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One Foul Fowl

29/8/2016

Do you know if there’s a Ripley’s category for "Attack by a Grouse"?

We had assumed that our relationship with Mouse the House Grouse was food-based (though dependent on an absentee-dog factor). Not a problem. He takes the food from our hands and sadly, we don't have a dog at the moment. Naively, we assumed he was like most other wild things.

Not so much. Grouse etiquette is byzantine at best.

Mouse, it turns out, is a boy. And boys, especially grouse boys, are insanely territorial. And I choose that adverb carefully.

At first, we thought he was merely being friendly and hungry because, if we are sitting on the deck, he inevitably shows up for hors d’oeuvres. Muttering his soft burble which sounds like a Selectric in the next room, Mouse scarfs down handful after handful of corn niblets or sunflower seeds. As it happens, I know the approximate volume of a bird’s crop. (Unwittingly I have become the repository of masses of generally useless information. We hand-fed Bijou, our baby macaw for six months and then there was that snowy owl, Honkey, and all those dead chicks - see May 19, 2014.) This esoteric avian knowledge did me no good at all when I could see that his crop was bulging but Mouse, like Oscar, kept going. Sweet reason about the perils of overeating got me nowhere with him. Mouse knows what he wants and what Lola wants, Lola gets.

In fact, when we have remained indoors for too long in one grouse's opinion, he flies at the windows. (Invited in, he didn’t like the kitchen at all.) He greets incoming cars by zooming behind them and chasing them in; exits merit similar attention. I guess that his stalking and stealth heel attacks should have clued us in to the unfortunate truth that we are unwitting interlopers on his lek. Although he has never danced for us, Mouse has both the ruff and the tailfeathers to display his manliness to female grouse (grice?) with low standards.

Unfortunately he was underfoot for too long one day, and the other male on the property picked him up and tucked him under his arm for the next ten minutes. That level of indignity produces one foul fowl.

I wish I had observed that incident when Mouse burbled, whistled and clucked his way towards me, triggering my conditioned response to feed him. He ate. I smiled benignly. He suddenly gave me the stink eye and chomped the back of my hand. Amazing grip for someone who weighs a pound and lacks teeth.

We are still friends but now we know who runs the farm.

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In Praise of Shanks' Pony

18/8/2016

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"Blue Road" (or "Walking Home to Joe's") glaze oil 30 x 30

Years ago, we spent an unforgettable six months, November to April, on Salt Spring Island, B.C. Of course, we did everything backward as usual. We Ontarians headed to the Coast for its mild winter only to find that most islanders had headed to the Baja to avoid that self-same winter. To add insult to injury we brought the snowstorm of the century with us.

True islanders are loath to admit that such an event is even possible. Several weeks after the event, Jon and I were hailed by a couple of men on the shore we were paddling past. Determining we were from Ontario, they assumed we had just arrived and donned the classic cloak of climate superiority which begins with the boast that it doesn’t even snow on SSI. Nice try. Completely snowed in for four days, we had had nothing but pizza ingredients for Christmas dinner; that is not something easily forgotten. Still, because Jon had packed our cross-country skis (and his canoe, his bike, his rods and reels, and all peripheral equipment, a collection which undermined his complaint that my painting kit took up too much room), we did get to ski, if only to buy eggs. So I guess it was worth travelling across Canada with newspaper on my lap because the only place left to put Bijou, our macaw, was on a perch hanging from the passenger visor. She loved the trip, delivering an enthusiastic ‘Hi!” to every car we passed. I should get danger pay.

Undeterred, the men who tried to mislead us about the recent weather hastened to tell us about a regular feature on a Victoria radio station. This gambit involved picking a name at random from the Toronto phone book, dialing the number and asking about the weather that day. They called it “Taunt a Torontonian.” Cold. Very cold. My own dear Uncle David never failed to write us in Winnipeg every January, always managing to mention (ever so casually) that the bloody daffodils were in bloom. This particular winter, thankfully, weather did settle back into its temperate, if overcast, norms and we had many days of hiking every trail we could find. Jon also took the car to go fishing and if I wasn’t painting, I would walk for miles up and down North End Road. There was little traffic and few houses so I could botanize or muse to my heart’s content. Occasionally a black-tailed deer and I would meet for a shy hello, but there was always time to think. This painting was inspired by a brief interlude of sunshine. I was so surprised that I took a picture.

