musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
heartache turned to beauty turned to giving: own a limited edition philmont print
Just released: Signed and numbered limited edition prints A Philmont Morning is the Best Kind of Morning by Dawn Chandler. More that half of the proceeds of the sale of these prints are being donated to Philmont’s Fire Relief Fund.
And now they’re here: 200 limited edition prints!
No wait — CORRECTION. Make that 13
Trying to capture the colors of an early July early morning on Philmont’s Tooth of Time Ridge. Photo by Douglas Fasching, ace photographer & coffee wizard.
Dawn Chandler’s original plein air oil painting, A Philmont Morning is the Best Kind of Morning, was auctioned off in July, raising more than $2,800 for Philmont’s Fire Recovery Fund.
Thank you!
we interrupt this summer to bring you….
pathways….
and waterways… and walkways ….
we interrupt this summer to share meals… meditation… direction….
and glimpses of yesteryear….
… to share the welcoming of shelter …..
and expressions … of friendship … of kindness … of courage ….
to share the splendor of meadows and mountains…
and wise old souls …
and astonishing beings …
we interrupt this summer to bring you a wealth of tiny dazzling things….
Yes, I’ve been walking again.
Slowly and solo, again in the New England woods.
This time, a short 50-mile section of the Appalachian Trail. That little bit of the AT in central Vermont where it breaks away from the Long Trail — a point called Maine Junction — and ventures eastward, to cross the Connecticut River at the border of New Hampshire. It’s a gorgeous, pastoral section of trail (and — thankfully — not nearly as rugged as much of the Long Trail), winding mostly under 2500 feet of elevation. Which means much of the path leads through rolling low elevation hardwood forests of birch and maple, beech and hemlock.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll get to enjoy the shade of the hemlocks… The changing climate means they’re particularly vulnerable, as are so many of the Beings that blessed me with their presence these handful of days.
All the more reason I feel an urgency to get out there now, while they hold on, while my aging body can still carry me through these woods.
How many times a day did I reflect on Emerson’s quote….
Or recited the words of Mary Oliver.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(from The Summer Day)
My question to you is this:
When are you going out there, to the fields, to the forest, or the plains, the mesas or the waterways, or even your city park, your own back yard?
When are you going out and leaving
your phone behind?
Go — go now.
Go this weekend.
Don’t bring your phone. Promise me you’ll leave your phone behind.
Go find a quiet spot.
Close your eyes and breathe. Deeply.
Listen for a long while.
Then open your eyes, and look around.
Look.
See.
Breathe.
Notice.
Enjoy.
Don’t thank me.
Thank
your Self
Thank
your one wild and precious life.
Thanks so much for reading my blog. If you enjoy my musings here, please feel free to share this post!
And remember that you can always find more of my stories, insights and art on Instagram, Facebook and via my Inside the Studio Notes.
Very Artfully & Gratefully Yours ~
Dawn
painting my way back to philmont….
Saturday morning, July 7, 2018 ~ Me, attempting to capture the unique shape and color of Philmont’s Tooth of Time. Photo by Douglas Fasching.
Over lunch, I had commented to my friend that I was shocked we hadn’t suffered any fires yet. The winter and spring had been worrisomely mild, and the winds had howled across April and May. And yet here it was one day from June and New Mexico had hardly suffered any fires yet this season.
The day was Thursday, May 31st, 2018, and an hour after supping with my friend, I was heading home to Santa Fe, taking an unusual route — north through Taos so that I could then bear southwest across the Rio Grande Gorge and out into the wide open sageland of Carson, where I hoped to get some photos for a commission.
As I drove up Paseo del Norte, I noticed an odd cloud behind Taos Mountain. That looks like smoke I thought to myself. A visitor to the Southwest might not have noticed anything unusual, but we who spend late spring worrying about fire evacuations have an acute eye for clouds. That’s got to be a fire… As I made my way across the gorge bridge and out through Carson toward Ojo Caliente, I kept pulling over to take a look, further convincing myself that that cloud was smoke.
The Ute Park smoke plume rising behind the Taos Mountain, Thursday, May 31, 2018. Photo by Dawn Chandler
The Ute Park smoke plume rising behind Taos Mountain, as seen from near Carson, New Mexico, Thursday, May 31, 2018. Photo by Dawn Chandler
Of course we now know that what I was watching was the smoke of the Ute Park Fire, which exploded across the heart of Philmont. (If you don’t know what Philmont is or why it’s significant to me, you can learn more in my bio). For the next 72 hours, the fire would double with every update, eventually reaching 37,000 acres, 27,000 on Philmont. Neighboring communities would be threatened and forced to evacuate, as vast acres of pinon, juniper and Ponderosa forests would be wiped out. Some of the most beautiful hiking country I have known would be rendered unrecognizable, despite the herculean efforts of an army of hundreds of heroic firefighters.
