Spring is close by

In eleven days we mark the first day of spring and while many places still feel like winter, I though I would share a few surprises from yesterdays trip home after dropping my daughter off in Santa Cruz. By all accounts it was a beautiful day with rain showers and periodic breaks of sunshine, with pockets of warmth, followed by strong winds and even a down pouring of hail. And I loved every minute of it.

Just north of Santa Cruz but before Davenport I came upon a field of blue flowers bathing in the sun. Cars were speeding by as I made my way down an embankment and then up the hill. For the next half hour or so, I stood, photographing the flowers, which after many years simply spread unabated into a visual spectacle.

I was on my way to the cove where upon my last visit during a heavy storm I discovered the two heart-shaped stones. Since then I had a strong yearning to visit this location as I felt it had been calling me all these weeks.

The opening to the coastal access is nested between eucalyptus trees and easily missed. The wind was blowing hard and I felt under-dressed even with a heavy jacket. On my way to the shoreline, a rain shower erupted, but I remained undaunted and continued on. As I reached the edge of the cliff, the rain stopped and I began witnessing nature’s impressive display of light, clouds, and a rainbow.

Tansy-leaved Evening Primrose

On the way down to the cove, I noticed between the grasses a yellow flower beaming with joy. It seemed to be shouting for attention as strong gusts of wind had it swinging back and forth, shaking any drops of water from its yellow petals. There were a few more individual clusters of evening primrose a little further on, however a number of their flowers had been battered by previous heavy rainfall, that the petals were damaged.

After gathering a few large pebbles for the garden and finding another heart shaped rock, I continued to drive north towards Pigeon Point Light House. Just before the official entrance to the lighthouse, I pulled over on to a dirt road the field hands use to gain access, so that I could photograph the ocean and the dramatic cloud formation that was unfolding.

The ground was soft and soaking wet as I made my way towards the ridge. Sheltered in a thicket of shrubs I noticed something bright and after a quick glance I proceeded onward towards my objective, knowing I would return to the where nature held a surprise.

Tough-leaved Iris

Though I already knew a future post about this trip would be forthcoming, I decided that I could not keep to myself natures treasure of a single blue iris emerging from the surrounding darkness and shinning in the rays of a late afternoon sun. I needed to share, bringing some cheer to those still suffering winters hold, even though we to are still in our midst of a northern California winter. I still had one more place to visit before heading home. The hour was getting late, my appearance a mess and though very tired, my spirit held firm. Next stop, Bean Hollow.

By now the winds had increased, the heights of waves multiplied from earlier in the day, and their ferocity had also become more pronounced. I headed on down the steps onto a beach of tiny pebbles, watching a group of small birds chasing a retreating wave, while collecting shells the ocean had surrendered. Without warning, I was standing in the middle of a brief hailstorm. Once it passed, I took a few more photographs of the setting sun and then returned home.

This day would not have been possible if I did not take my daughter back to school. I would have not experienced the beauty and drama of nature as I did and the adventure does not end there. For back home there waited another surprise, a letter from a concerned friend, who knew of my medical procedure of last week.

Eva Macie — A Creative Life

Eva Macie from A Creative Life, sent me a beautiful hand made card that she had crafted with loving care. A collage of different papers, speckled with a little bit of fiber and dashes of gold leaf, a few lines and an outline of a heart. All I can say is that it was the crowning of my day, making it a most memorable one indeed.

Anna Mavromatis — my Ephemera . . .

As I bring this post to a conclusion, I wish to publicly express an earlier joy that arrived without any expectations in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It came from Anna Mavromatis, my Ephemera . . ., in response to receiving full resolution files of two irises that appeared on my other blog. She had sent me a print of each, along with a Thank you card that she too had made herself. Anna’s technique employed the use of a computer to assemble a botanical scan and that of a bee with a photograph of a woman, then printed on her mono printed-paper she had made earlier.

I thank you both, Anna and Eva for your beautiful

and thoughtful gift that I shall treasure dearly.

Egmont

A change of surroundings

It has been far too long since my last posting, even though there was one written and ready to go last Tuesday on Forgiveness, but I felt it was time for something less serious, especially now that the holidays have passed and there are only two more months of winter left. There was even a draft about the rough storms California faced for a number of days, as my first exit from the house in just as many days for a medical appointment, had allowed for a photo to be captured. It showed how one of our reservoirs, Briones, had managed to raise its water level after a three-year drought.

