musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
when a journey goes horribly wrong…. and reveals a forgotten forest along the way
The forest outside my Stowe, Vermont “studio”
I could spend a couple of blog posts and thousands of words detailing the next 216 hours, as my dog’s beautiful face transformed into a horrifying grotesque and festering wound. How I reached out to friends and family and veterinarians across the country, wondering, ever wondering, if, with every mile eastward I should just turn around and head back to New Mexico.
How I drove for 2000 miles in silence in a perpetual state of anxiety.
How the road became a blur as I choked back sobs of concern wondering if I was doing the right thing by continuing on this trip.
I could spend pages telling of how friends and family and acquaintances threw their doors open to welcome us — my physically wounded pup and my emotionally wounded self.
How people waved off my dog’s blood on their white carpets.
How “cat people” made their homes dog-friendly.
How even “dog haters” cooed at and petted my sweet girl, as she stumbled trying to navigate the world with a wide “cone of shame” around her head. How she leaned in and “hugged” everyone who looked kindly upon her, despite her revolting appearance.
The best veterinarians are good, good people, and we consulted with four across the country (including ours back home, via phone & email).
None had ever seen anything like Wilson’s rash. All were confounded. But all agreed that it was likely an extreme allergic reaction to something — quite possibly (probably?) her new tick medication. Something in the environment? A sign of underlying disease? The tick medication — which she had never had before and which we had applied a few days before our departure — just seemed the likely answer. But none of the vets felt certain about it. “This just isn’t presenting like a typical reaction to tick medication. And the timing of the reaction isn’t quite right… And yet it could be…” Yet what else could it be?
The mystery of it was as distressing as the wound itself.
Finally, after more than a week of concern over Wilson’s raging wound, frustration over the lack of answers, and inspired by a text from My Good Man — “could it be a bite of some sort?” — from my aunt’s kitchen in New Hampshire I did a web search.
Mystery solved.
If you’re really curious and you think you can stomach it, Google “spider bite on dog nose” and there you will find image after image of Wilson’s rash.
I feel 99% sure that Wilson was bit by a venomous spider on the morning of our departure. Likely by Loxosceler reclusa — a brown recluse.
Wilson now, is fine. Remarkably, extraordinarily fine. it’s really almost as if nothing happened at all.
TOP DOG of Vermont!! Just two weeks after Wilson’s horrendous ordeal, we summitted Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak — and together kissed the benchmark. Photos by Long Trail legend Sylvie “Charger” Vidrine.
Pure October color along Stowe’s river path.
From a hike a few days ago with a friend I made during my long walk of 2015 ~ a creek crossing along the Long Trail, just north of Bear Hollow Shelter, Vermont.
Wilson as of this morning. The fur is starting to grow back across her snout where, nearly 3-weeks earlier, a gruesome wound ravaged the entire length of her nose. She may have permanent scarring….but she doesn’t seem to mind.
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. ~ John Muir
of lakeside chairs, vermont gardens, & the contemplation of a new hampshire river….
The final installment of my August painting trip in New Hampshire…
Of all the scenes in this small New Hampshire tract where I spent a few days in early August, none captivated me more than a little corner between my aunt’s tool shed and her guest house. Here, catching the forest-filtered light, are two metal chairs as old as I, maybe even older. They sit there as though conversing with each other under the tall pines. I think my aunt said she painted them with enamel paint some 40+ years ago, and still their color holds up. Every time I look at them I feel a little well of satisfaction at her artistic brilliance in deciding to paint one yellow and one blue. Their surprising jolt of color against the dark brown buildings and even darker backdrop of shadowy evergreens just make my eyes and heart sing.
Needless to say, I just had to try to capture them with paint. Because of that determination I finally pulled out my tube of Cadmium Yellow Medium — to get that yellow chair right — for the Lemon Yellow that I had been using for all my previous paintings is simply the wrong hue.
Funny thing is I don’t know that I’ve ever sat on these chairs. Rather, I’m content to look at them, and appreciate their quiet invitation: Come, sit among us. Enjoy the company of another, whoever they may be, whatever they believe. You are family. You are safe here.
Three lakeside paintings now tucked in my wet-painting-storage box and I was ready to continue on my journey…
The following morning brought rain to the lake region …and me to Vermont. For if I’m going to go to the trouble to travel from New Mexico to New Hampshire, then I may as well drive the couple hours west to the Green Mountain State and check in with that part of my soul that’s harbored there in the Les Monts Verts. Just a short visit though of two or three nights, staying in Stowe with my First Friend who is also the blessed owner of one of my favorite porches anywhere, ever.
