Art and Animal Communication

Oh, my goodness! It’s been such a long time since I last posted that I decided to share with you what I’ve been up to even though I haven’t done much in the way of art.

It is color season now here in northwest lower Michigan, and I did begin a plein air painting of the lake out on the deck last week but didn’t get very far. It had been so long since I set up the french easel that I forgot how it worked and had to fool around with it for a while to get the legs extended and set up. Then I moved the easel about ten times before I found a good spot from which to paint. Next I had to set up all the other paraphernalia like the palette and paints and jar of medium, and by that time it was getting too late in the day and time to fix dinner. So, I packed it all up and brought it inside. I did, however, get one layer of paint on the board.

Since then it’s been one thing after another and I’ll probably have to finish the painting from photographs I’ve taken over the past few days when the conditions and the light were right. If I can get to it quick enough, I’ll have the benefit of being able to observe the colors and so forth from the studio window as I work.

Since my last post, I also met with my local mentor again, and he gave me some very good advice about how to handle this blocked state I seem to be in and gave me a different assignment. He suggested that I put horses aside for the time being and do some plein air painting. However, I found that going outside my comfort zone was not going to work to get me started again. So, I’ll stick with horses and just do whatever strikes my fancy.

Since my other (horse art) mentor seems to have gone MIA and is no longer responding to my emails, I’ll be on my own for now. My hope is that once I’m painting regularly again, I can get back to working with the mentors - or mentor  - again.

Another project that I undertook was doing some much needed reorganizing in the studio precipitated by buying a bunch of cheap canvas boards and then needing a place to store them. The oil and acrylic painting supplies are now moved and consolidated together as are the pastel supplies. The cameras and their accessories are also now consolidated, and I managed to make room for them to be stored together in one place. I went through all the drawers of my big desk, got rid of some things and moved others around so that everything is in better order and more convenient.

Meanwhile, back at the barn as they say, there have been complications and continued issues with Scottie's soundness. To make a long story short, I am now saddle shopping again (Oh Joy!) but may have found one that fits Scottie and that is comfortable for me. The vet has been out a couple of times, and Scottie had an acupuncture treatment the last time. It really seems to have relieved his sore back which is reason for great celebration by both of us.

I’ve been so concerned about him and his depressed attitude that I also consulted with an animal communicator who was able to reach Scottie and ask him my long list of questions. It was very enlightening, and he told us that he’s having problems in his hock or stifle, so the vet is coming out again to explore that possible source of his continued lameness problems.

I’m really fascinated by this animal communication thing and would love to learn to communicate on my own.
 Apparently, it’s now widely accepted, and my own experience with it has made me into a believer.

Last weekend my husband John and I went for a drive and stopped at this longhorn cattle farm where some cows were eating breakfast right up by the fence. I’m sharing a couple of them with you here. I’m amazed by the varieties of colors and coat patterns on these longhorns and how they skillfully maneuver their horns so that they don’t poke each other.

The rest are photos of the view from our deck taken just this morning. The leaves are falling fast now, and it won’t be long before the trees are bare and snow is in the air.

Oh, dear! Did I just say that four letter word beginning with “S”?

Rainy Day Splendor

Fall is always a very busy time, and this year has been no exception. However, I did work on this little oil painting study again, and it’s pretty much finished. I’m calling it “Rainy Day Splendor”. By the time I got back to it, more leaves had fallen and the colors had changed, so I had to go partly by memory. But, it was still overcast and rainy, so the light was pretty much the same. And now, all the leaves are down and there’s nothing to be seen except bare branches.

We’ve had beautiful sunny and unusually warm weather for the past week, so I’ve been busy washing windows and other such things and dealing with a health issue which really threw me for a loop for a couple of weeks. But, the situation has turned around, and I’m back to being much more productive and much more relaxed.

Last night I finished revising the line drawing for “Easy Rider” and traced the new set of legs on the drawing. I plan to get back to work on it in the next few days and will post my progress as I go.

That’s all for now.

New Oil Painting Autumn Brilliance

Yes, it’s true. I worked on a painting this week; a “studio aire” painting to be exact.

It’s been raining and/or cloudy all week long, and fall colors are pretty much at their peak around here. Even on a cloudy, rainy day, the leaves are still brilliant enough to inspire one to paint them. I wanted to convey that in this little 8x10 inch oil on canvas board which depicts the scene outside my studio window. Hence, it was painted en studio aire.

