The School of Hard Knocks

I have just returned from a trip to Southern California where I enjoyed Parent’s Weekend at Biola University with my granddaughter and daughter. Secretly, I thought I would go to college one day to get my education, I didn’t expect it to be Parent’s Weekend.

Al swept me off my feet with all his charm and when I was seventeen I fell in love. I wanted to go to college, but you know how love is? It couldn’t wait. I always felt a college education was the one thing I lacked.

I stepped onto the college campus and I knew I could get into that thing I missed, “college life”; cute boys, dorms, no sleep, overloaded backpacks, and of course, studying.

I walked on the brick sidewalks where great men walked and I felt a tinge of envy. Those same sidewalks were leading young minds to greater knowledge.

I visited the library. I saw beautiful words written on the walls, a wealth of treasures sitting on the bookshelves, students studying, some with earphones, multitasking in their own cubical or at a library table. I pulled a few books from the shelves, just to get the feeling of higher education and how well-educated people must feel.

I found the Common Grounds Coffee Shop filled with students and laptops. I ordered a big cup of gourmet coffee and a bagel. What is it about gourmet coffee and places like that? The students and their books were sprawled out over chairs and sofas. The wall art was edgy, colorful, new and different and I thought. This is my place, I belong here. I sipped my coffee and lived my dream. I could see my art along side the young artists of today.

I ate lunch in the cafeteria with my granddaughter and her friend. Her friend was going to college for a career in the film industry. I threw out a few names of founding fathers in the film media. She hadn’t heard of any of them. I thought how could you not know about them, they blazed a trail for you? In my excitement, I threw out my little knowledge, and of course, I was still living my dream, I drilled her as to what she knew and where her education was leading her. She looked at me bewildered.

I guess I stepped over the line. My daughter took her finger to her throat and made a cut-off motion. She was silently saying, “Enough!” It brought me up short. I was a guest. It was not my place to teach her what she didn’t know. I was immediately brought into reality.

The difference in ages began to creep up in other places too. The president of the university spoke, he must have been in his early forties. He was young enough to be my son. Aren’t presidents of colleges supposed to be old? Every where I looked everyone was getting younger.

A younger speaker brought it down to fun and illustrations. I thought, what a paradox, higher education brought down to children’s minds.

An older speaker spoke. His words were deep, rich, and lofty and I hung on to every word. It was obvious with all of his eloquent speaking some of the students were lost. Students were busy texting their friends, sleeping with their heads in their hands and some were just waiting to leave.

I walked out of the classroom with the students; some of their faces were drained in confusion. I asked a couple of the students, strictly out of curiosity, “What spoke to you?”

They said, “I didn’t get anything, he didn’t say anything to me.” I wanted to tell them what I learned, but they didn’t ask. I could have gone into a deep debate with them. The last thing they wanted was to match wits with someone’s grandmother.

My knowledge has come from the School of Hard Knocks. I learned there are no free meals. If I want something worthwhile I have to work for it. I have worked for things with no apparent benefits, it was just life and I needed to do it. I have made lots of mistakes, but I learned from them. I could have probably gotten a better job and better pay, but would I have loved my life any more? I don’t think so.

I also had to admit, when I was eighteen, I would have gone for the college life and not for the higher education. I only gained a desire for knowledge after years of living. Today I hunger for knowledge, but it was not until I attended the School of Hard Knocks that I saw what would have made life a little easier and richer.

So what is the difference between college of higher education and the School of Hard Knocks? After visiting Parent’s Weekend it put things in perspective for me; it also forced me to get real. Life didn’t go quite the way I thought it would, but I realized I have all I need for today to make my life complete.

Maybe it was the age gap. Maybe I have learned that going back to a pipe dream would not be the same. And I also learned it was The School of Hard Knocks that has afforded me the necessary things I need for my life today.

Final Brushstroke! Learning or living? Some times one comes before the other.

Lines in the sand become squiggly

Have you ever said, “I will never do that”? Then you find yourself doing it. What happened! Did you change your mind or did something change you?

Recently a gentleman in a small group we attended said, “When I was young I made a commitment and I wrote definite lines in the sand, then a wayward child came along and the lines in the sand became squiggly.”

I reached over and I quietly said to him, “I understand exactly what you are saying, the lines we have drawn in the sand have gotten squiggly too.” This thought challenged me. How could I have been so dogmatic about life with such firm rules; and today the lines have gotten so blurry. Maybe it was life lessons that came our way and changed us.

