The Lost Cheese

One of the things I have learned in my life is how to squeeze in family life and juicy bits of experience. Although my work obligations greedily suck up most of my time, I guard small blocks of time for art, writing, sports, and social time with family and friends. This weekend, for example, I have taken a four-day weekend to fly out west to see my daughters and grandson.

Travel plans do not always go smoothly, however, and yesterday I ended up on a delayed flight, missed my connection, spent an unexpected night in a hotel, and had a 5:15 am wake up call to catch my rescheduled flight.

This is where the cheese comes in. 

When I arrived at the hotel at 10 pm, I was too tired to go down to the restaurant, and not that hungry anyways. So I indulged in the luxury of ordering a snack via room service, and settled down to watch some Olympics coverage. I ordered a platter of Quebec cheeses and crackers, and a beer. 

The choice of cheese was against my better judgment. My seat mate on one of my flights was a research scientist studying osteoarthritis. I asked her a little about her research. I have osteoarthritis in my knees, so this topic is of personal interest. She told me that sports injuries can predispose people to developing osteoarthritis, and talked a lout the importance of staying active and continuing to engage in weight bearing exercise to stave off it off longer. Obesity is both a consequence of the reduced activity that follows a knee injury, and also a risk factor for developing osteoarthritis sooner and more severely. Excess weight puts more pressure on the knees.

I already knew these things, having researched my condition. I know that losing a couple of pounds and keeping the weight off is important for my knees. However, one piece of information that she shared was new to me. Adipose tissue actually contributes to inflammation biochemically. So it is important to reduce the adipose tissue (fat) in order to reduce the level of inflammation. Reducing inflammation slows the progress of the disease.

Therefore, I should not be eating cheese, or at least not very much cheese. 

So I sat in my hotel room watching elite athletes on TV, with a lovely selection of cheeses in front of me - great big wedges of specialty cheeses along with rainforest crackers and dried fruit. In actual fact, I only ate 2 pieces of cheese, and put the rest in a ziplock bag, planning to bring it with me. 

This morning, bleary-eyed at a ridiculous hour of the morning, I ended up forgetting the cheese in my room. It was really excellent cheese, and it is a shame that it will be wasted. 

However, maybe my knees will thank me.

Creative Funk

I think I have finally figured out one of the biggest reasons that writers don't write and painters don't paint. In fact, this thing that I am about to describe applies to many types of creative endeavour, or, at least those I have engaged in. 

Creative activities often are as frustrating as hell when you are in the middle of them. It becomes obvious that nothing in the story or painting is going right. The words are clunky and amateurish, not at all representative of what you mean to say. The story keeps veering off in odd directions, and you have to delete hours' worth of sentences because they have nothing to do with anything. Or the painting looks sloppy and ugly, not in any way like the scene you are trying to represent, or the image you hold in your mind. The more marks you put on it, the worse it looks, and you can't think of how to fix it.

Tonight, for me, it was my painting that was going all wrong. I wrote here recently about starting a new painting, and not blocking it in the way I usually do. Well, now I am really struggling with trying to cover up the white canvas. I can't get the colours right, and have digressed into details before even getting the underlying shades in. Instead of enjoying painting, I feel frustrated and discouraged. 

I think many people, when they get to this point, also start to feel negative about themselves and their ability. This is when the critical little voice in the head kicks in with its sarcastic and disparaging cracks. This is the point at which people will throw aside the canvas, or stomp away from the computer, and then do not want to come back to the frustrating experience of that mess of a painting or that botched up story. This is when writers cease to write and painters cease to paint. 

Our creative activities, for large stretches of time, fail to live up to the rosy and romantic notions we hold about them. For example, I love to think about painting. I enjoy reading art magazines, and am very interested in other artists' descriptions of their painting process. I enjoy thinking about a scene that I want to paint, and every day I peer at the landscapes surrounding me and think about the colours, interesting contrasting shapes, or the type of composition I would create from a particular vantage point. 

Being creative in the mind is easy. It's actually making the thing that's hard. An art teacher I know has a favourite saying. She tells her students, "Go get in trouble."