Any season of the year, I never tire of this scene overlooking the lake and the far shore. It constantly changes, and on this day the rain varied from gently falling to coming down in sheets of gray. At times the lake was still with the brilliant trees reflected in the dark water, and then the wind would come up and kiss the water which partially hid the yellows, oranges and reds of the trees.

The image above represents about two and a half hours of work; a small accomplishment in itself for someone who is not used to painting alla prima or painting quickly. After mixing and laying on a first layer of gray, I next drew the composition and laid on an initial layer of local colors, intending that they would blend somewhat with the gray which would tone them down a little. After that, I painted the water and began detailing the trees and shore starting on the left, toning down the colors even more. I only got as far as the middle before time ran out, and haven’t had a chance to get back to finish it yet.

Admittedly, it looks pretty crude and amateurish right now. The shoreline goes uphill, and the rippled area doesn’t look natural. Maybe another painting session will improve it, but if not, that’s okay too. The important thing is that I painted. And, it’s been a while since I did that.

"GOOD Happens"

On the way home from Traverse City yesterday, I saw this bumper sticker on a car ahead of me. It read, “GOOD Happens”. Now, we’re all familiar with the other version, and I thought, “What a refreshing turn around on this well known saying!” It got me to thinking about how our point of view can color our lives and that we can find good that “happens” if we just look for it.

In the past couple of days, some small good things have happened for me. On Thursday I finally made it out on another trail ride with my riding partners from the barn, and I had a fabulous time! The weather was perfect, there were no bugs, and no monsters jumped out at us. You could hear the tree frogs as we rode along, going in and out of the woods on trails so familiar. We walked, trotted and cantered for over an hour and arrived back at the barn just as dark was falling. It is such a cool feeling to ride up the driveway to the welcoming lights in the barn and then to look out at the twilight sky from atop the farm hill. That night it was a spectacular red.

This afternoon I ran up to Central Lake to take in an art fair (a rather sad little affair with very few vendors and only one painter), but I did have the opportunity to chat with one of the arts council members who invited me to display one of my paintings in a local bank. I also voiced my regret that there weren’t more opportunities for art shows for the artist members and a desire to have a meet and greet event for artists to get to know one another. She agreed and said she would bring both matters up at a future board meeting.

Both coming and going from the art fair, I took some side roads I’ve never been on and did a photo shoot. I was particularly looking for cows; dairy cows; and did find one herd although they turned out to be steers. Oh, well; with some artistic license, they can easily be morphed into cows.

Here are just a few of the photos I took today.

There was a long row of these sunflowers on both sides of the road at one spot where there is a very neat and prosperous looking farm.

Here are my Holstein "cows". I had the iso speed way too high so the photo is washed out, but I corrected that later.

At the very top of a hill on this road, I spotted this spectacular view. The nearest blue patch is Torch Lake, and beyond it is East Grand Traverse Bay and beyond it is Old Mission Peninsula (for those of you who are familiar with this area).

This horse lives on a farm on my way to Bellaire. I've long wanted to stop and shoot some photos of him. He looks to be an aged Thoroughbred, but I'm not sure.

Around the corner from this horse, on a new road, I found this wonderful stone house. I'm sure it's being lived in because it is so well kept.

These two horses live around the corner and up the road from me. They are two older Arabs.

When I stopped to take a photo of the bull below, I noticed how much color is in this maple tree. It won't be long before there's a lot more showing in all the trees.


This bull lives on my road. As I went by him, he reminded me of Ferdinand, the bull who preferred to smell the flowers in the field rather than fight in the bull ring. He looks so peaceful and content with a wave of his tail every now and then. Take it from me, this bull is HUGE though! One of these days I'll capture him when he's standing up.

Well, not literally of course!

Fall Photo Shoot

On my walk around the pond I captured these scenes and many more inspiring ones. Here is the pond in early morning light. It's grown up a lot around the edges, the water has dropped and the fish are gone, but it still is a lovely place at any time of year. At one time it was clean enough to swim in, but not anymore.

Some of the most striking scenes I captured were backlighted, like these maples along the edge of the driveway and pond. But, even when the clouds came over, the trees still seemed to glow, like the maples below. I could see them from the kitchen window and from the family room and enjoyed them all weekend long.


The little town of Atlanta nearby is about as small town as you can get and still be called a town. I remember one year we took the kids to see the Fourth of July parade down the main street. It consisted of a few floats, some 4H kids on horses and the high school marching band. The band had no uniforms, and the parade was so short that they went by, turned around and came by again! In the past thirty years, it hasn't grown much of any, but at least there's a nice grocery store now and a much better fair grounds than our county has!

