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                                                   November 2012             Feb. 2013                                March                                          May                                                  June

                                                       July 2013

This one was hard to do. It was a half mile into the woods, which was not bad, but it is a really wild rookery and very new. Hardly anyone has seen it, and I was up on the steep hill, almost a cliff, over looking the Cuyahoga River, ---a very  beautiful dramatic place for Northern Ohio. But the question was how to get the trees to appear high enough without making a very tall painting.  I wanted the March and April ground and all those leaves and trunks to be in it too,  so the viewer could see how much in the forest this really us.  The small Beech tree keeps its dead leaves all winter here. I have always wanted to paint one. There are a lot of mosses at this spot and that explains the green on the ground, ---with all the gnarly leaves and soil hit by the late sun coming down behind me where I had my back to the drop off, which must be 150-200 feet or more down to the river.

Most of the birds were painted form life, which is not easy to do. For instance,  the bird flying into land on the nest in the upper right sky was done over several days and I had to wait to see many birds assume just that position to try to paint it. It would have been easier to work from photos  but I wanted to do it as much as I could from life. The challenge of painting birds form life is so rare.  Some of the smaller. more distant birds were done from photos but as much as I could the majority of them are done from life. The trees in the foreground are oaks, and there was a dead old sycamore, I think. Anyway, I have never done anything quite like it. It is perhaps a little crude, but it had to be really. I could not go any bigger in size, it is about 10 X 17 ". It was a good adventure and one that had me in the thick of the birds lives for many weeks. A rookery is such ordered chaos and the birds croak and groan like I imagine terradactyls sounding.

Shirley's Two Horses

 

       This is really part of my second eyar. I shows of Shirley's horses.  She is a neighbor of ours. They are older horses, one of them is 29. I have admired them for some years and wanted to do a painting of them and the Barns and stalls they live in. We are still next tot he national  park here. It was cold some fo the days I worked on this and the horses rarely cooperated with the pose I had in mind.  But I did the best I could form life.

        It was certainly a good year, I don't know if it could have been much better actually.  There were some hardships in our personal lives, deaths of a dear animal and close friend of mine and other losses, which I have not mentioned. I myself got sick and was hospitalized, but we weathered them as best we could. We were brought much comfort and enjoyment by nature in this this marvelous and under-appreciated Park. To be near this Park is why we moved here and it has paid us back many fold. I have deliberately lived near public lands most of my life. It is hard to imagine life without nature. Nature largely still free in our park systems.  Everywhere else nature is under threat by the arbitrary dictatorship of private owners. Life is decreasing and human over population is the norm. But in the National Parks there is an effort to restore ecology and balance. That means life in more abundance for all the species that live there. Outside the parks capitalism rules with its oil spills and foreclosed houses, its wars and grim rich people who steal from the poor to feed the rich. There is grim reality in the parks too. But at least life is given more of a fair chance.  It is that 'fair chance' I wanted to show in these paintings, the wondrous variety and diversity of nature left alone to flourish. That flourishing is the natural state of evolution, and that could be our lives too, if we learned to care for our world better than we do. Human rights will come if we learn to treat nature with the same rights. Watching my own children playing in the natural world, there is no deeper happiness.....

 This last one was done during the tropical storm Sandy, which came to Ohio from the east coast in early November. There was a stormy sky and the air currents were weird, with the normally west to east wind reversed and went from east to west instead. The is the view of the Beaver pond which I also painted in the Green Heron painting, above. As I have said throughout this essay, it was a year of weird and usual weather. The fact that corporate greed has begun to even harm the temperature balance of our planet is proof enough that corporate art cannot be sustainable any more than corporate culture is sustainable. The vacuous devotion to meaningless and formal art should stop. It probably won't, just as corporations will continue to wield their unjust powers, but we have a responsibility to object and spread the word about them. Eventually the corporation will go the way of slavery and the refusal to let African Americans and women vote. CEO's will go the way of Kings and will cease to rule our world unjustly.

        The train here is number 800. A man who works in the maintenance yard told me it is their best engine. Trains save allot of energy. They use a tiny fraction f the energy spent on cars and trucks. I loved trains when I was a kid. We rode on one in the Second Grade, and sang "I've been working on the Railroad" and rode behind a big engine up the San Joaquin Valley and back. Painting this train next to this lovely wetland reminded me of that. I also noticed that when the train went by none of the birds or animals I the pond seemed disturbed by it. It really takes up less space than cars and highways and does not pollute the atmosphere and cause global warming to anything like the destructive effects of cars. The car and oil industry and congress got rid of many of the trains and street cars we used to have. They should be brought back.
 

       The original reason for doing this painting was to try to capture the far Valley ridge and how it turns this lovely copper/brown/orange color early  in November. It is the Oak trees that stay this color, when the leaves of the Sycamores, Willows and Maples are all down. So what you see here are trunks of Willows and Sycamores low down near the river and shorn of leaves and Oaks higher on the hillside still in brown/orange leaf. I also wanted to paint this pond with the sky in it, and the ducks swimming across it as they are. But then I realized I wanted to train in it too.

       Once I decided that I was thrown back to lots of memories from childhood about train sets I had and played with. My brother and I even had my Dad's train set at one point form the 1930's and we played with that. My brother and I actually jumped a moving train once, like a couple of Hoboes, and did not ride very far, but it gave us an idea of how dangerous and thrilling that was. But the most vivid memory was a tiny train set I had, the only one that was really mine and my friend down the street had one of these too and we set up our sets together one day in his  house.  We got our son a little wooden train set recently and he has been playing with it all the time. I am not sure what the fascination with trains is, but it goes beyond cars and diggers.
       
        Lastly, I think what this painting was about finally was space,---- the space of the rather wild skies we were having that week. The space of those huge trees next tot he railroad tracts that tower over the trains.  The space of the pond. It is actually a fairly small painting, but it has a great deal of space in it. Where they is space there is life, and life is what I tried to show in all these works, real life.

