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Riding the Red Dawn at Los Caballos, Marathon TX
Last night, I closed the pages of one of the most remarkably satisfying reads I’ve enjoyed in my passionate relationship with fiction. If you love dogs, or race cars; if you’re young enough or old enough to contemplate the big questions life poses, rush out and buy your own copy of THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN by Frank Stein. I won’t loan my copy out. It’s the sort of book I’ll savor, ...
<< MORE >>Moonrise, Big Bend
"Moonrise, Big Bend" 24" x 48" pastel copyright Lindy C Severns 2009
Kiowa Gallery, Alpine TX $7800 (for a more detailed image, go to my website)
Alpine's ArtWalk and Gallery Night 2009
Painting in the Big Bend entertains me. This is a land of surprises where being one with nature is the only given. I can go to the same location day after day and never see the same place twice. I can go to the same place twice and never see the scene I’d intended painting.
And that keeps painting this vast region fun for me.
Art should be fun for the artist. Too much work goes into creating art for it not to be fun. The behind-the scenes tasks of a professional artist can be daunting. Take deadlines.
Alpine’s annual Artwalk and Gallery Night happens the weekend before Thanksgiving. It’s sort of dress-up time for us artists, when we hang new work in time for the holidays. I’m a resident artist at Kiowa Gallery, so Artwalk is my deadline for framing and hanging my next year’s collection. I’m allotted x-amount of wall space. Gallery owner Keri Artzt and I confer as to what sizes, shapes and price ranges I'll fill that space with. This year, at the last minute, the gallery awarded me a significant chunk of extra wall turf. Keri wanted a four foot long pastel, and she wanted it to represent one of my favorite subjects, the Sierra del Carmens across the Rio Grande from Big Bend National Park. At sunset, she suggested, and I do not take my gallery owners’ suggestions lightly.
I recognized this as one of life’s mixed blessings, the sort that makes me clandestinely consume chocolate. If I had the market, I’d regularly paint large canvases, but in this case, there literally wasn’t time to travel, paint and frame. So, I said “yes”.
We moved the RV to Marathon, intent on taking a couple of day trips into the National Park. A wind storm swept through West Texas. We couldn’t sleep, the RV was rocking so. We rose before dawn and drove to Panther Junction, about 80 miles. Disappointed, we turned back after lunch. Paintings of dust storms and blowing cactus just don’t sell. The next day proved much the same. And the next.
The Border Patrol guys were getting to know us as the crazy folks who drove in and out of the Park with a parrot, a dog and a camera. (Painting on location wasn’t even an option.) I decided to try for a sunrise location, someplace nearby. We set the alarm for pre-dawn-thirty. Filled the Thermos. Drove twenty miles. Waited for the sun to rise and strike the Los Caballos formation. (This trip ultimately produced another large painting, but not until I got rained on. Snow and ice followed, keeping us parked in Marathon.) We ate buffalo burgers at the Gage Hotel another night. We’d been in Marathon a week and I still didn’t have a painting subject.
On Halloween, the last morning we could possibly stay gone and still have a life to go back to, we traveled once more into Big Bend. We finally got to hike, and we took lots of pictures, but nothing that said “Paint me Large”. We researched locations from which we could see the sunset color the del Carmens, then after much hiking and much discussion, we returned to our chosen spot.
We hiked up the rise about 4:30 pm. Sat in the burning sun on a fossil bed amid cholla and ocotillo and lechiguilla and studied the view I wanted to paint. It was clear and sunny, and the hill behind us promised to produce an interesting mass of shadow right at sunset. I sat, waiting. Watching.
Jim kicked up a melon-sized rock. He analyzed it, then brought it to me. It was a fossilized egg, the shell clearly delineated. The amber-colored head, neck, body and legs curled within. Striations on the outside of the “shell” seemed to indicate the beak’s attempts to break out. Before what? What happened to keep the prehistoric avian from hatching, walking this rise, flying over the del Carmens? We felt connected to the stony creature. Awed to experience such sacredness of nature. It is a huge region, with hundreds of views of the del Carmens. We’d debated on where to set up. What had made us choose this very difficult to reach spot?
