The hill behind my house has a wide variety of wildflowers each spring.
The steepness makes it hard to photograph. Or, perhaps it is the lack of skill on the part of the photographer. I miss my manual cameras. Digital cameras have many advantages, but all this automatic baloney is a real hassle. Guess that is life – the more advantages, the more disadvantages too. But I digress. Let’s just enjoy the wildflowers, shall we?
Sometimes I tell you about the good parts of living in Three Rivers (running into people at the Post Office or on a walk, having a mailbox at the bottom of my driveway to drop off things). Sometimes I tell you the bad parts, which are mostly attributable to Tulare County in general rather than Three Rivers.
The down side to living in a self-contained small town and community is that when bad things happen, no one is untouched. Last week Three Rivers lost 2 men to suicide. Each had his own reasons which are not public knowledge, and each one left a trail of broken-hearted and baffled people behind. The ripples of sadness extend outward into every part of town.
This pencil drawing is called “Turbulent Times”, and it feels appropriate right now.
I wasn’t able to paint on Wednesday, due to life’s other commitments that make me thankful to be self-employed.
Have you been missing Samson? He is semi-civilized now, although better behaved for Trail Guy than for me. It might just be a male-bonding issue, or perhaps it is that Trail Guy is around more.
The first photos show our redbud tree in bloom. In the last photo, you can also see the tail end of the bloom on the flowering quince.
Just an average spring morning in Three Rivers . . .
Spring in Three Rivers is almost worth the long hot dry smoggy crowded summers. No, it IS worth it (but I doubt if you would like to move here – remember, we are all fat, poor, uneducated, have diabetes, get pregnant as teens, and have bad air. Besides, there is no Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.)
Yesterday I didn’t paint on the Mineral King mural because it was a drawing lessons day.
In the spring, it almost causes me physical pain to leave Three Rivers, even to go to a place as mellow as Exeter, even to do a job as exciting as repainting the Mineral King mural or teaching people I care about to draw.
Life’s hard; put on your big girl pants and deal with it.
Sometimes I walk by this in the mornings (unless I’m commuting to Exeter).
If you could work here, would you drive somewhere else?
Flowering quince is still in bloom in my yard.
If you had this guy sitting on a table outside your office, would you want to leave him?
And this is the flowering pear tree outside the studio.
Today is 17 years since my Dad died. I don’t feel like talking. You can look at Samson biting his way out of a paper bag, and then we’ll take a walk in Three Rivers. Maybe later I can draw some water from one of these rushing river photos.
The rain stopped briefly and the sun came out, so I went for a walk here in Three Rivers. This was on February 12, but there were other things to blog about last week.
Look! The buckeye trees, always precocious, are leafing out already.
Here is an unobstructed view of Alta Peak and Moro Rock.
The Red Maids are in bloom!
This ant hill is definitely a peculiar sight.
The narcissus are in bloom in my yard.
And what does a Central California artist do for fun when the sun is out?
She mixes a paint color for her neighbor’s kitchen, of course.
Neighbor recently was in Italy and fell in love with a particular color. (Could there possibly be 2 color junkies in the same neighborhood??) The hardware store mixed a too-bright red, so together we figured out the color she wanted. This required adding tan from the gallon container, lightening it with white, and correcting the resulting pinkishness with yellow ochre. Then, we tried it on a kitchen cupboard door and declared it a winner. (It took 3 attempts with minor corrections each time.) Next, I had to match that exact color to convert the rest of the too-bright-red to our newly named “Red Pepper Cream Sauce”. (Last time we invented the color of “Orange Blossom Special” for her kitchen, which looks spectacular with the Red Pepper Cream Sauce.)*
*My own kitchen is blue and white, has been blue and white for 18 years, and probably will probably be blue and white for as long as I live here. Thanks for asking.
Say what? Ore buckets? Little bitty ore buckets?
Remember the first Mineral King Room (in Three Rivers History Museum) mural was of a tram tower below the Empire Mine in Mineral King and only made sense if someone was standing there ‘splaining it?
Now, there are visual aids. In addition to the real ore bucket resting alongside the mural, there are to-scale versions actually on the mural, hanging from the cable.
These are utter perfection, the final touch that makes this mural come alive! Thank you, Nancy B. of the Three Rivers Historical Museum!!
And here are the other 2 murals, in case they were feeling left out.
The Commissioner and Mrs. Commissioner were very happy with their commissioned oil painting of the Kaweah Blacksmith Shop.
This little building used to be up the North Fork of the Kaweah where the Kaweah Colony was. The flood of 1997 took it away, and in recent years, The Commissioner and his wife bought the property and began learning about it.
He liked this one too. This pencil and colored pencil drawing has a story to it, several stories, really.
I drew this from some photos taken at a friend’s farm yard north of Sacramento. The tires were taller than I am, and my friend said it is quite A Thing when one needs to be changed.
The piece in the Madera Ag Art Show got 1st place in Equipment and Machinery, but it didn’t sell. I showed it around for awhile and finally just put it in my studio. Classic example of what I like not resonating with the general public. . . sigh.
When I was scrolling through old emails looking for Mrs. Commissioner’s name because I forgot it (rude), I found an email from 2007 mentioning the fact that The Commissioner might be interested in this piece. There was no way I was going to call a stranger to ask if he wanted to buy a drawing, even a 1st place one. Not happening!
He is no longer a stranger, he remembered the woman who suggested that I show this to him (she died in a skydiving accident, so you can see what a memorable person she was), and he has very good reason to want this drawing.
That reason will remain a secret, because I am not in the habit of revealing personal information about my customers. I may be rude enough to forget important people’s names, but I have my limits on rudeness.
Natalie, please tell “Jee-um” Happy Birthday from me today – thank you!
This rain is wonderful. I went driving around, not just for the sake of burning fuel, but to see some stuff. Artists have to see stuff.
What’s my job description? I see stuff and then decide if it is worth showing to other people.
I saw lots and lots of water, here in January in Tulare County. This is the St. John’s River. I crossed it several times, and also crossed the Kaweah, drove along several irrigation ditches, and crossed the Friant-Kern canal several times.
If the bridge above looks familiar, it is because you may have seen it on the 2017 calendar. This also gives you a chance to admire my ability to clean up real life, which tends to be messy and cluttered.
What’s my job description? I fix visual messes.
That was “This“.
Now for “That“.
That oil painting of the P fruits is coming along. If you are wondering, the dimensions are 6×18″.
The Other Thing is how beautiful it is in Three Rivers this time of year, especially when it is a wet season. Please excuse the lines across the photo. They are actually what enable me to post on this blog, but unfortunately they connect me to Huge & Rude. (the phone co.)
Can you see the elephant on Alta Peak? Here is a little visual aid as to how it is posed:
The trunk on my elephant is going the wrong direction and his head is bit outsized; you’ll have to use your imagination a bit.
What’s my job description? I help people understand what they are seeing.
Thus we conclude the post “This, That and The Other Thing”. Thanks for stopping by.
One day while I was painting the Oak Grove Bridge, Trail Guy said he wanted to drive up the Mineral King Road and see how things looked. I put down my brushes and put on my boots.
