One of the pleasures of painting is creating something special for loved ones. Both of my grandchildren have a special affection for foxes. This one is for my grandson, which also includes a mink because he mentioned how cute they are, having seen a report on how hundreds had escaped (or been recued) from a mink farm.
These paintings for loved ones don’t always come out as well as I hoped. A landscape of a California vineyard for my brother and sister-in-law did not please me. I mailed it anyway, since it was a Christmas present and “okay,” although not as good as I’d wanted. To make up for that, along with it I mailed them another California rural scene I liked better.
I just hope my grandson doesn’t outgrow this painting too soon. He’s a sweeet kid and loves animals but he just turned 15. I’m hoping he sees the humor in the two critters eyeballing each other. A bit of tension there. The mink is safe enough though. Maybe I could have toned down the flowers? But who’s to say young male teens can’t appreciate flowers as much as the rest of us?
My granddaughter will outgrow the paintings I made for her soon enough too. I like thinking these will be passed along to my great-grandchildren someday. Or some grandma in a thrift shop or at a garage sale will pick them up for a couple of bucks to pass along to their own grands.
It’s been awhile. I traded in my pen for my paintbrush these last few weeks. The new novel I’ve been writing is off with beta readers who will give me the feedback I need to continue revising. In the meantime, I’ve been wanting a seascape to go in a special place in our home to complement the model of the USS Constitution that my husband spent three years creating.
I saw an online paint-along of a seascape from a photo reference I liked, and decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, the paint-along format didn’t work for me. I’ve never been someone to draw within the lines. I wasn’t happy with the outcome and turned off the video and, using the photo reference, worked on my own, adding and deleting elements as I went along. It went through several transformations before my husband and I decided it would suffice.
It’s signed and framed and ready to hang. At first I thought this frame was too busy for the painting, but when I tried it with other, plainer, frames, it didn’t look as nice. Besides, I love the frame. The antique look blends well with Old Ironsides.
Seascape in acrylic by Deborah J. Brasket
I haven’t worked a lot in acrylic. Although I’m starting to get the hang of it. Most of what I’ve been doing has been in water color and pastels, or a combination of the two. I just finished another acrylic that I’m pleased with—a birthday present for my grandson. I’ll share that here soon too.
In the meantime, I’m wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving Day with friends and loved ones.
It’s not surprising I’m drawn to these so-called landscapes by Shara Hughes. They remind me of Matthew Wong’s mysterious mindscapes and Odilon Redon’s poetic paintings, whose work I’ve shared on these pages as well. The real and surreal, the interior and exterior, the symbolic and psychological wrap around and feed each other. You enter places that feel real and dreamlike at the same time. Beautiful and disturbing, fluid and chaotic, lush and luminous.
Her current show “Time Lapsed” at the Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland includes this statement about her work: “These fantasy landscapes satisfy our need for beauty on the one hand, but also arouse a slight uneasiness on the other. The nature depicted seems irrepressible and at times even threatening in its exuberant fullness. Shara Hughes’s landscapes are mood pictures that convey feelings, emotions, or memories.”
Perhaps that’s why they feel familiar, like some otherworldly place I’ve been before—evoking dreams, memories, emotions that wait just below the surface and lure me inward.
“Glow in the Dark” by Shara Hughes“Just Another Pretty Face” by Shara Hughes“The Delicate Gloom” by Shara Hughes“My Violet Lullabye” by Shara Hughes“My Natural Nycintimasty” by Shara Hughes
She sauntered into our yard about a month ago, this young orange tabby with a white bib. Her gaze passed over me as if she did not see me at all, as if I was part of the patio furniture where I was sitting. When our eyes finally did meet, I still saw no recognition that I was a human or animate or alive or anything at all. It was eerie—being so unseen, unrecognized—her complete disinterest in me. Even the deer and wild turkeys I meet see me, and seem wary and apprehensive when they do. They recognize me as something apart from my surroundings, something to pay attention to, keep an eye on. But not this kitty.
Until she mistook me for food. I’d dropped a couple pieces of lunchmeat on the patio for her, which she gobbled up. But when I held my hand out to her after that, which must have still smelled of meat, she slowly moved toward the smell. She sniffed at my fingers, and then took a bite. Not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough for me to draw back and for her to skitter away.
Later as I was sitting there reading, and apparently wriggling my bare toes, she approached again, stealthily. She saw my toes as prey—not connected to something larger. Then she pounced and bit, harder this time. I cried out. She dashed off again.
