Sidetracked Charley

BP has admitted that its latest effort to stem the flow of oil into the no longer pristine waters of the Gulf of Mexico has failed. They claim to have another plan to implement but if we all pull out our best plans first and BP is down to attempt four or five then what is in the future is not good. The sick jokes are now popping up: BP's new oil clean up method - birds and furry animals. And a website is taking bets on which will be the first fish, bird or animal of the gulf to go extinct because of this. I hope not the brown pelican. I love pelicans. I am not sure why this particular event of all the horrid things going on in the world today is so troubling to me. Maybe it is the greed of BP and other oil companies. Or all the short cuts we now know they took to expedite the flow of oil and make this spill more than just possible but probable. Or that our country has no power to oversee these oil shore leases because of concessions made by Bush II. Or that BP has been able to ...

I was remarking to a friend recently that the month of May was lost. I am shocked to find that in a few short days it will be over. By lost I mean in the scheme of the normal flow of my life. There was vacation and visit from friend and then the death of my brother-in-law. So while I was totally aware of the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon on April 22, 2010 I have come late to the total scope of this disaster. In fact, it is only within the last couple of days as the reality of the volume of the oil spill upon the waters of the Gulf of Mexico has reached the news, despite BP's efforts to minimize coverage of this event, that I am becoming fully aware of the horror of this. It isn't just the pictures of the oil slicked dying birds, or the soiled beaches I have walked upon in better days. It is the screams of the earth as the ecological microcosms of salt marshes and bayous are chocked off from oxygen and life which are such a disturbance in the force for me. ...

Some days I really don't feel I make a lot of direct progress: Sort of like a crab that walks sideways through the sand, first scuttling one way and then the other. Yesterday was like that. I seemed to be going all which ways and not making my way any further up the shoreline. Spinning wheel days. But as I was making a shopping list for a previously unplanned trip to Taos this morning I began on the back side to list my accomplishments. I got all the trees and bushes around the house watered I got the Smokey Thyme (only 6 to go) and the purple flowering ground cover planted I have a definite plan for two 14 x 46 inch horizontal paintings (perhaps I should finish the others) Laundry and the last of the suitcase unpacked Tended to pet sitting duties including talking to two new clients Interviewed a possible long term renter of the apartment Looked through Utah pictures for more ideas to paint Made a chicken salad to nibble on the next couple of days Admittedly I did not m...

I think I am having re-entry issues. First there was the vacation in Utah. Then I returned home to have my friend, Dianne, stay another week to help me finish up the furnishing of the rental unit.  Then she left and I thought I could get back to some semblance of normality and my sister called to inform me her husband, Alan, had just died. Below is a typical image of him on the vacation. I have lots of images with him and my sister. I find them every time I go through looking for a particular picture I want to use as a basis for a painting. Like this one. Or this one. And yesterday after I returned from the memorial service I had all the telephone calls to make to those who asked to be notified how it went. And then this morning I got the calls from the people that somehow had not heard but were wondering if I had returned from my vacation yet. I had asked my neighbors to watch the fur kids and water some plants on Saturday. It did not look when I had returned that either...

What I shall always remember about J. Alan Baker is how much he loved my sister. I always told her she got one of the last good ones so I was not even going to bother to look. He was not only good to her but good to her two kids, Patrick and Mary. And he was a grandfather to end all grandfathers to the six children of Pat and Mary. The back country trip up Lavender Canyon was the last of our road trip this May and we all had fun including the Rubicon. We all laughed when Alan lost his shoe in the wet sand of a narrow canyon he scouted before we went through gingerly. He took more photos than Deb and I so being able to take one of him was special. I stood back and photographed them together on more than one occasion like this one where they paused in the middle of Musselman Arch. The whole trip seemed like a last adventure on some level. But as the eldest I was more concerned I would not be this way again. This was the ritual tripod photo. One of those happy moments on a back roa...

There is an arch in the ridgeline, just left of center, in this picture. It was one of those surprise treasures discovered when focusing entirely on something else. We had been looking for arches in the main Lavender Canyon but in the West branch I had begun aiming at recording just the colors and formations of the walls. It was so narrow and the walls so tall. I loved the pinks and yellows and the lavenders and the rolling shapes. I have taken those colors into my appointing out of the apartment. Now the goal is to take the forms and sights into my paintings. But rather like looking for arches it is difficult to look for creativity. I have done all the "tasks" connected with painting. I have the canvases stretched and the sizes of them marked out on my sketch pad. I have gone through those pictures among the thousands that stand out in my mind and printed them out in 5 x7's to inspire my sketching. Now it is time to center myself and find the arch when looking for so...

