believe, broken, Christmas, crisis, family, hip, hope, miracles, season, shopping, winter

Christmas Miracles-(2011)- Part 1

I had an amazing Christmas-miracles abound. We tend to see things how we are used to seeing things and often miracles are overlooked because we were looking for or waiting for the wrong miracle and missed the great things around us happening. I believe the presence of something greater is around us all the time-it’s the feeling you get staring at a sunset, or the feeling of a winter storm on Christmas-a momentary feeling of peace that supersedes the everyday feeling of stress and crisis we go through.

I always tell a bride-usually it’s the bride as they are the ones that usually stress about a wedding- that everything will work out in its time and the things that don’t will be the things you remember or you can laugh about if you let yourself. I believe it’s the same scenario dealing with holidays, especially Christmas. For one day out of the year we expect to have peace, to be able to guess what our loved ones want for Christmas, to have the amount of money we need without going over budget and for the family and friends for one day to put down their differences and enjoy each other around the kitchen table. Every Christmas is the same-start off being conservative about money, start out being excited and by the time it is over you can’t wait to tear down the dried up tree and put off all the feelings of sadness or auld lang sine for the next year when we’ll try it one more time.

I have been schooled in miracles for the last two years because Christmas didn’t turn the way it was expected-it turned out better than I could have even imagined or tried to plan and it wasn’t any of the gifts or the perfect smile that a family member experienced from that extra special gift-it was the way the time went without the control of being able to sculpt this perfect day and that’s where the miracle comes in.

The word miracle can be overused, it is usually saved for some great deed, someone coming back from near death, the finding of funds when there were no possibilities, yes that is how we describe a miracle but just as the word love is often misused and mistaken for infatuation the very magic of the word is usually in the subtleties we would normally overlook. Which brings me to last years’ Christmas. My mom fell and broke her hip, how could we enjoy a Christmas season after something traumatic as that? I almost mentally wrote off the season-which is maybe the good thing-the problem with holidays are our expectations are often too high. So instead of shopping, we spent time at a hospital room and none of us could explain the fears we felt and the lack of control each of us felt about the fact that she was in for a surgery which science said she could not live through-first miracle maybe. The break was the best break it could be-if you could look at a broken hip like that but the doctors were positive about her prognosis.

I think one of the hardest things about a crisis during the holiday is the fact that children don’t need to be involved in the stress and worry, so that means just because a dads’ first instinct would be to lay down and watch some mundane show to ease the feeling of depression and worry-we need to go get a tree, decorate it, enjoy egg nog-without the nog and really feel the christmas feeling. This is where shear will comes in play-I don’t have the privilege to have  a bad season-my son is watching and learning how to deal with worry and crisis as well as expecting a Christmas he doesn’t want to have to remember as a bad memory. So I shop in between going to the hospital, wrap late in the evening and Christmas eve-don’t feel like I bought enough gifts for everyone-the usual dilemma and we all get through the process as well as we could possibly get through a holiday where someone you love is in the hospital.

Here’s the second miracle-it wasn’t a good or even mediocre day-it was special and beautiful in its own way. My mother learned things in the hospital she wouldn’t have, found strength in other people, allowed herself to give up control of her situation and shared her strength with other people-the gifts she got were more than we could have wrapped. The family joined together and felt that feeling of overcoming a crisis, there was hope for the New Year. My son and I got perspective about what Christmas really means and not what marketing would have you believe-we don’t deserve anything specific, we don’t need to overspend and put ourselves in debt to get ourselves and others everything we deserve-instead we got just what we needed-family-the closeness, the true bond, we watched other families coming together-we got perspective on our situations and appreciated things we would have overlooked if it weren’t for the wonderful misfortune of a broken hip. That is when you have witnessed a miracle when you call a misfortune wonderful-the presence you feel and joy is the unexplained phenomena that follows and just as a haunting can only be describe and understood by someone who has felt it, the same goes with the presence of God on that special, crazy, hectic day we call Christmas.