I think that instruction is particularly apt. As soon as you begin a creative act, you begin to create a problem. The more you work at it, the bigger the problem becomes. So you swallow down the frustration and improvise. You work through the problem bit by bit, improvising and creating and taking chances. Often while doing this, a joyful kind of flow starts to happen. And if you're like me, you eventually end up with something that you never would have imagined to begin with, and that even is halfways decent. 

If the process just went along placidly and predictably, well then maybe it wouldn't be all that creative. 

A Walk on the Headlands

I have started a new painting. It is from a photo I took during a walk with Rob along the headlands at Villa Nova de Milfontes, in the Alentejo region of Portugal. In fact, it was the same day that I took the photo of the seascape at Milfontes which I later painted. I have written about it here.

As you can see, I am just getting started. Working on this painting has made me reflect on how I get started on a new painting. It seems that I do not always start the same way. 

When I do a landscape, whether painting en plein air or from photo references, I always spend a very long time thinking about the composition, and sketching the main shapes lightly on the canvas. Although I do not use a grid or any other aids, and I do not do a really detailed drawing, I am very careful about getting the shapes and their placement relative to each other accurate. 

However, if I am doing an abstract painting,  I do not do a preliminary drawing at all. My abstract paintings often are quite organic and playful. 

With a landscape, after doing the drawing, my next step is to choose my palette of colours. Again, I spend a long time at this. Mostly, I limit my palette to 2 reds, 2 yellows, 2 blues, and titanium white. I mix my other colours from these primaries. Which reds and so forth that I choose depends on the effect I want to achieve, and the quality of the light. However, there are a few supplementary colours that I am quite fond of, such as mineral violet, Indian red, and magenta, and occasionally one of the umbers or siennas. 

The next step in my process varies. Usually, my aim is to block in the basic shapes and cover up the white canvas. Sometimes I start by doing a wash of the main colours that I see in each section, without really considering the values. In this case I correct the values later. 

Other times, I start with a monochromatic value study, either using a main unifying colour in the scene, or using a complement of the main colour theme. An example of this is the orange underpainting I did in this painting of my (mostly green) back yard. I do this complementary underpainting when I want the complement to bleed through, add visual interest, and make the main colour pop. Because I use impressionistic colour principles, I never do my underpainting in grey or brown. I want my colours to be clean, not muddy. 

In the painting that I have just started above, I haven't followed any of my usual processes of blocking in. Instead, I put in the sky and hills, and then painted in the fences and figure in a preliminary way. I was worried that if I did a wash, my fences and figure would disappear into the ground. I felt I needed to define them first. I also wanted to establish my darkest values, and these were in the figure, the fences, and some bushes and shadows. 

However, that left me with a problem -- a lot of white everywhere. When the white canvas predominates, you can't see the colours and values properly against each other. I started blocking in the background colours, and at first I tried to capture the actual colours that I saw and the values at the same time. However, that was not working, maybe because of all the white. So now I am just putting in the basic colour areas, and I can see that many of them are both brighter and darker than I want them to be. However, the colours and shapes so far have given me something interesting to work with the next time I paint. 

Wind Warning - Poem

Wind Warning

Walk into the valley of dog walk

Yip talk, stick toss into the wind

Its susurrous shush, its raucous roar

Muscles my auditory am

Roils the curls of winter trees

Their arms, their fingers sweeping, bending

Earache of listen, flagellated face

I toil against its bulk

Meltwater royal blue path, slush pillows, puddles

While the black dog bounds through undulating grass

Yellow field

Eats snow, looks back

Wind warning, gusting to 100 k.

Lately, I have not written many poems. Unfortunately by the end of the day, my work tends to suck all language out of my temporal cortex, leaving no playful words. However, today on my walk with the dog, a sunny day with big wind, a poem crept into my thoughts. 

So here it is, first draft.

I have included a photo of the area where we walked. This photo was not one I took today, but a few weeks ago. If I had taken one today, the snow would have looked soggier. The wind? Not so easy to represent in a photo. 

