nuukunui

13 more characters from The Search

2010-02-09T09:32:00.000-08:00

Mme de Cambremer after a strenuous session of music,

her diamond earrings fallen, her headpiece of black grapes come undone.

Mlle Vinteuil recalling a spell of very hot weather at Montjouvain.

Saniette waiting for thunder that never comes.

The affable Babal Bréauté.

Mme de Marsantes

Gísèle sur la plage à Balbec.

Rosamonde

Octave, listening to La Voix Humaine.

Léa

Tomato Twin no.1

M. Nissim Bernard, understanding how resemblance is often only external.

Tomato Twin no. 2

Marie-Antoinette, Jupien's niece, at her

first soirée as Charlus' inheritor, Mlle. d'Oloron.

An Unobstructed View

2009-09-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

Familiar Eyes

2009-09-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

~Correspondances~

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers

Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;

L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles

Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent

Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,

Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,

Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

II est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,

Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,

— Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,

Comme l'ambre, le music, le benjoin et l'encens,

Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

~ Charles Baudelaire

San Soliterio

2009-08-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Buen Paso

2009-08-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

Outside Salinas

2009-08-12T15:06:00.001-07:00

Gaviota Pass

2009-08-07T13:15:00.001-07:00

The Coast Road

2009-08-07T13:14:00.001-07:00

An Island, The Aquitaine, and Malibu

2009-08-06T09:42:00.000-07:00

Bird branch tree, Pt Lobos

2009-08-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

Our Lady of Carmel & etc

2009-08-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

Into the Mystic

Backstage

The Linda Tree

Clyde's Cove

The Aquitaine

2009-07-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

The student

2009-07-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

CC20june09

2009-06-29T15:49:00.000-07:00

Chasm

2009-06-29T12:59:00.001-07:00

Arab rider

2009-06-29T11:27:00.001-07:00

Statue

2009-06-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOeKCLQuyhc

Lunch

2009-06-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

The raker's reward

2009-06-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

3 Still Lifes

2009-05-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

Salt & Pepper

Fork in Butter

Succulents in Jug

Acrylic on canvas, 5x7 inches, 11-14 May 2009.

Portrait of Max Butler

2009-05-06T16:04:00.001-07:00

Oil on canvas, app. 28x32 inches, 1973.

Katy

2009-04-16T13:41:00.001-07:00

The Hawthorns, The Sea and The Martinville Steeples

2009-02-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

Acrylic on balsa, 3x4½ inches.

Off Point Vicente

2009-02-04T15:10:00.000-08:00

Acrylic on balsa, 3x4½ inches.

Nuukunui

2009-01-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

A. L. Kroeber and Ishi

I've been asked what Nuukunui means. Nuukunui was made from Ukunui, the name of the Yokut-Yaudanchi encampment on the middle fork of the Tule River in California, as recorded in A. L. Kroeber's 1925 Handbook of the California Indians. Ukunui means 'to drink'.

When I traded a painting for a computer, I added Nu to Ukunui in a fit of romantic personalization and used the term for my email address.

It was not the first time I stole fire from the original human inhabitants of the region.

In the fall of 2000, inspired by friends with whom I was involved in local environmental and cultural endeavors, I painted a line of riverbed boulders with markings made to evoke and honor the spirit of older native designs, as an experiment towards the eventual installation of painted rocks 12 miles to the southwest along the frontage of what was once a state hospital for the tubercular. Parts of the hospital were designed by Julia Morgan; it now exists as a facility for seniors.

I had recently seen the caves at Peche-Merle in France. Awash in the magic of those images and intrigued by indigenous rock art nearer home, I set out to try my own hand at putting color and line to granite, and my mind to studies about the mysteries of the origins of art.

The mysteries still remain, and the final installation was never realized, but the experiment was made, I called it Nuukunui, and it still exists, just below the site of a battle of the Indian Wars, the 1856 fight at Battle Mountain on the north fork of the Tule River.

The photos were taken during the weeks spent painting Nuukunui. One day I'll return and see how they've weathered.