Portrait of the Sun Over Chippewa Creek

      I wanted to have the sun and moon in these works. I spend so much time in my life watching them both. I got to see the Sunspots at the Natural History museum recently when their astronomer let the sun come through their 10 inch telescope onto a white board. I did a portrait of the sun a year or two ago and studied it through Nasa;s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

 

So for this painting I spent time in August looking for a place where I could do a sun portrait.  What I liked about this particular place is how the creek lines up on an east-west axis more or less, so the sun goes down at one end of it and comes up against at the other. Hence the trees are light on one side of the creek and dark on he other side.  I liked the symmetry of this as it made the creek itself a sort of solar observatory and reflector. The single tree pointing up to the sun is full of light.

 

     The kids played around me in the water and out of it, while I was working. These are again tiny portraits of my family from life, except me of course, I had to do myself from a photo.  But in this case I was able to actually have my family pose for me for 10 or 15 minutes off and on. My son was in a quiet enough mood to talk with my wife while she held him in her arms. My daughter was making the most lovely of wildflower bouquet's. The figures are less than an inch high so there is not that much detail. Though in this one I was able to suggest the eyes and nose without using a magnifying glass. I suppose as my eyes get worse now that I am in my fifties, proving I still can see the small things is important to me. Young people think their faculties will last forever. But those of us who have lived long enough, know that everything passes away, and even eyesight is mortal and will die one day. I paint these visions against that day and to share my joys and heart aches with other generations, perhaps bringing these days of joy to my children again one day when they are older and have forgotten their childhood and how much we loved them. My daughter likes to tell me that "Daddy I love you more than the universe", before she goes to sleep, I tell her I love her more than the universe too. My son has started saying this too. Maybe what we should say is that I love you as much as the universe, as indeed, it is a wonder-filled place, at least while the children are young. Over the whole face of the earth, childhood is a special time for all species.

        Maybe now I can sum up the involvement of my family in these paintings. I always wanted to have children. But back in 1998-2001 I spent over two years going to Heroes Wetland nearly everyday. The result of this daily contact with the animal world was profound on my wife and I. I watched the males and females of many species have sex, make families and raise their young.  I watched Orioles go through their life cycle many times. I saw  how thoroughly the female made the nest and how the males fed the babies once they came out of the nest. I saw the babies take their first perilous steps to climb up a tree from the ground. I watched males teach young orioles how to catch bugs.  In late summer young birds form into flocks with parents and there is allot of learning and education that goes on. Robins and Grackles could be seen in the woods in such flocks. I watched how female Wood Ducks worry about ducklings, with good reason too. I watched similar activities with Canada geese over many years. I saw a Goose more or less lose her mind when her eggs did not hatch after 35 days of sitting. Indeed, I do not know that I ever had a more profound educational experience than learning from other animals how to be a parent.

       I saw concretely that the lives of animals are no less precious to them than our lives are to us. I always wanted to be a parent but seeing animals parent convinced me of the utter joy and goodness of it, as well as he hardship and suffering involved. Life on earth offers no deeper and richer thing than having kids.

        I learned both how to love children and how to care for them from watching animals and how they treated their young. But also I learned this from my mother who had Alzheimer's. We cared for my mother for 10 years and she had an advanced dementia for 5 of those years. She lost the ability to speak and eventually walk and even use her eyes.  I become her father and her primary caretaker. What I learned from animals helped me enormously in the car of my mother. It is accurate to say that birds, mammals and my mother taught me how to care for children. I am far from a perfect parent, but parenting is not about perfection, it is about teaching children about how to love what is loveable on earth and to deal with reality and how to survive and even prosper in a difficult and sometimes painful world.

        My children are old enough that I can bring them into the natural world now and they can begin the life long learning that only nature can give us about how to live on earth. I doubt there is a better education than prolonged study of nature, up close and in the company of those who love nature. This is not to say that one should neglect Algebra or Physics, but that all of knowledge really has its origin in the natural world and our relationship to it. Darwin, Da Vinci, and Dewey understood this. Life is short and we began to share the natural world with our kids as often as we can.

 

 

          In the hot months of July and August, We sometimes take the kids down to various creeks in our area, which are shallow enough that they can get cool and wet without there being much danger of drowning. Once at such a place, I spied a popular bathing spot among the local birds. Often if one bird likes a given spot for a bath, other birds will imitate. I have even seen Redtail Hawks come to bathe at a spot where Goldfinches were a minute ago. On this day in July it was again Goldfinches that I saw first. Soon there were other birds, some Sparrows and at one point, a Scarlet Tanager. I have wanted to do a picture of birds bathing for years.

       Now I must say a few things about Scarlet Tanager's in our area. They are very rare. The first one I saw, many years ago was in North Chagrin Reservation. It was very far away and we could only identify it with binoculars. I later saw one up close in Allegany State Park in New York. They were eating some Honeysuckle berries.  Later I saw a 3 or 4 of them, all males, together in early May in France Run. That was the first time I photographed them.  This painting is loosely based on a photo I took a few years ago in July 2010.

In his novel The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles notes about birds as follows: "The appalling ennui of human reality lay cleft to the core; and the heart of all life pulsed there in the wren’s triumphant throat" Fowles sees in humans as in birds have this amazing capacity of life, apparent in their songs, which we all admire. Fowles sees the heart of human and avian reality as about love of life, despite all the boredom and horror that exits in the world. Like these paintings, the songbirds song is the song of life, the song of family and the need of one's own place, one's own locale in the world, a place where children my grow, life prosper and the sun shine equally on everyone.