The Bright Possibility of a Day

Today I awake, and the sun is shining brilliantly on fresh snow. Although it it is cold outside, minus twenty, there is no wind. My first thought is that a little later, after breakfast and a slow leisurely morning, we will go out and cross-country ski at the golf course. 

Rob groans at this. Yesterday we made an excursion to the nearest ski hill (a slow two hours each way because of icy roads) and spent the afternoon pounding the slopes. In his mind, that means that today should be a day for relaxation - a bit of reading and internet surfing. But for me, every day is filled with possibilities, potential new projects, excursions, and accomplishments. Getting some exercise outdoors is always on the list, except in the most foul weather. 

Yes, I have a mental list of things to do. Some of them are "should do's" that hang about on the list for weeks, months, or even years. These are things like: hem those pants, unpack the last ten boxes of books from our last move, organize my digital photos, and frame my degrees. This last one has been on the list for more than 20 years! About two years ago, I did get around to purchasing the frames, but it still have not framed the degrees. At this rate, I will be retired before my degrees are framed and on the wall. On the plus side, last month I ordered, shortened and hung curtains in the guest bedroom and my home office. These rooms had been curtainless since our move, and I was prompted to finally obtain curtains by the pending arrival of Christmas guests. Another "should do" that was done over the holiday break was taking our discarded clothing to donate to a local charity. 

There are also standing items on the list, tiresome must do's pressing forward demanding attention, like housecleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, car maintenance, and so forth. If I am not careful, these types of tasks can fill up the best part of a day, leaving little time for creative and enjoyable activities. 

Aside from the "must do's" and the "should do's", I spend a great deal of my leisure time on lazy but enticing activities like reading (novels, nonfiction, art magazines, newspapers and news magazines), and reading blogposts and articles on favourite websites, or watching Ted Talks, or how-to demos, watching movies or series, talking on the phone with friends and family, cooking, shopping (only as much as necessary), going out to dinner, and social events. If I am not careful, a beautiful day full of possibilities can slip away before I realize it.

The things I would really like to spend more time doing include: outdoor excursions and adventures (hiking, skiing, X-C skiing, cycling, fishing, kayaking), writing (blog posts count), painting and other creative projects, gardening, cooking/ baking/ preserving foods, and spending time with friends and family. I spend so much time at work that non-work time is precious. 

It is time to throw another load in the washing machine, and then grab those cross-country skis and get out there in the sunshine!

Remembering Sophie

Ten years ago, I accepted a new job in a small northern city and moved there with my two younger children in the summer of 2004. We bought a log house in a semi-rural area, with a large fenced yard. I promised my kids a dog. Our family had never had a dog before.

After about six months of settling in, my son reminded me, somewhat persistently, that we still didn't have a dog. We decided (or maybe I decided) that we would get an adult dog rather than a puppy. As I was working long hours and both of the kids were in school, I did not think that we would be able to spend enough time at home to look after and train a puppy. We liked the idea of giving a home to a rescue dog.

So during the winter and spring of 2005, my son and I began making visits to the animal shelter in town. Each time, we would walk down the central aisle peering into kennels. We saw many mean looking short-haired black dogs, a few pit bulls, some old sick dogs, and a couple of frantically yapping little dogs. Two or three time times, we took a dog for a walk to "try it out" but never did we find a single dog that seemed like a good fit for us.

We were looking for a loving family dog who would get along well with people and cats. Tragically, we had recently lost our beloved old cat, Tuxedo, who was attacked and killed in our front yard by a neighbour's dog that had escaped its owner. Therefore, we were especially cautious about dogs who seemed aggressive or antisocial. We still had one remaining cat, Chaucer.

Summer rolled around and we still did not have a dog. We did, however, acquire another cat, our grey tabby, Oliver. During those visits to the animal shelter, we often took a peek into the cat room, and every time we saw Oliver sitting, tidy and calm in his tiny cage, just waiting for someone to come and choose him. One day, I plucked him out of his cage. He put his paws up on my shoulders and purred into my ear. we took him home with us. He is still with us, and he is the most cuddly and loving cat I have ever known.

