A Favorite

Cut To The Core - 24" X 20"

Here is another one of my newest paintings with my signature carving style which is for sale at the Trails End Gallery. This one is interestingly based on the substrate beneath it. I found some panels that work very well for me and which have a birch luan top finely sanded as the substrate.

In this particular case I colored the grain as I found it and then in the darker band I reversed myself and carved out the grain as if it were traveling through and outer bark. This is a simple piece and lovely in that simplicity. It shows the wax very well and it's inherent organic lines are very pleasing and asymetrical.

It's story is the story of all trees and their bands of growth year by year, slow and steady, and unless cut likely to live for many hundreds of years. Witnesses to the natural and human history of their surrounding landscape. Timeless, for all intent during our lives, slow and endless.

I took a trip this week up to Bremerton to visit the new grave site of my mother-in-law. It was nice to envision her reunited with her husband and a dear man. We had to ready her house for sale. There were septics to get pumped and carpets to clean and furnaces to certify and the last remaining bits and bobs to go through.

We revisited many of the places we remembered them in, shopping, dining, walking through their yard. Ernie was a great old time orchardist and planted and grafted many varieties of apples, pears and even some peaches in fruit trees in his yard. He grew the finest eating grapes - green Interlaken and concord grapes on 4 vines in his yard and they bear so much fruit that many families felt his generosity during the ripening season when he gave away most of the produce. And he grew roses, a yellow Texas rose and a lovely hybrid fragrant peach rose in bloom. Pictures to follow next blog.

It's interesting that some of the little things that Dorothy and Ernie had gathered in their life together and that they cherished were what was left behind by the estate auction people and the women's shelter people, the children and the nieces. Their wind chimes from their porch and the geranium plants that Dorothy had lovingly put in her garage each fall were just waiting for her hand to reset them outside to bloom for this season. I've got them now and hope they will respond for me.

I had a wonderful though whirlwind visit with a painting friend in Bothell and her husband. We had a great lunch and much quick essential talk and laughter over recent happenings, the upcoming shows, our next painting adventures. I had visited them during the winter but hadn't had the opportunity to see their charming, charming place during the summer when all the fine japanese maples had leafed out and the deep purple evergreen rhododendrons (thank you Jan for your comment last entry about how rhododendrons were also such a characteristic NW plant!) were in bloom along with their special deep red flowered Kalmia and so many other interesting and choice foliage plants collected over the years. Theirs is a mature garden with that settled in and melded together feel with large wonderful sword ferns in that early lime green coloration and recently unfurled state. The northwest garden  in the summer after a rain is the lushest, most beautiful, and many shades of green that can be imagined. When you see it under these circumstances you wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Plus she dishes a fabulous pineapple upside down cake and tea. Thank you again for taking time for us.