 

           Beginning with the Beaver painting at CVNP, above, I spend most of the summer studying variations on the color green. One of the goals of the summer was to understand green better. it is a much neglected and abused color by many artists--- for instance, I once heard or read that the artist Robert Bateman said he does not like the color green, indeed, he said it made him sick. It seemed silly for an artist not to like any color, much less one as common as green. I have always thought all colors are wonderful. But then most of Bateman's paintings contain copious amounts of dull grey, for reasons unknown. i asked him once and he relied that that grey is "him", whatever that means. I follow my kids who sometimes have said when asked what their favorite color is, I answer, 'my favorite color is  "rainbow".'  No doubt there are places in the world where there is little green, places such as deserts, the Arctic, or the middle of the ocean. But wherever there is abundance of life on the earth there is a saturation of green.  When I say green I really mean the whole panoply of colors, not just the mysterious Chinese green or of the green of jade, olive greeen, Peacock green , Malachite green or the greens of Ireland, but perhaps these were not far away either.

         The more I look at it the more I see in green. I remember the first time I thought about green in isolation was when I saw a painting by George Inness, perhaps 35 years ago. The name of the work is "Gray, Lowery Day", 1877.  It is a marvelous array of the most varied green vegetation I can think of, and some ducks in a creek. It also hands in my mother's college, where she spent four of the happiest years of her life, so very likely she saw  this work. There are other works by Inness and Monet that really liberate green from the dreary green used up until Inness and Monet. And then there were some Pre-Raphaelite works whose use of green is new and marvelous for their time. The marvelous greens in Milliet's Ophelia or Hunt's the Hireling Shepard, where the green shadow of the trees illuminates the sheep, for instance. The background of such greens if of course in the Celtic green of the Ancient past, a green not yet put under the plow, the green of life in the British isles before Christianity started squeezing life under the veil of repression and priests. Green was the color of life then, the color of what matters, the color of Spring and Summer and the Maypole festivals, life celebrations, the Midsummer Nights Dream. John Fowles summarized this greenness of being as symbolized by the "Green Man", a pagan figure still picture in some British churches and a sort of hypertrophy. I am not inclined to symbols anymore. But having lived in England I know what green Fowles talks about in his writings. Blake did not praise this "green and pleasant" land for nothing. The greens of Ohio are not too much less spectacular than those of England, indeed, they are even denser and more plentiful and less relieved by island clouds and cultivated fields everywhere. The greens of Ohio are wilder and taller in tree and shadow.
 
            But yet the I was not trying to evoke these magical greens in my paintings. i was trying to evoke the magic of real greenery that lives in actual trees and go back even before the ancients festivals to the origins of evolution itself, before culture starts to deform reality. Leonardo was afraid of green and specifically cautions us against trying to paint sunlight falling through leaves, because it was too difficult to do. He only wants us to paint the sun side of leaves, and not stand behind the tree and painting it from the shadow side, as I do in the painting below. Leonardo was was right it is difficult to do this but, it is precisely the transparency and very absorbent nature of leaves that makes leaves to stunning and interesting to me. Leaves are the veritable face of life, without them there is no life at all.

      So what I was driving at in my study of green in these works was an inquiry into the evolution of green. So what is the evolutionary function of leaves? We know that leaves were adapted to accomplish the task or process of photosynthesis for trees. For years I have been looking at leaves as light gatherers, which they are of course, but only lately have I come to understand another function. They are darker than I used to think. The green is vibrant but if you look at plants in reaction to the sky they are markedly darker than the sky. The intensity of the green color does not increase the dark tone of the color. Indeed, seen against the sky tress are invariably dark, often nearly black, as in my second Goldenrod painting at the top of this essay. The dark green of the leaves is absorbing precisely because it is dark and the green of trees is really the color that maximizes light gather from the sun.  The ability to absorb more light from the sun helps the trees do photosynthesis more effectively and thus synthesize or obtain more food.  Since human would hardly exist if it were not for pants and green, it seems quite fitting to contemplate why green is so ubiquitous. Far from being sick of greens, I want to celebrate it and enjoy it infinite variations, from black jade to milky celadon, and mustardy -olive to emerald and opaline green.

       There was Vervain at this site, which is hinted at in the lower right and Queen Anne’s Lace.  I love the latter, a plant in he carrot family. Obviously, my wife took a photo of me so I could put myself into the painting.  I could not very well paint myself in this position from life. I love Plein air work and I wanted to show what is actually like to stand for hours in these environs.   The title Studying Green at Moonrise, (self-portrait) is a little cumbersome, but it makes the point I wanted it too. It was wonderful to study the green of our world. The moonlit greens of twilight take on a certain Alpen glow from the luminous air.

       But all this beauty has its problems too. Unfortunately there is some Mulitflora Rose at this site, another invasive plant and my son, who is only three, cut his eyeball on a thorn. We rushed him to the ER and had it looked at. It was fine and he healed quickly. But the experience taught us again how dysfunctional or health care system is and how the whole system is corrupted by Insurance companies, who are parasites of the system.  They are not needed at all, and should be eliminated. It is unethical to profit from people's sickness as they do. They exploit and gouge and do all the can to take your money and give as little care as possible. So from the moonlit greens of wonderful summer days to the horror of the American health care system, such is our lives, and one must face the truths of each day as they arise.

      In any case, this painting is one of three that I did at this site ......here are all three:

      

 

Green Heron's World

 

        The first is a study of the pond that is close to us, there is a beaver pond on the far side of it. You can’t see that in the painting, however. I wanted to do the wetland and the White Pines in the distance with the summer trees on the hill beyond that. The Green Heron is not form a photo, but was more or less invented as I have seen them in this position. I put a tiny painting of a kingfisher on one of the snags and i Leopard Frog and a Bull Frog up closer . The frogs are miniature again, and are actual life size as seen here.

      This is another attempt to celebrate the color green, as well as sing a song for wetlands. Wet areas create so much life in and around them they are irresistible to anyone who loves life. I suspect that is the real fascination that fisherman have with such places, though they express it is a twisted way, needed to kill and eat what they love. So I stood down below the railroad tracks that you can see in the painting of the train below. I painted for a week or more, my wife and kids came with me every time because they love it here and the kids got to chase frogs and play with sticks and mud. We ate veggie dogs on the railroad tracks and went for little walks together to explore the surrounding area. We waved 'hi' to the engineer as the train rolled by full of passengers. When I asked my wife a few nights ago what this year of painting nature meant for her, she said it was great for the whole family: we were outside so often together and got to know all  these places so closely. It brought the kids closer to the natural world and all of us closer together.