American Hero #66185, Miss Patsy Cline, Bob Dylan as Cate Blanchett, and the Queen of England

2009-01-15T12:23:00.000-08:00

Acrylic on canvas, 16x12 inches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtkFmCY9IZ0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ1_ejNJz84

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ0NTdzr39I

Three Dreams on the Same Rainy Night

2009-01-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

Describe a dream, lose a reader, Harold Robbins used to say. But this one’s different. ~Elatia Harris

I.
I dreamt I was on a boat. I dreamt it was a curious day of heavy weather. The torrent of rain brought a torrent of images, of faces and scenes swimming through my mind in an eerily familiar twilight without real morning, night or meaning and so disconnected me from action that I kept to the cabin with the sea dog curled in her bed and did nothing at all after cold-handedly wiping out the dismal, crook-nosed, dark portrait of X that had hung for a week in unfinished turmoil on the easel before the masthead, until Time, never letting go its constant grip kept hidden with a vengence in the chill watery gauze, rang five bells from the spire of New St. Vincent's and forced me from my bench to turn up the stove and re-heat the kettle of poi. When the cadence of the bubbling pot matched the tattoo of falling rain and the smell of boiling taro root rose and steam glistened the cabin-mold to the depth of a mirror, I lifted an old wooden spoon hand-turned 20 years before by its anonymous maker into a roughly hewn sigmoid curve, a utensil carried through my life as an icon of baroque memory, a spoon for stirring, left greasy on counters, never washed in a machine, an object held dear in drawers, saved in sea chests and packing crates through a maze of places, boats, ports and the kitchens of houses once called home where the closing sound of every door or hatch of each location still slams during the inconsistency of the night, or if sleep is easy, clicks securely shut with balanced weight - or more rarely- if a door is opening, as if X had returned unexpectedly, clicks in reverse and comes up the stairs on aural carpets unrolling on rocky steps in heavy seas and splashes the landing with the wing feathers of the dove.

I filled the spoon and brought it to the worn edges of my teeth, cooled it with a whistle, took a sip, wiped the drizzle from my beard and looked back to the canvas with its smeared mask of black and red and thought no more of lipstick, le chiffre or kohl, but of a time before X, and caught an image of still-life, of tangerines laid out in line on the felt of a billiard table with a clear-eyed icy pike hooked from the hoary lake where true winter first found me and caught me and moved me along to the castle in frozen awe, hurrying home, sliding along the dangerous promenade, soaked in a green doe skin jacket, blue jeans that would wait two years for embroidered patches, new cowboy boots never worn again, and the Genoan ensign's blouse traded for some spliff and my naked chest (Given freely!) to the boy in the corner, hours before, at the party Dad Renier gave one Christmas, for his mother and Petula Clark.