I was reminded of these wonderful solitary walks this week when I finally got into the second of the two books on the subject of hiking which Scott, my brother, had given me. It references Thoreau, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, and Kant, to name a few famous walkers. All four were dedicated to the outdoors, unpopulated spaces and that most precious of commodities, time to think. I particularly liked the chapter on silence:

What is called "silence" in walking is, in the first place, the abolishment of chatter, of that permanent noise that blanks and fogs everything, invading the vast prairies of our consciousness like couch-grass. Chatter deafens: it turns everything into nonsense, intoxicates you, makes you lose your head. It is always there on al sides, overflowing, running everywhere, in all directions.

I wouldn't begin to put myself in the company of those famous thinkers, except to say that most of my paintings and these blogs are begun in my head, gestated to the silent rhythms of walking or meditating; to some extent they write or paint themselves when I eventually get down to work. If there is a moral to this, it is nothing more than an encouragement to take good care of shank's pony. Start early if you can, the goal being not to outlive your feet! Wearing spike heels for thirty years was not a brilliant long-term decision on my part; my feet have eventually and grudgingly forgiven me, but only after I promised them a pampered future filled with orthopaedic shoes and pricey orthotics.

It would have been a heck of a lot cheaper to get it right from the beginning.

I am a woman and I could change. Because I had to. I guess.

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Advice and Where to Put It

12/8/2016

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A lovely surprise awaited me in last night’s email from Walkerton. I knew the jurors had awarded “Fly-fishing in the Gorge” second prize, so I was already pleased as punch. But the second email referred to the second painting — “The Cradle Endlessly Rocking” #2. Apparently it had been voted “People’s Choice” by those who visited the show during its three-week run. So thanks, Grey-Bruce!!

It is deeply gratifying to receive a popular choice award. An artist thinks of it this way: a group of total strangers (I know of only one friend who was able to attend this particular show) liked your work. Why does that matter so much? Well, think of your spouse and the general reception (or lack thereof) that your outstanding advice receives. Then suddenly s/he takes the advice to heart. And why? Because it has now been delivered by a neutral source. Case in point: Jon paid absolutely no attention to me for years when I encouraged him to drink his coffee with little or no sugar. One comment from Alice, our doctor, and he went cold turkey that day. Maybe women just need to organize better - speed up the process by assigning our priceless advice to a friend in a reciprocal arrangement. I could tell Harry that wearing sunscreen is a smart thing to do; in return for my favour, Harry’s wife, Sue, would tell Jon what a good idea it is to leave your keys in the same place. OR we could all hire Alice, I guess, although her day job might preclude it.

The point being, however unfair it is, advice or praise from a neutral party motivates us. In fact, the more distanced the source, the greater the weight it carries. No-one is suspected of being just kind or pulling a punch. (In that regard, I never need worry about Jon. He’s honest to a fault. For example, let’s take the title “The Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” an allusion to Walt Whitman. Jon has been known to volunteer his opinion that it is “the stupidest title anyone ever gave a painting.” Don’t hold back, Honey. Give it to me straight!)

Okay, I will admit that the title is a bit of a stretch but the phrase kept repeating in my head as I painted the two 30 x 40’s in the series. A river frequently symbolizes the life force in literature and in art and this painting was surely all about the river. There is almost no sky, and only enough vegetation to direct the eye downward. We were paddling down this blue avenue, floating across the sky, as the current drew us into the future. We felt safely contained - cradled - within the eternal procession of life.

That said, I am open to retitling the series with a more accessible title. Buttercup is prepared to suck it up, but if you have an idea for the title, please tell me directly. I would feel compelled to ignore it if you funnelled it through Jon.

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Back at You, Ernest Thompson Seton!

10/8/2016

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"Mouse," our House Grouse

Like many a gardener, I have been "planting with wildlife in mind." I took that phrase to mean butterflies like our resident tiger swallowtail (Her name is Joan but we call her Esmeralda for short) and the odd chipmunk.

