During our weekly half -hour drive into Fort Davis on Sunday mornings, we count animals. It's a rare Sunday that we don't start the count with mule deer and javelina, hawks, sometimes an eagle. This initial collection is followed by a handful of surly open range cattle, more deer, rabbits. Once, we saw a bobcat. Antelope are common. Coyotes aren't, so we get excited when one trots along the fenceline. We almost always interrupt our count to say something like, "This drive never gets old, does it?" or, "We don't take this for granted, do we?"  My husband and I once sat a few dozen stories high, in a rooftop bar in uptown Manhattan counting wrecks as they occurred. We are easily entertained.

Living inside the scenic loop around the Davis Mountains entertains us greatly.

When the familiar landscape decks itself in Sunday clothes, we take note of that, too. On one particular winter Sunday, we drove from sunny blue skies right smack into all these mystical feathery boas of fog. Jim is generally very patient with my compulsive picture taking — I go nowhere without my trusty Canon digital camera— but after years of marriage, I know when not to beg him to stop. Like, on our way to church. Sunday mornings.
 
Going to church, I'm usually running just a teensy bit late as it is. (On this particular Sunday, I'd washed my hair, a time-intensive act that automatically throws my mate into an obsessive/compulsive bout of clock-gazing as he paces the floor muttering how he hates to be late. I think it's a male Presbyterian flaw he has. I'd also wriggled into hose and heels, something surprisingly difficult and time-consuming after wearing jeans and hiking boots all week.) 

On Sunday mornings, I may gaze longingly at a lovely sky or dazzling shadows crossing the mountains, but I bite my tongue and let that photo go unsnapped. Now the wrapping of fog on those familiar mountains had me squirming in my seat, spilling coffee down my hose and into those wretched heels that I only wear to stay in practice. 

This fog was enchanted.  The lonely windmill, the red grassland, the frozen cholla, the layers of mountains. The icy, floating aloneness of the draped mountain landscape made me glad I wasn't out there on horseback. And, a little wistful that I wasn't out there on horseback.

Jim said, "Do you need that picture?" even as he slowed and pulled onto the shoulder.
Proof, of course, there really is a God, even on days I wash my hair.



MOUNTAINS ABOVE THE CLOUDS          7" X 18" pastel on Wallis museum-grade paper
Lindy C Severns   copyright 2008    2009 TRAPPINGS OF TEXAS     Museum of the Big Bend   Alpine, TX

This scene wasn't only magical. It fit the theme I'd chosen for this year's Trappings of Texas paintings. (Trappings is the Museum of the Big Bend's annual Invitational Western Art and Cowboy Gear show and sale in Alpine, Texas.)  I want the four paintings I hang there to speak of solitude. Silence. Spiritual moments in places seldom seen... 
I want these paintings of mine to make the viewer stop and image seeing them from the saddle...

When I paint, I don't know where my viewer is coming from. I certainly can't make my viewers feel what I feel.
But I can try. I can try to make someone sitting on a rooftop in Manhattan and listening to sirens hear the silence of fog-wrapped mountains. I can try to make you smell the ozone-rich clouds float their dampness down into crusty-dry grass and dessicated cholla stalks. I can even hope you see an eagle disappearing past layers of magical clouds as he climbs past an island of mountains.
And once, we saw a bobcat spring through high red grass, right about there.
Look closely. Be very quiet.
You might see one, too.

For more of my paintings or more about Trappings of Texas, visit my website! LindyCSeverns.com
For ticket information to this year's preview party and wall sale, email ejackson@sulross.edu