I will leave this year’s miracles for the next post so I won’t completely bore the reader as well as infuriate further whoever is looking for punctuation and grammar-this is what you call free thought, plain and simple. So I hope if this was even a bit interesting you’ll follow to part two when this year’s miracle is explained.

exploring, fishing, kayak, kayak fishing, lake murray, oklahoma, outdoors, painiting, relaxation

Kayaking Lake Murray

Kayaking Lake Murray Oklahoma

Saturday evening was cold and windy, after a two hour drive up highway thirty five we get to a spot    near Tucker Tower to put the kayaks in and the wind is ridiculous. It took much of our will to get the kayaks down and get the water shoes and actually commit to going in, especially since we only had two hours or so to be on the water before sunset but we decided to go ahead with it. My first problem, getting hung up on a stump while the wind pushed me the opposite direction-very awkward I must admit-an awkwardness I haven’t felt for a while after getting more used to fishing ad kayaking. In the beginning it was a very awkward process-I’ve lost a rod or two and even snapped a rod in the first try at it but I’ve gotten more comfortable over the last few months and every time it seems to be more enjoyable and I get more accustomed to the process.

It was a rough week, too many stressful things happening in the news-we all know what happened just Friday and here I am in the middle of a lake trying to relax and get past it. There is something about sitting in the middle of a beautiful lake just as the sun is going down. Lake Murray is particularly beautiful, I have vacationed there for years but had never been able to boat across it and it was an amazing experience. The water is emerald green and you can see ten feet to the bottom, it is surrounded by trees and huge limestone cliffs. There are loons, bald eagles and great blue herons that are regular visitors and on Sunday afternoon I even saw a kingfisher fly by. Suddenly everything that stresses you out just melts away and all that seems to exist is water, lots of water and the sound of the wind-which after we had gotten in for an hour or so, calmed down to a soft breeze. I heard an owl on the edge of a grove of cedar trees and it’s one of those amazing sounds that is both soothing and haunting.

I studied the water between cast in lures and made mental notes for future painting. Tucker Tower loomed above us shining a light across the water as the clouds covered and darkened the sky. We stayed in the water into the evening, the sky reflected in the water and the moon was a ghost behind the clouds. I have many sketches in my mind of several scenes-I will definitely have future paintings of the trip very soon. I realized as the sun went into its final position beneath the horizon, I was relaxed and peaceful- a feeling I have aspire to for the last few years and have known it only as an illusive state that I barely remember. It’s hard to stop and watch the sunset but on a kayak, you have no where to go, no one is pushing and prodding you. Time seems to slow down and you are suspended out in the middle of an amazing lake with nothing to do but relax.

We didn’t catch anything-maybe a cold but still-no fish-I’ve heard it’s harder when it gets colder to find the schools but the areas that we fished seemed prime for  smallmouth bass and nothing. I still enjoyed every moment of it and my son and nephew both agreed as well that it was one of the best times and the most beautiful lakes we have been on. Catching fish is a fun and wonderful addition to a trip but just being out there away for a short amount of time replaces something that time and age seems to take from us, some intangible calm we can’t find anywhere else but the outdoors. We had the lake to ourselves all evening and even the next day after sleeping over, I came home rejuvenated, I can’t wait to visit ten lakes in the coming spring break-we will go to ten lakes in eight or nine days.

 

You can’t control what is happening in the world, you can’t change the bad things that happen in society but you can get away from it for a while, you can get a different perspective even if it is just for a weekend or even just an evening. We need to stop, enjoy the beauty around us and hopefully we’ll find the peace we tend to overlook-  until next time get out and explore-it’s what freedom is all about.

 

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Inspiration 2: Evening Sunflowers

This is a large pastel inspired by the image of a single light illuminating an upstairs room at a nearby townhouse in Rowlett-actually the scene was pretty much unchanged only simplified-there was a haunting atmosphere to the image. I like the idea of an image that keeps the viewer questioning the scene-who is in the room-there is a mysteriousness about the window in the darkness. The sunflowers brings your attention in and lead your eye along the fence.

Sometimes images create themselves and all the artist does is capture what they see-parts of the scene are simplified or exaggerated for the effect and to control the eye of the viewer and how they perceive. What is obvious to the artist is not necessarily what the viewer will see-they make their own impression from the image and hopefully a hint of what the artist feels remains with the final rendering.

Below is the second in the series, again a very large pastel. Each of these include plants that were my favorites in the garden, the sunflower and the passionvine-each are symbolic in their own right and although I don’t often paint flowers, the ones I choose tend to be significant to me-either I have them in my wildlife garden or they have a symbolic meaning to them. The passionvine represents Christ, although there is nothing specifically religious about the bottom painting, I like the passionvine for its uniqueness and symbolism.