After the Ute Park fire ~ burn damage on Philmont, as seen from Cimarron Canyon, July 9, 2018. Photo by Dawn Chandler.
More of the Ute Park fire damage on Philmont, as seen from Cimarron Canyon, July 9, 2018. Photo by Dawn Chandler.
And Philmont would ultimately make the utterly wrenching decision to close its backcountry for the season — the first time in its 80-year history — crushing the dreams of thousands of Scouts who had been anticipating a summer of adventure hiking in “God’s Country.” But the continued threat of fire, and the threat of extreme flooding and mudslides, made the decision to close the only prudent option.
Meanwhile Philmont and its neighbors rose and continue to rise to the challenges of disruption with awe-inspiring resiliency. Summer staff have been reassembled and put to work on fire recovery efforts, while Philmont’s admin team has worked tirelessly in rescheduling crews for the 2019 season. Scout camps from across the country have welcomed troops whose Philmont treks were canceled.
Philmont’s “big board” of summer backcountry trek itineraries, normally a mass of tiny well-planned notes, completely blank. Photo by Dawn Chandler.
And people have been giving — have been desperately, passionately wanting to give — to help Philmont. For while Philmont’s insurance will cover a great many things, it unfortunately won’t cover things like forest recovery efforts and reseeding.
So a great many people have made contributions to the Philmont Staff Association’s Fire Recovery Fund — which is a heck of a great way to help.
I decided though to do something a little different; to give in the way that I give best.
I decided to paint a picture, and auction it off.
Saturday morning, July 7, 2018 ~ my trusty plein air paint kit. Photo by Douglas Fasching.
So here’s my painting, which I did at Philmont a few days ago. I’ve called it A Philmont Morning is the Best Kind of Morning, and that morning that I painted it was indeed a “best kind of morning.”
“A Philmont Morning is the Best Kind of Morning” ~ by Dawn Chandler ~ oil on panel en plein air ~ 9″ x 12 ~ painted July 7, 2018.
A Philmont Morning is the Best Kind of Morning PAINTING AUCTION UPDATE
After a week of exciting, nail-biting bidding on eBay, I’m utterly thrilled to announce that my painting raised over $2,800 for Philmont’s Fire Recovery Fund!
A Philmont Morning is the Best Kind of Morning PRINTS
As of 1 September 2018, special limited edition prints are now available for $95 each, with $50 of each print being donated to Philmont’s fire recovery effort. Half have already sold, raising over $4,500 for the fire fund!
Click here for more details and/or to purchase a print.
Meanwhile…
I want to go back to Philmont….
why we leave new mexico….
Every June I leave New Mexico ….
and I go to Oregon…
I make this annual journey from the parched mesas of the Southwest to the crashing waves of the Pacific Northwest in order to sleep.
My annual pilgrimage to seaside slumber began about six years ago as an escape. It was the second or third year in a row when June mornings in New Mexico brought black flakes of charred forests in the dry wind, and a daily grey dusting of ash. Even the wasps were thirsty, as they hovered at the edge of the quickly evaporating water that I bucketed into the metal fire pit, now a makeshift emergency birdbath.
About 90 minutes after the Ute Park fire was first reported on May 31, 2018. I took this photo of the smoke bloom from near Ojo Caliente, as I looked back toward Taos. At this point I didn’t yet know the location of the fire…
Nights were sleepless, as I worried about fire, which, were one to strike in my neighborhood of dense pinon and juniper with no guaranteed escape route, would be nothing short of biblical. Two dusty miles down a winding dirt road walled in with trees. It made me sick to my stomach to imagine
What if there’s a lightening strike?
What if a some witless person pulls off the road and parks in tall dry grass, their hot engine igniting a grass fire?
What if some idiot tosses a cigarette butt?
What if a tree falls across the only road out?
I dreaded going into town and leaving my pup at home.
What if there’s a fire while I’m gone?
But it was just too deathly hot to leave her in the car while I ran errands.
I kept evacuation gear — a change of clothes, important files, most precious keepsakes — in my car.
I did this during every drought year living out there on the ‘ridge, and also all those years I lived in Taos Canyon.
Finally with the Las Conchas Fire raining down ash for days, I had had it.
“I’m getting the Hell out of New Mexico next year” I proclaimed to My Man. Luckily for me, he decided he would, too.
And so for 5 out of the past 6 Junes we’ve headed north by northwest — though, alas, without Cary Grant — and without even my Pup. No, instead we have boarded her, at a cool place in ABQ where they take great care of her and she has lots of friends.