Yup, Oscar's still odd. He has his underground stereo so tuned to sound of car tires on the pea gravel that when I am unloading groceries I often look down to find him standing on my foot, none too patiently either. We have established a protocol of sorts: I plunk myself into our designated tryst chair and offer gazillions of black sunflower seeds. During his refined sixty-second round trip, I imagine him spewing out plumes of booty. Sometimes Oscar stays away for several days, usually when it is extremely hot. It must be cooler underground and he might be occupied in creating more storage space for his treasure or possibly just counting it. Golum had to make do with one "precious"; Oscar has thousands. At one point he found a bunch in the breast pocket of my blouse and instantly dove after them. A girl finds that scary, so I have become careful not to store extras there. Despite denying Oscar that final intimacy, I am his and he knows it.

Do you remember Junior? Until today I had only glimpsed his head poking out of the nest hole (see May 19 and June 17). You will remember that I was both worried and curious about his adolescence. Mystery solved. This morning there was a mighty hammering at our front door. I sneaked out the back door because I had an inkling and there he was, throwing himself into retrieving grubs from an aluminum door. His parents must be so embarrassed. At least he clearly looks like the kid he is — there is no red topknot yet. Maybe he has to memorize sections from the Torah or complete a walkabout to earn it. Just be grateful woodpeckers don’t drive.

By contrast, the rabbit on the driveway this morning seemed preternaturally calm even though we had never met. She watched me watch Junior and then she calmly hopped into the shade, calling out “Thumper!” occasionally. I like rabbits, as I do red squirrels if they are not trying to move into our house. One tried all four corners of our roof one year and kept Jon busy installing wire barriers; at one point the two of them had a standoff. It is strangely entertaining to watch your husband and a red squirrel yell at one another. My money was on the squirrel.

The wierdest member of the garden gang is Mouse the House Grouse. She has been hanging around for months but has undergone some psychic transition lately which has rendered her downright chummy. Jon laughed when I said I planned to make friends but yet again cynicism was defeated by crazy optimism. I begin with the premise that everybody has to eat and the way to most hearts is through the stomach. Mouse was gobbling large green leaves - dandelion in particular - so I just offered her some choice ones. Granted, there is a bit more to this befriending business. Prey animals are exquisitely sensitive to body language; they perceive predators to be non-threatening when they are sated and sleepy. Don’t try this in public, but scratching and yawning work wonders when you are trying to get to know someone who wouldn’t ordinarily think of you as friend-material. And sincere praise never goes astray. So, while stretching and giving myself a good scratch, I always wax eloquent about the subject’s beauty. Not hard to do with Mouse: her cryptic plumage is truly gorgeous (the vanity of deer, on the other hand, demands adulation of their ears and eyes). She ate my leaf offerings and her stare softened. After fifteen minutes, she followed me up the stairs to the deck, and guess who now appears near the driver’s door when we drive in or flies behind us when we drive out. Mouse may not be entirely compos mentis but she has an irresistible, if somewhat dim, charm all her own.

And I still have five whole months to figure out how to get us all together for the annual Christmas picture.

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Steam Heat and Plastic Paint

10/8/2016

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"Yellow" acrylic 8 x 10

All I can think about is the heat. Every year about this time, a run of scorchers sets me to wondering why southern Ontario was even settled. I certainly cannot imagine a woman saying "Look, sweetheart -- let's settle here and we will never need to build a sauna!" I once had the opportunity to re-educate a young man who was waxing eloquent about the searing temperatures. It seems he didn’t realize that anyone might feel differently and it fell to me to enlighten him. I gently explained that at a certain age, a woman’s thermostat breaks and never really functions properly again; I went on to stress that homicidal tendencies ensue. There was a long pause while he digested this and then he said, “That so explains my mother.”

I had such plans for today — an appointment, lunch with an old friend, some casual shopping for food, and finally painting! Then I walked out into the wall of heat and started to unravel like Macbeth’s sleep patterns. For heaven’s sake — he murdered the king; all I did walk to the car. By the time I got home all possibie creativity had melted and run.