And so it was there, from My Favorite Porch, on the second day of my visit, that I cranked out this little painting. All during my long walk across Vermont in 2015/16, my eye kept catching on the beautiful contrast of bright leaves against dark forest — especially when the leaves began to turn. (One of my countless art dreams is to do a series of paintings focusing on those very contrasts….) Here, from the porch, the brilliant sun-filled yellow flowers just seemed to sing against the darker backdrop of woodlands.
Alas, two days in Vermont is not nearly long enough, but I’m hoping to return for a longer spell later this year to really focus on painting (more about that sometime later….) For now, short and sweet would have to suffice, as I loaded my paints back into my sporty little rental car and made my way back to Exeter, for one last night.
My last August morning in New England involved two walks — the first, with my aunt (who, at 87, I can still barely keep up with) over to the cemetery to check in with our beloveds who are lain to rest there among the shading hardwoods. A beautiful sunny day to take in the quiet, pay our respects, and share memories.
My second morning walk was once again fueled with Me & Ollie’s coffee, as I ambled through the streets of Exeter on down to the river. The sun was higher than my first excursion there a week earlier, and shade was limited, but I finally found a cool seat at the opposite end of the river path. The best view here was looking back toward the Power House that I’d painted the week before. From this vantage, the Powder House was hidden, tucked as it was back behind the dark cloak of evergreens, but the flag pole was in view, as well as the roof of a nearby dwelling.
As I sat there with the river in front of me, a large raft of ducks slowly swam toward me, and then turned around directly in front of me and swam back down the river. Really, it was almost as if they were trying to get my attention, “strutting their stuff.” That, or they were checking me out. Either way, it delighted me — as did every moment of this trip.
But the moment that delighted me most of all on this trip, was when my aunt said to me — as did my cousin, in her own words later — that my painting her surroundings made her see her surroundings differently. ‘Caused her to notice color and light in a way she hadn’t really noticed color and light before. “I’ll never see this place the same again,” they each confessed to me, with tones of appreciation.
Getting people to see the world differently — to notice the small, quiet, beautiful passages of the world around them.. This might be my greatest source of joy in being a painter.
This noticing. It takes time to notice the world around you. To pause, take a deep breath, and, in silence, look.
Notice.
I can’t think of a better use of one’s time.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, one which I’ve memorized by heart. I’ll close this post here, with her beautiful words. as you read it, consider well those last four lines.
Snow Geese
by Mary Oliver
Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.
Links to Dawn Chandler’s posts about her New Hampshire plein air painting trip below
cool tools of a traveling painter
of painting tidal rivers and tool sheds…..
of sunrise clouds and sunset boats….
of lakeside chairs, vermont gardens, & the contemplation of a new hampshire river….
Thank you for reading
of sunrise clouds and sunset boats….
I promised a few weeks ago to share with you the several little plein air paintings I did while traveling New Hampshire last month. I’ve fallen behind with that. The truth is I’ve had a hard time turning my thoughts back to New England when my heart is breaking in Texas… It feels in a way disrespectful to all who are suffering such staggering hardship to focus my attention on something as “light” as Art.
But as my aunt said to me in the midst of the financial and housing crisis of 2008, “these may be the times when people need art the most.” I do know that in dealing with my own hardships — admittedly nothing as traumatizing and life-altering as the people of the Gulf Coast are dealing with — that it was art that helped me more than anything work through my grief.
And so, I shall continue sharing my creations.
Recall that I left off at my aunt’s summer home on Lake Wentworth.
The morning of our first full day together at The Lake, I rose early and joined my aunt in the kitchen. As tea water heated, I sat across from her (at what has become maybe my favorite kitchen table anywhere) while we each shuffled our own deck of cards, and commenced with dueling games of Solitaire. After watching her win three games in a row (OK — I’ll fess up: she does NOT cheat, damnit) and me losing three games in a row (which would be the case even if I DID cheat!) I finally had enough and decided to go down to the dock to paint. For I’d noticed that a great distant cloud in the sky over the lake seemed undecided about whether it wanted to be the softest shade of gold or the softest shade of pink. Regardless of which color it settled on, I figured the intensity of the hue was only going to get better. So I grabbed my paints and mug of tea and descended down the steps to the water’s edge.
What really delighted me when I looked out on this scene was how the evergreen line of Stamp Act Island was dark, but the distant shore beyond it was illuminated with sunshine.
The main cloud which initially caught my eye just radiated its pink and gold confusion across the lake. The point that I ultimately captured was when the water just below the island was golden, while gentle waves near me were picking up hues of pink.
Just as I was finishing up my painting, my aunt came down from the house, “I just had to see what you were doing!” She then admitted, “when you first went down, to paint, I looked out to the water and thought ‘now what on earth is she going to paint? There’s nothing of interest going on out there….’ And then I watched as that cloud — and the water — turned pink and gold! I’ve never seen anything like it! I’m so glad you got it!”
