October 14, 2014 – “Rest” – a video progression

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October 14, 2014 – The little junco’s last moments

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Yesterday morning, as Bo and I took off for our hike up the hill, I saw a little darkish ball of something on the sidewalk in front of the house.  I got closer – not letting Bo get to it – and saw that it was a little bird (I looked it up online and think it was a junco) with its beak tucked under a wing, all curled up.  I was concerned about it, but decided to let it be. When we came back it was in the same position, about a foot away from where it was.   I went in to call Wild Care to find out if I should pick it up and move it to a place where it wouldn’t be so vulnerable. When I came back out it had uncurled and was lying on its side on the sidewalk, eyes open and not responding when I nudged it with a leaf.  The sweet little bird had died.

Being there on either side of this little bird’s death told me what to write about today – because I’ve been watching something in my consciousness and have been resisting writing about it.  You see, I’ve been noticing myself ponder “the last time” of a lot of things.  It occurs to me that there will be a last time for everything.   As I’m painting, I think, one day, there will be a last painting I ever make. There will be a last time Bo and I hike up that hill, a last kiss that Joseph and I share, the last time we will sleep in this house, or go to Kauai, or….  I even go to the point of thinking of the day the last human is alive on the planet and the last bit of energy emanates from our sun.  It’s a star and stars burn out.

Some of these “last times” are not so momentous. We will probably not live in this house for the rest of our lives, so the last night we sleep here we will know that it is and can be present to it, grateful for all the rest and shelter this house has provided to us. But will I know which is the last painting I make? Or that this is the last kiss?

There is another version – that this is never to be repeated. Often it’s in the kitchen.  I make a soup with the bones and juices from a leftover chicken that had rosemary and a bit of lemon in it. To the broth I throw in the cauliflower/leek gratin leftovers, and some cold mashed potatoes, puree it up with a bit of milk and grated parmesan and it’s soup we start meals with over a few days.  I know I will never make that same soup again, the ingredients are never the same.

Eee-gads!  What am I doing, thinking this way?!  It all seems quite morbid!  But it’s true, it’s real.  Nothing in our manifest world is forever.  Everything dies, ends, runs out or cannot be repeated.  And we want it that way.  If I think about, even feel into, being immortal, my physical body living on and on and on into forever, it’s dreadful.  The endlessness is heavy. There is a blandness, even a torturous-ness to it.  But more importantly, I think that if things don’t end, then nothing is precious. Taken to a finer point, the moments of my life – our lives – are each distinct and different and are never to be again. For me thinking this way is a huge call to mindfulness – to be awake and present as much as I can.

I absolutely do live in the trust that the sun will come up in the morning, warming our planet for billions of years yet and that Joe will come home and give me a “hello, Honey” kiss this evening. But, paying attention to the “someday” keeps me awake for this morning’s “have a good day” kiss (which we just shared!).

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about all of this and wondering if I think about these “last times” all the time, how do I not get despondent, what keeps me inspired?  And I felt the skin on my body, warm and alive, I felt my body being breathed, without my having to think about it. I felt the eternal. The life force, the Source – for me it’s God. It animates it all, us all.  My faith is that God is never-ending.  It’s the “why” in my life – it gets me out of bed, connects me with Joe, Bo, you all – it gives me the energy to write this journal entry.

Ok, so there voice in me is saying I can’t believe that I’m writing about this. It’s quite trippy and I’m quite sure this is so not all there is to say about it. I’d love to know what it brings up in you, and what your experience is.

On another note – I finished a painting and will update later today.  Bright fall color – different than anything I’ve done before. I’m looking forward to what you think of it.

Wishing you color and light today.

October 7, 2014 – The last bit of night

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I’ve been waking these days somewhere between 3 and 4am.  It seems that all this menopausal body can sleep right now is about 5 or 6 hours.  I stay in bed and rest – not one for getting up to read.  I figure that if I’m at least resting my body and enjoying breathing, it’s better than nothing.  Thankfully, I don’t toss around, stressing about it anymore.

This morning I was wondering what to share with you today.  The stream that floated by contained all these stories of loss  – including my own.  It was Sunday morning and I was painting and listening to my music and Audrey Assad’s exquisite “I Shall Not Want” came into my ears.  I learned about her from a post written by David Brooks, where he noted that she’s often told by women that they listen to her music while in labor.  A wave crashed ashore:  grief that I’ll never have that experience, not just childbirth, but holding my own baby/ies in my arms.  It’s always there.  I no longer am a shivering ball on the floor, sobbing with the grief.  I can talk about it without the catch in my throat.  Yet, it bubbles up sometimes.