I still feel like both of these will probably be revamped as paintings. My initial image of the bottom pastel was originally darker and the passionvines stood out larger and more vibrant. I kind of got lost in the clouds, I will paint probably a smaller version of it with larger flowers, a less awkward smaller house and a late evening time frame.

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Inspirations: Origin 1
After the Funeral
This is the first of many in a series of paintings explaining where the inspiration originated, this should keep me busy while the weather outside bars me from getting out on the kayak. It’s actually getting cold and windy enough to not go kayaking.
This is the road right near Firewheel park center-it was before they finished putting in the ramps and stuff for the George Bush-it’s been a bit altered but you get the basic idea. The day I saw it was after my grandmothers’ funeral. There was a sadness and solemn state of the sky and out of the grey a whole flock of mourning doves raced through the image.
I felt it was almost like a metaphor for her soul moving on-okay this is the way artists, writers’ think or see things-lots of metaphors-okay maybe just me but I felt that moment when everything stops for a split second and the image pretty much paints itself. This scene was actually sketched and lived as a sketch for just a day or so. The immediacy of the pastels allowed me to start and finish the image in a matter of days. It was important that the sky captured the viewer and lead them in through the scene with the help of the road going into the distance. It is a mass of metaphors-even though I don’t like specific metaphors in a painting but I had just been to a funeral and you tend to be all symbolic and nostalgic after -okay again, maybe it’s just me but a funeral brings out my philosophical side and the obvious metaphors just kind of painted themselves-I guess the only way to get past the metaphors being so shamelessly obvious is the fact that it was a real scene and I wasn’t trying to be all philosophical, sometimes reality just begs to be captured and the images and symbols just jump out in real time. 
Which brings me to the intention of most of my paintings-I don’t set out to create a haunting image or disturbing scene but depending on my mood and circumstance those feelings usually meld in the design. I almost feel haunted by nature, I find myself excited about those dark misty days, I enjoy violent storms and ghost stories-I guess all of these feelings and images just naturally become part of my paintings. The secret to what would consider a successful painting is when the viewers feels the sadness or the loneliness of a scene without it being obvious why they feel the loneliness-it’s that intangible feeling that I strive so hard to capture.
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Ok, forgive the photography-I hope you will notice a great improvement once I actually shoot with a camera and not a phone but here is where I originally came up with the idea of a blog specifically about the vantage point of sitting close to the water. Everything is different, the scenery, the sky, the wildlife around you, you can slip into places and get by wildlife without them seeing you. It seems like your part of the scene and don’t interfere with it. The constant movement of the water and the sound of the birds around you is quite intoxicating-not that I suggest drinking and kayaking, in fact I’m going to say abstain but I digress.

I’m out with my son fishing on Lake Texoma, it’s one of those beautiful days where the air is cool and there is a slight breeze out of the south. Every time we go, we have these visions of grandeur, this time we are going to kill them, even if killing them means to just catch a lot of them and throw them back. It is a strange idea I guess as I’ve been told by a friend of mine to catch and just release, all that work, all that preparation for the fish and you catch them and just throw them back, well as far as I’m concerned If I want to eat fish, we have plenty at the grocery store, I would rather let them go and have another father be able to watch his son catch that big fish-you know the one I haven’t caught yet but still I have hope. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t eat some fish and that I haven’t eaten what I caught in the past but I don’t have a live well on the kayak so that would add to the idea of catch and release.

I  love the feeling of being out here, even if the idea of getting up early in the morning and doing all the preparation has made me hesitant in the past to go fishing but I’m so glad to have a persistent son because this is what I need to do more. I’ve always said that if I had a mountain or a place to hike, I would be very active and love exercise, it’s just the idea of being in a gym and doing the same repetition of weights or riding on a stationary bike that just seems impossible for me to embrace. Here I am out in the middle of a pristine lake-okay they have zebra mussells-short of that pretty pristine, I am enjoying the workout almost as much as the fishing which seems to be a futile point lately.

