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The Gate is Open

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I love visiting this Benedictine Monastery. I love the chanting. I love the silence, I love the ritual. I love the feeling of going back in time 1500 years. I love that I am welcomed so warmly, sometimes with words and sometimes with a smile. I like the daily ritual of keeping the hours, and work and quiet. It is good to be reminded that I don’t have to be so busy. It is good to be reminded to live an intentional life, whatever that intention may be.

I did this painting during a free period. I painted with a joyful heart and a quiet spirit. The late morning light was so beautiful on the gate to the little guest cottage we stayed in.

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Middle Tide

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I photographed this painting in its micro plein air setting. I lift out the tin of paints and use the empty box bottom as a palette, and water cup. The bottom corner holding my water, and then then I use the upper part to mix my colors. The tiny system works great, I encourage any artist out there to make there own, mine is made of mint tins and half pallets of water colors.

I painted this on a break from snorkeling. The ocean was composed of many blues and greens which made it fun to paint. The multicolored fish under the water, the seal napping to my left, and the turtles popping up their heads you will just have to imagine.

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Campsite in Paradise

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That little tiny yellow green triangle is a tent. The thin white lines are a waterfall. It is facing one of the most beautiful beaches in the world – but you have to earn the view…getting there requires crossing several mountains and valleys on foot. This is perhaps the tiniest painting I have ever done, it is 3″x 2″ and the paint set is about the size of a pink pearl eraser (we were backpacking).

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¿cómo amaneció usted?

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Buenos días, ¿cómo amaneció usted?
Good morning, how did the sun rise upon you?

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Can you consider it plein air painting, if you paint through a window? We do. My youngest and I love to greet the day before dawn, and her easel is perfectly positioned to paint the sunrise, next to an east facing window. I switched the light on to take her photo, but we painted in the dim light and quiet of dawn, she at her easel, and I, set up in the windowsill.

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Sand dunes sketch box

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Painting plein air in the wind is tricky. I finally found a system that worked well….instead of setting up an easel which is apt to flip in a gust of wind, I sat with a little sketch box in my lap and worked on a 5″x7″ pieced of sanded paper securely taped down.

The sky allowed for an interesting study in color this afternoon. Above the dunes it was a bright, rich, almost-cobalt blue; above the water, the same sky looked almost grey compared to the deep blue-green ocean.

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Crumbling Wall

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The Old Ruins
by: Mary Dow Brine (1816-1913)

If ye could speak, old ruins,
That rise in stately pile,
As tho’ ye longed to boast the power
That ye possessed erewhile;
If ye could tell the grandeur
Of the old days long past,
Ere Time, with his destroying touch,
Came ruthlessly and fast,
To level all the glory
That clung to your proud walls–
Ah! grand would be the story
Of those ancestral halls!
What tales of high-born maidens!
What tales of Cavaliers!
What comedies and tragedies!
What tales of hopes and fears!
What stories, too, of triumphs,
And tales of wrong and right!
What histories of the clouds of life,
And of its joys so bright!
But solemn is the silence
That reigns about you here;
Your secret hides in the deep heart
Of the old forest drear,
And Peace is ever brooding
Above your crumbling walls,
And heaven’s sunshine dances thro’
The space of vanished halls.

This old rock wall is on our farm, oh that these old rocks could tell their stories. I love to imagine the life that took place within the walls of this old house a hundred years ago. As I painted the fireplace I wondered what might have been stuffed into stockings hung by this mantel Christmases past. I painted in plein air, but I had to remember the lovely apricot light, for it never lasts long.