It's Christmas Time in the Country!

So much to catch up on, but I'm in the Christmas Spirit, so the art updates will just have to wait! Did a little decorating today - we've chosen to have a tiny "Feather Tree" as our only tree this year, but it has some of our favorite German ornaments that I've been collecting since 1965. The tree is not quite 26" tall, but she can hold a wealth of memories on her spindly branches. Of course, it's not really made of feathers, but the branches have feathery greens so I guess that's why they named them feather trees. They, too, originated in Germany in the late 19th century (according to Wikipedia).

The little fellow above is similar to the very first ornaments I purchased on a trip to Europe following my college graduation. We always called them the "blah blah boys" because they stick out their tongues when you push the button on the cap. I believe in Germany they were called the Naughty Boys, which seems fitting, as well! I tried finding them on-line to replenish our supply a year or two ago, but no such luck. But we still have a few in good condition, as seen above. Our son and daughter each have at least one or two on their trees, as well. The paint may be missing from them here and there, but the naughty boy can still stick out his tongue on all of them!

Nearly all the German ornaments are made of wood, often with felt, sometimes with curled wood shavings, usually painted. I love them all! I know my father's family never had anything like these ornaments, despite being from the Burgenland region of Austria/Germany/Hungary (depending upon which year we're discussing). But I've always been drawn to German wood carvings, sculptures, and, of course, ornaments!

Above and below, the little wrapped presents under the tree are made from scraps from my quilting fabrics, plus ribbons, threads, bells, yarn, jewelry bits, etc. There are a few ornaments on the tree too, that are made of rolled bits of fabric, tied with yarns & embellished.

Above, the ornaments from our Maine vacations over the years - happy memories of Green Lake and Acadia Park.

Christmas is the time for families, memories, traditions, and so much more. I hope you are creating and maintaining those traditions for your loved ones that have meaning and joy.

Pensive Thoughts on Being...

Some days, my desire to immerse myself in creating a new painting is overwhelming. I ride the wave of emotional connection into the realm of meditative space - that place outside time and space wherein dwells creativity and the Creator. Those days pass swiftly, contemplatively, smoothly - no matter if the painting is going well or not! Other days, the very thought of attempting to create something on canvas or paper seems totally out of sync with who I am. Today, the mind is full of thoughts and words, spilling out like water out of an overfilled planter...

Art is an extension of the self and how one sees reality around them. Every one of us sees life through an individual set of circumstances and experiences setting personal perspectives in a way that is comforting, mysterious, and ultimately frightening.

My personal love of nature comes from a lifetime full of experiences in and with nature that have planted themselves deeply in my body/mind/heart/soul/spirit. Back in early childhood, I learned that being outside was a balm to the turmoil within me. I loved the grass, the flowers, the dirt, the sand, the stones, sticks, leaves - well, everything out of doors. As I grew up, I walked further from our own yard seeking peace amid the beauty of nature. Once I had a bicycle, I rode even further out of the neighborhood seeking solace in wooded empty lots that dotted the city blocks of my hometown.

As an adult, we've always tried to select a home that bordered nature one way or another. Outside student housing, there was an empty oasis awaiting the next building boom on campus. Our first home, in Terre Haute, Indian, backed to a multi-blocked field that our kids loved to roam. Gazing out the kitchen window as the sun set behind the field was always calming as I prepared dinner and the kids played in the back yard. Our next home was on the banks (actually the dike) of the Susquehanna River in upstate Pennsylvania. Oh, how I loved watching the river in all of it's many moods! Flood state was terrifying, to be sure, but it never lasted long, and the might, depth and breadth of the river at flood stage was frighteningly awesome. Water continues to move, no matter what. Just as life goes on, no matter what...

The view of the Susquehanna River when we lived in Athens, Pennsylvania...

When we were transferred to New Jersey, we had no idea it would be so hard to find a place with natural surroundings nearby. We hunted for months - telling the realtor we wanted large shade trees in our yard and nature nearby. She looked at us dumbfounded. Most folks she dealt with were afraid of nature, coming from the Bronx or Queens or wherever. We wanted what she called "mature trees" - everyone else seemed to want tidy new subdivisions with infant trees and 27 back yard grills seen from their bedroom windows! I cried after counting all those grills and quickly leaving that new house I couldn't possibly live in.