Since then I’ve been putting food out when I see her in the yard. She now seems to “see” me as a food source, rather than as food. She won’t eat until I’ve put the food down and move away. If I stay in the yard, she keeps an anxious eye on me, and if I try to approach she darts off. Sometimes she’ll even stand by the door where I go to bring out food, as if waiting for her food source to fulfill its mission.
But she’s still a wild thing, with wild behavior.
We’ve watched her run full tilt at trees and dash up and down the trunks as fast as she can. One tree after another as she makes her way up the hill. For no apparent purpose but for the pure pleasure it brings, it seems. Once when my husband was pruning our plum tree, she dashed up its trunk and then wriggled like a worm through its tight branches.
At wild cat at play in a wild world.
I’ve watched her stalking birds at our birdbath. At first she tried to get them while standing beneath the bath and reaching up. Now she’s learned to take a running leap at them, flying up over the birdbath stretched out like superman, her back legs trailing in the water while her front feet try to grab the bird. She’s yet to catch any while I’ve watched. But we’ve seen her more than once climb up the hill toward the tall grass with a large furry creature in her mouth.
Now that she recognizes us a food source, she hangs out here more often, sometimes grabbing a drink from the pool or the water-can we keep full for her. Sometimes she drinks from the birdbath. She’s found a favorite padded patio chair with a pillow where she likes to snooze. Although a narrow wall will do just as well.
Sometimes we don’t see her for days.
When we do, I don’t try to tame her. I want her to stay wild and independent. But I also want her to see our home as a safe haven from the predators who see her as food—the coyotes and foxes and mountain lions that live beyond our fence. She’s small enough to squeeze through. They aren’t. And I want to augment her diet during the lean times to keep her healthy but not dependent upon us for her meals.
She reminds me—even more than the deer and coyotes and other wild things that live nearby do—that there’s an entirely different way of being in the world and perceiving it that’s unlike anything we humans could ever experience. Insects, birds, bats, orcas and others species each inhabit separate and distinct slivers of reality known only to them. There’s a word for that—umwelt.
We tend to anthropomorphize the animal kingdom, especially our pets, remaking them in our own minds in our own images. But what they are and the world as they experience it is so extraordinary and other-worldly as to make our own pale in comparison. More on this and the umwelt next time.
What is it about the fragile, fleeting, and flagrant beauty of flowers that can so break a heart?
I wrote about this once in a photo-essay called Riffing on Roses. And then just this week I found this new-to-me poem by Mary Oliver, Peonies, which broke my heart again.
The poem speaks to the flagrant beauty of flowers that gives itself away, all that it is, so freely and readily to all that comes its way: the ants, the breeze, the sun’s soft buttery fingers, the poet’s breaking heart.
“Beauty the brave, the exemplary,” indeed.
I wish we all could live so bravely, so carelessly, giving all that we are to all there is. I wish we all, like those ants, craving such sweetness and finding it, would bore deep within that sap. We must cherish and adore all we are, all we have, all that is, while it’s still here to have.
Peonies
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open — pools of lace, white and pink — and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes into the curls, craving the sweet sap, taking it away
to their dark, underground cities — and all day under the shifty wind, as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies, and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly, and there it is again — beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?
Mary Oliver, New And Selected Poems. (Beacon Press; Reprint edition November 19, 2013)
I wrote this poem for a novel I’m writing about love and war in Central America. It’s written in the voice and style of a 19th century poet about the ceaseless, ongoing struggles that have ravaged his land since before the Conquistadors. As they have been going on Ukraine since the Vikings plundered tribal villages, before the Mongols came and slaughtered all of them, before Hitler, before Putin.
This poem speaks to the ceaseless cycles of peace and plunder that haunt our histories and our hearts, but also to the spirit of the people who weather such storms. Although it will no doubt undergo further revisions before the novel is ready to hand over to my agent, I wanted to share it with you now, in honor of the brave spirit of the Ukrainian people who are weathering this storm today.
This Sea Within, Without
This sea that lies within, without, all things, All bodies, minds, and soaring hearts and grasping hands, Past, present, and evermore. This ceaseless stirring, this Siren’s call, these froward thoughts And listless rhythms that know no end. This urgent quest.
This sea that it throws itself upon our shores With grand bluster, heaving boulders and breaking cliffs, Leaving in its wake a disaster of debris, The detritus of society and small broken things, A child’s bracelet, an empty bottle, shattered shells and battered lives, Fallen faces like Flies rummaging through abandoned seaweed.