II.
I dreamt the weather was worse, as bleak as the Christmas when every tree froze along the quay and sailors lit bank notes hanging from the branches to warm homeless-ones in their huts along the lake, the Christmas I'd left X alone with the seadog in the icy hold, shipped out on a grander boat and the spent the holiday at the castle white-washing the towers of every withered rose, daubing every espaliered bougainvillea thorn in every desiccated secret garden with a snow flake made of the coldest pewter, and tried to scratch the devil's face from every hot coin falling from the pockets of the dropped pants of aging rock stars and defaced every cent pouring from the unclasped purses of the hitched-up skirts of bent-over Age of Reason philosophers, erased the drawings of mad artists, tore pages from the notebooks of Russian novelists, and cheated croupiers, tripped retired ballerinas, cut the lines of water skiers, canceled agents, robbed hobby enthusiasts of glue, bakers of flour, wasted the expensive wine of generous patrons, and, in their nameless thousands, ignored the menu suggestions of waiters, left drivers un-tipped, denied shop girls the grace of a bon merci , hung up on receptionists, kicked window washers from their ladders, left a mess for cleaning women, laughed at carriage-less nannies, tongue-less Berlitz teachers, and the countless bezique players, florists and footmen standing on the shore in service to the memory of the exiled Queen of Spain, enslaved to their hunger, the complexities of modern life - and had painted, with wire bristles growing from the ends of my fingers, what I thought were sweet Deft tiles on porcelain light-switch plates meant for the gifts X boxed and wrapped and gave away to his needy crew.
Obama appeared at the hatch of my boat , the hatch opened, and the carpet rolled up the stairs. Obama woke the seadog and apologized to us both for already disappointing the world.
I asked Obama to come in from the rain. He came in, took off his coat and laid it across the billiard table . The silk lining of his coat was printed with faces, all those from the lake, and of Lincoln, JFK, Che Guevarra, Hillary Clinton, Matthew Shepard, Nina Simone, Johnny Cash, Coco Chanel, Cosette from Les Miserables, (her very image from the poster!), Queen Liliʻuokalani, a Guantanamo prisoner in flickering neon orange, X, and a thousand more, each of them speaking, or singing, or crying at once in tart atonal harmony.
And when Rod Serling passed the microphone from the little drummer boy to Farah Pahlavi she sang her song of revolution from the Imperial banquette at the foot of the Belle Epoch stage where Obama stood grinning, and he lit two cigarettes, handed me one, and asked me three questions:

When did I ever say I was the first black candidate?
When did I ever claim to be your savior?
When has criticism of me been forbidden?

I had no answers for Obama, told him so, and speaking softly from the projection booth told him Mr. Salazar was no gentleman not to remove his hat when introduced as designate for Secretary of the Interior, and hearing this, the multitude of characters swimming through my mind moaned like pixilated ghosts, all as one, in the antique voice of Marcel Proust, and scrambled up Obama's coat sleeves like rain drops reversing, and fell up from the castle into a clearing sky.

III.
The weather eased, the seadog growled at a stuffed toy squirrel, and an invitation to a gay Hollywood wedding of came in the mail. X read it to me holding the spoon through the cloth of the lost portrait, and I played solitaire till I woke, losing game after game with a deck of religious cards that was missing the Jack o' Bamas.

The Aeroplane

2008-11-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

...I had gone on horseback to call on the Verdurins and had taken an unfrequented path through the woods the beauty of which they had extolled to me. Hugging the contours of the cliff, it alternately climbed and then, hemmed in by dense woods on either side, dived into wild gorges. For a moment the barren rocks by which I was surrounded, and the sea that was visible through their jagged gaps, swam before my eyes like fragments of another universe: I had recognized the marine and mountainous landscape which Elstir had made of the scene of those two admirable watercolours, "Poet meeting a Muse" and "Young Man meeting a Centaur" which I had seen at the Duchesse de Guermantes's. The memory of them transported the place in which I now found myself so far outside the world of to-day that I should not have been surprised if, like the prehistoric age that Elstir painted, I had come upon a mythological personage in the course of my ride. Suddenly, my horse reared; he had heard a strange sound; then I raised my tear-filled eyes in the direction from which the sound seemed to come and saw, not two hundred feet above my head, against the sun, between two great wings of flashing metal which were bearing him aloft, a creature whose indistinct face appeared to me to resemble that of a man. I was as deeply moved as a Greek on seeing for the first time a demi-god. I wept - for I had been ready to weep the moment I realized that the sound came from above my head (aeroplanes were still rare in those days), at the thought that what I was going to see for the first time was an aeroplane. Then, just as when in a newspaper one senses that one is coming to a moving passage, the mere sight of the machine was enough to make me burst into tears. Meanwhile the airman seemed to be uncertain of his course; I felt that there lay open before him - before me, had not habit made me a prisoner - all the routes in space, in life itself; he flew on; let himself glide for a few moments over the sea, then quickly making up his mind, seemed to yield to some attraction that was the reverse of gravity, as though returning to his native element, with a slight adjustment of his golden wings he headed straight up into the sky.
~Cities of the Plain, Part Two: Chapter Three, page 1061-2.

Before and after

2008-11-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

Boo!

