression don’t give up on them.

For me a turning point surely occurred when I discovered this early photo of me on the breakfast table a few weeks ago.

c1974

It was snapped while I was out sketching on the hillside behind the trailer we used to live in up in Vermont.  With the photo was just a little note in my husbands hand,”I’d like this person back.” It makes all the difference to know someone cares. He loves the artist in me, and knowing that is so important to me.

I am working on finding and reconstructing her. it may take a while but I’ll do my best. If I post less frequently its because I only want to post solid accomplishments: paintings i feel good about.  In the mean time I continue to avidly read  your posts and deeply appreciate your comments. Keep up the good camaraderie and enjoy your work! And, please don’t forget to look for mine rare though it may be!

I shall repeat this poem of Rumi’s from my last post. For me it speaks volumes.

“Let yourself be silently drawn,

by the strange pull

of what you really love.

It will not lead you astray.”

Holly

Sculpture by Kelsey

(Angel in the dust)

Magic Moments-My Own

Just now the “sparkle” dominating our home, Esperanza, are the red buds. They are in full and glorious bloom. The old one on the front lawn stretches most of the length of the porch now, its old branches supported at odd angels by posts placed there over the years to help it through the winters. The birds love it and fly back and forth to it from the feeders on the porch. In keeping with the advice in one of Rumi’s poems which i found in a recent post by Ancient Skies, i have chosen to paint it today along with one of our resident Nuthatches.

“Let yourself be silently drawn,

by the strange pull

of what you really love.

It will not lead you astray.”

                                                                                                                                             Rumi                                                                                                                                  

9×12 Canson multi-media w/c and Prismacolor pencils 170509

 

9×12 Canson muti-media w/c  and pen

detail of blossoms and horizontal branching of the old red-bud.