Our backyard in Freehold, NJ

The realtor then only showed us homes that had "green acres" nearby. And we found one (we really couldn't afford) that we liked, although it was huge, and we settled on that house making it our home. The yard backed to a small park, Lake Topanemus Park, and we loved walking through the young woods with the kids and grandkids. We saw deer regularly, and all manner of small wildlife. We watched baby turtles hatching out of a sandy hillside to make their way down to the lake. We listened to the owls, hawks, geese, ducks, and all varieties of woodland birds singing their mating, territorial, and night songs. While the house may have been too big and too costly, the surroundings were idyllic and saved my sanity for the duration!

Our next home was a town home at the edge of a development that backed the Monmouth Battlefield State Park. I loved sitting out on the back deck listening to the bird songs. One afternoon I counted over two dozen different song birds singing their spring songs as I relaxed happily immersed in nature. Peepers out back were quite vociferous during the springtime nights, of course. And we'd routinely hear some larger animal devouring a smaller one in the dead of night. Feral cats hid beneath the neighbors deck and had their kittens - all black and white little ones, looking just like Mom and Dad. The raccoon visited only in winter months, taking our bird feeders down with their usual dexterity. An occasional opossum would wander up on the deck at night, again searching for bird seeds. All of them were part of living at the edge of a wildlife area - we were the interlopers in their worlds, not the other way around.

Out back of our town home in Manalapan, NJ

The deck at the back of our town home in Manalapan, NJ

Fresh air rejuvenates me. Warm sunshine fills my heart with peace. Water currents remind me of both eternity and the immediate present. Leaves budding, changing colors, falling all remind me of the ever changing reality within which we all live. Birds sing their melodies into my being and embed themselves in my psyche with notes of joyful serenity. Their flight reminds me that I, too, am free to fly when I release my fears...

My dog reminds me that love is essential for all beings - Spunky demands my attention, my expressions of love, my company. And petting her grounds me in life - soft, wiggly, demanding, comforting. The fox that swiftly disappears into the woods calls me to adventure beyond what is seen into the unknown with dashing bravado and internal knowledge. Gazing into the eyes of the farm animals calls me deep into the awareness that all life is connected.

Sitting on the dew dampened soil as the sun warms the earth is one of the most grounding experiences I can have. Merging with Mother Earth while maintaining my own separateness is an exercise in being. Watering my houseplants seems trivial on busy days, yet when I am fully present to who I am and to what I am doing, it is an act of comfort and joy.

My conversations and experiences with the plants, animals, water or air can often catch me suddenly aware of the "more." Not that I know what that is or that I can define it. But conversing with and in nature is one of the deepest conversations I have experienced. Being aware of all that surrounds us somehow makes us more aware of just who we are in this great universe. It's not much, that little bit of who-ness, yet for us, it is everything.

When painting plants, animals, birds, scenery or anything else of Mother Nature, I feel more connected to that which I am painting. I've learned that it's really very difficult to paint things that we really do not "know." Oh, I could probably paint a zebra but I have no personal experiences with zebras. I know that my painting would lack something essential because I'd have to work from a photograph of an animal with whom I am unfamiliar. The better the photograph is in capturing the essence of the animal, the better able I might be to capture some of the essence of the zebra. But I would always know that I really never knew that zebra and could only do the best I could given the photograph supplied...

Thus it is that I prefer painting what I know - the birds that I love, the wildlife that attracts me, the creatures that I have watched avidly for years and photographed for as long as I've had a camera.

Some of my older (sold) watercolors of things I love from the 1980's:

Recently, I painted a rusting old truck - after swearing to myself back in the 1980's that I'd never again draw/paint a car or a truck! I had just completed a pen & ink drawing of an antique truck on top of an auto shop that would be used for their advertising. They were happy with the drawing. I, on the other hand, had hated every step of doing that commission. I'm not a "car" person. Cars are just cars to me. Trucks even less so! So doing that commission was an exercise in self-discipline. The customer was happy. I was unfulfilled...