Jim took the fossil back and carefully replaced just as he’d found it, gently sinking it back into the nest of dusty ground that for eons had been its grave and almost, its birthplace.
The shadows on the del Carmens deepened, but the sun was still high. We were hot and thirsty, but didn’t want to hike back down to the truck for water. Jim started politely whining about needing a beer and a buffalo burger. I was tempted. How foolish to spend hours sitting in one spot, waiting on a five-minute window that might or might not happen?
Having chosen this spot, I was reluctant to move at all now. I played with pebbles around my knees. When I looked up, the full moon was rising over Pico. A gift to an artist. Waiting became instantly easier.
Almost three hours after we’d hiked up the mountainside, the hill behind us dramatically blocked the sun and cast a giant shadow that melted the red volcanic rocks into purples and blues. The moon hesitated in its arc across the deepening blue sky, and the del Carmens vibrated with lights and darks.
It was almost two hours back to Marathon. The animals had been shut up in the RV all day. We were tired and hungry and hoping the bar at the Gage was still serving burgers. We passed less than an handful of cars all the way back. Five minutes out of Marathon, our headlights illuminated a deer lying in the opposite lane of traffic. Her head was up, alertly looking around, but her mangled legs were twisted awkwardly beneath her body. She calmly facing death. Wondering why, or maybe knowing why. She seemed so...aware.
We talked about stopping and shooting her.
We didn’t. And I thought about her all night.
For us, the things we didn’t do that busy day proved the most significant. We didn’t irreverently kick the fossilized chick aside. We marveled. We didn’t settle for merely spectacular scenery, and we didn't succumb to impatience so we didn’t miss moonrise. We didn’t try to “fix” nature by putting the doe down.
Sunset. Timelessness. Life. Death. Moonrise.
We got our burgers, shared a toast to the day, returned home to spend the next week of twelve hour days paintng in my studio before delivering the finished pastel for framing. I was tempted to keep this painting, but I have the memories that generated it.
I’m grateful for the gift of being able to celebrate and share Nature through my art. And that makes the deadlines a lot easier to handle.
for more paintings visit my website OLD SPANISH TRAIL STUDIO
Sleeping Lion Mountain Under a Sky So Broad and Deep
Walking such ground as you go about life affects the way you look at time and space.
Numerous books and local organizations, such as the Friends of the Fort and the Historical Society regularly share arcane facts about our predecessors in Jeff Davis County. My favorite involves notorious mail carrier Henry Skillman. The first Butterfield/Overland Express carrier was taking his siesta in one of the towering palisades of igneous rock lining his route. He took off his boots and was mending his buckskin pants when some pesky Apaches interrupted his break. The dedicated mail carrier reported he dropped his drawers to sling his mail pouch over his shoulder. Bare of more than just his boots, he then tediously evaded the Apaches, who rudely confiscated his horse before scattering back into the mountains. After hours of playing hide and seek in the rocks, Skillman continued on to El Paso on foot. While neither rain nor snow nor Apaches could keep our Henry from his appointed rounds up the Old Spanish Trail from Fort Davis, I can only imagine the sunburn he must have suffered.
Sleeping Lion Mountain typifies those rugged, jumbled igneous rock formations that make this area so wildly spectacular. The mountain is the spinal cord of Fort Davis. Along one side spread the original pre-Civil War fort, followed by the "new" army post, the one still standing today. Town sprouts under the mountain's southern and western shadows. The Davis Mountains State Park and McDonald Observatory have the mountain's back. More significantly, just past Sleeping Lion, there's still nothing but land and sky. And lots of both.
When I had to choose my subject for a recent in-studio pastel painting demonstration for a group of out-of-area artists, Sleeping Lion seemed a good introduction to Fort Davis landscape art. In an hour and a half, a relatively short time, as painting goes, I would paint a sky, because that's what I do—I paint skies.