Briones Reservoir

Contra Costa County, California, January 22, 2010

As the previous weekend passed, it was time to take my daughter back to Santa Cruz. I was looking forward to our company and the trip back home along the coast on Cabrillo Highway. The weather looked good all morning but after dropping off Ariana, it took less than an hour for raindrops to appear, signaling what was about to come. Undaunted, I continued to my two favorite places, especially one, a little hideaway. Just above Aña Nuevo State Park, lies the Aña Nuevo Whitehouse Creek trail, whose entrance is nestled between groupings of large eucalyptus trees easily missed from the road unless one is looking for it.

A little into the trail, it splits in two different directions, one north into the open area and the other west, towards the coast where another split in the trail would lead one down to the shore or along the ridge. My aim was to head down towards to a little cove, which when entered made one feel like the pages of an adventure book I read as a boy about pirates and smugglers came to life.

Now the rains became heavier, they had brought on also stronger winds, causing the surf to plunge deeper into the coast, almost reversing the flow of the stream that I no longer was able to cross in order to enter the cove and reach the beach. Never the less, I was able to retrieve from along the stream a few pebbles for wrapping. Once back in the car, it was off to Bean Hollow.

Bean Hallow

Bean Hallow, San Mateo County, January 25, 2010

By the time I arrived at Bean Hollow the rain stopped but the winds had increased significantly to cause the waves to cress between fifteen to twenty feet with an additional five-six feet of ocean spray on top. At first I was the only person, but soon several more die-hards arrived to observe the oceans display of aggression as it seas swells forcible trusted itself against the few outcropping of steadfast rocks that rose above the waterline for a spectacular show. Almost one hour later, I felt as if I was frozen to the bone, signaling that it was time to go home.

Bean Hallow beach

Bean Hallow, San Mateo County, January 25, 2010

The next day I managed another escape from the walls that have been confining me these past weeks with a return for another medical visit in Berkeley and since the day lighting was better than before, I was able to document a number of telephone poles. One of my long term projects I have been working on these last four years, with an earlier posting to The Artist Within Us and how these telephone poles were turned into an artistic vision, a new direction that my paintings since have taken. I promise to share more of these in upcoming posts so that you can see what it is that that has me so fascinated with these mundane totems lining the streets at regular intervals.

Amidst the grey a dash of colour

 Berkeley, California, January 26, 2010

The next several days were spent like most of this year at building The DIRECTORY, my third blog. It is a collection of resources for artists and a list of the blogs I follow. There is still far more work ahead, but do have a look when you have a moment.

The brief outing along the coast lifted my spirits considerable; it has offered much needed rejuvenation and has permitted my focus to see challenges in another view. Circumstances have not changed, but a little strength has been mustered that will permit me to go on, for it appears winters brooding finds itself waning as spring approaches and days begin to be longer.

I wish to leave you know with a thought and your next excuse for when your spouse cannot understand the mess you are making, just tell them

Kreative Menschen machen keine Unordnung,

es sind alles Ideen, die da rumliegen!

Translation:

Creative people make no messes,

they are just ideas lying around!

They still might not understand, but at least you won’t have to stand there in silence and have that blank but questionable look about you.

A glass of peach tea

The last few days it has been almost impossible to focus and accomplish any work since the Bay Area has had its fog bank disappear, resulting in temperatures reaching the century mark and more. I for one do not tolerate such heat, especially when the thermometer reads only a few degrees less inside the house than what it is outside in the shade and at 102° degrees Fahrenheit (38.889° C), I am useless and so is the laptop.

I had been trying to write the next installment, part three of distressing multiple layers of newsprint on a canvas to create a surface to paint on, when I looked at my glass of ice tea and the chilled bottle, realizing here was a wonderful distraction on the ‘simple pleasures’ in life.

Earlier this year I had purchased a bottle of Lorina lemonade from France because I wanted to recapture the pleasures of my childhood. Having grown up after the war, I still can, but vaguely, remember seeing the bombed out buildings and how precious certain foods were, like bananas, oranges, and strawberries, so even a bottle of flavored soda water was considered a luxury. Just as much a luxury as a small bag of lemon drops, which were carefully weighed by the merchant before he would reach over the counter, and hand me the bag.

