Three Trees (2002)

I like this painting. Not sure what it is about.

Recently I have not had much extra energy. I've had a hard time responding to email. Maybe it is for good reasons. I have been doing art work daily for 51 days, which now includes weaving on an inkle loom. Maybe it's because I just took an exhilarating trip to Cariboo Country in British Columbia, requiring a 6-hour drive to get there. Maybe it's because so much of my energy goes toward trying to figure out how to get back into the work force without losing my creative momentum. Maybe it's because I think I'm younger than I am. Who knows?

Reading other blogs, being exposed to so much lively creative energy, and looking back at my previous art work has resulted in renewed creativity for me and less time for writing on my blog and making comments on other blogs, although I continue to visit a handful of blogs daily and am committed to posting my 40-year retrospective and then my ongoing art work.

This morning in a 7 a.m. pranayama (yoga breathing) class I've been taking, a class which meets every other week this spring, the teacher said that if all we can do in our daily pranayama practice is to lie down on the yoga mat for a few minutes and observe our breathing, that is okay. She compared pranayama to standing quietly offering an apple to a horse, rather than chasing a horse around a field in order to give the horse an apple. Maybe I'm tired in a general way because I've been chasing the horse, instead of letting the horse come to me as it would do naturally.

I'm seriously considering doing medical transcription again because it is something I can do at home and can define my own schedule. For all my searching, I have yet to find another line of work that I am suited for that doesn't require several years of expensive training, I am acutely aware that I am close to retirement age and financially vulnerable. It is disappointing to have failed so far to find another way of making a living. Starting Monday, I am taking a two-week evening refresher course in medical transcription. If that goes well, I will take the course that follows, ending in mid-June. I will try to think of myself as holding an apple and waiting for a horse and resist chasing a horse.

Calendar Series: 38th Month / Innocence (The Unexpected) (1988)

Not exactly sure why I titled this image with the name of the 25th hexagam of the I Ching. I do remember the first dramatic view of the Pacific Ocean on the way out of San Francisco on Highway 1 going south and remember wanting to paint how it felt to see that. Up near the setting full moon, which appears to be eclipsed, are the number symbols from the six sides of a European-style die. I must have been wondering if there is a connection between dice and hexagrams. To read the text for the 25th hexagram, click here. Below are two of my pastel drawings posted previously, in which an eclipsed full moon appears. Self-Portrait of an Old Friend as a Young Man (1982): and Middle of the Journey (1984):

Calendar Series: 22nd Month / Sunrise (1987)

Now I am beginning to remember that, over and over again, the ocean scene I was painting in the Calendar Series was from my memories of hours spent walking on the bluffs and beach at Montara on the San Mateo County coast in California, just about 12 miles south of San Francisco but a world away in terms of population and sense of place. 

On my way to the beach, I used to buy a "lunch" of golden raisins at the tiny organic food store (in those days it was called a "natural food" store) in Montara and then spend the afternoon walking and taking in the extraordinary multi-sensorial experience of feeling part of the ocean, clouds, sky, horizon, wind, sun, fog, gulls, killdeer, sanderlings, sandpipers, crows, sea lions, seals, orcas, whales, blue-sailed jellyfish, kelp, sand fleas, broken shells, driftwood, agates, chaparral-covered coast hills to the east, coastal plants growing on the bluffs and in the distinctively golden sand, all not far from eucalyptus groves and straw-flower fields. 

Sometimes when it was sunny but windy and cool, I would dig a bed for myself in the warm sand of that steep-sloped beach and sleep and dream. It would be almost 15 years before this experience of loving and being loved by a place would show itself in paintings. During the time when I lived within weekend afternoon driving distance of Montara Beach, I was not drawing or painting at all but working with brightly colored carpet warp, making small colorful tapestry-like images using a macrame technique.

(the photos are from an online album of splendid photos of the northern California coast by Daniel Wolf-Root that I found while looking for images of Montara)