The sky is an amazing blue and it reflects in the water perfectly, in fact as I look across the lake I am envisioning new paintings and options for the paintings I have started. The more I study the water and study how the reflection of the sky changes with the angle of the sun I learn more about painting water which is my specialty after all. So while everyone else is fishing, I am staring across the lake with a look like they must be thinking I’m spacing out. Every time I get out on the water I have a new idea and new vantage point to paint water. Again, as I’ve always said when we see things as an artist often we complicate them-when you study water I realize it is a simple process of a transparent block that refects the sky and when the mirror of the sky is broken you see either the bottom if it is clear enough or the darkness if it’s either to murky or too deep. I will definitely have more paintings of water and probably of texoma.

I’m planning on getting this same photograph from multiple lakes-I collect places, vantage points, memories and this will be the main focus of this blog. Anyway-until the next time-get out and explore…..

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This is the first of many I hope, contemplations from a kayak- what a wonderful place for clear thought. It has not been easy to get to this point as for some reason there has been much hesitation on my part, I’m not sure if it is the getting up at 4:00 AM on a Saturday morning to go kayak fishing or the stress of putting the kayaks on the top of a Nissan Sentra which is not exactly meant for carrying kayaks but with the help of Thule-I have gotten past that obstacle. So why have I had such a hard time motivating myself to get out on the water. 
I love nature, everything about being out in the woods but I have never been a lover of lakes and that may be from a rather hazardous time I had my first time water skiing. It’s awkward, hell I can be awkward and clumsy by nature never mind putting a set of skis on and a large life vest and hold on to a rope and relax. I’ve watched people do it before, it looked easy, I’ve even enjoying snow skiing but what happened that day on Bardwel lake might have changed my feeling of open water. I was in the water after my first fall trying to overwork the rope and fight the water-you’re supposed to go with the water and let the rope ease you up on the water but all I ended up with a face full of rushing water. The boat always seemed to win-the boat, than the water and than me-with a face full of back wash. 
So I’m waiting for the rope to come around and I hear the unmistakable sound of a boat going at a high speed some where in my peripheral view. I turned to notice a boat that had its front high in the air and the rooster tail of water behind him coming straight for me. Luckily, the life vest was big as I mentioned, I slipped out lost my skis and swam as fast as I could straight down, waiting for my legs to meet the propeller of the boat that just went over me. It must have been a terrifying moment for my family that saw me and than just the boat going over the same spot that I had just been.
Obviously it was a close call and I got to keep my legs and my life but I did partake of a bit of alcohol that evening. I believe since than I have not loved the water or the idea of being out on the water. So here I am out on a kayak and actually loving being out there. It has taken a long summer of fighting with my son who never seems to get enough of getting up at 4. So now I am loving being out in the midst of an amazing sunset, realizing I am being upstaged by the greatest artist there ever was. I sit there, my son is close by fishing and I watch the sky. There are a few boats, a few twinkling lights in the distance and just me and the water all around me, I believe I have finally overcome my fear because I refused to let it be an obstacle for me and I have a pretty persistent son.
We have been fishing for about an hour now, just before the sun goes down for its final display. For the third time in a row we haven’t caught a dam thing-I think the fish realize its cold in the water and are just not in the mood to eat, especially the plastic wannabe shad we keep dangling in front of them. Three times and I could care less that we didn’t catch anything, my son and I stopped our treadmills for an hour and have the beauty and amazing feeling of being out there. 
From a kayak any place can seem beautiful-we could just as well be on some lake somewhere in the northwoods-okay it would be much colder and more beautiful but I digress. It is amazing to stop and take in the sunset, enjoy the sunrise, listen to the sound of water rushing along the edge of a kayak or the sound of the birds diving for the shad we have not found yet, It’s a moment where all you need is what is right in front of you and the artist who has somewhat of a phobia of open water truelly relaxes and takes in nature-something he has lost the power to do in recent years-I’ll explain later but it was an amazing sunset and an even better time with my son as we just about closed out the kayaking season although I’m sure we’ll probably squeeze out one or two more trips before it gets too cold-we are in Texas after all-there is no winter-just summer, cooler and than summer again. 
I will let you know the next time we get out and maybe I’ll have other thoughts and ideas to share but until than-get out there and see things, experience things, find new places to explore…..

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Taking Chances with Style and Technique

Too often we fall into a safe rut with our artwork or creative endeavors, choosing subconsciously to stay with what we are familiar with. A portrait artist may tend to stay with portraits, a landscape artist with a certain landscape style or even region they paint. Over the years I have painted many landscapes and unfortunately at times find myself attempting to stay within a particular style or using the same mediums and colors.

