When sunny, the outdoors can be blindingly clear. However today, upon walking though the sliding glass doors, I could not tell whether my eyes were clean or sullied. Winter passed and I thought the haze of gray in and out of the house lifted. Despite the shade from the Red Oak, I can see color. Stark in the sunlight, the only drawback is the pain to my eyes and the confusion to my heart. I see color and strangely enough I am not comparing nature to a tube of Winsor and Newton's finest. In defense, don't want to commit to proclaiming nature pale and wan because I get deluded that what is natural can not compare to the vibrancy of ground pigments; that would be a sacrilege. So I look hard where cast shadows do not fall to find nature awake.
From the metal chair, spring is raw. My first attention is the pale yellow flowers of the collard greens. In the sun they flash the bellies of bumble bees and sun burnt leaves . Confusion, confusion, confusion. Am I looking at a painting or is life teeming this mystical? Clover reads the same way – beckoning, needing, and mesmerizing in the fray. Dare I uproot stalks and leaves to bless my belly; then bite and be fed. Ground cover bellows, “I am alive” and flashes of Eucharist in the sun come to mind. They are calling colors voicing me back into my limbs. Ironic though, taking the breath out of lungs when the neighbor intimates living paintings have a time limit. Winter eventually consumes as well as a lack of water. In my pride I tout the sleet and rain by midnight. Stalking back into the house I mumble the decay of the garden over the past twelve years has not stopped me from study and it will not. I revel in the fall of the garden even more than its resurrection. If not solely because the heat of the day is pressing in ways more tolerable in the autumn, than during the waking sun of spring.
Just like primitive artist rites, learning colors again seems in order. Gouache makes one type. Oil another. Should I make it to that oil painting studio in my mind, we will see a different depth on canvas. Local color is all I revel from the collards and the clover. I know I do not want to mix colors to arrive at some grayed out hue called “Eureka”. I want to be direct. I may not be able to do that with other therapies, but this may be the best approach for my energies. Local and direct, save making gray for making stars out between late afternoon clouds. Save Prussian blue for dancing stars swirling in the spirit hour. Garden after moon rise. Hmm. I will try not to argue with the plein air urge. Still, magic dwells in the afternoon shade through then. Before the week is out I must. Before the change in temperature I trust.
As ever, stay hungry and curious,
N.A. Jones