Today I opened my mail to read that dear Robert Genn had died and I cried.  

I have never met Robert but think of him as a close friend because of his twice-weekly letters.  Several years ago another painter had sent me the link to his page and I subscribed immediately;  since then he has faithfully sent me his insightful and literate essays about art and life, all of which revealed him to be not only talented but deeply intelligent both intellectually and emotionally.  A beautiful soul.

When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer late last year, Robert told us that he would be continuing to send his thoughts either directly or through his daughter Sara.  He was true to his word.   And Sara, bless her, is planning to continue his work, publishing one of his countless essays and one new one of her own each week.  I hadn't understood how deeply he had always touched me until I felt the enormous relief of realizing the letters wouldn't stop.

It's not too late to meet Robert.  He will live on in his and Sara's wonderful words at www.painterskeys.com/

Red is showing up everywhere lately.  Last week, we saw what we assume were two male red-headed woodpeckers in hot dispute over a flirty female, and yesterday the high canopy was filled with scarlet tanagers, again mostly males.  There few sights sadder than desperate unmated males in spring;  sit outside any high school if you don't believe me.  I saw the female tanagers but didn't at first identify them as wives, for the males' colours drowned the dear dowdies out. (One of my favourite lines from a forgotten novel: "The archbishop's wife was a pale penumbra of the archbishop.") And tonight the cardinal who sang from a high bare branch caught and magnified the setting sun. Resplendent fellow.  Males look great in red, as all Canadians know.

This wee house also sang out like a beacon high within Gros Morne.  I took the shot, enchanted by the colour and the scale, but later when I appraised the digital I realized that the house called for cadmium red medium, a very specific colour.  What to do?  I make it my business to avoid heavy metals like the cadmiums, lead whites and cobalts, good practise if you don't want to end up stark raving mad like so many famous painters.  (Less successfully, I also try to avoid stirring my coffee with my brush -- I've got it down to just once or twice a week)  But I wanted that colour to sing, so I started with white and then glazed multiple times with alizarin and transparent yellow.  I think it's right, because my eye is irresistibly drawn to that glorious pop of true red.  

You would think, then, that red clothing would inherit that cachet but, perhaps because I am a woman, I have absolutely no luck with that colour, especially in shoes.    One dark winter morning on my way to university, arms filled with books, I found myself limping badly.  I paid just enough attention to it to think, "Good grief, now one leg is shorter than the other.  Oh, well, I'll deal with that after I deliver my seminar paper."    As I clumped up to the second floor, my boyfriend took one look at me and said, "Z'Anne, why are you wearing one black flat and one red high heel?"  I should have sworn off red shoes then and there but inexplicably chose to wear them when visiting Germany shortly after;  an awful lot of men gave me a funny look .  All women know that look. Finally someone took pity on me and explained that red high heels (including my red high heels) sent a specific and, in my case, unintentional signal.  Perhaps a man wearing red high heels would have been perceived as dominant and independent rather than available for rental.  Red works for Mounties.  I gave away the shoes.

But you can't banish something so cheery forever and last year I bought another pair of red high heels.  And I would have worn them this week, had there been two of them.  Either my left red shoe has left for Germany, or it has joined the sterling flatware I hid fifteen years ago in The Land of the Missing.  And I do miss them both.  If you see them, please give them the message that all is forgiven.

Many years ago, I arrived home to find the door to the basement closed, my husband pacing behind it in the kitchen.  It seems that we had someone in the basement who must not be allowed to come upstairs.  

Life is always an adventure around here and I couldn't resist the urge to peek, so I sneaked down the stairs.  And there beside the freezer sat an enormous bird.  I turned my head to ask Jon why we had a snowy owl in the basement and when I looked back, she had vanished without a sound.  I located her on the old converted coal furnace at the far end, where she solemnly blinked at me.  I knew right away that we would not be having frozen orange juice any time soon.