And then the paradox comes to me. I know in my knower, as my friend Joanne Cormier says, that I’d not be doing what I’m doing with my life if the in-vitro fertilization had worked. We’d have a 10-year-old now and I’d be Mom before anything else. I know me. I’d be focused there – and I’d want to be. I’d not worked so hard to become a mother at 40-something to then park my child in daycare to pursue my dream!  But I would not be painting, at least not with much regularity –and I’d for sure not be showing my art or teaching.  It’s hard enough for me to get myself to sit and paint sometimes now, without a child needing of me!

At the end of the fertility treatment road, it was 2004 and I had just left my contract position with Schwab in the city (San Francisco).  I jumped into real estate with my mom to do something – but the gnawing wouldn’t leave me.  In August I took myself to Rancho la Puerta in Tecate, Mexico for a spa week.  I spent the week doing only what I wanted to do – no sweat-‘til-you-bleed workouts, just dance classes, morning hikes, and looking at the sun through my eyelids.  I painted “Full Circle.”

It came to me that I needed to ask for help.  I prayed for the energy and inspiration to adopt (a whole odyssey in itself)  or to be given something else that would give my life meaning and purpose.  I got the “something else” – painting these watercolors – and now leading others in their painting journeys.

This is just my story. I think if we look, we all have a story of loss – of grief.  What lifts me back up is seeing what comes of it.   Saturday I was hauling the wood chips from the tree trimmings (it’s amazing now that the tree has been lightened up!) and randomly the thought came to me “what if Bill Wilson had not suffered from alcoholism?”  Millions of addicted people of all kinds would not have been helped with the 12 steps. Pain can be great fuel for transformation, for fostering connection – for bringing forth humanity. They say we are at our best when things are at their worst.  It’s a pisser that it’s that way, but it is that way!

I’m pretty certain that none of us escapes it.  It’s part of the deal of incarnation. We live a human life, we experience beauty, joy, pleasure, ecstasy even – and we have pain, loss and suffering. The light and the shadow – it’s all part of the bargain.  What I want for me, for you, for the world is to be able to see the light in the darkness.  I went out this morning with Bo to get the morning paper. It was still dark and I was ambushed by the beauty of the moon, nearly full, a shred of clouds over it, framed by the neighbor’s redwood trees. We can’t order up this kind of experience. We can just tune ourselves to notice and receive these moments when they happen.  My iPhone camera couldn’t capture it, but I wanted to share it anyway. I added a bit of color – because, well, that’s what I do.

Wishing you a lovely, lovely day,

Cara

October 1, 2014 – The old oak tree

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A week ago this morning, at 1:30 am, a huge limb from our ancient coast live oak tree (they say it could be anywhere from 150-300 years old) fell on our house, kicking off a chain of events that nearly completely took over my psyche.

This tree is 8 feet in diameter, 6 feet from our front door – and about 45 feet tall and twice as wide. We live under it. It probably should not have had a house built so close to it, but that was done in 1954 before either of us were born.  Now it is ours to care for and steward.  It lost an even bigger limb in May – due to internal rot, which so politely landed without harming the fence or the neighbor’s roof where it rested itself.

This one did a bit of damage – not huge, but it landed literally 5 feet or so from the skylight in my studio, the one I was painting under a few hours earlier.   It bashed a hole in the eave and shook the house – and us!   The consulting arborist came at first light and, seeing the solid wood of this branch, declared the tree likely unsafe.  He suspected the wood is dry and brittle due to the drought.

This meant it was upon us to take down this enormous, beautiful piece of nature’s sculpture – that processes who knows how much CO2 into oxygen every day – and has been since likely before Abraham Lincoln was born.  I wept.  I talked to a “tree whisperer” – a lovely woman named Heather Preston, who I met when working for Light Rain, doing art reproduction. We worked on all the images for her beautiful book called “Tree Spirits.”  She consoled me and wisely suggested that I honor it by capturing it in photos, drawings, paintings – and then with ceremony, before we took it down.