It reminds me of a watercolor workshop I took a few years ago. The teacher said, “I want you to paint in flux. Find a spot and sit still and start painting. I’ll come by and check on you from time to time. Have at least six sheets of paper.”

The place was called Cathedral Forrest. The trees were so thick they literally arched over each other. There were just bits of light showing through and the light changed quickly through the trees.

I chose a beautiful spot next to a small creek; the trees arched, partly in shade and partly exposed to the sun. I found a rock to sit on, pulled out my paper and committed to the instructions of the teacher. I started to paint, each painting I painted changed from rigid to fluid; each one showed a certain confidence and the subject became clearer, freer, and yet with fewer lines.

In the course of the afternoon, a rain shower came; I covered my supplies and continued to work. The soft spray of water hit the paper as I painted, making the paints fuse together, taking on a whole different look.

I committed to the spot I chose and did not change my position, but one by one, each painting recorded the moment I was in. As I lined them up later I could see what the art teacher was asking us to do, “paint in flux”.

So I went to the dictionary to see exactly what flux meant. Webster puts it this way: Flux is an act of flowing, and flow of matter, flow of the tide, anything used to promote fusion.

My most favorite of all the six paintings on the same subject is definitely the last one I painted. There was little paint, lot of white paper, quickly executed colorful trees, and a dramatic zigzag for the creek.

Later, the first five paintings were changed from watercolor to mix media. I added acrylic paints and then oils. But that last one is framed and will remain the way I painted it originally as a reminder of the afternoon when I learned about painting in flux.

Back to life, what happened to the lines we so intently drew in the sands of conviction? Did we become diluted, did we compromise, and was it all to move with the ebb and flow of life? Maybe it was all about learning to get along?

The tide has and will continue to come in and erase the harsh lines we have drawn in the sand. Each time the lines became softer and squigglier. It is just like each watercolor I painted, the strokes were fewer. And soon the lines and exactness were not so necessary and the only thing that was important to me was the subject before me.

The commitment written on my heart years ago goes much deeper than the religious lines I drew in the sand in my younger days. Hopefully love is finally working itself into me, and the harsh lines of prejudice, religious notions, success, ambition, and how I thought things should be are being erased.

I’ve not changed my position towards the commitment I made years ago. It is just as I sat by the creek with a small continual stream of water passing between the banks, and the lights and darks changed in the course of the afternoon. I didn’t move. Even the showers came and fused colors together and I continued to paint. The subject was constant before my eyes, it is the same as today, life is changing how I look at things. I have been living in flux just as I painted that afternoon.

Final Brushstroke! The ebb and flow of life erases the lines drawn in the sand and even our footprints will vanish in time, but the commitment we made in our hearts will remain. Our lives are being established and written as we live in flux.

I Don't want to do it... Don't make me do it!

Why did I kick and scream for years? “I don’t want to do it, don’t make me do it!” What is so terrible about technology in an artist’s mind?

“What are you doing about getting your art into the market?” a friend asked who came for the weekend. “I will set up a Blog and put you on facebook.”

And my answer was, “Why?”

“It’s a great way to catalogue your work. You can also have a record of all your past newspaper articles. Also you will be developing a reader’s base,” she expounded.

“I’m listening,” I replied. “All these years and I still don’t have all my art categorized. I haven’t taken photos of them and they are gone now. But I still don’t want to waste my time on the computer.”

“It’s not wasting time, if a gallery wants to see your work, it’s on your computer.”

“Okay, I’ll learn it.” Slumping down and pouting I tried to be civil to my guest. After all she was helping me and I should humor her.

And the process began. I started blogging. “I decided to put one painting each day along with a min-art lesson and meanderings on my Blog and send through Facebook. Then one Blog turned into two and so on.

This playground for the crowd under thirty has now become a new way of social networking for people over fifty; and the growth for them is faster than the young users.

I read an article “Blogging and what I learned on the Therapist’s Couch” by Moshe Mikanovsky. The title caught my attention and I knew I was not alone. Most of us artists need to be on the therapist’s couch. We paint and work diligently all of our lives in our art yet we make few feeble attempts to show our work, then we quit. As I read his article, I felt sure other artists have found themselves with the same resistance and have used all the same excuses to stay away from social networking as I have. It robs our creative time.

As artists, we need to re-invent ourselves to fit into the economy of today. We have to do something different than we did just a few years ago.

My friend is a Venetian artist and has always supported me in my art as I have in his. He heard I was blogging. He paints on people’s walls - old Tuscany, marble, and all kinds of faux finishes. As a painter and with the construction market falling, he found himself out of work. He painted and finished the walls of million dollar homes once, and then the work was gone. He wrote to tell me, “You’re missing it if you don’t get on YouTube. You need to be global.