I’m glad, too.
Much of the rest of that morning I spent on a long walk through pine forests, exploring the rail trail into the town of Wolfboro. Although I brought my paints with me, there wasn’t time for me to pull them out that during my walk, so instead I took a lot of photos, eventually turning to them back in New Mexico, as I did a couple weeks ago when I recreated this inviting shady scene from the trail, just below Wolfboro.
Later in the afternoon (post nap & swim, but before the late-afternoon jigsaw puzzling session lubricated with sherry) I returned to the lakeside, this time at the other of my aunt’s docks, to observe the late afternoon sun on my cousin’s boat. Boats and buoys are intimidating, as they have such perfect geometry, (as does the square dock in the mid-distance of this scene). I struggled for a bit trying to get the boat and buoy the correct brightness (I kept making them too dark), but eventually got them at least pretty close.
What I would have given to ship this boat off to Texas last week…..
Links to Dawn Chandler’s posts about her New Hampshire plein air painting trip below
cool tools of a traveling painter
of painting tidal rivers and tool sheds…..
of sunrise clouds and sunset boats….
of lakeside chairs, vermont gardens, & the contemplation of a new hampshire river….
Thank you for reading
of painting tidal rivers and lakeside tool sheds
Walk for maybe ten minutes from my aunt’s front door, across the academy yards, past the post office, past the Congregational Church (with a wave down the lane to the Unitarians), past the town hall and bandstand, and make a quick right turn into Me & Ollie’s for a coffee-to-go (resisting, if you possibly can, the small snack packages of crack-like addictive granola), cross Water Street, walk past the couple of dozen pretty little shops with flowers in their windows, cut down through an urban canyon of red brick, and find yourself, coffee in hand, at the Exeter River. Here you’ll find a little paved path, dotted with occasional park benches and lovely shade trees, coursing along the waterway.
It was from one of these inviting seats that I decided to create my first New England plein air oil painting. I wanted a seat in the shade, so as to minimize glare on my painting and palette (glare, as you might imagine, makes it much harder to see what I’m doing), and found one near the town-end of the river. My gaze took me across the river to the far bank, where, under a tall dark stand of pine trees sits all alone a little square brick one-story building, with an American flag out front.
I remember the first time I really noticed that little building. It was 1976 (I was 12) when my grandmother and I were driving along the Swasey Parkway and she pointed it out to me across the river. A group of women were teaming up that year to sew a Bicentennial quilt for the town of Exeter, with fabric squares of historic scenes from around town, and my grandmother’s square was to be of that little house. “That is the Powder House and was built in 1771 to store gunpowder, which is very explosive. It’s out there all by itself so that, if the gunpowder blew up, no one would be hurt.” Since that day I’ve always thought of the Powder House as belonging to my grandmother and me.
This early morning though, the Powder House was barely discernible against the shaded forest, though toward the end of my painting session, the flag was just catching the light. The hardest challenge of the morning was getting the shade of the distance trees right — not too dark and not too light. Also not too bright, as more distant colors tend to fade, though here the difference in contrast between the foliage of the mid-ground to that of the background was hardly contrasted at all. Also I needed to get used to these water-mixable oil paints, as they are slicker in texture than regular oil paints, and therefore handle a little differently.
Note the limited palette of just four paint colors: Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Hansa Yellow + Titanium White. In addition to seeing how a painting progresses, I love, too, seeing the transformation of colors on the palette.
The other big challenge was painting that flag pole. I had not brought a fine detail brush with me, and so attempted to capture that white line with the flat edge of one of my regular brushes — which is a bit like trying to do fine embroidery with a toothpick. Amazed to have pulled it off as well as I did! I find it’s this tiny detail that adds charm and interest to an otherwise rather boring painting.
Later that afternoon found me an hour north of the Exeter River and just a few yards from the shore of Lake Wentworth, in the shadow of my aunt’s summer house. I don’t know when the house was built, but she’s had it since the 1950s, and has kept it more or less the same these 60 some years. Yes, it has wifi, but blessedly no television (If you want to keep track of the Red Sox, you need to tune in to the radio). During my brief visits to The Lake, my primary occupations are, in no particular order of importance: swimming, reading, jigsaw puzzles, card games, conversation, naps, walks, knitting, kayaking, letter-writing, eating, sipping, and — most recently — painting.
And so my first painting at The Lake was of my aunt’s tool shed — mainly because, when I found a seat in the shade, the tool shed sat right in front of me. Though the day had been quite temperate, about the time I sat down to paint, the wind shifted and plunked down a stiffing mass of heat and humidity. Eventually it would shift again as I was painting, and bring with it a lovely cooling breeze and, eventually, a few rain drops.
