March 14 Day 1: OK, so a virus has arrived and the country is shutting down. The streets of Santa Fe are quiet outside my studio window. I have been busy paintings, hoping for a good summer season which is now in question. It is time to share this new work. ART BOX, on the plaza, is also my studio space and so, no matter what happens you’ll find me there painting. This is what I do. I’ll try posting one painting each day till all have been shown. These are in no particular order.
Day 3: On day three of this Corona Virus spring a painting with the wildly inappropriate title of “Autumn Bouquet”.
Day 6: This week Roger called from LA, Don called from Albuquerque, and last night Jack called from cross town. We’re all just looking for contact.
Day 10: News out of DC is dire as a friend in Pecos tells me he has stopped watching the news and his biggest concern at the moment is having only six pounds of coffee left in the cupboard. I admire the way he’s dealing.
Day 11: Stay-at-home ordered for all of New Mexico beginning this morning. This means my studio doors stay locked for now. I will still be able to wave to you from my window, which was open yesterday to the new spring weather.
Day 12: While prunning trees in the late afternoon a parade of neighbors and not-so-neighbors came walking by. We’re all taking respite however we can.
Day 13: From a letter written yesterday to a friend in Nevada.
“But there is a palpable sensation of constriction pervading the national psyche. It hangs about like a fog. Still, Meg and I went hiking in the foothills yesterday and, at least for the time of the hike, the cloud lifted”.
“I continue to paint like I am running out of time, even while I question the relevance of the creative drive in times of such disruption. I have always said, “The darker my mood the brighter my palette.” This has held true throughout the years but it always surprises me to see it. It surprises me to see it happening again. Sometimes these paintings can feel like beautiful lights growing out of a murky dusk or dawn”.
Day 14: Spent yesterday building a partial inclosure for our ‘second bin’. It took all day working in an off-and-on rain, gusting winds, and mid 50’s temps but it’s done and I have assured myself, falsely or no, that I am in control.
Day 15: At three AM the city was silent. The electric, gas, and water still worked. The house felt safe and warm. But outside the world seemed to have stopped. From the deck looking towards downtown a traffic light, directing to an empty street, changed from green to red and back again. / This morning the bird feeder is busy. The sun has come up as it always has.
Day 19: Visited via zoom with some dear friends in LA last night. Dreamed this morning of warm hugs with family. Life in a time of quarantine.
Day 21: Talking with Mary and Don last night I told them how, when at my most depressed I produce my most colorful paintings. “If they get any brighter I’ll be committing suicide!” I told them. Just a joke. But true that the paintings are getting brighter by the day.
Day 22: From a dream two nights ago. I sense a lot of people must be having similar dreams. “I was trotting along on a turning globe which suddenly stopped, leaving me stumbling forward trying to keep my balance.”
Day 23: We took the day off. No TV. No internet. No FB. Feeling much better.
Of course this morning it was Sunday. If it’s Sunday it’s Meet The Press.
Day 25: The consequences seem to be mounting, or perhaps they are just dawning on me.
Day 28: World on fire. The center holds.
Day 30: Happy Easter everyone.
Day 31: Snow in Santa Fe. The silence is deafening.
Day 32: I finished rehanging ART BOX on Sunday. This included repairing and painting walls, labeling the backs of all the encaustic paintings completed this winter, rigging them to hang, and then (after rehanging the walls) cleaning the studio. All this was the result of last weeks push to photograph and edit all the new works.
Yesterday I intended to paint all day. After lunch I lay down on my studio couch for a short nap and woke up two hours later. So this is what self quarantine looks like…
Day 33: Are we clear now what the consequences are? Or do you need more time in your room?
Day 36: Calm, people. Calm. And Kindness.
Day 38: Up to today, day 38, I have been posting paintings done over the winter. All these were completed before the stay-at-home order came down. My next post will begin showing those paintings done over this last month and a half period as the streets emptied and this unfolding disaster began showing itself outside my studio window.
Day 39: Now begin the paintings begun 39 days ago.
Day 40: It’s all beginning to feel like a passage, isn’t it? A journey to some place quite different from where we were.
Day 42: Did the virtual studio tour yesterday. 29 people showed up, a quarter of them were family. Thank you all for coming! It was lovely.
Day 44: Getting so many house projects done this spring I’m afraid we might run out of house!
Day 45: ‘Blessing’ Now more than ever.
Day 46: Summer has arrived. Temperatures will be in the high 70’s to low 80’s for the foreseeable future.
Time to break out the oils.
Day 47: While the news worsens daily we continue to tend our garden, meaning the house, studio, each other.
Day 49: Los Luceros is an historic hacienda set in the bosque north of Espanola. One of my favorite places in New Mexico, the old growth cottonwoods light up in the autumn in brilliant yellows.
Day 50: I’ve begun a few 36″ x 42″ panels, visualizing them as the finale of this series of encaustic paintings. Full days working on these large panels is leaving me physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.
Day 51: The country has begun to open up. We’ll see how bad this gets.
Day 52: Today I finally have the psychic space to begin contemplating how we might weather the next 12 to 18 months.
Day 53: Closing the bedroom window and blinds to the earliest morning light and a singing bird, I thought, “This could be the end of the world!” Given this early May heat generated by a warming planet and the political turmoil around the world going hardly noticed, drowned out by the cacophony of coverage of this pandemic which holds us all in place, we are, each of us, confronted with an uncertain future.
Day 54: I dreamed of large quantities of wood and cement, all delivered and set down on our hillside, while I began digging a foundation. My mother taught me this. The cure for depression, or the grief of loss, is work.
Day 55: Google Maps Timeline tells me this morning I have made eight stops in the last month, all within two miles of home. I have become my age (that is, if I were living in an assisted living facility). I do not like it…..
Day 63: These last two paintings are big ones (44″x37″) and finish off this series of encaustics, for now. Next week I return to oils. This has been, for me, a remarkable series. There is nothing like enthusiastically learning a new medium; letting it take you where it wants to go.
Often we learn too well the lessons of a medium or subject, then spend the rest of our time trying to get back that initial enthusiasm once it is lost. After many years of painting I’ve learned to move on quickly as my excitement wains in the face of familiarity.
Day 64: After two months of entries, this is the last of the new encaustics. Its posting, coincidentally, falls on the first day of Phase One Reopening here in New Mexico. We are taking first steps into “A Capricious Season”. My fears are varied and many. My hopes are for a better world.
This unusual final painting seems to delineate the struggle between those two seeming opposites; a balance ready to either float away or topple.
Clearly, I stand on the side of hope.
Let’s, everybody, be kind,
please.
……….