         The pond was drying up in the drought we had this year and by the time I finished this painting at least half of the water you see here was gone. I blocked in the water the first and second afternoons. I kept it at that height.

       There was a pair, with a young one, living at this pond and they would fly around me or fish across from me.  The logs in he foreground were where the Green Heron was going to go into the painting. Painting the Green heron from Memory was a challenge. I have tried this on other occasions, especially at Life drawing and painting sessions. There is an interesting 19th century book by Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, (1848) in the public domain that you can down load or look at here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     The Border of this painting is a Celtic Braid, not quite a Knot design.

Having been in the Green Isle of Ireland myself years ago and being mostly Irish, I can't resist such designs. I used it to try to illuminate an aspect of these paintings that is about the the wonder of the natural world and animals and us in it. The undulating colored lines evoke the ocean,or the Shannon or Cuyahoga Rivers and call forth sun and grasses, grey clouds, ferns curling and braids in a woman's hair.

     Lastly you can see the  attempt to paint a tiny Kingfisher from life on the second tall snag form the right side of the painting and mid-way up. The Kingfisher was there looking for frogs I presume, for a few minutes. I had just enough time to put down some tiny brushstrokes and block him in.

 

Kingfisher. Graphite drawing, Oct 2012

        If I do use photos to help my art I like to use my own. I am not a photographer in the regular sense, but for years I have been making images that are more documentary and sometimes aesthetic with cameras, both video and still. I see cameras as an extension of sketchbooks or notebooks.  So at various points my wife and I were trying very hard to photograph kingfishers. We had bad luck, the bane and friend of all photographers. We even located some nests on the Rocky River and attempted to hide in bushes, and watch as the Kingfishers came to feed their babies inside the long tunnel they build in the bank of the river. The babies live in a nest of fish bones deep in there. One can here them chattering and crying when the parents are near. Though we got a few distant photos and some video nothing much came of all are efforts.

      In later years we have tried again and still with no good luck. So recently, a few months ago, while my kids were playing at the Natural History museum here, I spent an hour or two drawing one of their taxidermized exhibits. It is very nicely done, showing the bird in a lovely hovering pose just as I have seen them above a river looking down at a possible catch in the water. So this small drawing is a study of a kingfisher such as I had wished to make in previous years but was unable to for lack of a good reference of my own making.

 

Montaropa Uniflora, Indian Pipe

         This painting is of a similar environment to the image far above of the Red Squirrel in the woods: both depict damp woods and a fertile and humus rich leaf litter. This is July and is based on a photo I took in Allegany State park in New York State. But it could be many places in Ohio or Cuyahoga National Park too. I did this painting this year so include it here, even though it is not of CVNP. We saw the Indian Pipe in a Pine and Oak woods. Indian Pipe  used to be called a saprophyte, but this has been changed and now is is held to be in the Heath family (Ericaceae)  which have an unknown or "parasitic" relation to mychorrhizal fungi. The relation to fungi appears to be unknown so I hesitate to use the term 'parasitical'. They are also somehow related to host trees like Oaks though the fungi, but it is not very clear to me just how this works. In any case they are fascinating plants, perennials which do not have chlorophyll and do not do photosynthesis, and yet have seeds like other angiosperms. They can live in the dark. It is related to the Sugarstick or Candy-stick (Allotropa virgata) and Pinesap (Monotropa hypopithys). We got to know the candy-stick a little in California. We even found a little restaurant called the Candystick, devoted to it, in Fortuna, California. This is a separategc area of study all to itself, and it would be interesting to pursue this further....

 

Homage to Rachel Ruysch, (1664-1750)

     This was done a year earlier than the previous painting.  This Toad was in our garden for a few weeks. We grow Tomatoes Squash, Zucchini, Strawberries as well as other vegetables and flowers. I have studies Toads to a degree. I used to often see them at Heroes wetland where they had a sort of singing convocation in the spring. Toads have surprisingly elegant and lovely singing voice, as you can hear here if you wish.

      I did this little vignette of the Toad as an homage to a great woman painter who painted around he time of Rembrandt, De Hooch, and Vermeer. Indeed, what this painting is about is my own predilections.  My interests have turned increasingly toward science in recent decades, with increasingly skepticism toward myth, religion and even poetry, insofar as poetry serves irrationalism and myth. The Dutch realists, along the with French and British Realists and Naturalists of the 1900's as well as Da Vinci have held a lot of interest form me this year. In all these cases I admire the devotion to reality as well as a certain advancement in inquiry and social consciousness that all these artists stove to accomplish.

      Rachel Ruysch was a great and early woman artist in Holland. Her teachers were her father,  Willem Van Alest and Otto Marseus Van Schrieck. These men together with Rachel, and others were among the first science painters and naturalists and began the process of rejecting religion in art. Her father was a scientist, a botanist and anatomist, remembered for his developments in anatomical preservation, as well as some discoveries about the lymphatic system, snakes and the eye. In 1693, Ruysch married the painter and lace dealer Juriaen Pool. She had ten children and this did not stop her production of paintings, indeed, it seems to have accelerated it. One of the most prolific women in history who was creative both as a mother and an artist. She finished her final painting in 1747, when she was 83.  There is great love of life n this woman.

           Some of her paintings are said to be allegories, I don't think I accept that myself, or perhaps she did that because it was in fashion at the time. Hardly anyone escaped religion then, and it was dangerous to try as Descartes' career shows. Van Schrieck and Willem van Aelst were both are more naturalist that religious, indeed in the context of the time they are very progressive and Rachel for me stands out as a bright early light of both women's rights and scientific naturalism. She appears to have followed in her father's footsteps too, who was a devoted scientist.
  
