Foggy Mornings and the Simple Joys of an Artist

Foggy Morning

Another Windsor & Newton day, all in fog as if a water color in reverse… Slowly, so slowly the shapes, of lines and images of seeming shadows of the surroundings emerging out of the fog, to show the trees forming into view as the white mist slowly dissipates to show the beauty of color that fills the valley, as I sit sipping an espresso listening to the morning songs of birds…

For those who don’t know Windsor & Newton is a European watercolor paint I have grown to love over the years, it’s pigments so full and the slight sweet smell I sense as I open a tube still sends chills of the excitement of creation when looking at an empty sheet white watercolor paper…  Often the smell of good watercolor paper is fowl if you soak it for a wet wash of the pigment that flows off the sable hairs of the fine brushes that Windsor & Newton make…

The old pear tree starts to spread it’s branches and new leaves of spring out of the fog and mist, and further behind it the shadows of what I know are maple and oak trees that line the edge of my wetlands…  This Pear tree that no longer produced the large fruit it once did when I was young and in my teens, now rushing towards the middle 40’s the memories of youth, jumping and reaching, or bringing the ladder out to pick those sweet pears brings a smile…  I never really cared for the texture of the outer skin but with pocket knife in hand, I would carefully carve off it’s outer layer on one side to sink my teeth into it’s sweet body, as the juices would often flow down my chin, not caring taking another bite enjoying it’s sweetness…

I sit on the back porch staring at this old pair tree slowly coming out of the mist with memories giving me a smile…  I notice watching a pair of Morning Doves on a branch that seemed to be sharing their morning care together…  Their soft throaty voices queuing softly to each other, as they seem to also share morning kisses together…  Then the whooshing sound of their wings as one takes the step off the branch and spreads it’s wings to fly off into the white mist followed by the other…

Off in the mist out in the wetlands where the Doves disappeared in the fog I hear the honking of some of the Canadian Geese that nest out there…  Knowing that again a pair has taken as their home near an old stump where I have stacked branches in the middle of winter’s freeze a teepee that I know is surrounded by the swamp grass and still shadowed by an old oak tree on one of the islands out in the wetlands…  For 15 years now this location has had pairs that march their little goslings out that follower their mother with soft peeping voices that can only make one smile at the sight…  The little fluffy yellow with dark brown heads trying to keep up with their mother in the water under the and around the water’s brush…

I look to my old studio and the Dutch door I once upon a time built of thick pine board…

My Old Studio, built in 1982,renovated from a Chicken Shack in 1992 into my Studio

The need to get inside that now fills my mind and heart, the need and desire to create, wanting the smell of the sweet pigments of watercolors and inks that mix with the sounds of morning songs of birds…  the touch of textured cold press watercolor paper and hot press smoothness that are white needing only a soft pencil rough sketch to fill it’s emptiness…  I need to get out there and fix the storm damage of last fall, to unpack again those boxes of art materials and supplies, and dust off the old drawing table so mornings such as this I can be enjoying the views the sounds and smells while creating of images that hide behind the white fogs that are just empty watercolor paper… How I love to be an Artist…