One day in August 2005, a member of my soccer team showed up at the field with two young dogs on leashes. One was a black and tan short-haired male, and the other was a midsized female black and tan wire haired terrier cross. My teammate explained that she wanted a dog, and that these two dogs, a brother and sister, had been found abandoned on the streets of the town. She had tried to find the owner unsuccessfully, and had taken them home. Although she only wanted one dog, she was thinking of keeping both of them because she thought the two of them should stay together. I looked at the female terrier cross and immediately liked her. She was exactly the dog we had been looking for.

"If you change your mind and decide not to keep both dogs, give me a call. I will take that terrier dog," I told her.

Two weeks later, my teammate called. "You can have the female terrier if you still want her. You can even have both of them. I just couldn't manage them."

And that is how Sophie became part of our family. She came to us on September 11, 2005 (my son recalls the exact date). The vet said that she had been spayed, and that she was probably about one and a half or two years old, and not older than three.

At first Sophie was afraid of everything.We think that she must have been abused in her early years. She was afraid to come into the house. She was afraid of sudden movements and noises. She was especially terrified of men. She cringed when we tried to pet her, and she never barked. When she was anxious, she chewed things, especially my shoes.

She also was an escape artist. She chewed through her leash or ropes, and she could squeeze through, jump over, or dig under most fences. We called her our Houdini dog.

But she settled in and quickly became a member of our family. She was very smart and easy to train (although somewhat willful). She overcame her fears, and became the loyal loving dog that was her nature. Sophie loved my son, and often sneaked into his bedroom and slept with him on his bed. When my daughter returned from a trip away from home, it is hard to picture a more joyful welcome than the one Sophie gave her. Sophie and Oliver became best buddies, and often slept cuddled together. But first and foremost, Sophie was my dog. She listened to my voice, and quickly learned a vocabulary of more than 20 words. She followed me from room to room. She was always sleeping outside my bedroom door in the morning; was in the kitchen with me while I cooked; slept  under the desk in my office while I worked; and was right beside my chair every evening. Sophie always was thrilled to go with me for a walk or for a ride in the car.

In the summer of 2007, my son, Sophie and I made a 6 week trip across (most of) Canada and back in an ancient motor home. Sophie was an excellent traveller. In December 2007, I met my husband to be, and his dog, Kate. Kate and Sophie became constant companions. In 2012, we moved east to the prairies. Sophie loved to run through through the fields and coulees. She had a way of bounding upwards so she could see over the tall grasses, and she was always the first to spot a rabbit, deer, or grouse. Even though she often came running back to us with a face full of burrs, it was such a happy face!

This fall, Sophie started to lose interest in her food. We tried her on different foods, and each appealed to her for a short time, and then she would lose interest. She became thin, although in every other way she seemed energetic, happy, and healthy. Then about ten days before Christmas, she stopped eating altogether. That was followed by laboured breathing and lethargy. After multiple visits to the vet and many tests, the vet diagnosed her as having a tumour in her chest cavity. Her lungs were filling up with fluid and she couldn't eat. The last morning, she even refused water.

Sadly, we had to put her down on Christmas eve. Our dear little Sophie is with us no longer. Although I know that she had a good life and I would not have wanted her to suffer, I miss my loyal, loving canine companion.

Sophie, on the right

   

Larry Seiler, Artist

Tonight I would like to feature Larry Seiler. Larry is an amazing plein air artist living in northern Wisconsin. He has won many awards for his paintings. His style ranges from quite realistic and precise to a more loose and painterly approach, as in the painting below. 

This painting, titled Flooded Timbers, 10 by 20, oil on linen, is actually one of his studio paintings rather than a plein air work. I have chosen to present it here because I think that the way he establishes a focal point of interest in this painting is compelling. His use of light is masterful. As in all of his works, he demonstrates great control of his brush strokes to create a very effective image of what he sees.

He maintains both a painting website at larryseiler.com and a blog. Check them out to view his many landscapes, portraits, and examples of wildlife art. Of course, I love the landscapes the most.