 

My Daughter and Foxglove. June 2012

      June: 2012  The land behind our place is overlapping jurisdiction, part Metropark and part National Park.  So the woods in the painting are actually in park. I loved painting the light playing on the trees back  in the woods. I suggested some of the space relationships between the boughs of leaves.  It is a mile or so to the other side of the park from our land and you can sense that distance in the upper left of the painting. There is a tangle of red grape vines in the woods. My daughter delicately touches a flower, amazed at its color and shape. She actually posed for a a short time while I did the drawing of her.  She is curious and studying the flower heads which are exactly her height. At age seven this is an image of perfect consciousness and life, as yet untroubled with the tragic power struggles, yearnings, failings and losses of the adult world.

          I love Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) . I was hesitant to plant it as it is invasive in California, Alaska and other states.   I have not been able to find it's status in Ohio, but I do not see it on the roads and read it is invasive mostly on the coasts. It is poisonous to humans so it is not near the house. It is way out back near the woods. I loved painting my young daughter next to it.  It is used as a heart medicine in some cases. I have never used Digitalis but certainly my daughter has been a medicine for my heart, so I enjoyed pairing her with this flower. 

        My daughter showed interest in bows and arrows, so I made her one in June, the same month I was doing this painting. The fireflies came out then too. She loves to catch and release the fireflies, figure out if they are male or female, and watch their cold, greenish-yellow light in the magic of twilight. We spend lots of time in the twilight back yard watching the Brown Bats come out and fly and the Fireflies dancing in our fields. This year my son joined in this too and we all were out there catching Fireflies and letting them go. I have wanted to paint that too, but have yet to imagine how.

       Her interest in these activities called forth a certain poetry of greenness, innocence and flowers and in my mind. The green I was thinking of has a springtime hint of that suggests the Elizabethan miniatures I have seen in various museums i the US and UK. There is a certain naturalism in some of these portraits, a certain botanical 'grace', You can see hints of this, for instance, in Nicholas Hilliard's "Young Man among Roses" and there are 19th century English works that echo this love of flowers and innocence, such as William Homan's Hunt's Our English Coasts, or Sergeant's Lily, Carnation, Lily Rose. These two paintings are two of the best paintings of the 1900's, in addition to being the best of these artist's works. I did not think of either of these when I did my portrait of my daughter, but I think I so internalized both works in previous years there are echoes. When I lived in England in the 1980's these were my two favorite works and I went to see them again and again at the Tate.  Together they summed up for me what is fair and loveable about England , in terms of its land, its light, its Springtime and it people's love of gardens, coasts and flowers. I doubt that is any people on earth as loving of flowers as English.

     This romance of roses and gardens can also be felt especially in the lovely textures of language in Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet or As You Like It. The Forest of Arden suggests a special green, a green that is very much the green of May or spring.   In this painting I tried to capture something of that late May or June green, of new life and hope for a great harvest, such hope as I place in my beloved daughter.

     This is the first of the "green paintings" of this year,--- as I will explain later I spend allot of time thinking bout the color green and its many meanings and evocations.

 

 

    I have spent time designing and hand making frames for some of these paintings. I worked with Oriental rugs, doing repair and restoration between 1982 and 1990, and that gave me a love of these objects of craft. I particularly liked the one I did for this painting. It was actually based don a Persian carpet I photographed long ago in 1982. In the carpet there are green leaves on an ultramarine background and then white birds and orange cartouches. There was a poetry in Iran at one time that had carpets as one of its special creations.  I have always admired the design skill of the makers of these rugs, mostly women. But in addition to the evocation of carpet design I  added to this border a certain feeling that comes form the Elizabethan poetry and English gardens. I wanted to celebrate the love of my dear daughter with an evocation of Kew Gardens in England, where I spent many fine days in May and June, as well as my own poor attempts at gardening.

       One other detail about doing this painting....I saw a rare Yellow Billed Cuckoo above me while I was working on the this.  I am a pretty good birder, but do not seek out the rare for the rarity sake and I have never been a lister. But it is marvelous to see a bird one has never seen before. The slow awareness came over my brain as I went though my memory and finally realized that that characteristic tail would only be one thing.

Beaver pond near Vaughn Road. May 2012

       This is the second of the Beaver Lodge paintings, this one done in Cuyahoga National Park , not far for the yellow houses that are the Park headquarters. There are various beaver ponds spread around CVNP, most of them have bank lodges rather than the sort of independently existing structure that I was painting in Alleghany State park. I would think that a lodge surrounded entirely by water would be the best and safest option. But Beaver have their own minds and reasons for doing things. I wonder if it takes decades or years to develop pods that will support a lodge that is at the center of the pond, or if it is merely a matter of what is convenient for the Beaver. beavers have not lived long in CVNP, so it maybe that as tome goes buy and they make their ponds larger, the lodges will move away from the backsides. This lodge is connected to a fairly large beaver made pond, upstream perhaps 100 feet form the small pond shown here. The pond is at least 100 feet across, I am guessing. Beaver often create the sort of stepped or terraced system of ponds as they appear to be culturing on this site.

         Willow trees are so often near or next to Beaver ponds that I chose this small pond partly because i could paint the Willow trees too. These three are older Willows with deep furrows in the bark and lovely lacy leaves that we fun to try to represent in paint. I liked how the light played on them. What I have found, invariably, whenever  I have visited A beaver pond, is that the wetlands they create provide habitat for an amazing diversity of plants and wildlife, many of which are becoming scarce due to continuing wetland destruction, paving over and 'development'.  Over 90% of Ohio wetlands were destroyed between the 1780s and 1980s (Noss and Peters 1995). We obviously need as many Beavers as we can get to help restore some of these areas. The destruction of the "Black Swamp" in northwestern Ohio was particularly onerous. Some of this huge wetland should be restored.