There was no allowance, not until a few years later when I received a nickel for taking out the garbage. But those days, living in Hamburg, a city having suffered severe bombings, we were fortunate to live in a flat shared with another family and though we only had one room, it was ours. The only other memories I have of this time were the arguments my mother had with the proprietor, as to when she could use the kitchen or the bathroom. Never the less I tried my best to behave and do all my chores without much of a reminder, knowing that at the end of the week I would receive a reward.

Memory is a fickle thing. As one grows older, the mind becomes capricious and indecisive, resulting in gaps between events and chronology begins to blend its own reality, and we begin to believe this to be the unequivocal truth. Yet I recall specifically the lemonade coming in a shape of a wine bottle, having a ceramic bottle cap, which was connected to a metal mechanism that applies pressure so that the orange rubber at the end of the ceramic nipple creates a secure seal. So when I had that glass of Lorina lemonade several months ago, I not only relived a memory, I restored a sense of my past with the presence.

Though the taste of the lemonade brought back an experience, it is the bottle with its mechanical ceramic cap that has, like a long lost friend returned to become part of my life, to the point that I now have eight such bottles. Not sitting around in idleness or being used as decoration, rather employed to store and chill my peach tea.

Now this simple pleasure of the bottle and pouring the tea into a reused marmalade glass jar engages my mind to wonder and reminisce, reconnecting not only with the past but also with the old country. In many ways I feel fortunate being able to enjoy this singular pleasure, as plastic bottle with an aluminum screw on cap just does not have the same romantic qualities as this glass bottle embodies.

Obscure objects of desire

Over the year’s cherished treasures that have been hidden or accidentally misplaced, end up lost without explanation. These obscure objects of desire have a memory that lingers on, seemingly forever, surfacing unexpectedly just as in a recent conversation, when the memory set into motion the hands of time reversing the hours with a steady swiftness. Going back into the early years of my childhood, when at the age of ten or eleven we visited England, almost fifty years ago. Though I faintly recall Piccadilly Circus, the London Bridge, before it was dismantled and moved to Arizona, the underground and of course the Queens Palace with the changing of the Guards. However it was a British copper penny that I treasured most and for many years the coin was kept safe in various places until it finally was no more to be seen, yet I never forgot the beauty and wonder the coin imparted upon a very young mind.

In those indelible years I probably believed the penny possessed mysterious powers that I would have garnished from it, believing these to have made me invincible whenever I must have felt threatened from real or imaginary evil forces. On the other hand, memory faintly recalls the penny and other foreign currency to have been my secrete stash, a pirate’s bounty, kept with stamps and other perceived valuables in a small cigar box.

Yesterday I received a light brown envelope, upon which were affixed two British Revenue stamps, contained within was a package of about one hundred foreign stamps, a cigar package wrapping, and a 1939 British copper penny. These items my friend Ian had sent me from England after I had told him about the penny and how much I have missed it all these years. Now that I held the coin in my hand once again, it appeared much smaller then what I remembered, only realizing later that after almost fifty years my hand has tripled in size from that of a child.

Yet as I look at the penny, I cannot help but think about the many hands that it has passed through these last seventy-three years and the history it witnessed during that span. The detail of the coin has little wear, absent are also any visible nicks and scratches, that I begin to wonder if this penny might have been kept by a child who also had it part of his pirate booty. But as the years passed, the coin was lost to him, finding its way through other hands, eventually arriving in my hand, through the intervention of a friend. In regards to the stamps, that story is saved for another time.

Simple pleasures and Frogard’s roses

Though it was rather over cast with a cold steady breeze, the balcony sliding door was open for fresh air and while I was making the bed, the television was on in the background. Briefly glancing up at the screen, I noticed a young girl of ten, looking out of the vehicles windshield and while her pupils were growing more sizable so too was her smile. Stepping out of the car the camera followed her and we witness the young girls pace quickening into a steady sprint, moving across sandy dunes until she stops just at the waters edge. We finally see why the girl was beaming with excitement when we see the ocean surf fanning out before her feet. It was then I had asked myself “when was it the last time one looked at the ocean and saw it through the eyes of a child?”

As the thought took a grip upon the mind, I decided to Twitter the question for others to contemplate while I further pondered its significance for it had caused such a distraction to my routine in the morning.