We immediately christened her "Honkey" because she was whiter than white.  She had been stunned at the airport and brought into the sanctuary to recover;  unfortunately, Bernice was away and now Jon had to figure out how to keep her alive.  So he began by bringing her home.  (A phone call wouldn't have hurt.)  

Owls are hunters, not scavengers.  She would have to be force-fed.  But how do you force-feed a large and furious owl? At the time, there was a hatchery in Brampton and I was dispatched to purchase a bag of small chick corpses.  We were vegetarians at the time, but no matter.  Honkey wasn't.  

Feeding time was fraught with tension.  Sometimes she lurked in the large cardboard wardrobe we had moved in with, and Jon would have to climb in after her, muttering what he hoped were soothing endearments.  They generally weren't received as such.   The two of them would noisily renegotiate the space in the box, which lifted and banged with muffled thuds.  Then Jon would emerge triumphant with one leg in each hand and half walk, half fly her across to our "feeding station."  There I would await, swathed in every leather item I owned and Jon would hand me her legs while she tried with some success to fly me across the room.  Neither Honkey nor I had signed off on the manoeuvre but there we were.  Jon and I  would then wrestle her down onto her back on his lap, during which she would attempt with extreme accuracy to impale me.  After Jon had pried her uncooperative and terrifying beak open, he would stuff a dead chick down the side of her throat into her gullet, and shoot some water after it.  

Then each day the miracle would take place:  Honkey would swallow, blink her huge amber eyes, and I believe to this day that she would flash us a wintry smile.  The big girl survived to be returned to the sanctuary (where Bernice pronounced her the largest snowy she had ever seen) and then to the airport for release.  She must have arrived home in the Arctic Circle with some great stories to tell.

Life tip:  never go to bed before dark: the other night at dusk I missed the visit of a special visitor because I had gardened all day and chose to collapse and read in bed.  Jon had yelled up, asking for the binoculars, and I, as Household-Keeper-Tracker-of-All-Things, yelled back an answer.  I was deep in Donna Tartt's Pulizter Prize winning The Goldfinch and didn't think to ask why.  Only later did Jon mention that a small owl had perched on the other side of the driveway, grooming, stretching and gazing around.  Dang!

Jon didn't think it was a saw-whet.  We're familiar with them because we had provided bed and breakfast to one some years ago for a few days when his wing was healing.  During Beethoven's stay, Jon had left for an overnight of fishing, but the tiny fellow and I had elected to stay home.  Although his air of tousled genius and impatience with the mundane had inspired his name, I underestimated the significance of that look, deciding to bring him upstairs with me to spend the night.  I had forgotten than owls are nocturnal and, if not particularly bright, certainly persistent.  Beethoven made clanging circuits around the cage all night , obviously assuming that his wing just needed some more air under it.  By morning, we were both exhausted, although his leg muscles were certainly well exercised.  The wing eventually healed and off he went.  I was not heartbroken to say goodbye, I'm afraid.

The usual owls around here are much larger -- great-horned -- and they have roosted in our neighbourhood for generations.  We knew one captive pair who had been injured but lived at Winding Lane Sanctuary and successfully bred;  Delilah was twice the size of Rodney but they seemed happy enough as a couple.  Occasionally I get their call correct and manage at dusk to get a wild great-horned to reply.  I shouldn't tease them, I know, but it comforts me to know they are out there.  

If not a saw-whet, perhaps our recent visitor was a boreal owl.  Whoever he was, mice and voles beware!  I find their tiny bones in their hunters' coughed-up pellets.

The deep blue violets are gradually resurging in our wild garden this spring.  Last May I carefully dug each tiny volunteer in our grassy areas, transplanting it into the back garden to edge the black path leading to the ravine.  My happy surprise was their utter enthusiasm for the move.  The transplants might have been only a few inches round but, mulched with several years of fallen maple leaves,  they stretched out, even shouldering one another for space, competing to produce large flowers for several months.  Even when the flowers were gone, the gorgeous rosettes of heart-shaped leaves persisted until fall.  The heavy rains today will coax them out again this year, I hope.