2008-10-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

The Matinée Guermantes: Four guests, wigged, with and without masks and beards

2008-10-31T07:25:00.000-07:00

Mme X

The prince de Guermantes

Mme de Forcheville

The former Prime Minister

These were puppets bathed in the immaterial colours of the years, puppets exteriorized by Time, Time which by Habit is made invisible and to become visible seeks bodies, which wherever it finds it siezes to display its magic lanterne upon them.

~Le temps retrouvé

Resemblances, Part Five

2008-10-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

Charlus's stable boy.

The milk-maid at the train station.

The princess de Parme.

Swann's carriage driver.

The lift boy at the Balbec Grand Hôtel.

Aunt Léonie.

Théodor the grocer's boy with a swarm of angels around his head taking Aunt Léonie's market order.

A parlour maid with her mop.

The footman recognizing the duc de Châtellerault on the reception hall steps.

The duc de Châtelleraux telling the footman "Je ne parle pas le français".

A pastry chef.

Mme Putbuss's maid.

Mme de Saint-Euverte's chauffeur.

The boy who resembles the Angel on the Day of Atonement.

Mme de Saint-Euverte.

Brichot.

Doctor Cottard.

Norpois.

Mlle Stermaria.

Uncle Adolphe.

Mamma, from the photograph by Nadar.

Leaf on rug

2008-10-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

Resemblances, Part Four: Five of the Help and the ruined Château de Guermantes

2008-09-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

Marquisse, the water-closet attendant on the Champs-Elysées.

A chambermaid.

Aimée, restaurant manager.

Françoise's kitchen maid who Swann thought resembled Giotto's figure of Charity on the intrado of the Cathedral at Padua.

Poullein, the footman denied his afternoon off and the chance to see his girlfriend by the Duchesse de Guermantes.

The ruined Château de Guermantes.

(The images expand when clicked.)

Resemblances, part three

2008-08-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Albert Bloch about to recite Homeric verse in response

to a question on the weather.

Mme Bontemps worried that Marcel might not marry Albertine.

Jupien contemplating giving up his shirt maker's shop for the bordello.

Charles Morel no longer in need of his violin.

Andrée watching Marcel the last summer at Balbec.

Basin de Guermantes eyeing carriage mares.

Resemblances, part two

2008-07-27T16:23:00.001-07:00

Bergotte pleased to hear Marcel has read every word he's written.

Berma wearing her cowl in a performance of Racine’s Phèdre.

Vinteuil in retirement at Combray.

Elstir recalling his first drawing of Odette.

Françoise worried Marcel might marry Albertine.

Mme de Villeparisis resembling
Draouais' Mme Pompadour at her tambor.

Rachel recalling a comment about
anti-Dryfusard lesbianism.

Legrandin greeting Charlus at the Hôtel de Guermantes,

hoping Charlus does not recall their moment in the train station

Waiting for Balsa

2008-07-11T12:19:00.001-07:00

Still life, MSPaint.

Resemblances

2008-07-04T16:44:00.001-07:00

Oriane de Guermantes after winning a game of lawn tennis at la Raspelière.

(All images are acrylic on 3x4.5 balsa panels, 2008.

They enlarge when clicked.)

Baron de Charlus returned to Paris, refreshed after a month at Balbec.

Charles Swann with the monocle he never wore.

Odette de Crécy dressed as Oriane de Guermantes.

Gilberte Swann watching Marcel.

Albertine Simonet in her Fortuny gown.

Mme Verdurin somewhat amused by a non-sequiter.

Robert Saint-Loup the day before he fell in the trenches.

Mme Amèdée watching Marcel as they listen to

the water-closet attendant on the Champs-Elysée.

Nadar's Marcel at 16.

A complete gallery of the characters from À la recherche du temps perdu would include more of the narrator’s family than his grandmother Berthilde, Mme Amèdée. Mamma, it goes without saying, would appear in a place of honor, and Father, and Aunt Léonie of the madeleines and the lime tisanes, and Uncle Adolphe with whom Marcel first meets Odette. François the family servant should join them of course; perhaps Eulalie. The walls would be crowded.

