My mother and I spent the previous day slowly prepping, A task that allows this morning also to be easy as guests trickle in early Precious were the years she would come and join us Precious this year, wary gratitude, as time has a way of pulling us up short.
Leave out early to drive north. The drive is uneventful, good. The dogs sleep I drive and eyes on the road, my mind there On the one in front and also on the road yet To be taken. But somedays I feel I can not look down that road For any great distance as it still remains clouded, where I wish clarity.
Start this week spending a few days at the beach. At a friend's house, three of us meet to paint and talk. The dogs play. Best is the company shared, knowing others are near. Glad for the quiet and good talk, beach walks, feel the need For slowed time.
Company, a favorite cousin and his friend are here. They have wended their way south and back, looking For the blues. An evening listening to her play guitar And get interviewed on the radio. Tired, slept well.
This week has been consumed with yard work. Your chainsaw, I give to another as I will Never use it. I will find, eventually, one more useful for me. For now, a new sawsall, leaf blower, rake help me tidy. And all solidifies in my mind, I can do this alone, I can, alone, even find some peace in that but not In my heart.
The Studio at Line's End Farm is where I paint and try to find some joy again, and some equilibrium, not simple these days. One weblog records thoughts, ideas, methods and mixtures, palettes, observations, actually anything that intrigues me concerning my painting and working in the studio. Another observes only the horse in paintings that I find influential. The last are done for my sanity. All are my opinion only, open to other suggestions.
I will write in red, for my dear, love; who never saw red, not in ink, not in ire.
In 2010, the cold went beyond ten decades, was a century mark of hard winter through the mid-atlantic. For one small household banked by an Eastern Shore river this winter was epochal.