This sea within, without, unbroken in its vastness, Spreads out like a calm comforting blanket of blue, its lacy Traces whispering secrets in our ears, Seducing us with sleepless dreams as it Reaches across the sand to wash our feet and sings its pleasure in the sun, Its tender kisses everywhere, Its mesmerizing music everywhere, Calling children, and lovers young and old, to its shores, To romp among its waves like playful porpoises, Safe as sand.
And so it lures and soothes and laments, Before it lashes out, breaking Whole continents apart Leaving all in ruin.
This Sea within, without, Pouring across the centuries in Endless rhythmic cycles of peace and plunder, Plunder and peace, Ever restless, relentless.
This sea within, without Each heart, each nation, each age and eon. We and sea and all that lies between, Taking our pleasure where we may in warm, balmy breezes, Finding our strength in broad strokes as we surf and swim, Taking our lives into our hands as we resist Its uprising roar As it crashes down and drowns our dreams.
O drowning heart, O vale of tears O lovers lost, O sons and daughters, O detritus of raging storms, Be not dismayed. As ceaseless as the turmoil is, so is the spirit that rides upon it And survives to rise again.
Savor the sun’s sweet kisses and the balmy breezes, Hold them close, don’t let go. Even when the broad drowning seas rise up and crash down, Do not despair. Tis the way of weather, And of weathered hearts, and leathered minds, And grasping hands, and the sons of man.
So we lay our hearts and histories Upon such shores as storms do rage And retreating bare all to see Such luster still in the strong arms and stalwart hearts Of souls long lost.
Where all that’s left of mighty ships’ splintered rails And torn sails sink below and wait to rise Once more. Once more.
By Deborah J. Brasket, 2022, from the novel This Sea Within
The poem is read by the protagonist of my novel on a plane heading toward a war-torn country in Central America in 1973. On the plane she’s been reading the history of Latin America starting with the conquistadors and the destruction of two major civilizations that had persisted for 3500 years until the Cortez arrived. The history continues with ongoing struggles of so many countries in Central America to become independent nations, and then to break the hold of one brutal dictator after another, each propped up by the United States after the Monroe Doctrine went into effect. The constant civil wars and guerrilla warfare in the region, and her own country’s involvement in that is disheartening, to say the least, to the young, idealistic woman.
But then she reads the poem of one of the most cherished poets from that region which speaks to this very condition of constant strife, and surprisingly, it heartens her.
I don’t know if it will hearten you as well, but I thought I’d offer it here in that spirit.
We’ve been blessed with more than usual rainfall on the central coast of California recently. I love the way the gray skies and damp, rain-soaked surfaces around our home make the colors seem more rich and vibrant. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. Wet cement and a shovel can look like abstract art. While fallen tree branches take on the purple glow of a Fauvist painting. Even a little hummer left behind this winter came out to dazzle me with its red-throated splendor. I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.
This painting is considered by many as Van Gogh’s finest floral, and one of the only two paintings he chose to exhibit publicly. It was painted after breakfast on the first day at the asylum where he went to heal after mutilating his ear.
The garden has always been a place for healing, and the fact that Van Gogh found some healing comfort in painting these lovely things I find incredibly moving. A poster of these irises has been living with me for years, hanging over a hutch in my dining room in my last home. And now it adds its blue and turquoise dazzle to my pool room bath, decorated in blues and turquoise, shells and candles, and other sea inspired paintings.
The sea too, like the garden, has always been a healing place. Spending time there gives us a sense of coming home, connecting us not only to nature at its finest, but also to some deeper sense of calm and beauty that we recognize instrinsically as part of our primal nature. When we are hurting or out of sorts, seeking that connection brings us home to ourselves and we find healing. Music and art share those healing qualities.
That call for us to come “back to the garden” for healing and renewal is found in an old song from the sixties, one of my favorites, that I listened to recently when doing research on a new novel. The song isn’t actually called “back to the garden” as I’d thought. But a google search of those words brought me to it nonetheless. It was written by Joni Mitchell in 1968. The trio Crosby, Stills, and Nash were the first to sing it, and made it famous, but I like the way Joni sings it better. She named it “Woodstock,” but it’s less about that famous festival than the idea behind it. It captures the spirit of the times, that hope of healing the nation, of turning the turmoil of the times—“the bombers riding shotgun in the sky”—-“into butterflies.”
You may remember the song’s intoxicating refrain:
We are stardust We are golden And we’ve got to get ourselves Back to the garden
The garden evokes the Garden of Eden, a time before The Fall. And the reference to stardust, of course, reminds us of our even more primal origin, the fact that the stuff of which we are made is the stuff of stars.
