Old windmills aren't much to look at, at least not by some standards. Drab constructs of weather-worn lumber, windmills aren’t quaint. Unlike lighthouses, you can’t live inside a windmill, can’t turn one into a studio, can’t sell tour tickets for inspection by inquisitive visitors.  Most West Texas windmills are so battered, it’s hard to tell whether these much-repaired towers of bailing wire and scrap lumber are relics or actual working models, laboriously pumping precious water into rusty tanks flanked by skinny cattle.

As a preschooler, one of my favorite travel pastimes was spying windmills on the sweeping Texas prairie between towns scattered few and far between.  I’d scan the horizon for anything taller than mesquite and prickly pear, and when I spotted a circle of blades mounted on weathered lumber, I’d exclaim, “That windmill’s turning!” to which Daddy  always responded, “That windmill’s NOT turning!”.  This argument could go on for a couple of miles. The delight of this game was that mostly, we drove across Texas, where the wind is the sun’s every breath.  Which meant I was invariably right about those windmill blades spinning in the wind: My windmills were always turning.

Fascinated with the concept of the ever-present west Texas wind spinning rickety blades whose motion ultimately coaxed water into surface tanks, the child that was me also chased the shadow of every crop duster and waved my arms in comradeship with every jet plane that soared overhead.  Airfoils have always intrigued me. In a land of endless sand storms interspersed with frequent tornados, I observed delicate rings of petal-like blades regularly harnessing the wind. Circles of blades brought water up from the earth and moved aircraft across the sky.

I no longer fly, but the whine of a fan jet will never really leave my ears.  And seeing age-scarred windmill blades spin silver across a lonely landscape will forever play my father’s playful voice: “That windmill’s NOT turning.” Remembering makes me smile, but Daddy's teasing challenge did more than entertain me on long road trips. Spying windmills taught me a valuable lesson: airfoils aren’t designed for stillness.  With that lesson now as intrinsic to me as the blue of the sky at 41,000 feet, my goal isn’t to paint the vast, empty landscapes of my home turf. My goal is to paint motion, whisperings and creakings and glimmers of light shimmering across mundane expanses of silence. Good landscapes may be still, but they are never stagnant.

If you are in windswept west Texas, that windmill you see IS turning, its aging gears creaking and groaning as its blades harness the sun’s every breath. And if you aren’t? Spy whatever is in motion. Listen for the distinctive sounds of everyday life.  We aren’t constructed to sit idle in the wind, and as with old windmills, weather scarring just make us more interesting.
©Lindy Cook Severns2010

 A BREATH OF WIND, A CREAK OF BLADES   18” x 18” pastel copyright Lindy Cook Severns 2010    (for an enlarged view, visit my website.)

Ehibited at TRAPPINGS OF TEXAS 2011 Invitational Western Art and Gear Show  Museum of the Big Bend,
Sul Ross State University,  Alpine, Texas

We pass this windmill all the time, and ten months out of the year it is camouflaged against the brown landscape.  No matter how much water it pumps for the cattle, the grasses languish around it, dry and brittle gray.  But then, finally, it rains. This brilliant lushness hardly looks real, and it doesn’t last, but I thought this old timer deserved to be painted surrounded by its rare carpet of emerald green.  Most of all, I liked the way the light hit the blades as they barely moved, whispering in anticipation of the approaching storm. Turning...