The name “Sarah Jones” was new to me when I ran across it in Maria Popova’s  superb blog “Brain Pickings” (thank you again, Toby) but I shan’t forget it now.   I have re-written this sentence four times, trying to describe what Jones is/does and finally concluded that to say she is sui generis  will have to do.  

Okay, let’s start with the fact that I have no idea what her nationality is.  Nor would I call her an “actor” exactly.  She is a one-woman show but beyond that…   So I will have to content myself by describing the performance that knocked me dead.

A series of nine head-shot segments shows Jones reciting a profound and sad poem by Campbell McGrath entitled “Jane Goodall (1961).”   But Sarah Jones’ genius as a portrayer of voices quickly becomes evident because she morphs as she reads the poem.  The addition of a piece of clothing, the quiver of a hand is just the beginning;  it is her complete mastery of accent, intonation, posture and delivery which brings each of the nine characters to life;  by the end we realize that we have heard the world speaking to us as one.  

I encourage you to go to “Brain Pickings” and cursor down the left side to “Archives” and enter “Sarah Jones.”  You will be glad you did.  And while you are there, subscribe to the free podcast.  Popova won’t waste a minute of your precious time.  Her blog contributes to the discussion of how this world can be saved.  Enjoy.

Yesterday found me with a lapful of cold water.  The weather was delightful — cool but sunny — and we had decided to run the river so we pulled on fleeces and loaded up the car.  Because it was a holiday, there were families thronging the walking paths and lots of them waved to us as we passed.  I half-heartedly tried to wave back but had to remind myself to  keep my paddle in the water when we are whistling through class 1-2 rapids.

Running The Credit brings back funny memories.  I learned how to paddle white-water here.  There is a railroad bridge which always reminds us of the time when I confused a pry and a draw;  Jon finally screamed “Your OTHER left!”  I didn’t actually steer the canoe up all the way into the unfortunate fisherman who was casting there, but I wager that both of us still remember the moment.   

To further complicate things, I toggle between being an amateur naturalist and a dependable bow-paddler.  The rock gardens which are my responsibility to call too often coincide with an unusual bird or a botanical surprise (we found a huge wisteria in full bloom pretending to be a lilac);  taking a photo with one hand in a moving vehicle pretty much guarantees rotten shots but I can’t stop myself from trying.  Once in a while it works:  “The Ancients” 2, which won that recent award, arose from the same situation, although I had to paste three shots together to get what I wanted. 

The great joy of being down in a river valley is that sense of being totally immersed in nature, far from cities, even if civilization lurks just over the hill.   At times nature even feels quite wild:  near the cliff further south is a run of standing waves;  Jon claims it is my job to intercept the ones that sweep in.  Thus the lapfuls.  Over the years I have developed an intimate empathy for all of the biblical sacrificial lambs.

We went back out today to complete the run to the lake.  Rather than standing waves, the threat du jour was the golf ball — the course nearby has several holes which traverse the river -- but nobody managed to bean us and we were rewarded for our courage when we saw a family of common mergansers!  Dad was sporting a formal-wear black-tie head but Mom and all of the kids were crowned with gorgeous ginger.   They were ensconced on a couple of snags in mid-river along with with a couple of equally-elegant Caspian terns. Despite a considerable headwind, it was another great paddle, even ending in a colony of swans, all of whom were absorbed in re-oiling their feathers).

Suggested collective nouns:
"an Irish of mergansers"
"a snazzfest of terns"
"a preen of swans"

You may have heard of “Salon Style,’ a phrase which has particular meaning for artists. What comes to mind is not so much a good comb-out as a vision of wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling paintings. In centuries past, most art shows would have been hung this way, cheek-to-jowl, every square inch crowded with works jostling one another. The "modern" period saw the pendulum swung sharply back in the other direction; huge public gallery rooms might and still do house only four paintings - one for each wall. I can never decide whether this reflects the luxury of space or an extreme paucity of the imagination.

While I theoretically aim for a midpoint, our wee house has been creeping back in style. This is not so much an aesthetic consideration as a practical one — paintings are meant to reside on the wall rather than under the bed and so today found me once again perching precariously up and down the staircase with hammer in hand. In our stairwell at least, the salon is literally on the rise.

At least I'm no longer wrestling with heavy watercolours. Of the several impulses which directed me towards oil, framing was one. The final straw with watercolour was the moment when, after having spent half an hour cleaning the glass and then carefully screwing the whole combination of backing, painting, double mat and glass into the frame, I turned it over to find that a bug had crawled in to die. Crap. I also had to admit to myself that I probably shouldn't  work with glass;  for one thing, I can't afford the blood loss.  I have always thought Polonius’ injunction to Laertes to “Know thyself/ to thine own self be true” should have earned him more respect from Hamlet, but there you go.

So using oil pigments on stretched canvas offered an escape from complicated framing or, at least I thought so until I finished the first large big painting and realized that I somehow still had to hang it. hmmm. When I decided to shop for an oil frame, I realized that what had been a light and portable object would be transformed by that addition into what amounted to a piece of furniture;  just like that, my fancy of easy seasonal change-overs of subject matter and palette vaporized. Then Lyla suggested that the next piece could be painted on a “gallery” canvas, one built with deep stretchers. Eureka! All problems solved simultaneously — extra space around the edges to wrap the image, good strong construction, and minimal weight. Bring it on!

But of course I am drawn like a moth to the flame by these light and large expanses of canvas - which brings us back to that issue of limited wall space. This is the newest goliath asking to be shoe-horned onto a wall;  it's now hanging in the stairwell but we both could have done without the wrestling match.  It's wishful thinking that babes like this might develop some self-hanging inclinations but I am haunted by the memory of an elderly friend whom I helped move house.  Frank ran out of patience and simply hauled a batch of wonderful oil paintings to the curb with a "Free to a good home" sign.  Neighbours emerged from their burrows like carpenter ants in spring.