        Wetlands are beautiful and they also serve as important stop-over places for migrating birds, or nesting areas for local birds and animals. Beavers create lots of life around them. The more Beavers there are the more diversity and life will be seen. I like the light on the willows too and the Yellow Flag iris that grows next to the pond.

       We are in May now and the sun is higher in the sky. This is the first of my summer paintings. The whole summer long I was meditating on he color Green and you can see various yellow-greens, blue-greens and olive-greens here. What I was especially happy with in this work was capturing light in the water itself, around the Beaver, where the willows are reflected it he water.

      The beaver at his Lodge posed for me several times. I got the basic color, light and and shape from life, and refined it further at home. He or she (?) also walked up the path to my left several times, without smelling or seeing me. Beaver do not hear or see very well, I was standing on a rise above the pond for hours and move little when I am concentrating. Painting Plein Air involves deep concentration and precise calibrations of color and tone. It is a meditative and active state, head and hand working together is making many subtle decisions.

       In the background of the painting, on the middle right are some tall ochre colored grasses, actually a kind of Reed, that are from Asia called Phragmities. Unfortunately the National Park has done little to remove these very invasive plants. They are choking wetlands. I had doubts about putting them in the painting, but they are there next to this beaver pond and I put them in because it might be worth it if others notice and try to get the park to do something about this problem.

                                   

         The next one is one is another of my favorite images. It was done over several weeks in late April and early May. The painting of the Virginia Bluebells above was done a stones throw from this bridge. Indeed, it was when we were walking around looking at wildflowers that I got the idea to paint the bridge and my kids not for from it.

       So, for a week or so in early May, when the weather was perfect, my wife and kids and I went to Furnace Run to play and paint. The kids played in the creek as I worked.  My daughter was playing with pebbles. In nothing but his "unders", as we call his underwear, my son looked on his sister with the sparkling water all around him. They were in the cool water because it was strangely warm for this time of year. This is the strangest year of weather in my life. But this did not prevent our joy in this day. I often think that humans are hard-wired to love their kids with an intense aesthetic appreciation. Indeed, some of the most intense moments of love and beauty in my life have come from watching my kids on an ordinary day. Love of children may be the deepest of all human emotions. Religious imagery, such as the "Virgin and Child"  seems to be a sad exploit of this simple and fathomless love. Love of children is perhaps the most wonderful aspect of our lives.

      In any case, my wife made us all veggie dogs and green beans cooked on our tiny camp stove, which we call "Little Sister" and have been using for years now.  We ate sitting on the rocks over there on the right bank.  These were special days, the air was cool, the water clean, the children playing in the water were happy. My daughter kept coming over to me while I was painting and telling me she loves me, to which I replied that I love her too very much. Life seemed wonder filled and worth every breath of spring air.

        I am well aware that some will call this a "cliche" image, but I don't care about that. For me it is real poetry. There are images of 'the covered bridge' that are hackneyed and cliché and no doubt over-cultured cynics will see this one  as one of those. But my interest in this structure is quite authentic and the structure itself is quite authentic.  admire the craftsmanship of any bridge so nicely made. Indeed, there are two portraits of bridges in this series. This was a functioning bridge for a century or so. The fact that it is persevered is a testament to our history and the love of where we live. This is also one of our cleanest creeks and my kids love it there.  I am not ashamed of celebrating this and those who despise such authentic testaments to our real history, are the real fools.  Snobs who prefer their art to picture empty grids or drawing made of elephant dung, can go jump in the lake, as they say. II am proud of this painting, and always warm to it when I see it.

       Not far from Everett there is a farm where I often took my daughter. We went to  Hale Farm many times from when she was 3 until she was 6. We have taken our son there a few times too. Jonathan Hale came to the Western Reserve from Glastonbury, Connecticut, and acquired the valley acreage from the Connecticut Land Company In 1810. The Hale's made their living with commercial fruit orchards, market gardening, and the butter and cheese industry became popular due to urban demands. My daughter learned about this history as well as how to make butter, candle making, basket weaving, blacksmithing, ice cream making, glass making, broom making and gardening. She also learned what it was like to farm and be a kid and go to school in the 19th century. All this was quite valuable and gave us both deep appreciation of the history of the Valley to complement what we learned elsewhere about the geology and Native History, and this history of the Canal Boats.

        The Everett Road bridge and the Creek is Furnace Run, near the town of Richfield . Everett was a small town near to the Bridge, which had about 200 people in the 1920's. The remaining houses of that town are now used by the Park managers.  In the 1880s wooden bridges was replaced with more durable iron bridges like the one that still stands near at Station Road. I did a painting of the Train Station above, during the winter.

 

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Beaver pond in Allegany State Park,
 N.Y. April 2012
 

        I am not arranging this material by subject so much as chronology. I want to stay with the time line. This series is a sort of calendar of a year in our park.  The next in the series is this Beaver Lodge, done in April.  I intended to do a Beaver lodge in Cuyahoga National Park too. But we took a brief holiday and went to Allegany State Park in New York for a few days, a place we have been going for years. So I did two beaver lodges. Compare this one  to the other beaver lodge two paintings down, the one below, done in CVNP.

         Allegany Park has some of the best and wildest Beaver ponds in the eastern states.  They were restored there many decades ago and allowed to build or not build on their own. Beavers were first introduced in 1926 (2 adults and 4 babies eight months old). They were shipped by train from Palisades Park and were released on the north shore of Science Lake, according to the Allegany Park Historical Society. Much of the construction in the park was done by the Conservations Corps (CCC), which did great environmental work all over the country, including here near CVNP.  The Beaver of course, existed in Allegany and CVNP centuries ago but they were wiped out by the greed of the fur trade, when Europeans starting trapping and killing every animal they could all over north America. By the middle of the 1900's many animals were gone locally and some were extinct, like the Woodland Buffalo and the Passenger Pigeon.

