something's happening

I'm just not exactly sure what.
I got a clue, though, while I was drawing in one of my favorite places in the world:

Skaneateles.

Aptly and justly nicknamed Jewel of the Finger Lakes.

Anyway, I found myself not doing the work to actually look at things, work with them, be with them, create them as living as I could on the page. I was taking shortcuts.

On one drawing I actually scrawled: "Lazy!"

As a description of myself. 

I don't recommend name-calling as part of one's self-talk repertoire, but there it is. It happens.

I felt BORED.

I seldom feel bored.

But again, there it is. It happens.

I think boredom - or at least, my boredom - is a sign of emotional exhaustion. It becomes difficult to care, so you don't. And because you don't care, you don't pay attention, and the world of beautiful gesture, color and detail no longer reveals itself to you.

That's ok.

If I'm emotionally, mentally, physically exhausted, it means I need to rest.

I might have to step back, rethink some things, get a new perspective.

The next day I looked at this maple seed and it was beautiful:

So I spent some time with it, immersing myself in its gradations of color, its subtle undulations, its presence, weight and weightlessness.

That felt good.

skaneateles

Skaneateles is one of my favorite places on Earth.
The lake reaches right up to the edge of the town, or rather the town reaches right into the lake. The water is clear. Ducks abound. In summer, you can run from the porch of the Sherwood Inn straight down the grassy hill into the water. In winter, thick ice forms on the surface of the lake. Sometimes it breaks into huge clashing plates that make an eerie sound when the wind blows.

The hills in the distance across the lake look pink, green, blue, gray, depending on the weather and the time of day. Boats appear: big touring ones, little sailboats, kayaks, paddle rafts.

The town is kitschy, like the one I grew up in, but lovable, again like the one I grew up in. Its antique stores and thrift stores and libraries burst with the history of the people who live there and have lived there. I picture them all like my Quaker and Puritan relatives: reading crumbly leather-bound books at night, grinding coffee by hand in the morning. Their spirit, strong, stern, boundedly but bloomingly beautiful, lives in every eave and hedge and curb and curve of Skaneateles.

2 views: one while I was there, one a memory-reflection that evening.

fun with an altered book

lake day

Yesterday I visited one of my favorite places: Canandaigua Lake. It was sunny and a little bit chilly but there were a lot of people out and I enjoyed sitting on the rocks and looking out over the water. I even got a chance to draw a couple of quick scenes:

palm springs

Ansel and I went to Palm Springs to visit his grandfather. When we got there, I realized I didn't have enough pink. If you've ever been to Palm Springs, you'll know that in order to convey anything about it, you need PINK.

So we found an art store and I got some pink.

I painted everywhere. On the paper bag our bagels came in (hooray, Townies!), on the free pad of paper in our hotel, which was quite pleasingly and surprisingly close to watercolor paper, on the airplane, on the street.

palm trees :)

away 2

We were on a very comfortable, well-made and well-equipped canal boat, cruising down the Erie Canal. Life slows down; one starts to appreciate subtle changes in landscape and foliage, the bends in the "river". I didn't do a whole lot of sketching, being occupied with a whole lot of looking - but I did manage a pencil drawing of the front of our boat, the Canandaigua:

and some quick, faint sketches of a liftbridge in Brockport and another view of our boat:

Sorry they are so faint!

I came to love tying the boat up to a cleat on the dock - so effective and pleasing.

Also, seeing my city from such a different perspective was totally neat. We pulled up to a gas station next to the canal that Ansel and I knew otherwise from getting there by car, tied up our boat on the little dock, and hopped off and into the gas station for supplies. Then back to the water. Amazing!

away

We've been on a boat!
 Perhaps more about that later, but first:

springside farm

This weekend Ansel and I met our friend Alicia at Springside Farm in Fabius, NY for the sheep and alpaca shearing festival. It was a perfect day for it: sunny, not too hot. Lots of kids running around making noise. 

I got to hold a lamb in my lap. 

We saw pot-bellied pigs, and chickens, and bunnies, and of course sheep and alpacas. 

Alpacas never cease to amaze me. Their funny heads, their alert but odd stance, their big eyelashes. And of course their beautiful fur.

I thought I might draw some of them, but the crowds (and I suppose my residual shyness) were a deterrent to my getting out sketching materials in the barn. 

Instead, I plopped myself down in the grass outside and drew: 

Ansel, from a distance, wandering around a pond:

A blossoming tree:

And a view of the whole picturesque farm.

my traveling companion

I just got back from a trip to Delaware. I drove down, and one of my many stops on the way was in the beautiful town of Skaneateles. There's a thrift store there - well, you know the thrift store! It's the one that my cup comes from. 

So anyway, I popped into the thrift store, and there on the counter was this cute little plant. Wrapped in tin foil, and labeled in shaky handwriting on an ancient piece of paper Scotch-taped to the pot. 

I did not think twice. The plant came with me. 

On the drive, it sat in the cup holder of my rental car. When I got to my hotel, it came in with me. The next morning, it came with me to the coffee shop (I walked in carrying this plant, with a violin case on a ribbon around my neck. The guy at the counter stood back. "That's adorable," he said. "Don't worry, I'm not moving in," I said), then to lunch with my relatives, and then all the way home.

I would never have thought it practical (or particularly good for the plant, probably) to travel with a wee baby plant, but I have to say that it makes a wonderful travel companion, a wonderful impromptu centerpiece and conversation starter. 

Instant living room, wherever you go.

that wonderful town

I had about three hours in Chicago to scamper about and see as much as I could at the Art Institute, eat lunch, and meet our group at the Field Museum.

I did so with the help of a handy little tourist map, given to me by a helpful Chicagoan (in general, I found the people of Chicago to be lovely, nice and helpful)...

…and my scribbled plan from before. Since the museum didn't open until mid-morning, I explored, found coffee, went to the art store, and then made my way over to where there was a long line forming down the steps of the museum. It was a festive feeling, even in the gray rainy cold of that early April morning. A museum guard was entertaining a little girl in line in front of me. Her family was visiting from Milwaukee. "My family's from Milwaukee," the guard said. "Great town."

travel

Travel, usually on my mind practically all the time, has been on my mind even more than usual lately.

Even doodles end up looking like compasses.

I draw maps, I make plans.

Like most people who love to travel, I love to travel. 

Unlike most people (at least, as far as they let on) who love to travel, however, I also dread it. 

It's so hard!

Who goes on one of those travel shows and talks about how they had to get to the airport in Rome for a plane at 5 am and there was no train that early so they had to take a taxi at 11 pm the night before only it wasn't an authorized taxi because those were all already off-duty, it was a very sketchy unofficial taxi and the only language you shared with the taxi driver after running through all the options was French, and yours is patchy at best, and you decided on a price before you got in and it was all you had but it was less than he wanted so you thought he might try to extract the remainder from you some other way (horror) and sure enough the whole way there he told you how "belle" you were and at one point even looked like he was about to exit the highway in some deserted location and you had your hand on the car door handle the whole time, gripping it, ready to fling yourself out of the car if need be, and you got there, to the airport, and then spent the whole night on an upper floor looking down at the people cleaning the floors below, and reading most of Anna Karenina...

Or about how they got stuck in a small room in a youth hostel with two young women with the longest and most mysterious night-time beauty regimens in the history of womankind and a serious case of jet-lag, the combination of which had almost murderous results?

In my complicated wanderlust, I dug up some old drawings that made me smile:

Eating is complicated for me when I travel. I want to eat everything. If I could, I would have 5 or 6 meals a day. Plus snacks, and coffee breaks.

Of course, I LOVE to travel.

LOVE LOVE LOVE