First Morning in Taos

"FIRST MORNING IN TAOS" acrylic on board 12"x12"

 The name of this painting used to be "Last Spring" and it was a picture of an apple tree in blossom, painted on a one foot square piece of masonite.  I painted it in the spring of 2013, after a bad winter with my fibromyalgia, when I thought this would surely BE my last spring!

I don't know why I painted the entire board sky-blue first.  This isn't my usual routine or the way I normally paint. And when I was finished with the apple tree, I didn't like it at all. It was way too heavy-handed on the blossoms, so I put it away.

Recently, while preparing for an art show, I found the thing and a light-bulb went on in my head! This was the embryonic beginning of a Taos painting, started a whole year before I even thought of going to northern New Mexico. The sky-blue background is so fitting for Taos, where the skies can be achingly blue at times.

My first morning in Taos, I woke up and stepped out to a beautiful early spring snowfall. I grabbed my camera and walked out into the ancient apple orchard across the acequia from my cabin. Wet glops of snow covered every blossom and stuck to the tree bark. By noon, the snow had melted.

So all I needed to make this a "Taos painting" was to add snow to the tree trunk and ground. And an authentic Taos painting was born: 

"FIRST MORNING IN TAOS."

War Zone - America

[NOTE: Photos borrowed from news sources show recent violent, racial rioting in Ferguson, MO.]

The Second Coming

by W. B. Yeats (1919)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

PRAY FOR PEACE!

Looking for Something...

TO CHEER ME UP!

I'm feeling all lonely and blue today. I've been alone all week while Rich does the haying. He said yesterday was going to be the big Hay-Day, but the weather turned off cool (HEY! I'm not complaining!), so the hay didn't dry down like it usually would on a hot summer day. I'm hoping they get it baled and put up today, so he can have the 4th off.

I'm trying to get ready for my upcoming art show August 1st. There's so much to be done, that should have been done months ago... it's overwhelming.

So I took my camera outside and caught some flowers to cheer me up. (nice try...)

NEW Painting --- My Chimayo

El Santuario de Chimayo, NM  (16x20 acrylic)

This is the beautiful little chapel in the mountains that I made a pilgrimage to in April. It's the first painting of my new series "Two Weeks in Taos."

(If it seems a little tilted to the left there, it's not.  Just bad picture-taking.  I'll try to get a better shot & replace it soon.)

Hakuna Ma Tatas

Last Saturday we had the Curves/Avon 5K Walk for Breast Cancer Awareness.  I'm unable to walk across the yard without hurting myself, so I couldn't join the gals. But I took my camera with me and became their unofficial photographer. We had so much fun for a good cause.

New Painting - "Lake Watch"

"Lake Watch" (Ring-Billed Gull, Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior)

Here's my latest painting.  It's from the "Postcards from the Heartland" series. It's called "Lake Watch." It comes from photos I took while on a road trip to Lake Superior in 2007.  I started painting it last year, but had to put it away because I was having problems with it.  Now that I'm working on my "Two Weeks in Taos" series (Hey! I'm painting again!  Yea!), I decided to dig it out of storage and finish it.

The Dusty Trail Home

Early Sunday morning, April 27th, I left Taos the way I arrived, with snow. Charles, at the B&B, was kind enough to send me on my way with a brown-bag-it breakfast of two bran muffins and a banana.

I dreaded trying to get down out of the mountains in the snow, but the roads weren't bad at all. And I was, after two weeks, an old pro at mountain travel. So no problems there.  Once I was down on the plain, I kept looking back sadly at the mountains receding in the distance--- how I wish we could live there!

Coming across the emptiness of the Oklahoma panhandle, I found this windmill.  I saw so many windmills on my trip to Taos, and I love having windmill pix in my photo source files --- so I wanted at least one picture of a windmill on my way home.

Most of my trip out of New Mexico and across Oklahoma and Kansas, I was driving in a blinding dust storm! That really slowed me down and made for tense driving. I stayed at the Swedish Country Inn B&B in Lindsborg, Kansas again, that night. Nibbled at the complementary Swedish breakfast (just didn't care for the food) the next morning, before the last leg of my trip home. Before I left town, I saw this wild and crazy "art car". Wonder what the owner looked like!

I only stopped at one place in Missouri to sightsee. Have no idea where this was, but I saw a sign for "Pony Express Way Station, 3 miles.  So I went to check it out.  A lonesome place if I ever saw one!

And finally, it was home sweet home at last. When I left it was still winter grays and browns.  When I got home, spring was busting out all over. 

Beary was so happy to see me! Little did I know that exactly one month later he would have to be euthanized.  This was one of the last pictures I took of my Beary Boy.

And so wraps up my TWO WEEKS IN TAOS. It was an amazing adventure, and I hope someday to return.

Goodbye, Good Friends

On Sat. April 26th, I just hung around the casita, packing and resting. I dreaded that two day drive home so much.  And I just hated leaving the magical place that is Taos. Most of all, I hated saying goodbye to my new friends, the Jordans.

On Thursday evening the four of us had gone to see another movie.  This time it was "God's Not Dead." It's the story of a college student who takes on his atheist professor (Kevin Sorbo) in a debate about the existence of God. Very moving and thought-provoking film, produced by Willie & Korie Robertson. I hope the Duck Dynasty people will continue to produce good family films like this one.

Saturday evening, the Jordans took me out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, the very rustic and delicious Ranchos Plaza Grill, next door to San Francisco de Asis Church in Rancho de Taos. 

We'll continue to keep in touch, I'm sure. (Why didn't I think to take a picture of them? I took enough pix of everything else!) Jerry and Marilyn and Harwede are the most welcoming and genuine people I think I've ever met. It's been many decades since anyone made me feel as special as they did.