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 Garth Stein. I won’t loan my copy out. It’s the sort of book I’ll savor, knowing I can return for one succinctly profound thought at a time.

What does this have to do with art? you ask. That’s why I enjoy blogging for you. You’re astutely aware of where your interests lie, and I assure you, this is going somewhere besides Watkins Glen or the kennels behind the library.

Without spoiling your read—should you take my advice and read the book—THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN keeps several philosophical themes weaving through its pages. As in the title: Anyone can race on a dry track—an artist embraces the rain, triumphing over the technicians skidding across a wet track. Rain is the unknown element, a thing that appears unbidden, heedless of all our planning and preparation. Rain. The wild card in life. That which cannot be controlled but which can, and often does, change everything. Forever.

I traveled to Marathon, Texas to paint a spectacular sunset. I like painting sunsets because I can select both the sunset vista and also, which afternoon I paint.  Painting sunsets is a rather leisurely activity that can be savored. Sunrises, on the other hand, are just awful on artists, who must awaken in darkness, then blindly seek out transient light winking at an interesting terrain. If it’s cloudy or raining, or if you don’t know where to wait for sunup, most likely you’ve gotten out of bed early for naught. In my case, I drag my little family, husband, dog and parrot with me for such occasions. If I’m yawning and cold, I want everyone to share my discomfort. Art is a team sport in our family.

To say the weather that week didn’t cooperate would be like saying lechiguilla, with its rapier-tipped, toxin-coated spines, hurts when it breaks off in your knee. Painting on location went by the wayside with the first day’s ice storm. By midweek, we counted ourselves lucky to have one decent photograph of the dreary-skied desert. The next morning, I woke uncharacteristically early and roused the troops. Twenty-six degrees and windy. Nice driving toward sunrise weather, I announced. I screwed the lid on the Thermos as we staggered out the door and headed south.

South of Marathon, a rocky, isolated formation dramatic in a country steeped in drama gallops across the desert floor. “Los Caballos” the early Spaniards dubbed it, because the folded pattern of undulating white ridges reminded them of horsemen on their mounts. It hadn’t been much to see at sunset, but with time ticking the week away, I had nothing to lose but sleep. It was darkest-hour-before-the-dawn black when we reached the formation, or rather, the marker indicating it was out to the west, somewhere. We pulled off the road to wait.

Then, sunrise!

Sunrise drama is so fleeting, you can blink and miss the show. This frigid morning the sun rose, shone scarlet and gold across the eastern horizon, then instantly leapt into the clouds, leaving the mountains dark cutouts against a cheerless horizon. I took a picture anyway, a record of our travels. Jim poured coffee. We were there, so we sat in the truck, enjoying the silence of dawn. And there, we waited. For a lady with no patience, I wait a lot for what I want.

Pilots know all it takes is a hole in the sky. One hole. During our second cup of coffee in our Ford Super Duty F-250 holding pattern, the sun escaped to beam light onto one section of those ridges known as Los Caballos.

I leap from the truck, scramble up a boulder for a good shot. And giant, wind-driven  raindrops splatter my cheeks. Now, I’m waving a digital camera around in the rain while precariously balanced on a slippery rock I didn’t actually need to climb and I still haven’t taken a picture and the sun is retreating into the clouds. Sheltering my hydrophobic camera with one hand, I focus on the galloping folds of rock ridges as late dawn dresses them in red velvet necklaced with diamonds.

Intellectually, I know—because I study guidebooks written by scholars of geology—that I’m not seeing diamonds. The sparkling white strata in this rollicking column of aged mountains poking up from the earth, unattached to their neighboring hills is novaculite. This stunning ripple of white chert-like rock is composed of microscopic quartz crystals. The crystals are wet now, and collectively, they dazzle. I get my shot, and another, and my camera battery goes dead. I have extra batteries in the truck, of course.  I am not in the truck though. I am on a large slippery rock, and the rain is falling harder now. The photo shoot is over.

Another thing the guidebooks proclaim is that this formation is both ancient and displaced. Without getting lost in the fascinating geology of tectonic plates, let me summarize this place’s history as I understand it: Something cataclysmic happened to this spot very, very long ago, and these dawn-red mountains draped in jewels aren’t supposed to be here, and once they interjected themselves into this landscape to the sound of continents crashing apart, nothing was ever the same again. And on this morning, I am there to appreciate these old souls of mountains.

I love most of my paintings. The few I don’t love, you don’t see. But I love some paintings best, and this is one of those. I loved being out in the middle of nowhere, drinking coffee in a pickup truck with my husband and the animals we share our lives with. Loved standing on that rock in the icy rain and wondering if it would be me or my camera to crash first. Loved printing those two not-so-spectacular photos and knowing I’d remember, better than they, what splendor dawn light through rainclouds urged onto those ancient mountains. Loved boldly using the garish red pastels gathering dust in their little-used landscape tray. Loved painting in the studio as if sudden raindrops might wash my work away, as if my hair was afire and getting this one onto canvas was my last living act before that fire consumed me. As if continents were about to break up to drift apart beneath me and my easel.

Unanticipated, unknown elements fall into our lives every day. The trick is to live life as an artist, not a technician. Experience teaches more than the most detailed photograph. Diamonds excite us more than novaculite. Art, poetry, music, fine literature all zoom us past the guidebooks we depend so heavily on and into a place where wind whips our hair across damp cheeks and words are meaningless.

Today, may you take each moment for what it is. Rain is wet. Don’t fight it. You may even try racing in it.

 
RIDING THE RED DAWN Los Caballos near Marathon, TX
copyright Lindy C Severns 2009
22" x 33" pastel  conservation framing by Midland Gallery   $5800

for an enlarged image of this painting, visit http://lindycseverns.com 

Lindy C Severns
PO Box 2167  Fort Davis, TX
Old Spanish Trail Studio
http://oldspanishtrailstudio.com

Gallery Representation:

MIDLAND GALLERY
432-694-8761
4610 N Garfield Ste A-2
Midland, TX 79705
http://midlandgallery.com

KIOWA GALLERY
432-837-3067
105 E Holland Ave
Alpine, TX 79830