The actress Berma, the author Bergotte, the painter Elstir and the composer Vinteuil each deserve a portrait. Basin, Duc de Guermantes, and the Prince and Princess de Guermantes in their various incarnations must hang in the gallery. Monsieur Norpois and Mme de Villeparisis are necessary; the Princesses de Parme and Luxembourg; (or were they the same person?) perhaps not so much. Mme Verdurin needs M. Verdurin along with rest of the “little clan”: the Cottards, Brichot, Ski, Princess Sherbatoff and Saniette. The Bontemps and the Marsantes, the Cambremers and Mme Saint–Euverte must round out society with the Arpajons, the Ambresacs and Gri-gri Agrigente. Forcheville must be there for Odette and Gilberte. Rachel the actress, Mme Stermaria, Andrée, of the “little band at Balbec”, and Bloch, Albert the nephew and even his uncle Saloman need a place. Jupien and Jupien’s niece (or is it his daughter?), and Charles Morel must surround and support the Baron de Charlus. And it would be pointless without portraits of the manager of the Grand Hotel, of the lift boy, and of Mme Putbus’s maid.

Except for Nadar’s photograph of Marcel the 10 portraits here are of course imaginative. That they each share some resemblance is a measure of how much each is a facet of Marcel’s soul: In the end we must have faith in Marcel’s diligence and sincerity as well as our own.

Château de Creysse

2008-07-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

Acrylic on masonite, 2008, 8.5x6 inches.

Saint Francis

2008-07-04T15:50:00.001-07:00

Acrylic on masonite, 2008, 3.25x3.75 inches.

Three paintings from the nineties

2008-07-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

My Constant Shade, 1994, acrylic on masonite, 11.75x13 inches.

Battle Mountain, 2001, acrylic on masonite, 13.75x11 inches.

Cow Mountain, 1998, acrylic on masonite, 11.75x13 inches.

The Lynx off Point Vicente

2008-07-04T15:25:00.001-07:00

March 2008, acrylic on canvas, 8x24 inches

Detail

The Noisy Fourth

2008-07-04T08:53:00.001-07:00

St Francis returning to Asissi

2008-06-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Blue butterfly in the portulaca

2008-06-13T16:27:00.001-07:00

les Circlettes

2008-06-10T13:55:00.001-07:00

City of Marigolds

2008-06-09T12:36:00.001-07:00

Alice at Machu Picchu

2008-05-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

Alice at Machu Picchu, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 12x18 inches.

~Usted Aprende~

Después de un rato usted aprende la diferencia sutil
Entre tener una mano y encadenar un alma,

Y usted aprende que ese amor no significa inclinar
Y la compañía no significan la seguridad.

Y usted comienza a aprender que besa no son los contratos
Y los presentes no son las promesas,

Y usted comienza a aceptar que sus derrotas
Con la cabeza arriba y los ojos abren
Con la gracia de una mujer,no la pena de un niño,

Y usted aprende a construir todos sus caminos en hoy
Porque el suelo de Mañana es demasiado incierto paraplanes
Y futuros tiene la costumbre de caer en el medio-vuelo.

Después de un rato usted aprende...

Eso aún quemaduras de sol si usted consigue demasiado.
Así que usted planta su jardín y decora su propia alma, en vez de esperar alguien traerle florece.

Y usted aprende que usted puede aguantar realmente...

Que usted es realmente fuerte

Y usted tiene realmente el valor...

Y usted aprende y aprende...

Con cada adiós que usted aprende.

~Jorge Luis Borges

Coco honors Cpl. Squirrel

2008-05-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Reconstructing palaces

2008-05-19T17:20:00.001-07:00

The Alhambra, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 12x10 inches.

EVR photo: Sony cybershot dsc h50.