     Some of the Beaver ponds are ephemeral in the sense that some of  the beavers move allot, and a pond that one might see for a few years is suddenly breached and will be gone for some years as those Beaver move down or up one of the creeks or river valleys. On the other hand there are ponds that we have seen in the same spot for years. It would be interesting to know exactly how this works, but I do not claim to understand it. I suspect it has to do with family dynamics, deaths, or with conditions of the actual pond and its viability.  But I have not studied it enough to know.
       
         In any case, we were in Allegany Park for a few days and I wanted to paint at least one lodge from life. I chose one and started it, but there were problems with the light and I was not happy with it, so  after some hours of work I wiped off the board. My kids and wife had founds some Newts in a puddle next to the beaver pond and we studied those for while. I saw, oddly,  a bat flying around aimlessly and wondered if it had a disease, the so called, "white-nose syndrome", a fungus which kills bats at an alarming rate. as for awhile. Then we moved up the Valley a few miles and started over at a the pond you see here. This is near the top of French Creek Road. My wife decided to take the kids to a playground in the park.

      So I set to work. It took some doing to get into the Willow thicket that is at the base of the pond.  But I managed. Because I was below the dam I had a good view of the lodge from a low angle, more the point of view of child than a man. That pleased me because it made me closer to the animals themselves. The beaver was swimming around his pond once twilight arrived and I made some attempts to paint him. I finished him from a few photos I took once I got home. I am not sure what the trees were beyond the lodge but the spring growth of leaves was decidedly yellow. The dam was breached towards the front and little waterfall flowed there. When I was done painting after many hours passed my wife and kids picked me up and as I was talking with them a rather strange man pulled up got out of his car with two of his kids. He started trying to breach the dam to show off for his kids. He pulled out stick after stick until he started sizable waterfall. I walked over to him and pointed out how much labor the beavers put into this pond and perhaps he would like to be more considerate of all their hard work? ---after all this dam and the lodge in the middle that the dam creates is their home. Would he like it if someone messed with their house?. He grunted, got back in his car and drove off with his kids. It is mysterious why he wanted to destroy the dam in front of his kids. Was he trying to teach his kids to despise Beavers?  Many humans have a dysfunctional relationship to nature that makes them do odd things when confronted the lives of other species.

 

 

      Then in early May the Warblers come. This is always a marvelous time, with rivers of birds flowing north all over the eastern states. Waves and rivers of birds come up from Mexico and across the Gulf form the Amazon and beyond, traveling on warm air fronts. Chestnut-sided, Blackburnian, Black and White, Yellow, Redstart, Magnolia, Palm, and Yellow Rumped Warblers, among many others all arrive in early May.  Many other species, totaling millions of birds come in one of the great migration on earth. It should be much more celebrated than it is.  There should be holidays that celebrate it, much like the great migrations in the fall, where I have seen 50,000 Mergansers in a single flock on Lake Erie. Spring celebrations would be in early May and perhaps could involve Migratory Bird Festival.

      This little migrant is the Prothonotory Warbler, and he lives down near Station Road train station. We have known him over a number of years. He sings his small heart out most of the time, marking his territory near where his spouse nests. The Heron's roost was near there, west of the train tracks. But an Eagle pair moved in a few years ago and started harassing the Herons. They moved out,  when the Eagles predated their babies and moved across the Valley east of the tracks.
    
      Home schooling has its rewards but also its hardships and stresses. I have little time to take photos. Usually, i ht least few years, when I was in the park in the during the week I was with my son walking him in the stroller. Last year I was using a bike for rides or a walks. There is a baby seat on the back of the bike.  We stop somewhere for lunch on the Tow path. The I have a few minutes, when my son is playing with sticks or pebbles, to sue a camera. But the photos are less than ideal. Taking care of children does not leave one with allot of time to do things for photography.   I I photographed this Warbler when I could safely. 

      I love the Yellow Warbler too, but the Prothonotory male has the most beautiful yellow imaginable, set of by the bluish grey back and tail. He has singing perches were he likes to belt out his favorites songs, to warn other males about the nesting presence of his family.

      My wife deserves special thanks for giving me what time I have been able to devote to this book.  Perhaps half of the works done in the last year were done when my wife was home or when we are all out in nature together. Perhaps half these paintings were done when I go out by myself. In both cases, I was able to do the work I have done because of my wife.

      

 Virginia Bluebells and Spring Light,
April 2012

       This also is a celebration of spring. One of my favorite things about it is the illuminated trees in the distance. There is a hill there and the trees are on top of it catching the last of the sun's rays, whereas the Bluebells are in the woods and in shadow.The largest tree towards the viewer is a Locust tree.d I have been in love with Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) for over a decade. They grow in colonies,  usually in wet areas near rivers, creeks or floodplains. I have often seem them near Wild Hyacinths  (Camassia scilloides) which also likes rich wet soils.  Wild germanium is often in the same areas, This particular stand is not that far from the painting below. I had wanted to paint the Bluebells for some years and spent some days I the woods admiring them. Getting that particular blue was not easy. I find that intense blues are especially hard to do in paint, as the blues that are available just do not have the saturations that I need. I wonder how it would be to make my own blues out of Lapis Lazuli.

        I don't know what proportion of the paintings in this series are about Wildflowers, but certainly it is one of my favorite subjects. I would like to do more of them.  We spent a good deal of time in the last two years looking for Hepatica in the parks. We succeeded in finding it in a number of places. It is so rare I will not say where, but it is a gorgeous little flowering plant. I have not yet figured out how to paint it on site. They are small and doing a close up would be difficult unless I use a camera.  I have taken pictures of it and may do a study of one of them, but I would like to paint it form life if possible. I am still thinking about how to do it. It is an 'ephemeral' and so does not last long.
 