It was a huge deal to have the responsibility of deciding this tree’s fate. It seemed so unconceivable, looking up into it, still seemingly so very alive.  The next morning, I called the arborist to ask if we could press the pause button on the permit process to “remove” it.  He was at the time in conference with his colleagues on how we could mitigate the risk so we could safely live under it.  None of us had the stomach to take it down.  The birds, the squirrels, the shade-loving plants beneath it, it’s a whole eco-system. So we’ve decided to prune it rather aggressively and then cable the limbs together. I’m so relieved – and still leery of being under it.  I’m painting at the kitchen counter until it’s tended to!

We noticed that this year it has had an unusually abundant crop of acorns, and asked the arborist if the tree “knows” it’s in decline and is working extra hard to ensure its reproduction. This had me noticing the other coast live oaks in the area on my morning hike with Bo.  I saw that many of the trees had no acorns at all and none had anywhere near the amount on our tree.  This triggered my compulsion to head to Google. (I used to be a search geek for a living!)  I searched for “oak tree age acorn production” and I learned that oak trees don’t actually start producing acorns until they are sometimes as old as 25 years! Wow!  Twenty five years before they develop the resources to reproduce themselves.  Talk about patience!

Now, in its old-age, this tree is cranking out the seeds for potential new oaks like crazy.  This so speaks to me in my own process to grow myself as an artist and teacher/leader/guide.  Our insta-famous crazed world, where going-viral is revered, though super-compelling, is unsettling to me.  It’s obvious to me now why – it’s against nature.  Things that matter the most come in their own time; they require of us faithful hard work, and a season-after-season maturation process in order to bear fruit in abundance.

A new *big* painting for the spring – cherry blossoms!

It may be hard to see what’s going on here, but it’s the faint light of the projector on the watercolor paper after I finished drawing. It’s only a small piece of the painting.

Just one layer of the blue sky background in. I think it’s too blue! I used three pigments to make the color more rich: cobalt blue, manganese blue hue and ultramarine violet.

Here’s a corner of the blurry, out of focus parts of the paiting just starting in:

Peonies, roses, a terra cotta pot – “Lustina” accompied me through the winter

Completed painting on 2-26-2014:

Grapes – Finished in time for the Healdsburg art festival

The final progression of the painting I call “Zinoasis:”

Shannon’s portrait of Genevieve and her horse – start to finish – Nov 2013 – Feb 2014

Shannon Brown is the person we can all thank for getting me going leading watercolor groups. She kept on me as I stalled, because I had no idea what it meant to teach people how to paint. Shannon also takes workshops from a beautiful painter, Jeanne Vodden, who uses just three pigments and lays down many layers. This is a portrait of her daughter and her horse using that technique that Shannon worked on through the winter this year. The image she worked from was taken inside in an arena, but she decided to put them outside near vinyards and hills. It’s a beautiful painting. Hope you enjoy seeing how it evolved.

September 17, 2013 – New square of grapes

Here’s where I am today – pretty much all the leaves are done (may need to make changes after all else is painted). Working on the vine branches. Scroll down to see the various stages over the past two weeks.

September 11 – All the background done – starting in on leaves.

September 10 – Almost all the background painted.

August 30 – Sausalito Art Festival Gala this evening – just finished “Imagine” (water lily). Starting in on the far background – the central Marin hills from Mike and Julie’s place (former place, they’ve sold and moved to the city). I’m going to have to make friends with the new owner to keep painting her grapes!

September 17, 2013 – Tuesday Group

Sue started last Friday and now wants to come to BOTH groups for a while! Now, look at this painting, she’s spent two 4-hour sessions on it and she’s just started to paint – remarkable, huh?

Marilee’s aquarium – coming together – the color is fantastic, working on blending and layering.

Win started a new one today. Said she wanted to do something simple and focus on the background. I love how we all do things our way, even when we think we want to do them someone else’s way. This is Win’s palette, Win’s brush work, it’s inescapable – we are who we are, we do what we do!

Susie’s fabulous buoy painting – what a great piece this is. We talked about shadows and how instead of the being a slave to the photo, to have it be OUR servant.

Robin is back from Mexico and back to the group after a couple months away. We’ve missed you. This is Booker, her son’s dog. Going to be great to see it come along.

Paulette’s new piece – drew and started today – no moss growing in this chair! Sunflowers – from the back. Great background work.