But I wanted to convey a sense of place to these Texas hill country artists. I wanted to share this place in history, this place unchanged by big box stores and high rises and freeways. Although there wasn't time to spin the yarn about Henry Skillman, I wanted my fourteen visiting artists to intuit what a barefoot hike from Fort Davis might be like. I couldn't take them hiking, so I painted from photos I took while hiking the trail from the park to the fort with young city cousin/mountain goat Dylan Hernandez.
I enjoyed my visitors, the Lakeway Artists and their workshop instructor, professional artist Danny Jones of Mansfield, Texas. We painted, wined and dined. We laughed a lot. I hope they learned a lot.
I also hope they took something wild and agelessly empty home with them.
As I hope you do.
I introduce Sleeping Lion Mountain. Look down on it. Imagine climbing in and out of those long-cooled lava rocks, hiding from pursuers, taking shelter from the sun and storms.
Imagine you're alone. Walking across a mountain ridge. Standing on this mountain trail between the State Park and the old fort. The surrounding mountains hide all evidence of man's still sparse habitation in the area. Careful you don't bump into that needle-sharp dagger that clings to the rocky ground for dear life.
Look straight ahead. Will that distant rain shower make it all the way to Sleeping Lion Mountain?
I invite you to travel into a cloudy West Texas sky. It's a long way to Infinity, but here in Far West Texas, we can still see that it's out there.
UNDER A SKY SO BROAD AND DEEP
Sleeping Lion Mountain, Fort Davis, TX
12" x 18" pastel on archival Kitty Wallis paper copyright Lindy C Severns 2009
$1800 unframed
* for a larger image and more paintings of Big Bend country, visit my website http://oldspanishtrailstudio.com
TECHNIQUE TIP
Single Point Sky Perspective :
Years of flying made me acutely aware that clouds aren't puffy little cottonballs in cerulean sky. Clouds are substantial, sometimes scary entities that compete with each other, crowd each other, layer themselves over each other like rowdy litter of pups clamoring to get out of a box. Clouds are NOT symmetrical white shapes on a solid blue field, and they aren't all floating around on the same plane.
To paint layers of clouds, I employ perspective, just as when painting terrain, except mirror-imaged. The clouds at the top of the page are the closest. As such, they will appear larger, and they will overlap those beneath them. Successive layers of clouds get progressively smaller as they approach the horizon, and will be layered from the top of the page downward, with those on the horizon being the farthest back layer. In painting the ground, the exact opposite is true—items at the bottom of the page are closest and therefore, largest. This front layer overlaps successively smaller layers approaching the horizon.
Try this: Fold a piece of paper in two parts, but not necessarily in half. Your fold is the horizon. The top and bottom edges (farthest from the fold) will hold the largest shapes, say, clouds and rocks. Progressively layer increasingly smaller clouds (down) and behind and rocks (up) and behind until you reach the fold. That's where you place your smallest, farthest clouds and tiniest, most distant rocks.
See, you didn't even have to attend my workshop demo to learn that. Of course, you did miss drinks followed by that delicious, authentic Mexican food dinner on the veranda, but unfortunately, that can't be helped now. (The Internet does have its limitations.)
Light of a Distant Fire
Fire calls are, after all, much like the calls that used to summon us to drop whatever we were doing to go aviate.
One June afternoon, we
...<< MORE >>
Storm Coming and Laundry on the Line, Finishing Touches to Blinded by Green
In the studio, it seems easier to finish a painting. You're unhurried. In the studio, there exists the comfort of continuity. You walk away from the easel. The next day, and the next, and so on for as long as necessary, you step up to that easel, which is in exactly the same spot you left it. Your paints are arranged in the same orderly or chaotic arrangement. The light is either the same as your last painting session, or you flip a switch and recreate that very light. ...<< MORE >>
Blinded by Green
Regardless, I do believe if you set your mind to it, you can bloom, wherever.