“Oh me, do I have to? I don’t know enough about all that stuff. I don’t know if I want to do it.” I said.

His reply was, “It is free and it is easy. I have made contacts in Thailand and they are flying me to instruct them on how to do Venetian finishings. Sherwin William’s representative is flying out and they have considered me an expert on how to use their paint. And it has all free and it has been handed to me through YouTube.”

My response was, “I don’t have anything like that to sell. What do I do? Do YouTube or develop a product first? What comes first the chicken or the egg?”

He fired back an e-mail. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? YouTube. Get an account with YouTube; then you can add to it as you decide.

Just like Mikanovsky, I felt weak in my knees and drained. I needed to lie down on a therapist’s couch and cuddle a Teddy bear. I don’t know why I have fought going into this next phase of life. So I typed myself a list of what I had to sell - what I was working on at the moment - what I needed to get started. Also I listed things I didn’t want to do anymore, what I was willing to do and what were my biggest fears.

I believe the fears are losing my privacy, losing my creative time and learning something new. It is also stepping out of the realm where I thrive.

I bit the bullet. So each morning I get up and add one more painting to my Blog, a description and a mini-art lesson. By the time I finish this project, I will have hundreds of paintings on file. I am setting it up with a theme so that it is already compiled into whatever I decide to do with it.

Galleries who want to see my work will be able to go to my Blog. As far as Facebook, I am adding friends and their friends and their friends.

My grandson said the other day, “Grandma, you are on face book more than I am. Ha Ha.” My children are finding great humor since I have entered into their playground. They can’t believe I am playing in their sandbox.

I am writing to you my artist and writer friends and encouraging you to reach out for another market. I am with you. I just want to paint and write, but as my Blogs are unfolding I am beginning to understand the value of them. Not only am I categorizing my work, it is getting me out of that “stuck” place and developing a bigger market.

Final Brushstroke! It is a matter of being honest with ourselves and refusing to listen to the same old record we keep playing, hearing the same old tune played over and over in our heads, “I don’t want to do it.”

Before the Snow Flies...Moving with the Season

Gently Drawn Away

Before the snow flies, there is work to be done. Al and I began the process again which happens every year. Outdoor furniture moved under cover, outside hoses rolled up, wood stacked, guest artist’s cabins weatherized, and the list goes on. It is all part of moving with the season. It’s all protecting what we have and what we have already established in season’s past.

Al asked, “While the weather is beautiful would you help me organize my garages?” Talk about music to my ears. Al doesn’t ask for much and I knew he needed help. He was overwhelmed with too much stuff. So I agreed, of course with the hidden agenda of throwing away a bunch of junk.

How do you organize a packrat? It was going to take some brutal action and a master plan. I had to be careful though because Al likes his stuff and is attached. But Al was ready to move into another season of life and now was my chance.

I knew I wouldn’t have any problem throwing away his junk! My junk is another story. Every artist knows that ideas take up space. So we all have our junk, but it is a different kind of junk. My junk is going to turn into something beautiful one day.

After all these years Al and I have been moving in and out of one season after another. You would think we would look at things the same way. Not at all! He hangs on to things, I throw away; he chinks, I give it a place; he moves slow, I want to get the job done; he wants to sell it in a garage sale for ten cents, I want to burn it. He wants to reminisce, I want to move on; I put it in the trash, he takes it out, and the saga goes on.

So we began the process of eliminating and working together. There were a few close calls. After a piece of wood flew by my head from inside the garage, I had to speak to Al in his currency. “Al, if I get hurt, you lose free help.” That seemed to temper Al’s throwing arm. Free help is a premium around here.

After two long days, loading the trash trailer to the top, burning everything I could get my hands on, Al and I succeeded. Al is organized; everything has its place; like-things are grouped together, such as jumper cables, battery chargers and batteries; air hoses and hoses of every kind, bicycle pump, tire patch and inner tubes.

As Al began stacking the shelves again, I reminded him, if you want to stay organized, these are the rules. Nothing goes in front of something else and after you use it, it goes back to its designated spot. So we have managed to get through another season but what have we learned?

Henry Thoreau, writer and poet writes it best. "I have learned this at least by my experience: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

As different as my sweet Al and I are, we are advancing into seasons which we are not sure of. Growing older takes on new dreams and fewer expectations. We have walked together with a gimp leg for many years, but always following our dreams and endeavoring to live life as we have imagined. We have unexpectedly met in common hours. This time was no exception.

