Stealing Time

Paintings 2013 Summer, a set on Flickr.

This summer, when I can - if Luca will watch Mom, I get out old watercolors and a pad to go paint.

When you go somewhere you enter into the work inside the setting's dynamics, which is extremely interesting-at times so calm-peaceful, or alternately active and de-focusing. Paining in the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden is amazing because of things like the redwoods. The squirrels that seemed bent on killing themselves defying gravity scared me when they came down a huge redwood headed my way beating each other to pieces at a breakneck speed-listening to the wood peckers and swatting the sweat bees-almost choking to death and asphyxiating on OFF-these are things I remember along with the music in the forest.
When I go to paint I understand immediately WHY the arts need to be included in the curriculum. It instantly proposes a problem-what goes in this picture-how do you take the all of it to represent the experience? So far I can only sustain a three hour work-but to get the watercolor to a really credible level I'd need 10. It's almost overwhelming technically, and then also work emotionally. When I'm in the forest all the details just flood in to confound my skill level further.
And skill is a barrier.
So is intention.
I'm learning and connecting to creating by doing, however. I need hundreds of these days to build enough real skill.

Today we tried the Ventura Harbor. I love painting water-I may have failed utterly, but the boats cannot be painted straight forwardly-I learned that. Well they can be painted, but you have to just represent the unbelievable amount of detail in some "suggestion" of it-rather like a poem, a short story-you are editing the experience, and as I was doing that I realized the importance of having children work in nature and how this translates to skills writer's can use.

It doesn't hurt that I'm also filling in a journal called 642, it's full of prompts and a few lines to complete the assignments. Again I think what to put in, what to take out. Am I speaking to emotions, or trying to represent this as it is seen by the eye(or in the case of writing- what happened).
In the journal I think-why am I bitching so much-is this a real issue I have?
Why do so many memories go to the hurt in life?
When I'm painting I'm utterly free of that.

Free.

Quite a summer.