When I tried to put them on canvas last year, the violets were less cooperative, however, but I had an ace in the hole:  good and talented friends are an essential part of the creative process.  "Sarah's Violets" is so-titled because of her help when the painting was wrestling me to the mat with background/foreground issues;  Sarah, who paints flowers beautifully, knew exactly what advice to give.  They are hers in spirit.

The basement (which is truly just that) smelled a bit pungent this morning when I was loading the washer.  Oh yes.   I'd almost forgotten the skunk tail clipped to a hanger.  The adventure of being married continues.  

In winter, when Jon cannot fish, he ties flies -- tiny works of art, shimmering and exactly executed with both symmetry and complexity.  In spring, when the roads are strewn with the sad evidence of anyone too slow to cross, he stops and harvests tying materials.  I am the only wife I know of who has a boning knife, wire snips and plastic bags in the glove compartment.  Back off, girls --  he's all mine.

The wafting from that beautiful late-winter tail reminds me of the skunks we have known.  Many years ago, before rabies was an issue with skunks here, we had a long-term relationship with both them and our other back-door neighbours - the raccoons.  The skunks were our hands-down favourites because of their gentle natures.  Skunks are slow, appreciative eaters,  meanderers, and unbelievably nice.  If they seep, it's only a little bit and not unpleasant.

One evening, however, the raccoons and skunks arrived at the same time so one particular skunk had assumed the classic defensive u-shaped position which allows for both aiming and shooting.   Now have you ever observed the table manners of raccoons?  They hoover a handout while already sussing out the next one.  And perhaps this skunk, like Marilyn Monroe, was short-sighted and too vain to wear her glasses.  One raccoon simply moved to her rear and reached through, grabbing a piece of bread right out of Marilyn's mouth.  Marilyn did not shoot. 

 I would have shot.  I would have blasted that raccoon with all six barrels.  But if your dog comes home stinking, you'd better believe that the skunk felt she had no choice. Ample warning had been there for anyone to see or sniff.

We don't see skunks very often any more because feeding them is no longer a safe option, but we wish them well and welcome them to our garden.  They have continued to be good neighbours.  If they visited the last night, I can immediately see that any and all grubs have been removed and put to good use.  All I have to do is to push the divots back down.  Thanks.

This time of year I watch for fawns, hoping that there is one nearby, obediently crouching 
in the underbrush and, camouflaged by her dappled coat, silently awaiting her mother's return.  It is now, before the leaves open, that I have the best chance of spotting the wee thing, so yesterday I followed the fresh tracks of a single adult deer for some time;   I congratulated myself too soon and without warrant, and found neither mother nor baby before losing the track.  



Realistically, Jon and I consider ourselves lucky to see one fawn a year.  But oh, what a sight:  inevitably, the fawn is perfectly quiet, every muscle frozen.  Today's painting was based on such an encounter many years ago between Ron, a naturalist friend, and this fawn.  I couldn't be sure of her actual size, but a large canvas seemed right.  She is awake, alert, and utterly still on her bed of mosses.  I titled it "Perfect Obedience"to convey the painting's raison d'être:  motherly love expressed in a baby's complete trust.

Happy Mother's Day to all.

When I read, my eye moves like a bee who is inspecting one flower while fixing another facet of her  compound eye on the next yummy blossom;  the email in my inbox entitled "Farming Sale" proved it yet again this morning.  "Yippee," I thought, without even questioning why de Serres, an art store, might be so informing me .  Already formulating lists of possible farming implements (it's spring and I'm a gardener), I was eventually forced to realize that I should have read "Framing."  

Rushing through life is wrong, I know, but overdrive has always been my default setting.  I've spent my life trying to slow down -  cultivating quiet settings, low lights, early bedtimes, limited outings,  and learning to say no -  but only glaze oil painting has really done the trick.

