Blog

As stated in my last blog, which happens to also be my first blog at FASO, I have traveled an ascending circle. I find myself at this time in my life wanting to get back to nature (again), to get closer to it then just the walk into the woods to do a few sketches for studio use. To reconnect and try to get into my paintings the feelings and moods of nature, its moods and mine. So I have been reading more books on nature , authors such as Jim Dale Vickery, Dean Krakel II, Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher and Sigurd F. Olson. This is a good thing also because I read little fiction and at this time have no biographies or art books I want to read. I love these kinds of books that describe their experiences and feeling about nature. I am amazed at their knowledge of plants and animals, that they describe so much as they give the names of those things that inhabit the woods, fields and waters. This also scared me some as I know, knowing me and my inability to memorize and remember details by name, that I could never connect with nature on that level.

But why do I have to?

I just read in ‘Reflections From The North Country’ (by Sigurd F. Olson) about a professor he once had that had the same issue as I do in remembering the names of things. When asked about this the professor basically said that he did not need to remember the details, the names, in order to understand the whole. Naturally I identified with that. I then remembered Andrew Wyeth once stating that he was not a naturalist (this was in regards to his detailed drawing and paintings of natural things) that he did not necessarily know the names of all the things he painted, but he did not need to know the names, to know that they are wonderful (I am of course taking some liberties with what he said as I do not remember it exactly). So great, the names of things are not that important.

It seems a silly thing to worry about the names of things, to wonder if I am not doing my job completely if I do not remember them. Then again when I paint a tree, a grass, or meadow of wild flowers it is usually not my desire to paint them so that the viewer of my work would know specifically what it is they are looking at. No my aim to give a feeling of what I felt, feel, to portray a mood of time and space that I experienced. The viewer may not know by looking at my work that the tree is a white pine, or field of wild mustard, but that they, I hope, see nature for what it is. Beautiful, amazing and full of mystery.

So I will leave the names of things to those who have better memories then me and to those who the names of things are important for them to know.

Peace.