Bird's Eye

As 'Memoir in Two Chapters' unfolded from June 8-September 11 this little trio of new paintings took their place at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia for the Faculty Exhibit.

They're from the current series 'Birdwatching'. I've been a bird watcher all my life. Recently I've been enjoying the elegant and focused beauty of watching Egrets move about in the cove. I can see them from my kitchen window or my garden. They are highly independent and most often solitary and yet from time to time they will consent to sharing the shoreline, particularly when the Cormorants are herding fish beneath the surface waters...a great ballet, a wonderful sight.

A college student recently reviewed one of the Egret paintings in this series titled 'Still Point' .

And for those interested in a lovely artist newsletter visit Heron Dance. A recent quote:

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity. -Anne Truitt sculptor.

Angels Surround

The evenings in the late summer garden are intoxicating with the scent of the Angel's Trumpet swirling in through the window's on the night breeze.

I am saying thank you to All That Is for the ability to look back using the art form of the memoir. It allows a space for the gaze into what was without being pulled away from the preciousness of the moment. I love reading, writing and taking classes in memoir.

Here then is a short Afterward to the Memoir in Two Chapters that ran between June 8 and September 11.


AFTERWORD


I was raised to believe in Guardian Angels. And believe in them I did. I had a trust in life, a naivete' that caused one person important in my life to refer to me as "unassuming".

Mother always said, "Give them the benefit of the doubt." and this particularly odd one "You'll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar."


I was house sitting in 1982 and I read an essay in my host's college journal that was titled 'Rape as a Spiritual Experience'. I was enraged and outraged. I became 'beside myself' the same way I did when I took rape crisis training and learned of the documented post traumatic stress (PTS) syndrome that is no different than that visited upon veterans of war.


It took me years to realize that the Hells Angels were, for me, 'The Angel's from Hell'. These Angels took be into the Underworld and showed me a cavernous dark.

Like any demons worth their salt will do they tried to make me small and of no use.

Like any monsters, dragons or strange beliefs that we invite in either consciously or unconsciously they tried to strip me of all dignity and worth.

Like any demon they brutally lay in ambush.

They preyed upon my Innocent state of being. And from them I learned that when brought face to face with what we believe we cannot endure we do indeed. We do indeed. We endure. And more than that, much more than that, we rise above...individually and collectively...our true spirit, beyond the Beyond, lifts us away from danger. We float with effortless ease above the battlefield. The body may be battered upon return, or we may not return at all (transcending the body), yet our sweet strong empowered creative spirit lives on.


This is a Big ol' School called Earth. I learned that at 19. I wouldn't have been able to comprehend that or assimilate that without a model. Immediately Life sent me that model, my mentor, my guide...my guardian Angel in Alice. She offered me an example of what Life could be. She demonstrated a life of lightness of being employing yoga, art making, gardens, gentleness, laughter and balance in all ways...even in the midst of her own severe loss and heart break.


I could address these issues at length and ad infinitum but I prefer to recognize that the 'Angel's from Hell' made me a life member of what Clarissa Pinkola Estes brilliantly refers to as 'the scar clan'.


Like my friend Indigo Girl decided, I hope that you will pull Estes' work off the shelf and read again this concept. You'll find the treasure of her wisdom on page 374 of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

You too may discover that we are each indeed much stronger, far wiser and certainly more capable than much of the mass consciousness cultural out picture would have any of us believe or subscribe to currently.

Notice the manner in which you have faced your demons and faced them down. Celebrate your ability and your capacity to thrive rather than survive.


This Life is all so temporary and precious.


Rumi says it so well: Let the beauty you love be the work that you do there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Thank You Alice

I immediately write a letter to thank Alice for all that I have gained as her guest.

A week later the mailman delivers a large manilla envelope to my parent's home. There I find five pages of her poems, four sheets of her small abstract watercolor paintings, and the most enraptured letter that I will ever receive in my entire life. It marks the first of twenty-six years of delightful ongoing correspondence and visits.

This first hand written letter reads so beautifully and is so deeply inspirational that it feeds my soul for all of my days. In part Alice states "...you will never leave the farm...and wherever you walk, I'll be with you...my strength is vast and comes from Beyond...so take from me what you will...I know that you will use it wisely...please let me know where your special star leads."
That letter is dated August 21, 1968.

Years later Alice and Larry sell their Ohio farm and settle on the banks of the Rio Chama in Abiqui, New Mexico, just minutes away from the home and studio of Georgia O'Keeffe.

Larry builds Alice a simple artist home that hugs the earth. He continues his woodworking and Alice her painting. On my last visit I camp on the bank of the river. Alice comes to sit at my campfire. The flames leap turbulently into the brilliant star lit sky on this crisp October night. We sit quietly staring into the thick bed of hot coals. After a time she shares her deepest story. Twenty three years earlier, in March of 1968, her eighteen year old daughter died in a car crash. Six months later I arrive frail from my own trauma. We instantly bond as surrogates unaware of the other's recent injury. It is enough to hold her story. I don't ever tell her mine.

"What is La Loba? ...she is the female soul. Yet she is more: she is the source of the feminine. She is all that is of instinct. Of the worlds both seen and hidden she is the basis. We each receive from her a glowing cell which contains all the instincts and knowings needed in our lives." Clarissa Pinkola Estes

On January 30, 1994 a large manilla envelope arrives. It echoes the first from the summer of 1968...a handwritten letter, four watercolor paintings. In part she states "Feels like much is happening planet wise. No doubt it is. Would like to block it, sometimes I can, sometimes no. We have no TV, no radio, no newspapers, no magazines. Quiet here. Serene. It's good. we send much love.
The letter is dated January 27, 1994.