Frogard’s roses

In the past I have taken a moment to observe a hummingbird dancing with almost invisible wings from one blossom to the next or followed with my eyes a disappearing garden friend, the bee, entering into the flowers carpel tunnel to collect pollen. These stolen fractions of a moment always have brought a smile and briefly placed everything back into a proper perspective.

So when my friends from the East Bay Artists Guild came to the house for our board meeting, in walked Frogard, handing me a pickle glass jar filled with freshly cut roses from her garden.

Their colour ranged from a deep dove ruby red to a slighter lighter shade of medium red. The roses gave off a compelling perfumed fragrance that filled the room with an intoxicating wonder and though the pickle glass jar was simple to keep the flowers fresh, it was to be the absolute perfect container, anything else would have just not complimented this climbing English antique rose variety.

This simple gesture by Frogard had me beaming just like the little girl upon seeing the ocean and as I kept looking at the roses throughout our meeting, I found myself in a favorable disposition.

We are primarily too busy multi-tasking, juggling duties that leave little to no time for one to slow down and even stop and take in a moment of undistracted silence. We have mostly forgotten that sometimes we need to look at life as a child sees it, so that when we view a stream of puffy clouds floating above us, we can imagine all sorts of mythical creatures.

It is not escaping our daily responsibilities; it is simple remembering the little pleasures and learning to appreciate them once again.

A favorite place of mine

At one point or another we all have a favorite place, it can be one that we have all to our own or a place we share with others. Since childhood I always had always a place I called mine, from the one under the staircase I claimed as a child, to the 120 square foot cottage that I had build in the backyard of our first house and which served as my graphic design studio. When we sold our home and I lost my cottage, we had moved into a larger house, one with a downstairs guest bedroom and its private bathroom became my new office space, the one the wife refers to as the dungeon because it is located at the lower level of our house.

Yet there is also place I feel in love with when I took a drive to discover what was there on the back roads where we now live. The location is less then two miles away and in these past eleven years I have watched closely the changing seasons upon this geographical location.

There is really nothing special about this section of land that is surrounded by rolling hills and where a two-way road cuts through its right side and runs along the base of several hills, a road that is traveled by those seeking a short cut to Martinez or Pleasant Hill.

Spring 2009

Earlier this year I drove by this magical field every Friday in order to attend my history of modern art class and depending on when I left the house, I would usually stop off, park the car, and take a number of photographs to record the weekly progress of the land reacting to the changing months and the weather.

In the previous years the field would be covered by the end of May in a sea of tall rich golden yellow muster flowers but this year, due to an unusual heat wave in January and February, along with a sever case of a drought, the plants rose to no more than two feet and never really matured into that ocean of yellow.

My Favorite Field in Spring

O/C, March 2002, 11 x 14 (27.94 x 35.56 cm)

Throughout the years I have painted this spot from various viewpoints. Either in early spring just as the ground broke open with the year’s new growth, to when the area was covered in full-grown muster flower, as well as when the plants were cut down and only dried bleach yellow stubbles remained.

Even when the land revealed its darker side after it had been plowed under; there was a beauty I found just as irresistible when the muster plants in all there flowering glory, stood tall.

My Favorite Field Turned to Gold by the Summers Sun

O/C, August 2008, 8 x 10 (20.32 x 25.40 cm)

However anytime I wish to cover another vantage point of this field I must locate an entrée area, since all the land along the road is sealed off with barbwire. When I do jump over a fence at a firebreak line, I need to keep my eyes open for any roaming cattle grazing, which includes possible snakes and depending upon the season, the blood sucking ticks.

Still I will return when ever the mood strikes and the light is right for more photographs from which I can draw upon for another painting, considering I can never stay long enough as I am trespassing on land owned by the water department and leased to the local cattlemen. It is rather a sad statement because I remove nothing from the land and I leave nothing behind, all I wish to do is enjoy its beauty and paint what I am experiencing so that others might enjoy what I have seen when they look at my paintings.

August 2009

As we near the end of summer and are closing in on late autumn, when the land will have been scorched brutally by the sun, I can only hope that with mid winter and the coming of spring, the clouds will return to darken the sky and unleash the angel’s tears upon the soil so that we can see once more the earth covered in an ocean of yellow.