In my studio of big dreams The Scribe holds his broken arm and a palm-frond crucifix across his knees. He sits on the computer tower along with one speaker, the African statue and the porcelain angel, and he looks, as much as rough clay can, out across the lawn, beyond my reconstructed Alhambra on the screen, to a fat bee humming Granada in the flowering chamomille: dangerous enchantment to the watching dog.

Coco and Mr. Squirrel!

2008-05-13T12:40:00.001-07:00

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u7XTDRg3o7Y

Happy fuchias

2008-05-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

The dog chases a squirrel and wild parrots screech in the purple jacaranda while happy fuchias smile under warm fog from the sea,

remembering their funky weekend.

Coco de Mayo!

2008-05-05T10:38:00.001-07:00

May Day

2008-05-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

Constantine P. Cavafy, 29 April 1863 - 29 April 1933

2008-04-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

Today, while they embed the new French drain in the patio,
Send 145 life and death greetings to Constantine P. Cavafy:

Whose student, closer to Shanghai than Istanbul,
dreams past the porcelain Hospice of Sta. Caterina
and walks into the field where his mother,
who to him has become the Duchesse d’Guermantes,
sits on the hood of an antique Rolls-Royce smoking cigarettes.

And look how he promises her a portrait

of each border crossed resident:
That she might know each family and send each a
Welcome Wagon.

http://cavafis.compupress.gr/index.htm

From a notebook: 30 June 1997

2008-04-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

FLORENCE.

Of all the fairest cities of the Earth
None is so fair as FLORENCE. Tis' a gem
Of the purest ray; and what light broke forth,
When it emerged from darkness! Search within,
Without; all is enchantment! 'Tis the past
Contending with the Present; and in turn
Each has the mastery...

~Samuel Rogers, Italy, A Poem, 1830

Freesias

2008-04-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Secret Garden, Baudelaire and The Confluence

2008-04-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

Celui dont les pensers, comme des alouettes,

Vers les cieux le matin prennent un libre essor,

- Qui plane sur la vie, et comprend sans effort

Le langage des fleurs et des choses muettes!

(The man whose thoughts, like larks, take to their wings

Each morning, freely speeding through the air,

- Who soars above this life,

interpreter Of flowers' speech, the voice of silent things!)

The last stanza of The Elevation, from Fleur-du-Mal, by Charles Baudelaire, 9 April 1821 - 31 August 1867. The translation is by James McGowan. Today is Baudelaire's 187th birthday.

The image above Baudelaire's stanza is a camfone photo, detailed in MSPaint, taken by a Polaroid of a 5 x 6 foot 1992 canvas originally called 'The Secret Garden', which was painted over later that year with another painting called 'The Confluence', below. It hangs in France, and was first posted here.

Poems from Dry Creek: New and Selected Work by John Dofflemyer

2008-04-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

Miss Bingo, 1992, acrylic on masonite, 11 x 12 inches.

Photo by S. Chopper Martinez.

~ Io~

On the horns of an infant moon,
the creek shrinks and pools
between sycamores and live oaks

as babies come to first-time mothers
bringing the bear tracks downcanyon
on the scent of spent placentas.

Black progeny of the river nymph -
white heifer driven madly by Hera's
gadfly Oestrus to cross continents

and populate Asia - find maternity
perplexing at first. Yet, lick and nuzzle
the stumbling wet struggle to stand,

suckle and rest that enflames instinct
in all flesh. Worthy timeless worship,
no better mother ever than a cow.

~ John Dofflemyer, Poems from Deer Creek, 2008.

Fifty-four poems new and selected poems are published by Starhaven in London.

The note at the start of the book says this:

"John Dofflemyer is a cattle-rancher and poet. His work has been widely published in journals and chapbooks. He lives at the edge of the Sierra Nevadas on a piece of land his family has worked since shortly after the California goldrush.

The cover of this book incorprates a drawing by Cloyd J. Sweigert, an early settler of the Santa Clara Valley who took an agricultural degree at the University of California at Berkeley before going on to become a cartoonist for The San Francisco Chronicle. "

I met John and his wife Robin at another ranch in the Sierras several years ago. John could as easily be writing from or about any country. He recently gave a reading of his poems in West Los Angeles.