As I finish reading her words the phone rings. A friend is calling from New Mexico to tell me that on the evening of January 28, on an unlit back road, Alice was killed instantly when Larry's truck hits a rock and overturns.

Later that day I write into my journal...Thank you Alice for your natural beauty of spirit and your love of the artist life. You gently and joyfully passed these gifts to my heart when I was a very young woman. I have nurtured, nourished and shared the legacy you passed to me. I pledge to continue to do so all the rest of my days.


This artist memoir is dedicated to Alice Boucher Twitchell November 4, 1917 - January 28, 1994

'She who we love and lose is no longer where she was before. She is now wherever we are.'

This closes two chapters of an artist's memoir. A brief look back in the 60th year.

Leaving the Farm

After a week on the road with the band and my two transcendent weeks with Alice my travel companion mildly twists her ankle. We must depart.

I dissociate.

It is unfathomable to imagine not being in the company of Alice. She has folded me under her wing. She has wrapped me in a quiet and calm acceptance.

We are driven back to the bus station. I wear the sandals made by Sam, and carry his gift of the Tao Te Ching. Invisible to all, my spirit and my soul have been stamped with the imprint of Alice, the natural earth mother/artist.


The sky high corn stalks create an impenetrable corridor. The car crunches gravel and throws up a veil blocking any backward look. It weaves down the narrow canyon of a driveway. I stick my hand out the window so the large slender leaves can slap against my palms in an extended mournful goodbye. As the flashes of cool green chant their rhythmic farewell I make a silent promise that I will attempt to walk in the footsteps of Alice, my model of sanity, to the best of my ability, for the rest of my days.

As we move on down the road I randomly open the treasure of the Tao:

6
The breath of life moves through a slender valley
Of mysterious motherhood
Which conceives and bears the universal seed,
The seeming of a world never to end,
Breath for men to draw from as they will:
And the more they take of it, the more remains.



An artist's memoir in 2 chapters
Graphic done using Sumo

Meeting Alice

"Within each woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity and ageless knowing." Pinkola-Estes

The next day I wander in the garden. I am startled and surprised as I find, squatting low among the rows of green beans gathering the long slender snaps into a clay pot at her feet, my vision from the pond.

She smiles, asks my name, my length of stay, tells me she is Alice Twitchell.

Beyond that she doesn't say anything specific, we simply become companions. She allows me to accompany her for hours on end and so the days take on another level of mysterious depth and substance.

I am mesmerized.

I observe the manner in which this angelic woman glides through her days. There is some type of frailty that visits her...with frequency she excuses herself, telling me that she will be resting.

I watch as she floats around the corner like a mist and disappears into her room.

Larry Twitchell built their home and all the outbuildings by hand. He included an indoor tropical garden in the southwest corner of the main room with tiny entries in the foundation allowing small animals to run back and forth hiding treasures among the rocks and roots. With tranquility Alice eyes a chipmunk as she creates our lunch. Later she follows the darting movements of a field mouse, busily tending to its affairs, as she quietly moves lush watercolor over her paper's rough surface.

When she reappears from her quiet time she wraps the embroidered white caftan close to her body and speaks to me of things foreign and exotic like India and Baha'i, meditation and mi so; of the rigors of art school and polio and chiropractic adjustments.

I don't understand her or her ways yet I know that I want to be nowhere else but with her and I want to be more like her than like myself.

An artist memoir at the 60 year mark.

Graphic created in Sumo

My Earth Angel

On my way to the long low poultry houses I pass the large fenced vegetable garden. It feels like a sacred space, far more private than the rest of the surroundings, and so out of respect I have skirted it...until today. Now I unhook the rusted latch on the slatted wooden gate and enter.

Life is burgeoning. Bees and butterflies are at work in profusion. My inner senses dance among the variety of shapes and colors and textures. I realize immediately that in order to be whole again I need a garden in my life.

Something catches my eye and as I squint through the oversized foliage of a summer squash. I see, perhaps two hundred feet up the slope, lying snug against the earth, the main residence, a low single story contemporary designed home. There is a natural pond outside the back door.

I stare.

The sun is reflecting off the surface of the water.. Through the brilliant light I think I see an apparition. I watch as a graceful nude figure emerges, rising up and out of the pond with ease.

There's fluidity to her movement and dignity in her posture as she wraps herself in a flowing white garment. She stands in the sun and idly creates a long single braid in her pure white hair before the shadows absorb her into the house.

I am entranced.


This artist memoir celebrates the 60th year.
This graphic created in SUMO

The Farm

Following a week on the road the bus brings us back to the farm. Ths 300 acre Twitchell Farm is my opportunity to discover that something serene exists in the world beyond the chaos.

For the first few days I wander. I hike the land until tired and then find a tree to lean against. I sit for hours watching whatever happens by...a snail, spider, butterfly, rabbit, hawk or doe.

Morning and evening are linked by my work of collecting a portion of the eggs laid by a flock of 1500 Rhode Island Reds.

Days flow with a nourishing rhythm.

This is an artist's memoir chapter 2
The graphic's done using Sumo