           In any case,  just beyond where the foreground trees end, is Furnace Run Creek, and this meets up with the Cuyahoga a mile or so from here. Furnace Run is one of healthiest, intact streams that flow into the Cuyahoga River.  It meets Ohio EPA standards. There are allot of wildflowers here. I recall seeing Bloodroot, Cut Leaved Toothwort, Spring Beauty and Rue Anenome. There is a high deer population there so it is interesting the wildflowers are doing so well, since deer are so often said to decimate such areas. I did see deer came by as I was painting, but there were still plenty of wildflowers. There is a claim that various species of earthworms are invading our hardwood forests and causing the loss of tree seedlings, wildflowers, and ferns. I do not know how true this is, but it seems as likely an explanation for the loss of wildflowers as the deer hypothesis. Perhaps both causes are at fault.

      I also saw, every afternoon I painted there, a roost of pehaps 15 Turkey Vultures come in just before sunset cavorting in the pines near me. As I was painting my Bluebells, one of the Vultures came crashing down through the trees and landed on the ground. Another day the same thing happened. I puzzled about this for some time and the only explanation I could come up with is that one or more of the youngsters, born this year, fell, and the branches of so many trees prevented it from stopping its downward trend, and so it landed in an ungainly way on the ground.  They need some space to regain flight, with such large wings.

 

My Kids Overlooking Cuyahoga National Park from the Ledges
(April 2012)

       By early April a more normal temperature was abroad.  That is why my kids are wearing coats. It is colder. This painting was a joy to do as we all went to the Ritchie Ledges over a week's time and brought dinner to eat at a picnic table. The kids got to play down below the ledges with their mom while I painted up above and they came to visit me frequently to talk and see how it was coming. Many of the hardwoods are in bloom.  The pastel shades of spring, which some will confuse with fall, cover the land in delicate tints and hues.  "The time when a rainbow falls over the land", is obviously still here. The late sunlight is pouring through the tender new  leaves, casting light on the grey stone making in purplish and blue, ochre and green.

      I especially like this painting. This is a special place, with the Berea sandstone cliffs raising up to 100 feet in some places and covered in mosses and lichens. You can see some of the mosses on the rocks here and an old root of the tree just out of view. All of this painting was done on site expect the children. This was a very dangerous place for my little three year old and we took the picture with his mother just out of the picture. There is a 40 foot cliff in front of the children so it was out of the question that they could pose. There was no danger of him falling as his sister and mother were both looking out for him.  I painted them into the rest of the painting, which was otherwise entirely Plein Air, from a photograph. This is also one the best views over the Cuyahoga Valley. I have gone around the Valley from many directions and it is hard to find places to get such a wide view. That is partly why I did the painting,  as well as to memorialize a moment in the life of our two children,  who love this place dearly and love our park. It is a celebration of spring. It  is also a study in the poetry of color and the use of aerial perspective

 

 

Redbud Tree in March

        April, 2012. Spring in Ohio is glorious. I love spring anywhere, but in the eastern states it is so spectacular a change from winter to spring that it takes your breath away. I have always thought so and remember the rapture of this season going all the way back to my teens. It is not just the beauty of the trees, though that is a major part of it, but the air itself is full of hope and new life.

       This is another portrait of a native tree in our area: the Redbud. I got to know Redbuds at Hereos Wetland years ago. I had seen a large stand of them in Richfield, and knew of this stand up on Hines Hill Road. These are special trees. The flower actually grows on the stems themselves, rather like the lovely Spice Bush which comes into bloom around this time too. I've seen Cardinals, Golden Crowned Kinglets or Goldfinches in them. So for a week or so when I had some time I went up Hines Hill road and painted this. It was so warm the trees were coming on quickly and I did not have much time.  It was done again in probably 4 or 5 visits. The tree with brownish/red buds in the background is the Sugar Maple. I am not sure what the white blossoms were, perhaps Serviceberry, or Dogwood.  Below the Redbud is more Little Bluestem gasses as well as a few daffodils someone planted long ago. The Redwing Blackbirds were back and kept me company at the pond near where I stood. I have been wanting to paint flowering trees again for many years and was very glad to be doing it. I hope to do more next year. Spring is so dear to my heart and I cna't imagine why I have spent so many years no painting spring trees.

        In any case, I was not prepared for an early spring and had to rush into painting the Redbud before I was psychologically ready for it. The Turkey Vultures were back weeks earlier than usual and the Magnolias burned out early. Dragonflies were out early too. The ponds where the Jefferson's, Yellow Spotted and Red Backed Salamanders migrate was lower than usual because there was so little snow. The daffodils you see in this painting should not be out yet, but they were out a few weeks early. Usually they come out in early April, but here there are out of the 24th of March or so.

      Once I finally adjusted as best I could, I was glad to see the Redbuds coming out in late March. I finished this sometime around then. In years past I used to call this time of year "the time when a rainbow falls over the land", as the spring trees look so various and fresh in their pastel colors. 

      The last two paintings before this, one of a waterfall and the other of a spring creek, both had to do with water and early spring  run off. We had so little snow that there was little run off though. There was a bizarre heat wave in March and this caused the fruit trees to bloom early and then many flowers were killed in a later frost. No flowers, no fruit--- and so allot of our local apple growers only had apples till November instead of December. That that was hard on them. Certainly all this was caused by global warming.  It was again the warmest year on record. Indeed, NOAA's National Climate Data Center reported that over 7,000 daily record high temperatures were tied or broken from March 1 through March 27, 2012. Businessmen unregulated will destroy the earth if we let them. They don't care as long and they make their billions. We need to tax and regulate them much more than we do.

     The heat wave affected my paintings. Spring was odd, as some trees came early and some came at their regular time. I worried about the birds as their timing is partly motivated by 'photoperiodism'. That is to say they move north  when the  length of daylight suggests they should.  I was worried that the “shift” to an early  timing for the emergence of vegetation and insects could compromise survivability for birds . Would the insects they prefer to give their young be there for them? But it seems weather also plays a part, and it may be that some birds have been moving north early. There is evidence that some did come early. The effects of early arrival might affect birds in various negative ways too. Like the fruit trees they could be exposed to sudden cold or their food supply be decimated.  I worried about these things over the spring.

       

Spotted Salamnders in Flashlight. ( Jan. 2013)