80

80

You can see sites repeated in my pictures: they’re Oregon places. 

Turning 80, I’m carrying my kit for shorter distances because most of the emotional work has been done. I know my pinpoints of transcendence. They’re personal motifs, like flowers and fruit in still lifes, or summaries of wilderness. However, I’ll never be as relaxed when drawing people.  

Getting back to early adolescence, I always felt insignificant at Silver Creek Falls, standing before mesmerizing sights and sounds. On the way down, there was the splash of a profundity indifferent to my witness and then on the way up, the blush of my own vanishing.

In the 50’s, we spent whole summers deep in rugged mountains. Then in the 70’s, I could sketch for days out of a backpack. Back then, I didn’t know what I was doing but I could get the destination, and now that I know more, the easel stays in the car. Presently, I’m painting at pullovers.

Socially, I’m ever more practical, private, and early to bed. My energy outside and inside my home varies, my sense of fun varying between night and day. Invite me to an evening event in morning conversation and you’ll hear a morning persona, but come 4 o’clock the soul is settling down.