So let’s talk about the relationship between painting and climate. It is well accepted that the Mistral or Witches’ Wind contributed to the accelleration of van Gogh’s mental illness to the point where his cutting off an ear must have felt inevitable. Madness aside, simple physical factors such as temperature and humidity have powerful effects on the painting process. Because my oil paintings are comprised of multiple transparent layers, I depend on low humidity as a prerequisite to proceeding in any kind of timely manner. Each layer has to be bone dry before the next can be applied. My tentative finger test today proved that nothing has dried since yesterday. The surface remains syrupy and there is no point in continuing for the immediate future. Oil painting promotes patience, whether you want it or not.

This should be motivation to dig out my acrylics. Unfortunately, they dry too fast. (I am beginning to sound like Goldilocks, small girl of with high porridge standards.) The few acrylic paintings that I have been remotely satisfied with began and ended in days of pouring rain. Because the humidity level must have been close to 100%, I could work the pigments for long enough to coax them into submission.

There. It's both hot and humid, and I have just talked myself into giving my acrylics another crack. If life gives you lemons, paint one.

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Washday on The Avalon

5/8/2016

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"Washday on The Avalon" glaze oil 10 x 30

I’ve been meaning to paint this scene for a years. The sight of laundry on a line has always seemed to me a cheery subject,. This is, of course, pure sentimentality as I have rarely had either the opportunity or the necessity to dry our clothes outside. But let me tell you about my mother and her own mother.

My grandmother would have begun her married life as a soon-to-be prodigious washer of clothes with a large copper boiler like the one I use decoratively in the garden. Water would first have had to be hauled by the boys from the pump and then heated on top of of the wood stove with lye soap. Once added to the boiling water, the clothes would have been stirred with a stick and sometimes scrubbed against a washboard, before being rinsed with clean water - cue more hauling and more heating. The toughest work, though, must have been the hand-wringing and I am sure that the advent of wringer washers would have been a blessing; I hope that she had one in her last years.

My mother’s clothes-washing days would have begun with just such a washer in our basement on Kingsway. I can vaguely remember the machine, probably because the sight of it was always accompanied by dire warnings to keep my fingers and hair away from the rollers. I loved to feed clothes into it even though I was properly terrified of finding a large flat hand coming through on the other side. Mom hovered a lot. For that and many other reasons it was a happy day for her when she got her first (and only) automatic washer - an Eaton's Viking. It was still working when she moved into a seniors’ home fifty years later. The concept of “planned obsolescence” hadn’t been invented yet.

An automatic dryer accompanied Mom’s new washer even though the backyard boasted a modern new square clothes line set-up which obediently whirled when I twisted it. Frankly, I preferred the old-fashioned long line which could be hauled in and out but I suspect my mother was still getting over the early days of hanging diapers on the line in 50 below weather and needed no reminders of that time in her life. She said that the wash, which had solidified, stiffened and sublimated in the cold, was a challenge to fold. She may have mentioned raw red hands too but I'm suspect I wasn't half as sympathetic as I should have been. If memory serves, the dryer got constant use in cold weather; when it came to laundry, Mom was no martyr.

Even so, she still hung the clothes outside in the summer. Do you remember the wonderful smell of line-dried clean clothing? I still love it, but a Southern Ontario summer quickly put paid to that little pleasure. I grew up in dry prairie air which dried everything quickly and efficiently. Imagine my surprise the first time I went to bring in the clothes here and found them limp instead of crisp almost a day later. It baffled me, who had no concept of humidity beyond its scientific description. Using a curling iron on my straight hair in this wet air had much the same result. I finally gave in, bowing to the necessity of ponytail clips and a clothes dryer.

So I hope you will forgive the hypocrisy of my painting a clothesline blowing smartly in the wind. Put it down to genetic memory (which is receiving a lot of press this year). Someone else might channel vestiges of ancestral abilities. I get laundry.

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One Foul Fowl

In Praise of ﻿Shanks' Pony

Advice and Where to Put It

Back at You, Ernest Thompson Seton!﻿

Steam Heat and Plastic Paint

Washday on The Avalon

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In Praise of Shanks' Pony

Back at You, Ernest Thompson Seton!