Whether we go to the garden for healing, or the sea, what we are really doing is connecting with some primal part of ourselves that includes the whole universe of being. If only we truly knew and understood what that means, turning bombers into butterflies, or a mutilated ear into irises, would be inevitable.
Like many living in rural areas, my husband and I enjoy watching the show that nature puts on outside our windows every day. We love watching all the critters parading in the meadow behind our home, the gentle deer traipsing by in their high-heeled hooves, the mighty elk lifting their crowns of horn, the black boars scuttling along through the brush with their young, the wild rooster puffed up in all its finery to dazzle his adoring hens, the skinny coyote trotting by on the hunt, and the comical quail with their clutch of fluff-balls scurrying behind.
But every good show needs its villain to heighten the drama, and ours have been the nest of rattle-snakes that took up residence in our back yard. We’ve killed three in the past two weeks. The first two were young, no more than a foot and a half long. One was found lounging by our pool, another slithering into our garage. Then yesterday my husband caught their mother, or rather she got caught in the black netting we’d hung over the tomato plants to keep out the birds. She was at least 3 feet long and not happy in the least.
He threw her carcuss over the back fence into the meadow where that hungry coyote who makes its daily round might find it.
What surprised us though was how the quail reacted to its demise.
At first they cautiously approached it and then hurriedly backed away. Then slowly they approached again, at least a dozen, surrounding it completely.
It reminded us of that scene from The Wizard of Oz when the Munchkins timidly came out of hiding to gather around the withered feet of the Wicked Witch of the East when Dorothy’s house landed on her.
We imagined the quail viewing the snake with the same sort of surprised and delighted glee. The snake had been caught only a few feet away from the bushes where our families of quail nested. We had been watching three clutches these past few weeks, 15 babies in one, nine in another, but only one little fluffball following its parents in the third. Who knows how long this snake had been terrorizing their homes and gobbling up their children?
So there they all were, gathering around their nemesis, wondering what merciful god had answered their prayers and slain this mighty villain. With heads bobbing and dancing feet, we could almost hear them singing gleefully:
Ding dong, the witch is dead!
Which old witch? The wicked witch!
The wicked witch is dead.
Then the lights dim. The curtain falls. The audience claps. And our cast of critters quietly leave the stage to resume their daily routines.
Dale and I spent a magical day recently at San Simeon Bay along Highway 1, just below Hearst Castle on the California central coast. Quite unexpectedly, we found two sailboats rolling gently in the bay and three elephant seals lulling in the sun. Something we’ve never seen here before. Although elephant seals are found abundantly in this area, it’s unusual to find them on busy beaches. Signs warned us to beware, as these wild creatures can bite should they be disturbed.
One of the boats looked like La Gitana, the 46-foot sailboat that was our home for six years when we sailed around the world. Nostalgia for that magic time hit heavy. I almost felt like I could see our son at the bow with his fishing line thrown into the bay, our daughter riding the boom as she liked to do, and Dale and I sitting on the aft deck with two big green buckets and a wooden plunger, doing laundry.
Further up the beach was a quaint hut made of driftwood that some surfer had built. Like ones we often saw on remote beaches built by yachties when we were sailing.
Along the way as we hiked up the bluff and out to the point, we stopped to visit the largest eucalyptus trees we’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, with their rainbow bark, elephantine trunks and long octopus arms. Magical!
When we reached the point, we could look back at the bay and get a faraway glimpse of Hearst Castle high in the hills, another magical place. On the other side were beautiful views of the coastline.
The last time we came here we headed back after reaching the point, but this time we turned north to a path lined by pine and eucalyptus trees that parallels the coast.
The path grew narrower and darker and spookier as we walked, the trees thicker and more gnarled, blocking out the sun. Sharp branches reached out to grab and tree roots rose up to trip. On one side we could hear the hidden ocean waves whispering warnings to us, while all around the creepy creaks and groans of trees sent cold shivers down our spines. It seemed to go on forever. We could almost imagine ourselves as Hansel and Gretel lost in the stark, dark woods just before reaching the witches gingerbread house. Our path eventually opened up to a sun-filled view of the coastline stretching out as far as we could see, with the very faint outline of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse in the far misty distance.
On the hike back to the beach we came across a strange trail of dark, oily splats along the path, as if dropped from some huge creature flying by. Dragon shit, we surmised, looking up as if to see the dark shadow of reptile wings wheeling by. A fair and fitting end to our magical day at San Simeon.
Deborah J. Brasket 