Until this year.
This year we drove 3000 miles with The Pup.
Why?
Because she’s getting old.
And because I wanted to see her run on a beach at least once in her life.
Last October when she and I drove to New England, I had the same plan to take her to the beach, only I’d do so in New Hampshire. The Live Free or Die state doesn’t have much coastline, but it has 18 more miles of coastline than New Mexico does. New Hampshire’s beaches are beautiful, and they’re actually the beaches I grew up on. Despite being raised in New Jersey, our family never went “down the shore” like most people who populate the Garden State. Rather, we went to New Hampshire and Maine.
So just imagine my heartbreak when my pup and I arrived at the Atlantic Ocean only to find NO DOGS ALLOWED. I think we both cried.
When we finally did find a beach that allowed dogs, it was high tide, and the waves were crashing against the rocky and treacherous shore, crushing us with disappointment.
Gazing with longing at that long stretch of sandy beach….but….NO DOGS ALLOWED on the New Hampshire beaches that we visited.
But Oregon?
When the Oregon legislature passed the brilliant Oregon Beach Bill in 1967 that “established public ownership of land along the Oregon Coast from the water up to sixteen vertical feet above the low tide mark” I’m pretty sure they had dogs in mind among those “public owners.”
So two weeks ago — three days and 1500 miles after leaving achingly smoky New Mexico — we brought my beautiful old desert rat of a sweet girl down to the beach.
And she ran…
and ran…
and ran…
and ran …
Unfortunately I didn’t get my phone out in time, but look above Wilson and you’ll see ever so faintly the spread wings of a bald eagle flying off into the fog, after SOMEONE rudely interrupted his beachside breakfast.
And she kept on running…
And then, in that cool, wet, lusciously soporific Pacific ocean air… she — and we —slept….
Thank you, Oregon.
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Photo above of Wilson & me by ace photographer Joe T.R. Beman.
when painting isn’t fun anymore…and getting over it
My changing palette over the course of the five days..
I work well under pressure. I like deadlines and due dates. At least that’s what I’ve always thought.
I remember a few years ago getting ready for a solo show of my abstract/textual landscapes and, just a couple of weeks before the show opening, I realized with some horror that I was going to need twice as many paintings as I’d figured to fill the space. Never have I worked with so much focus and creative abandon as I did those next few days. Unplugged from all my devices, I locked myself away in my studio and painted 12 – 14 hours per day for a week solid as creativity overtook me. Quite to my amazement, everything fell into place, as the groove of flow swept in and over me. Rather than feel tired, I felt completely energized. Rarely has painting been so supremely joyful and effortless for so many days in a row!
That, um, didn’t happen last week.
Painting out at the Galisteo Basin.
No, quite the opposite. I was freaking out on day one of the Santa Fe Plein Air Fiesta, a competitive painting event involving 50 artists.
We’d gathered in Santa Fe to paint for five days. The goal was to have two completed and framed plein air paintings ready to exhibit at Santa Fe’s well-respected Sorrel Sky Gallery at the end of the week.
While my new painting peers all seemed to be experienced in these competitive “paint-outs,” this was my first one. Really, I didn’t know what I had gotten myself in to.
Each day there were designated paint-out locations, though you didn’t have to paint there if you didn’t want to. Rather, you could paint anywhere within about a 100-mile radius of Santa Fe.
Morning of the first day I decided to avoid surprises and stick with the familiar. Still full from the huge kick-off welcome dinner the night before, I headed out to the Galisteo Basin at dawn to do my first painting. After a brisk hike with The Pup, I did a very quick sketch, loosely noted the values per what I’d learned at PACE18, then set to work. The painting came together without too many headaches, though I wondered if I should have paid more attention to the values. Regardless, I was thrilled to have my first painting under my belt. Whew! Just 14 more to go!
Now to pack up the car with my paints, food for four days, and The Pup and head up to Dixon to my friend Miya’s place. I figured I’d camp out there for a while as Dixon would put me fairly close to several of the paint-out locations in the Rio Grande Gorge, Abiquiu & Espanola. And Dixon itself doesn’t lack for beautiful and interesting subject matter for paintings!
The hills surrounding Dixon, New Mexico.
Come late afternoon my easel was set up in front of Miya’s, as I raced furiously to capture storm clouds over the ridge line and afternoon sunlight angling in. Yet I seemed to forget anything that I had known about painting. I was anything but focused. Negative speak pounded through my head. I felt overwhelmed.
I DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO A SKETCH AND A VALUE STUDY!!! The light is changing so rapidly, and there’s so much going on between foreground and middle ground and background trying to get the shape of this and the color of that and the shadow here and the tree over there and and and
UGH!!