But living where you desire to live is very different than living somewhere because you've chosen to live there. What's the difference between desire and choice? The place where you locate Home Base is almost always arrived ...<< MORE >>
Having Known Better Times (but is it really that bad?)
The borderland locale known as "Terlingua" is disputedly also recognized as Study Butte. Then up the road, there's Terlingua Ghost Town. Local lore provides numerous arguments as to which is where. It's easier to think of the three as one and the same place. Anyway, the backyard of Terlingua/Study Butte adjoins Big Bend National Park, a land in which vastness takes on a vastly expanded meaning. Things die in the desert, National Park or not.
Deserts intimidate most of us, anyway. Deserts are uncomfortable. Desert life, whether plant or animal implies a definite ruggedness alien to those devoted to air conditioning and lattes. At first glance, this borderland habitat is also stark, colorless, empty. Summer temperatures are commonly 110 degrees or more, unless there's a heatwave. Nights, you can freeze to death. Terlingua once hosted a large mercury mining industry, so there are those of us who don't feel comfortable rolling around in the white Terlingua dust that coats everything, and winter/spring sandstorms don't make it easy to keep out of that dust. The nearest hospital is a couple of hours away, and WalMart is only a whispered dream spread by those who vacation there.
The obvious conclusion is that anything and anyone living in such a place must be touched in the head.
Far from it. Although there are the usual small town misfits living in isolation because they can't cope in society, the majority of folks living in the area are extremely intelligent, capable and self-reliant. At first glance, you might not be able to tell these two types apart, but never judge a west Texan by his hat. (And during Terlingua summers, staying scantily clothed and frequently wet is the fashion norm. This is not Manhattan. In the desert, shoes are tools, not fashion statements. I suspect you could spend a whole summer down there with less than a backpack full of clothes, and not wear half of what you packed.)
Scattered across the desert you'll find crumbling adobe ruins, discarded tools, broken things that would've cost the users too much energy to carry any further. Tumbled cairns pointing the way to who knows where anymore. Remnants of hard-lived lives. Some were failed lives. Most, I imagine, were not. "Hard" doesn't negate happiness.
Residing on the border is still a dramatic life choice. There are, after all, easier places to live. The thing is, many Terlingua residents have lived in those places and wouldn't go back now, not even for all the water in their radiator.
Terlinguans, man and beast alike, regularly enjoy softly painted sunrises and sunsets uninterrupted by the silhouettes of man-made structures. When you've been down there awhile, the colors become more vivid. It's kind of like being in a dark cave - deprived of visual stimulation, your hearing becomes acute. There, in the white vastness of the desert, every speck of color screams for recognition. In the apparent absence of animal life, seeing a line of ants marching in the heat can feel like a wildlife adventure. The cry of a hawk, the yips of coyote pups can send chills of joy down my spine. It means something is out there. Something besides me.
Some animals, like some humans, are more cheerful survivors than others. For that reason, around Far West Texas, we admire burros a lot. They're hardy, kindred souls who've shared the desert with us for generations. We came upon one just at sunset one December evening. At a glance, the lean old burro seemed pathetic. Nothing to graze on, no shelter, no protection from the large scary predators who rule our desert. But as the spotted burrro trotted toward a broken down wagon, I noticed spring in his step. The day was cooling. The sky splashed subtle color over the alkaline hills of dust and tuff and who knew what else. On closer inspection, I saw tufts of green clawing from the ground, purple tumbleweeds, lacy mesquite fronds. The burro saw us. Brayed. Swished his moth-eaten black tail, then trotted on about his evening business. Hard? You bet. Happy?
Who knows. But he's a Far West Texan. I doubt he'd take kindly to being penned in some green Kentucky pasture about now. What fun would there be in that?
"HAVING KNOWN BETTER TIMES" 12" x 15" pastel copyright Lindy C Severns 2009
oldspanishtrailstudio.com
Drawing from the Bed of A Pickup Truck and Other Stories of Aloneness
Remember which things in your young world first shaped who you've become?
