Visit to the East Coast Reunion and Return to the Desert

September 2019

The East Coast Re-Introduction

September 2019

Two week pilgrimage just completed yesterday!

From the High Desert of Northeast New Mexico to the old home turf near the Atlantic Coast, the historical quaintness of the US’s beginnings
and a bunch of people I went to school with long ago — people with remarkable accomplishments to their credit. This was a fortnight of high contrast in so many ways.

In the photo, a porch-step full of people from my younger years during the 1950's.No, I was not in the picture at the time. I was taking a nap!!

What a contrast — the recollection of our school years, and the reality of our current 80-something package of rich and fruitful years.

Exhausting as well as mind-boggling, it is!

The water still is salty and remarkably warm to my bare feet as I stand on the sand of Cape May’s beach. How I reveled in those waters during my first couple of decades of life!

Back now, I sit looking out across the high desert landscape in Northeast New Mexico. It’s cool in the shade, but hot in the sun. There’s a full moon tonight.
Last night the sky was perfectly cloudless. This morning there was a general overcast as far as we could see. I could hear a flock of geese making their busy music as they headed southward, but I couldn’t see them. The butterflies are finished fluttering through on their way to Mexico already, and the humming birds are not pestering us for red juice as they did two weeks ago. They seem t be gone!

The sky last night was as black as I have ever seen it, but the the moon and a huge display of stars very brilliant.

Soon I’ll take a trip to see my kids and their own kids. People there will be wishing for early snow in the Cascade Mountain Range, and signing up for ski lessons. About November, the Washingtonians start asking for prayer, some of them — “Pray for snow”, that is.

My youngest grandchild has started “Middle School” this year, and her brother is a Freshman in High School! My eldest grandchild turned 40 this past spring! Their parents are getting ads from AARP! Imagine!

In a conversation yesterday, someone asked me if I was planning to submit my art into the Santa Fe art scene this fall and winter season. “Well………… not sure,” I said, guarding my option to say “no.” I have not yet become truly in love with the desert. After a few more years, I may discover my relationship to Santa Fe. And I have considered myself more or less “retired” from the fuss of entering and showing art.

I suppose I could continue learning the colors that are attractive to buyers in Santa Fe. So much of the decor seems to want square, bold, abstract things in muted colors applied with a broad brush and thick paint.People are clearly already painting (and selling prints of their work) for this look, and why, except for income, would I want to add more decorative abstracts to a market already saturated. Besides, I am vain enough to want to stick to my lifelong habit of putting only Originals out into the market. Not giclees. Not posters.

And I am very aware that I am not a product of the desert yet. I’ve been doing different art since I’ve been here, but not trying for the Georgia O’Keefe look. Like Georgia, the art I’make has to do with things I have become intimate with. But my eye catches on different things than the remarkable Georgia.

So far it is animate elements, like birds, and spiders, and the special sounds of huge expanses of land, and odd shadow shapes. But how do Junipers place themselves in the red clay? How do you love a ravaged arroyo when you have not seen many arroyos active in a deluge of rain out of a black cloud that covers the entire sky? I am not familiar enough with that huge phenomenon to try to put my feelings about it on canvas.

A bowl has evolved over the summer. Timeless hours spent carving a piece of laminated camphor wood. People are remarking about it. I’m not finished yet, but can see the end a short way off. Some strong waxing over the colors and time to cure.

But, then, Grandma Moses began at 80, and she’s a household word!
I think I’ll take another nap.

SGHolland ©2019