What really drew me to this unusual view though was the light shining through the windows of the tool shed, and spilling onto the floor and work bench.
Of the seven paintings I created on my New Hampshire sojourn, THIS is the one my aunt (87!) chose to keep for herself (for I let her pick one — a small token of my deep appreciation for her letting me invade her lake sanctuary). In selecting it, she said, “I like this one, for I’m particularly proud of my tools!” As another woman who is also proud of her tools, I can relate!
Links to Dawn Chandler’s posts about her New Hampshire plein air painting trip below
cool tools of a traveling painter
of painting tidal rivers and tool sheds…..
of sunrise clouds and sunset boats….
of lakeside chairs, vermont gardens, & the contemplation of a new hampshire river….
Thank you for reading
living free and coming home
The rail trail path near Wolfboro, New Hampshire.
I’m in a live free or die state.
No, I don’t mean ideologically (tho’ that, too). I mean physically — in the Live Free or Die State. New Hampshire.
In the years that I’ve been writing this blog, my love for New Mexico is evident: simply survey my paintings and you’ll find no state more frequently depicted than the Land of Enchantment. I’ve made New Mexico my home for some 20+ years; it’s clear I’m infatuated with it.
More recently, I’ve spoken of of my love for Vermont. Indeed, I’ve written so affectionately about The Green Mountain State that some people — knowing I’m from the East — have assumed I’m from Vermont. (I am not. I’m proudly from New Jersey, another of the original colonies that is dear to me).
But I don’t know if I’ve ever written here about my abiding affection for New Hampshire.
Exeter, New Hampshire was my mother’s childhood home. Though born in Belmont, Massachusetts, at the age of 10 she and her family moved to New Hampshire, where my grandfather took a position teaching history at Phillips Exeter Academy. He taught there all the rest of his life, until his retirement in the 1960s, when he and my grandmother simply moved down the road, a short two or three-mile drive from the academy and town center.
The Exeter River, New Hampshire, as seen early one August morning from one of the town bridges.
Exeter was where my mother was raised, where she married, and where she and my father — along with her parents — are buried.
Though she lived 42 years of my life in New Jersey, it was New Hampshire that my mother called home.
And it’s a place that I call home, too. A place I’ve been returning to nearly ever year for over half a century. Where I feel safe in my family’s memories. I know that my vision of New Hampshire is through the opaque filter of nostalgia, tinted deeply with rose and warm sepia, and little, if any, shadow. My vision is filled with light and warmth and every visit pulls me back into memories of simpler times; memories — some of which aren’t even mine, but rather are conjured from black-papered albums of faded photographs….
The farm at Bow.
Elders in rocking chairs.
Shucking corn on the back stoop.
Fields and forests where now box stores lie.
Softball and picnics at the Unitarian Church.
Hockey in a make-shift backyard rink.
Pocket knives and corncob pipes.
A rusted can dribbling water onto a whet stone.
Stone walls.
Woodpiles.
Woolens.
Wool rugs.
Aluminum foil Christmas decorations.
Vases of tea roses and snap dragons.
Green beans cooked in cream. Common Crackers with melting pads of butter floating like boats in bowls of fish chowda’. Lawrence Welk. Red Sox. Aromas of baking bread and hermit cookies. Orange pop. Apple sauce and gingerbread. Jigsaw puzzles. Hot attics and damp cellars. Wooden trunks. Lakeside conversations. Creaking stairs and kitchen table card games.
The smell of pine.
The smell of pine.
The smell of pine.
The smell of ocean.
Three games of solitaire at the kitchen table at my aunt’s New Hampshire lake house. Note my winning game on the left. It was my only win that morning whereas my aunt (above) and cousin (below) won numerous times. I’m pretty sure they cheat. 😉
I come to New Hampshire to connect again with my roots, and walk with my mother’s family’s memories of good lives well-lived. To be reminded that all good things eventually come to an end but all bad things, too. And that the hard edge of even the most troubling news is somehow softened with a cup of tea and shared laughter.
In my years and years of visiting New Hampshire, this most recent visit is the first time I brought a plein air paint kit. I’m so pleased that in my busy visit I somehow found time to do a bit of painting. Not nearly as many paintings as I would have liked, but a few. I’ll be sharing them here over the next few posts. Come — meet me back here for a painted glimpse into my New Hampshire….
Links to Dawn Chandler’s posts about her New Hampshire plein air painting trip below
cool tools of a traveling painter
of painting tidal rivers and tool sheds…..
of sunrise clouds and sunset boats….
of lakeside chairs, vermont gardens, & the contemplation of a new hampshire river….
Thank you for reading