An archaeologist unearthing the world that is Lindy would find a stack of people, of loves and loathings, of experiences so deeply intrinsic to my current self, I can't map therm all. I certainly don't remember them all. First memories are, at best, fuzzy memories.
We burn early personal memories for a reason, though: First memories give us a template to expand our lives on. In my case, devoted parents and grandparents assured the tiny me I was a being of value. I took it from there, and my second memory involving family is of willful rebellion against my mother, a personally thrilling episode involving a water faucet and new white shoes. That experience also taught me I tolerate pain well.
I learned very early that I liked chocolate and hated mayo, loved super-sonic jet planes, feared snakes of any genus. Nothing in subsequent years changed my mind about those things, although I later added single malt Scotch to the love list and I now accept mayo in tuna salad, but never on bread.
I learned to mind my mother most of the time, my father, all of the time. Without the benefit of siblings, I learned to play alone before learning to play well with others. Years later, remembering that I was a being of value, I chose wisely and joyfully added Jim to the top of my "love" list. (My retired jet pilot mate doesn't like mayo or snakes, either.)
But before there was a Jim, before airplanes or chocolate or single malt, even before crayons blessed my days, there existed in my world a thin stick of graphite encased in wood: The Pencil, my first best friend. Paper was nice, but, optional. I'm sure the closets in a couple of rent houses still bear my mark.
With a pencil, I could go anywhere and never be alone.
Speed forward a few years. My favorite jet jock is currently spending his golden years as a volunteer fire fighter in a place where wildfires are as common as covered dish dinners (way too much mayo) and rattlesnakes. This leaves me with large blocks of time on my hands. I'm happy in my own company, but one of the rules of firefighting is that fires never erupt when I want to be alone. Not to mention three long nights a month when these waterhose-wielding wilderness warriors train for proficiency.
Also, since we live up in the mountains, we often end up in town together with back- to- back engagements, which inevitably involves one of us waiting in the truck...
Jim escapes into a book. He's so low maintenance that I miss him when he's away.
I don't enjoy evenings spent without my husband. And I sure don't sit still in a pickup truck very well.
My parents would've scolded the preschool me to find something to do with my time.
So, in a flash of inspiration, I dug out my sketchbook. When we were flying, I used to sketch almost daily. Nothing grand. Just people, streets seen from hotel rooms. My toes. Somewhere, I lost the habit, despite now owning an entire case of pencils and several sketchbooks. Re-forming the drawing habit has been like reuniting with a lost love, except easier on one's marriage. Being stuck in town has become an adventure, and the subjects of my pencil intrigue more than views from urban hotel rooms. There's the historic fort, scenic Davis Mt State Park, local Sleeping Lion Mt., all within ten minutes of the firehouse. Interesting faces abound in Fort Davis and Alpine, so faces sketched from my photos help fill the nights and keep the worry level to a dull roar on nights Jim is off in the mountains, fighting fires.
SLEEPING LION MOUNTAIN AT THE OVERLAND TRAIL FORT DAVIS, TX
11" x 14" pencil Lindy C Severns 2009
I've even found the perfect platform for plein air drawing. I perch on the toolbox in the bed of the pickup, far from the slitherings of any reptilian locals. (It's not the way Monet did it, but it works for me.) Often I have the animals with me, and the truck bed contains the dog while the parrot prances around the railing. Odd is the norm in Far West Texas, so the only stares I draw are from tourists, folks I'll never see again anyway. It isn't the most comfortable seat in the house, but remember, I'm pain tolerant. Time passes too quickly. I race the sunset. I haven't forgotten to pick Jim up yet, but I've been late once or twice.
Funny, the things we forget to remember.
