March 2005
I had to look up the spelling. Such a lovely activity must certainly be spelled in the French. "Plain Air", not right. I googled. Plein Air, Plein Air, Plein Air, on and on it went all Plein French, all Air American. Even the French site spelled Air. So disappointing. I am thinking that even the French have moved their lovely ways a bit farther toward the American frenzy, what with their new longer work weeks. I heard this on the radio and it saddened me. Please, don't tell me they are eating short lunches now too, and that their dogs are locked home with their cigarettes. Alas ... Finally, near the end of the page ... Aire. Ahhh Plein Aire. So soothing, so gentle and breezy. And yes, indeed, the painting, it was, completely.
Hours later now, after writing for too long and pulling my painting off its block to put in the web, I find that I have been entirely wrong. Here, in front of you, particularly those fortunate enough to have studied French instead of Spanish, not that I regret my Spanish, but it is somehow the flute that I studied instead of the violin, what I was told to do rather than what I hoped for. Oh my, off the subject. Several days now I have been living with my dreams of plein air in Paris. Today as I write and stop for a moment to look for Bill Morehouse's paintings en plein air, I decide to regoogle, to look further into Plein Aire. Google, Plein Air. I check my Websters, Plein Air. I check my tiny French dictionary, Plein Air. Alas again, it seems the e on air is merely an affectation. air means area. French for air is air. Plein Air. I will learn to live with this. I consider an en for my plein air, in honor of Bill, or was it Michelle who wanted to say en plein air? I wonder if they discussed how to name this sort of painting as Steve and I have.
This morning I dreamed Steve died. I was in howling pain, shock, but keeping myself quiet in the midst of all the people who were discovering his death. It was only a moment before I woke up that I began to cry. My face feels trapped in the dream's despair. I have been ever so sad all day. It is interesting to me that a few hours later I find Michele's website, featuring both her work and linking pictures of Bill. Their's was an epic love that everyone needed to gossip about and many did not understand. He died in my last years as their neighbor in Bodega. Michele was already much of the time in Mexico. On her returns to the neighborhood, it was difficult to look at her, her loss was tangible, she wore it in her body. This morning I wondered how in the world I could bear to be without Steve. I felt Michele, then I found her. For me, lucky, I woke up to a very alive Steve. But the sadness of his loss lingered, still lingers. I didn't cry nearly enough.
Bill Morehouse, in his white-haired years, went trekking out with three painting buddies to those beautiful Bodega hills and to other northern California scapes for painting en plein air. That's the first I had heard of it. The paintings are beautiful. The vision I had of four friends out in whatever the day would bring - lunch, of course some drinking. Their easels and tools. Plein air painting, indeed seemed like real life, the way life should be but for the wrong turns we take as youth in our confusion over what is important. Steve and I have spoken of plein air painting. A road trip taken just to draw and paint. We haven't yet, though often we are drawn, a dreamy sense of life right, a sense of civilization is made of plein air painting.
In the first week of March I was meant to be part of a Fountain House training team, which was meant to take my time and focus. Clubhouses cancelled, two Swedish, I never heard why and one Iranian, due to exit Visa problems. The third Swedish clubhouse, Fontanhuset, Malmo, still meant to come, but it was decided we would not train just one clubhouse. It was my friends, it would have been Mia, who directed the training I took in Malmo. I couldn't put face to name, but surely I would have known the member too. How dear that time still is to me. Plein Air in Malmo, now that speaks worlds of loveliness. So. The training was cancelled, leaving me available to take part in Art Week at High Point Farm. Joe, our courageous Farm liaison, against all turns to the fallow, continues to foray into the best that High Point can offer. He developed the chance to make art at the farm as part of the work-ordered-day. For those unfamiliar with my work in Clubhouse, you'll be wanting to know, what? Farm, paint, work. Yes? This, about the most wonderful and difficult place in the world, Fountain House. A place that needs convincing that art is work. A place that I have spent my last six years loving to my own distraction. A place most natural for enjoying the truth that art is work, the most lovely work. This particular week was a chance to say, yes art is work, it is viable work, it will improve our community to know and practice art as work. On and on, unintelligibly I go. This is the cake pan, not the cake.
The cake is that I unexpectedly had the chance to paint at the Farm. For a while there Steve had thought he might come. We thought the best project would be Plein Air painting using gouache and a watercolor block. In the end Steve did not go. But Ruth did. She is one lucky girl. I got to paint en plein air.
The trip itself was full of ins and ups outs and downs. Too much time was spent organizing, cajoling, cooking, cleaning, convincing the other artists that we had an extraordinary chance that should not be lost to the temptations of sitting, staring, napping. But there were moments, no hours, when I did put pencil to paper, eyes to chair and enjoyed, oh so enjoyed, the tender shapes, shadows and glowing surfaces of a dining room chair. That was one day.
The next day, though my time was again poorly managed and the chores went on for too many hours, I at last, come afternoon, let loose the legs of my easel. I cajoled it into a standing position. Chose my paper block. Opened the brand new gouache, though the old lay there in an even older drawer. Tore the cellophane from a trio of brushes I thought might suit the paper's scale. Tucked my water bottle under my arm. Stepped out the door then went back for the color tray. Popping my winter hat onto my head and arranging the easel over my shoulder I set out over the icy gravel to the spot that best enabled me to catch a bit of my favorite road at the farm.
I set the easel up a few feet from a short wall of tractor sculpted ice. I would have preferred an angle from the end of the largest alpaca barn, but I didn't want to make those nervous pregnant girls any more jittery so I set up on the road outside their fence. Though I had spent good sun hours indoors tracing the best of the Chalet's vintage wallpaper, because Tony was there working so hard and I didn't want him facing that work all alone, there were warm rays and fetching light a'plenty left at two o'clock when I set out. The road still held the bend, out a stretch, that I love, the rock walls still showed a bit through the ice.
How can I describe the pleasure of the air, cold, but not so cold I couldn't use my hands. How to say that my brain hardly knew what was happening to it, so rusty in the exercise of making art. Where to start to say what it is that I love about the shape of that road. My eyes couldn't figure where to land, what to capture, how to say it. So I just started.
Mixing the paint. What colors I did see. What colors did I actually see. What colors would say what I saw. How could the basic paints, ever so basic, ever mix to reflect what I began to understand about the color I saw.
So many trees near and far. My eyes couldn't know what to catch. The shapes, so obvious, so many of them in so many places. One brush too big, too round, too flat. Texture flits before and from me. Trees are too far then too too far. The brush a half mile out looks like fire under snow. So many questions a painting answers when the brush just keeps up the work of laying paint on paper. A painting takes shape. When my finger tips are too close to frozen and I'm wearing a skirt of curious chickens and all the alpaca girls are hanging their heads over the fence rail to see what I could possibly be doing instead of bringing them grain, I clean my brushes in the curb of snow beside me, gather my chilly tools and take this, my first plein air painting back to the house. Happy. Happy and shy about it. Happy happy girl.
Ruth Parson