THIS SUCKS!! IT’S NOT COMING TOGETHER!! I DON’T LIKE THIS! I DON’T LIKE PAINTING UNDER PRESSURE!! HOW AM I EVER GOING TO GET TWO DECENT PAINTINGS DONE BY NEXT WEEK?!
Finally I just STOPPED. I’d lost the light. The more I worked on the painting, the more I was ruining it.
I did not sleep well that night.
The next morning I attempted the same view, but this time — obviously — with morning light.
Same thing.
Once again I was anything but focused as distracting negative speak pounded through my head. Once again I felt overwhelmed, and confused about how to paint.
I DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO A SKETCH AND A VALUE STUDY!!! The light is changing so rapidly, and there’s so much going on between foreground and middle ground and background trying to get the shape of this and the color of that and the shadow here and the tree over there and and and
UGH!!
THIS SUCKS!! IT’S NOT COMING TOGETHER!! I DON’T LIKE THIS! I DON’T LIKE PAINTING UNDER PRESSURE!! HOW AM I EVER GOING TO GET TWO DECENT PAINTINGS DONE BY NEXT WEEK?!
And once again I just STOPPED. Once again I’d lost the light before completing the painting.
I felt drained and deflated.
This was new to me, this intense feeling of stress and anxiety when painting.
Sure, my paintings almost always go through a stage of looking like a mess, and often there’s negative speak going on in my head and I wonder if it’s ever going to come together. But always there’s a point where the painting DOES start coming together and those negative voices get shut out, such that by the end of the painting session I’m feeling pretty satisfied with the result.
But this was performance anxiety. It was uncomfortable. It was sour. I knew it was all in my head — it was all ego — but knowing that really didn’t help to diminish the discomfort that sat heavily with me.
Three paintings so far. One was okay, two were terrible.
I folded up my paint box. I definitely would not be heading out to the community “paint-out” locations. Last thing I needed was people potentially looking over my shoulder.
The view outside my little apartment at Miya Pottery in Dixon, NM.
A few hours later..
Mid-afternoon.
Deep breath.
This time I would slow down and apply everything I observed and learned two weeks earlier at PACE.
This time I would do a preliminary sketch and focus on the value structures, on composition.
This time I would take my time and do it right.
And
of course
by taking my time
it all
came
together.
Same with my next painting.
And the next.
And what a surprise that I felt calm while painting these. I felt joy when painting these. I felt unplagued by the pernicious chattering ego, and instead felt completely present with my muse and the view before me.
The lesson, of course, is an ages old one, summed up best in the annoyingly wise question
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
Though in my case I was lucky, for I did have time to do some things over — to revisit my earlier “disasters” and make adjustments. So with both the 2nd & 3rd paintings I stood at the same spot the next day and, shutting out the demons, focused more, made corrections, and ultimately turned them around into surprisingly decent paintings.
At the end of five days, I had six respectable paintings — a far cry from the ridiculously ambitious 15 I had originally set as my goal. But I soon learned that six was about as many as most of my fellow artists had completed. And I learned, too, that I was not alone in being haunted by performance anxiety demons.
The culminating exhibition at Sorrel Sky was nothing short of a celebration. Imagine seeing over 100 fresh paintings capturing early May in New Mexico! The turnout was huge, and the energy electric. Master artist Stephen Day judiciously handed out awards. Though none were handed to me (nor were none anticipated!), my blue ribbon was without a doubt the overall experience. What a journey it was!
I’d be remiss if I failed to give a shout-out to the Plein Air Painters of New Mexico [PAPNM] who did an outstanding job planning and managing this event. It seemed to me to be incredibly well organized — really, they thought of everything. And from what I gather from other participating artists, few other regional paint-outs are as on the ball and well-directed as PAPNM.
Will I participate in a competitive paint-out again?
Maybe not.
As much as I enjoy plein air painting, the idea of art being “competitive” doesn’t really appeal to me.
I don’t like feeling pressured to paint — except for the kind of pressure that comes from my sweet pup when, after an hour or so she lets me know: You’ve been working on that one long enough; time for you to put your paints away and for us to hike some more!
But then again… maybe I will…
Never say never, as they say…
😉
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And YES! All of my Plein Air Fiesta paintings for sale! Click here to explore them all.
My favorite pic of my Mascot, my Fearless & Brave Protector ~ worth sharing again!
Thanks so much for reading my blog. If you enjoy my musings here, please feel free to share this post!
And remember that you can always find more of my stories, insights and art on Instagram, Facebook and via my Inside the Studio Notes.
Very Artfully Yours ~
Dawn