A Weekend Getaway

We spent a long weekend at our family getaway near Atlanta, Michigan this past weekend, but before we left, I caught site of the scene above from my studio window. Five swans came out of the early morning mist, the sun shining on them like specters of the lake. They spotted me in the window and immediately swam over looking for a handout, which I know better than to provide.

After loading up and saying goodbye to the cats, we headed for Atlanta on another spectacular day of warm sunshine and fall colors. Saturday dawned sunny, warm and still so I took a walk around the pond with my camera and captured as much as I could for memories and paintings to come.

My parents-in-law bought this property in the 50's for hunting, but the family gathered here frequently over the years for holidays and snowmobiling, and eventually the folks retired here. We spent our honeymoon here and used to take long walks in the woods before kids, so it has a very special place in my heart.


When they first bought the property, this is the shack that the folks, my husband and his brother stayed in when they came up to plant and tend the hundreds of tiny pine trees that were planted on the bare hills. A pond was dug and stocked with fish, and not too many years later, a mobile home replaced the shack. It was added to over the years to accommodate the growing family of wives and grandchildren.


The years have since taken their toll on the old shack whose additions have now fallen down or caved in. It has a melancholy look now as if it holds memories of much better days and people whom we can only wonder about. Such abandoned shacks are pretty common around the northern Michigan woods, and one always wonders what stories they could tell about their former inhabitants. Now they are left to the skunks, raccoons and other wild creatures who find bits of shelter in their dilapidated ruins.

Remembering Bo

We are having absolutely spectacular fall weather here in northwest lower Michigan; warm, sunny days and cool nights which have brought out equally spectacular fall colors. We are nowhere near peak color yet, but it's a good color year with the brilliant oranges and reds of the maples contrasted against the dark evergreens and golden yellows of our beech trees and poplars. It's been a bumper year for beechnuts, so the squirrels are again busy bounding about in our yard gathering their harvest for the winter.

Thankfully, we have no apples, so that means no deer to browse on my perennials and shrubs. On the other hand, that also means no apples for us, which means I had to buy some for the first time in three years!

Unfortunately, I'm stuck in the house looking out while continuing to work on gathering financial information for our advisor guy; made all the more urgent by the financial crisis in our world. Ugh! I've been adding up our monthly expenses and wondering how everything got so much more expensive so quickly.

In spite of also nursing a sore throat and headache, I did manage to get outside yesterday to give my car a very overdue interior cleaning. I felt a little sad while doing it because I was washing the last of Bo's muddy paw prints off the back seat and vacuuming up his hairs from the cargo area. We lost him two years ago this month, and yes, it's been that long since the car had a good cleaning!


I still miss Bo. I remember the joy this small Lab mix pooch brought to the family for nearly 16 years after we rescued him on a freezing December night from a household that had banished him to the yard with no shelter from the cold and wind and very little human contact. We were just going to take a look at him that night in response to the ad in the paper, but when my husband saw the conditions he was living in; tied to a tree and shivering; there was no way he was going to let that dog spend another cold and miserable night in that place. Bo eagerly hopped in our car with not even a look back as our kids showered him with attention.

In the first 24 hours we had him, he had to be shoved out the door to go potty because he was so afraid that he couldn't come back in. We got him as a companion for our German Shepherd, and they bonded immediately. Bo thought he was in Heaven and showed us every day how grateful he was. He and Daisy became best friends and spent hours playing in the big dog yard until Daisy became too old and crippled to enjoy the rough housing.

Bo had a habit of tuning you out when his attention was focused on something. If he got loose, he would take off on a dead run out the gate and into the road. Most likely it was this propensity that caused him to end up a stray on the doorstep of the family that took him in, so one of his nicknames became Hobo Joe. More often we called him Bobo. We could never trust him to be on the loose, but around the house he wanted nothing more than to be at your side - or Daisy's.

Bo never did get over his dislike of the cold or isolation, and after Daisy died he became strictly an inside dog.

Well, now I've digressed. The two photos at the top are views from my studio. Our lake is quite narrow and long, and on a still morning like this one, the fall colors are reflected in the water, adding to the brilliance of the scene. I love the view from my studio window, and one of these days I'm going to paint it.

Speaking of the studio, poor Bard is languishing on the easel as I work on these financial figures. It will take two or three days in a row that I can dedicate to painting in order to finish him up, and so far I haven't been able to put them together. I'm determined to finish him by month's end, however.