Because each layer such as the grisaille or the various colour foundations has to be bone dry before proceeding, I have had to pace myself better.  If I do wander out to the garden, the painting will call me back before I've spent a week on my knees, an idiocy which I have committed in the past.  This winter, I read copiously but in small doses during drying time and even now have eight or nine books on the go but quietly awaiting their turns.  Kakuro, an American number crossword invention with a Japanese name, is another reliable and absorbing alternative.  I've been learning patience.

Only three or four of my larger paintings were done in acrylic.  This one, long gone in a charity auction for The Art Gallery of Mississauga, was inspired by an extraordinary day of fly-fishing in Newfoundland with Sandra and Bob, Jon's cousins.  I took my moose-alert eyes off the highway just long enough to aim my camera at this sunset. I then managed to paint it in acrylic without much difficulty, only because it was fairly simple, I think, and needed little glazing. 

While I may still give acrylic paints another go, its lightning-fast drying time works against it in my case.  You can finish an entire painting in an afternoon and I have a number of friends who prove this (thinking of you in particular,  Lise!).  Their abilities make me green with envy but, even if I could, I know that I shouldn't.  

Slow painting is:

*good for my blood pressure;

* an enhanced opportunity for me to look at something very carefully multiple times and maybe get it right eventually; and

*a practical necessity for any mildly productive artist living in a small house with limited wall space!  I'm even running out of room in the stairwells....

On Sunday, I dropped an open tub of Greek yoghurt straight down to where it exploded like a bomb;  assiduous wiping up didn't do the trick, it turns out.  We may have to move.

What does this have to do with art?  In "Blue all over" I sang the praises of ultramarine blue, but it has since occurred to me that I would be misleading you, Dear Reader, to imply that all blues are cooperative team members.  To employ a mixed geographical metaphor, Prussian (or phthalo) blue is a tartar!  It simply cannot be trusted to play nicely. 

I was warned by Kathy Marlene Bailey, who has mastered glaze oil and shares its mysteries, that it should not even be added to the palette until the final glazes.  She was right: it is so finely textured that it insinuates itself everywhere, making even Greek yoghurt look like a slacker. More than once I have come home from shopping to discover that I have been parading a Prussian moustache around town .  Why does no-one mention these things?  

And why, then, include Prussian blue in such a spare palette as mine?  Because it is the truest of glazes, ready to transform a pasty blue underpainted sky into a splendour.  Do you remember the scene in Dances with Wolves when the camera swings up from the grisly horror of the butchered buffalo herd into that deep blue zenith of the sky?  I caught my breath, recognizing that sky as  that of my prairie childhood.  The smoggy summers here had masked it so gradually that I had forgotten its deep loveliness.  And I know that I can't paint it without that last glaze of pure Prussian blue. 

Now it's back to the kitchen for me.  Did I tell you that the cupboard doors were open during the Great Greek Disaster?

I think I shall reward myself by going for a wildflower walk in the valley with my camera.  I may, just may, be finished with "Stephen's Oslo."  The edges are done and the rigging is done, although it might beckon me once again for a touch of darkening (the very last jobs in every painting being that of  tweaking the darkest darks and the lightest lights, perhaps adding one more glaze......).  I even used the mahl stick that Bert Liverance taught us all how to make;  our group is made up of women and there were a number of jokes about how they would also function as "husband boppers" for those moments when "he isn't listening."  I think I've figured out how to use it, and it proved a dandy tool for steadying my arm when painting straight lines free-hand.  Have yet to use it to on Jon although opportunities have presented themselves.




Now I have to decide "What's next?" as President Bartlett always asked after that week's crisis on The West Wing.  I have several portraits I could start -- the second portrait of wee Rose :  "Prairie Rose" beckons.  But the image which insistently knocks at the door is that of Jon fishing in The Rocky on a summer day last year.  We were at Traverston and I stood on the iron bridge and shot everything in sight, including the lovely old mill.  Focused on retrieving his cast, Jon is almost crouched below me in the river.  It will have to be a horizontal painting so that one's eye can follow the flyline.  And it will have to be big, like this one.

 I will take that walk and think about it.