SPILLIN' THE BISCUITS
12" x 16" pencil Lindy C Severns 2009
To see more of my drawings and paintings, or for a virtual vacation in Big Bend country, please visit my website!
lindycseverns.com
The Road to Sundown and Visions Shared
Much of my art and thus, my writing about my art focuses on the Scenic Loop, a 76-mile circuit around the Davis Mountains. Well worthy of its descriptive name on area maps, this sightseer's delight starts in Fort Davis, then weaves southwest past us all the way around the mountains. A majestic, rugged volcanic formation aptly named Sawtooth Mountain marks the major change in direction, the psychological halfway point. Past Sawtooth, to the north and east, the road winds by McDonald Observatory, Davis Mountain State Park, the historic frontier fort, then back into Fort Davis.
This usually deserted two-lane road circles lands ranched by the same ...<< MORE >>
The Colors of Silence
For lack of a scientific term, she called this elusive and now-missing spiritual appendage a sixth sense, a connectedness to the earth that once encompassed both knowledge and intuition in a protective, portable chassis planted deep within each of us.
This favorite prof of mine claimed humanity's design includes an intrinsic connection to nature. Over millions of years of massing intellectual lore, she theorized that man allowed one of homo sapiens' most precious traits to atrophy. That leaves sight, sound, touch, smell, taste. Those bold senses we've got down pat. We email and twitter and blog. We download our favorite tunes, IM, leave voice mail. We obsess over the darkness or lightness of our third cup of coffee before nine, proclaim our Cabernet has dark chocolate undertones, our Chardonnay hints at grapefruit. We wear leather and silk and sumptuous velvet that begs to be stroked as we dance the night away under faceted crystal globes that spin and sparkle. It's not a bad life at all.
Okay. So we aren't so good anymore at feeling the eyes of a mountain lion follow us on our morning hike, at sensing an earthquake before picture frames crash to the floor. We're even less adept at intuiting our neighbor's silent pain, at living our lives in moderation, at being still and knowing our God, and thus, ourselves.
We escape to nature now. We even call our getaways "escapes" and we go to places we can build fires with twigs and perhaps just a cheat of lighter fluid when no one's looking. We fill our living and working spaces with tropical plants and pump-driven waterfalls. Consciously or unconsciously, we seek to regain that which we've lost.
You'd think that life in a small town in the mountains would satisfy the missing sense for those of us lucky enough to enjoy such a life. But small town life is busier. We fill our days with activities. Meetings. Clubs. Lectures. Dinners. Benefit auctions and pot luck luncheons. Volunteer-ism rules a small town, where saying "NO" can mean something doesn't get done because there aren't enough willing hands to go around. Good causes, good people, worthwhile activities. But it's easy to get ensnared in a web of busy-ness. And I believe that along with living in cozy homes and not having to forage for our own food, its that busy-ness that disconnects whatever remains of our sixth sense. Even we must get away sometimes, and, we do. Jim and I take frequent drives, and our front door is the scenic loop through the Davis Mountains of far West Texas. We hike almost daily. (Today, we saw a new spider web spun between rocks on the ground. How do they do that?) But even that isn't enough.
I would add to Dr. Montgomery's premise. I think to be whole, we have to regularly recognize and experience silence. I believe silence reconnects us. Silence implies stillness. Introspection. Awareness. Appreciation. Intuition and Knowledge enter our spirits through silent corridors. I get as busy as the next person, but I've hiked some of those corridors, even flown through some. So I ask you to take five minutes from your busy day (do it now, if you can, or return for an escape later). Walk into this painting of the natural world south of Marfa, Texas. Study the mantle of cloud that cloaks the landscape in peace. Be still and listen to what nature says to you. Listen with that buried sixth sense if you can. But for me, silence is also brilliantly colored.
THE COLORS OF SILENCE
ranchland south of Marfa, Texas
a 24" x 36" oil on archival gesso panel by Lindy C Severns 2009
available at Midland Gallery, Midland, TX $5800 (plus framing) contact the gallery for final pricing
for an enlarged image, go to my website oldspanishtrailstudio.com