For Al and me, as we change seasons once again, we are learning how to move into that next place. Not only nature changes but we are changing too. And somehow we always find each other in those common hours. We are so blessed.

Final Brushstroke! Common hours! What are they? I believe they are when we reach that place, where we line up with each other in that moment and we fit together. It is where our goals and who we are and where we are, meet in satisfaction.

Thank you to the Boys of Fall

Message Tree (Oil 24X30)

Under the bright lights, huddled in the cold and wet, wrapped up against the winter winds which tease us from around the corner, Pagosa comes out for the best night of the week. It’s Friday night under the lights at the Golden Peaks Stadium. Our young boys suit up in their numbers. The fans wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Our little town of Pagosa files into the bleachers, with thermos bottles, extra blankets and stadium seats. Mothers nestle with all their belongings around them, fathers brag, band members tweak their instruments, and young girls without coats, in flip flops wear their boyfriend’s jerseys. None admit they are cold. Cold doesn’t come into the conversation, the excitement of the game keeps us warm.

We stand together united as citizens of this great country and place our hands on our hearts and sing our National anthem. There are tears in our eyes as we hold onto a deeper feeling of blessing. We want freedom and hope for the generations to experience what we have. We send up a prayer of thanksgiving and forget the trials of the week.

Fathers out of shape, come scruffy in their dirty work clothes. It shows they worked hard all week. They willingly take their place as family providers during the week, but for three hours on Friday night, they get to be boys again.

“Put my son in,” one yells. Another one shouts, “Get me the cookie!” The fathers hash over the plays among themselves, talk about the unfair calls and penalties; and they secretly think they could do better if they were in the game.

Proud moms busily tape the game in between screaming, yelling, chatting and drinking hot chocolate. At home, the tape is slipped into the DVD player and watched, stopped, talked about, watched and watched some more. The family binds together as they look at the plays one more time before they fall into bed.

My young grandson said to his mother, “I wished you could be out on the field. It’s different than being in the stands videoing it. I am looking at some guy bigger than I am, and I know I can tackle him. You can’t even imagine how it feels.”

Another grandson who enjoyed the same feeling last year is suited up in his uniform, standing on crutches on the sideline, knowing he will not have that feeling this year. His heart is breaking and his parents’ heart aches for him too. No one can help him. This is also a memory and a tough life lesson that will change him and how he looks at things.

Why do we love the game so much? I look around and see J.P. He has supported the Pagosa kids as long as I can remember and is still rooting for the team. I remember watching David Cammack, Billy Manzanarez, Randy Swornson and Cody Ross playing. Cody rode around the track during half time as Homecoming King with Debra Holder as his Queen. Today the guys are pacing the fence, watching their boys, remembering when they were the boys of fall.

Out of town games take more effort; parents leave early from their jobs, caravanning and carpooling. The Excursion fills up with hopeful fans trucking over Wolf Creek Pass; or driving west to Dolores for two games, Varsity and Junior Varsity. They spend the night, pile extra boys into the motel room, and talk about the game, the wins and defeats. They listen to the radio for Kenny Chesney’s song, The Boys of Fall.

A hush falls over their voices when K-Wolf Radio plays The Boys of Fall one more time. Some one comments, “That’s the way it is!” And another one says, “Yep!”

The game consumes us this time of the year. I am sure everyone has their reason. For me it is a time that brings me back to being young, remembering I too wore someone’s jersey. They sang their football song after the “Win” and I hugged a tired, sweaty boyfriend who played his heart out, and I thought it was all for me.

Moms and Dads want their kids to have the same memories as they had when they were in high school. Coaches are bent on building well-rounded boys who will learn how to work together as a team, wanting to build young men for a better life.

The boys learn how to take defeat after they have played their hearts out. This is a necessary reality in life. The bus trip is a long way home. The coaches are already talking about next week’s game. The dirty, grass-stained uniforms are thrown into the washer for the next time.

Maybe this is one of the few times in a busy family when they enter into each other’s lives and rally in the glory, defeats, the grind, the injuries and the sweat.

It’s an experience none of us can really put a handle on. It moves in all of us something special. It takes old boys to the rocking chair. In the nursing home one of the grandfathers is still bragging and it is keeping him alive. “I remember in 1945 I carried the ball in the last two seconds and made a touchdown and brought the game home.”

I guess it brings the game home for all of us in one way or another. Thank to The Boys of Fall.

Final Brushstroke! To day’s moments are tomorrows memories.