As I have gotten older and perhaps more confident with my mediums I have gotten more eager to try new things and open to new directions. I have painted more people in the last few years than I ever have, I will try anything once, being unafraid to not succeed is the key to many recent successes. I have recently started to revamp a painting that had sat on my wall for many months waiting for a new direction. The painting is a simple landscape of Lake Ray Hubbard and the original image is a late afternoon moon rise over the lake. Originally there were the wild sunflowers in the foreground which were small and barely gave any direction in the painting. They turned into an area of flowers that didn’t do much for the scene but maybe lessen and distract from any depth. I did like the direction the moon was taking and the light in the scene was headed somewhere but the foreground was just blah.

The painting sat unfinished, I even added flowers, deleted them, adjusted the light and the water but nothing seemed to spark the creative vision that originally motivated me to start painting. This particular image was not even sketched out or envisioned which might explain the loss of direction in painting it.

I drive through the country and see many sunflowers on a daily basis and have gotten the idea of a field of wild sunflowers with dashes of blues and violets. I thought of the image as a rough, almost violent scene of sunflowers in a simple field. Suddenly the image that lost all its inspiration became a place to throw paint and enjoy strokes of raw color. I didn’t care about the quality of each flower or the grasses and detail it was more the whole image with the vibrance of the sunflowers and dashes of violent color and suddenly from no mood and direction an image finally appeared in my mind.

Another element that appeared in the new image was that of a young girl staring into the distance, the departure from the original and the chances I took with colors, style and subject matter turned something mundane into a vibrant place that restored my excitement and inspiration. I believe the creative mind needs to be challenged, pushed beyond its comfort zone and allowed to play.

The need to create what will be a masterpiece can often turn into a mundane task that loses all its vigor. Sometimes taking chances with color and form and having no fear of failing miserably is the shot of inspiration and passion a painting is desperately missing.

Questions:

Have any other artists had the same process? Do you always know where the painting is going and how often are you surprised by the final work? Do you often enjoy just the process of playing with form and color instead of being afraid to not perfect the inspiration?

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Criticism, the Best Learning Experience I’ve Ever Known

Artists can become blinded by their own sense of accomplishment and tend to recreate the same image and the same mistakes over and over again. Another drawback in this point in the creative career is that we tend to feel we’re better or further along than we are. I had the good fortune about twenty years ago to meet with a very talented professional artist and teacher as well as a gallery owner. My first expectation at the time was that they couldn’t get over how amazing of an artist I was and that they just had to have me in their gallery at any price I wanted. Of course, this was not the case, luckily for my beginning career as an artist-I learned humility and much about what makes descent art much better.

I learned that what I knew about perspective and depth was lacking and learned to think about depth, color, light, value-Immediately I learned what I might be doing right and what I needed to do better.
So many of the bad habits I had picked up and the lack of being able to be objective enough to truelly see what I was creating opened a whole new scope of ideas and a wealth of knowledge I had just started to process.

Unfortunately my first feeling of painting was awkward at best. I started out questioning every movement I made, I had a hard time going into a subconscious state of creating because the things I had learned were not second nature yet and I was thinking and processing every lesson I had learned. I found myself pushing paint-a term I use for what seems like painting a strangers painting. I saw the process and instead of being able to paint fluidly and without thinking, every stroke I made was awkward and clumsy. I had several failed series of works, many that never saw the light of day.

Over the years I had come to the point where the new lessons I had learned became second nature and I no longer had to think of how to create in varying shapes to create interest or to change values or colors to illustrate depth, everything became second nature to me again but instead of going back to painting the way I had been, I had a new way of seeing my own work and a greater arsenal of tools to use in my painting and I learned to use them with the instinct of an artist that had grown from the criticism and objectivity of the lessons I learned from other artists and art lovers.

I welcome criticism, I want to know what hits and what doesn’t, I know it is a subjective process and one persons’ art is anothers’ garbage but I believe the more we can step back and really see what our art does to the viewer and learn other ways of judging our own work, we open a door to an amazing insight into what makes us artists and what makes great art.

QUESTION: What was the greatest lesson you learned through a viewers opinion or the criticism of artists or art lovers that were critical of your art? How did it change you as an artist? How did it change your art?

Artbygordon: Original oils on canvas, Original pastels on paper celebrating the beauty and mystery of nature. Water and night skies are my specialties.