I don't think I'm there yet but I promise to post advance notice if it comes to that.  "Coming to a curbside near you...."

As I work at our kitchen sink, I am keeping one eye on a long motionless tail on the other side of the window. A robin has built her nest in the old euonymus which clambers up the stone wall. Jon had spotted her last week and yesterday the mother-to-be unintentionally buzzed me in the garden before diving into an opening among the branches. I imagine supper had been a hurried event for her and that she had stuffed in only a few worms before returning to her domestic responsibilities. The whole set-up looks promising and we hope to share a bird’s eye view of the little family.

This mom is no amateur, unlike the robin whose nest appeared in a photo my merry mother snapped at their cottage decades ago. She labelled it “First-year-mom.” The poor soul had set her sights on the back light fixture; she only got as far as laying one egg before the nest collapsed, breaking the shell, which shattered and spilled. I suspect the sight of the yolk, suspended six inches below the nest, inspired the poor young bird to put more thought into nest sites. I certainly have no reason to feel superior, having once rented an apartment in what turned out to be the site of a former red light district; the locals had stayed, it turned out, and gave many a loud party on the other side of my living room wall; they also played Leonard Cohen around the clock, finishing any affection I had for his voice. And then there was the fire hall. Live and learn is good cross-species advice.

I had not, however, expected to experience deep fellow feelings for starlings, the most-maligned avian species in North America. I didn't dislike them and loved John Updike's description of them:  "On the single strand of wire strung to bring our house electricity, grackles and starlings nearly punctuated an invisible sentence.  But it seems that even (or especially) ornithologists despise this introduced and successful bird. Given that powerful bias,  I was further surprised to hear of a naturalist raising a starling, whom she named “Carmen.”  Lyanda Lynn Haupt is acutely aware of the paradox of adoring a particular starling while hating starlings in general. Even so, her inspiration to foster such an outcast arose from Haupt's fascination with the story that Mozart had doted upon his own starling; they met in a pet shop where he was astonished to hear “Star” whistle the first few bars of his yet unpublished sonata; it was kismet and Wolfgang and Star were inseparable thereafter. "In their shared vocal play, their clever backing-and-forthing of aural possibility, Mozart found the closest thing to an avian kindred spirit that the green earth had to offer. A bird playmate evolved, it seems, just for him" (p.146) for, like parrots and mynahs, starlings are true and accomplished mimics. Unlike songbirds, who perform memorized mating calls, starlings, both male and female, compose and extend huge repertoires of remembered sounds. Social animals, they seem to sing for the sheer joy of any sort of communal living.  I like Updike's observation that "On a single strand of wire strung to bring our house electricity, grackles and starlings neatly punctuated an invisible sentence."

Mozart may not have attended his father’s funeral, but his tiny fellow musician rated an elegy and a special service. If you love both birds and Mozart, you must read Mozart’s Starling. If nothing else, it will remind you to sing more often.

This photo was taken through my studio window during a whirlwind visit by a flock of hungry musicians who within seconds consumed an entire bush of euonymus berries. I should have opened the window — maybe they were giving “The Messiah” a crack too.

​Yes, we have a frost advisory tonight so I hauled in the red geraniums and wrapped the white begonias in a scarf, but otherwise it is spring.  I know this for sure because everything is in motion.

In general, the usuals are doing the usual things.  At least one chipmunk survived the winter and last summer’s predators, thank heavens, and scoots past our feet as we garden.  The garlic mustard, while almost eradicated in our own garden, thrives elsewhere, growing inches each day — It was discouraging to hike Mount Nemo this week and notice that its splendid masses of ephemerals are under siege.  I pulled the biggest plants but this is not a battle which can be won.  Woodpeckers everywhere hammer away,  dazed by  the bonanza of dead ash trees.  And then there’s the grouse, of course.  We’ve concluded that he is mildly insane, but in a nice way.

For me the excitement is in the return, if only briefly, of migrants.  Jon saw a wild turkey a couple of doors down and the next night our neighbours called to ask about the enormous birds roosting in their tree — the huge lumps turned out to be turkey vultures.  They soar above the valley but this is the first time I’ve seen them resting.  Warblers appear and move on, edgy geese couples take turns brooding and guarding, and the steelhead run straggles on.  

What brought all of this motion to my attention was a moment in an art gallery yesterday.  I was admiring a Maurice Cullen when Jon said “Remember how I always tell you to add an animal to your paintings?”  (He relentlessly teases me that there’s nothing wrong with a painting that can’t be fixed by the addition of a bunny.  Or a fish.  Or an eagle.  You get the picture.)  Anyway, I turned to look at the painting he was talking about and instantly caught the joke.  The scene was beautifully painted with blue-capped snowbanks reminiscent of Lauren Harris, and perfectly capable of standing on its own.   But at the focal point was an unfortunate stag, frozen in  mid-jump like a wooden carousel horse.   Jon christened it “Boing!!”

Not that I would do any better.  Not a chance.  While everything, particularly in the spring, is in motion, it is motion itself which is the hardest thing to capture.  A still life subject has the virtue of staying put.  (When I was teaching myself to paint, I began with single flowers on a white background;  all alternatives were too overwhelming.)  I wish I could report that I have since mastered motion but nope.    Some of my paintings avoid sharp edges to give the impression of blurred speed but often the best I can do is to guide the viewer’s eye to move through the painting. 

Whatever the device,  spring paintings need an edge of chaos. This small watercolour reflects my panic as I watched Jon and Brian surf a standing wave. Maybe spring's my season.  I scare easy.