The frenzy of getting ready for a road trip and then the frenzy of this particular tip followed by getting home and hitting the ground running, as it were, has been exhausting. But there has been something calming about returning to some sense of normal routine. But after the time away they do seem a bit strange. But isn't that rather what vacations are all about: to open our perspective and stretch the envelope just a bit. A friend of mine mentioned the Zen in the photographs I have been posting after my Canyonlands adventure. And in culling through them and uploading to FlickR and posting to my blogs and Facebook I began to slow down just enough to see that aspect. I would have loved to have set on the bank of Lavender Creek and just sketched and meditated. Or contemplated for hours the reasons for the folds and crevices and hallows in this rock face. But during vacations we are trying to cram so very much in to so very few days. It has only been upon returning home that I ...

Why is it I always forget the amount of time after a vacation that it takes to settle back in. I have been home since Tuesday and am not completely unpacked. My friend who was house and fur kid sitting is still here. She goes back on Sunday. Meanwhile she is helping me spruce up the apartment. It will be a vacation rental this summer and fall. I was at the local thrift store yesterday and got some lovely lamps that just match the bedding on the queen bed. And some great decorator pillows too. Still looking for the table and chairs. Taos trip tomorrow for that and a couple Wal-Mart items. Today I decided to reward myself for my hard work by working on two unfinished paintings in the studio. Taos means art store and I want to figure out what size of stretcher bars and panels to buy to record my new Colorado Plateau impressions. Thinking of actually painting some cactus flowers. Speaking of paintings, I took some of those I do not lug to shows these days and used them to decorate the...

When we scheduled our trip to Arches and Canyonlands we were thinking about the temperature and the fact that school was not out. Figured it would be warm enough to camp but not too hot to hike, and the vast majority of people we would encounter on weekdays would be adults. What we had not considered was wildflowers and cacti. We were absolutely amazed at the variety of plants in bloom around us - or getting read to bloom like the prickly pear cactus. Of the fields and fields of budding Prickly Pear we found only one blossom. The Claret Cup Cactus was another matter all together. After we spotted the first flash of vivid dark red we saw them everywhere - even sandwiched between rocks. Another star was the small barrel cacti with their lavender blooms. They seldom got more than a foot tall and 6" around but they largely grew in a solitary setting where they could make the most of their showy flowers. The Yuccas were everywhere too and we watched them for days as their...

My sister with her Rubicon allowed us to get off the beaten path in this last road trip to the canyonlands of Utah. Perhaps my favorite off-road experience of the trip was the one taken on the last day - Lavender Canyon in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. The trail opened with what could be a view in any of the four states the Colorado Plateau covers. I thought this bluff, which I photographed again and again in various lights and from different angles was very New Mexico in its appearance. And the lavender and purples of the morning shadows hinted at the name of the trail. Here is that bluff again after we had turned up the trail and encountered the stream which would be a repetitive feature in our trip. We would cross it several times and meander along dry beds feeding into it when the rains come. The deeper we went into the canyons the higher the walls rose. And the desert lacquer took on subtle shades of lavender too. The very tops of the canyon walls were...

We left at 4:21 in the morning on Sunday too excited to sleep longer. And had to drive through winter to get here. We saw tons of elk and not very much road because at times we were in total white out conditions. Still the early start got us here in plenty of time to do a beginning loop of Arches National Park to refresh the spirit. The remnants of clouds and snow were to make for some fantastic photos for the next days. While it was still quite chilly we did have to stretch our legs from all the driving and take in some of the short treks to arches just off the loop drive. Had missed Sandstone Arch on our first trip here but got some great photos of it on this trip. Only on the beginning of our third full day in Moab. Seems as if we have done more than can be included in those days. But each day begins about 6:30 and goes to 7:30 or eight before we return to base camp to prepare dinner and enter into the continuing Yahtzee tournament. Inspiration for paintings has been abundant a...

My first excursion into the canyons of Colorado Plateau was in 1963 when to celebrate my graduation from high school the family went to the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park. My sister and I did not get back to there until 2004 and then our focus was more on Arches and Island in the Sky and Bryce. I found my muse that August. And went to Lake Powell, formerly Glen Canyon, in 2006. Tomorrow we depart to take another look at Arches and Island in the Sky but we are also going to the Needles and Maze area of the south part of Canyonlands National Park. Our intention is to see what we missed, but there are favorite spots we will no doubt revisit. There will be three laptops and six cameras on this exhibition to the Utah part of the Colorado Plateau. No doubt when there is time and WiFi we will post the visions we see on our journey and have attempted to capture. But most important to me is to reconnect with the spirits of the walls and canyons. It is indeed a magical place and I ne...