But the truck I just finished painting is another story completely. That lovely old truck sat on our construction site for two years. We walked our dog down the hill where it rested, not just surrounded by undergrowth, but with a truck bed full of wild grasses. Small animals scampered in and around it, plants surrounded it, seasons enhanced it, the different lighting of dawn, storms, bright sunlight, foggy mists, and peachy dusk all lent that truck an ethereal element that simply grew in me.

The day we heard that old truck engine actually start up, I knew it would be driving out of our lives forever. The poor old thing huffed and puffed with tremendous effort after many efforts to get the engine started at all. Watching the truck as it lumbered out of it's several-year-long parking spot reminded me of trying to get my arthritic bones out of a chair after spending hours reading a good book. The old truck wasn't able to drive very quickly either... It continued to lumber slowly as it gracefully departed our little bit of Paradise Hill, belching and complaining much of the way.

Goodbye, Rusty!

It didn't mind going downhill, but when it had to actually leave the development, it was required to climb a big hill. Poor old truck. You served many so well. I hope your new owner will be able to use you one way or another, even if recycling your various parts is the only thing left. Thanks for teaching me the place for old, rusty trucks in my life.

Farewell... "Rusty Truck" - watercolor - (c)Pat Dolan 2017

Life Changes - Changing Life - Remembering...

Now that I'm 70-something, I find it's easier to look backward rather than forward. Life takes on new meanings and there are new ways of seeing what has been. And it's easy to be grateful for the new perceptions as they bring understanding that was missing when I was younger.



For instance, when I was just 3 years old, my family moved in with my grandparents for an extended stay of 7 years. I'm sure my parents never wanted or planned to stay that long, but that's the way things worked out. As for my grandparents, they were in their mid-60's when we arrived and in their 70's when we moved two blocks west of their home. I have an sister five years older than I, and while we were living with our grandparents, my younger sister was born when I was 5 and my older sister was 10. It was another 5 years before the family moved to our own home.

My grandparents had a lovely home, built in 1929 - white stucco with deep red trim. There were two bedrooms on the main floor along with the kitchen, living and dining rooms. There were two large rooms on the 2nd floor. One was a large bedroom with a huge walk-in closet - rare in the 1940's. There was a clothes chute that we used for sending laundry to the basement. And the basement was huge - at least to my child-self. Pop Pop had a workroom that he used as a dark room for his photography. There was a large laundry room, where the laundry fell from the clothes chute into a tall, wheeled, wooded lattice cart. That laundry cart occasionally became a jail cell for one of the younger ones - if the older ones could talk us into getting into the cart. The bribe was generally a "ride" in the cart - and that bribe worked remarkably often! On laundry day, the laundry was removed via the cart door, sorted, and washed with a ringer-washer, then hung in the cellar to dry, unless it was warm enough. Then the laundry was carried out back and hung on the clothes lines outside. And those clothes always always smelled SO clean and SO good. I still love to hang my sheets outside in decent weather. Funny how my spouse doesn't especially care for the smell of laundry hung outdoors...

There was more to the basement - a fruit cellar, a small toilet room (the 2nd in the house - also rare in the 1940's). And there was one large room that we used as a play room. It had a full sized ping pong table at one end, Gam's ancient pedal Singer sewing machine, tables, chairs, and a book case. On the walls hung maps from the Minnesota Highway Department, where my grandfather worked after his first retirement. Pop and I used to play "Find It" with the maps - of course, he knew the state very well, but he pretended not to know where every Minnesota lake, city, town, river, and more were located. And I learned where many of the cities, towns, rivers, lakes and more were located. I learned how to read maps, something I have loved doing ever since - whether or not I need to figure out how to get somewhere shown on the map. Maps are works of art, things of beauty, as well as useful tools, in my opinion.

Enough remembering for now... in fact, I wrote this in September, and now it's January 2014!