Reading "Io" in his new book, I saw my own 'Miss Bingo' standing in 'worthy timeless worship' on her platform in the hills. She was inspired by a cow bingo game at a street fair in Lindsay, California, 15 or so years ago. She looks a little old to be a heifer, but her bovinity is clear.

I've happily added John and Robbin's website, Dry Crik Journal, to the list of links at the right.

Three boats on Santa Monica Bay, 2008

2008-04-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches.

The Willamette: The Canby Ferry, 18 July 1998

2008-04-06T10:32:00.000-07:00

Small watercolors meant for postcards; never sent, found stuck away in an old notebook.

Crossing the Channel: drawings from a sketchbook, 10 July 1976

2008-04-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Dover, 2:30AM.

Dover to Calais, 2:30AM.

Calais, 3:30Am.

~The Night Boat~

Looking back from the aft deck

keep England in sight across the ferry’s wake.

Let France come on slowly, from behind,

through a passage of dreams and clouds lit with great expectation.

Then turn around and draw the waves as if they were letters home

telling your mother everything's fine, still asking for money.

~3 April 2008

Coco

2008-04-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

Max Butler's avalokitasvara

2008-03-31T15:36:00.000-07:00

He is able who thinks he is able.

Goya's little dog

2008-03-31T15:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks to wood s lot

Easter Sunday

2008-03-31T15:13:00.000-07:00

Teed's Catalina

Poppies at Pt. Vicente

Lookin' for a drink!

I like Easter because...

2008-03-23T07:21:00.000-07:00

...it is Springtime's Halloween.

CStP's Angel on the Bay

2008-03-23T07:17:00.001-07:00

~ On Angel Island ~

Clio, history's muse, lived on quahogs and taters through her early years
and set the zendo bells to rhyme with
sunrise and art.
Away from Maine,
she does as she pleases,
saving lost slabcaptains and buffers
from electrophoresis.

* * *

(Original card and figure by Carol St.Pierre; MSPainted seascape and poem by myself)

I will be your lastyear's Easter wheelbarrow

2008-03-17T22:58:00.000-07:00

Patti Torrey singing at the Home Pond: Battle Mountain Ranch

2008-03-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

20x16 inches, acrylic on canvas, 2004.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.

Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.

But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.

I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Some say once you're gone you're gone forever, and some say you're gonna come back.

Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.

Some say that they're comin' back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.

I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.

Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.

But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.

I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory and I ain't saying it ain't a fact.

But I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory and I don't like the sound of that.

Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.

But I choose to let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.

Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.

But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.

I think I'll just let the mystery be.

~Iris Dement

Storm passing Santa Monica Bay

2008-03-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

Acrylic on canvas, 8 January 2008, 12x12 inches.

1982

2008-03-01T07:27:00.000-08:00

Untitled landscape, 1982, acrylic on canvas, 42x60 inches.

Collection of the artist.

The Delta

2008-02-08T10:54:00.000-08:00

Watercolor on paper, 14 February 1986, 4x10 inches.

Reproduced by kind permission and the assistance of

Ned Newt Takahashi and Bernie Schimbke.

Maybe too early to last...

2008-01-24T23:00:00.001-08:00

...ooh there's been some nice squalls and a good amount of rain on parking lots and fruit trees exploding in back and forth colorful spells of early warm weather,

then cold again: apples, cherries, almonds, all in flower.

Papa was a Rodeo

2008-01-20T22:39:00.000-08:00

Papa was a Rodeo, The Magnetic Fields,

69 Love Songs, vol. 2, Merge, 1999.

Beach Paintings thought lost found in old computer

2008-01-16T11:16:00.001-08:00

Quartersheet watercolors from 2003.

Giles and the Donkey!

2008-01-14T08:02:00.000-08:00

My Rondré YouTube

2008-01-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

AH! Mes frères, ha ha! Merci!

Old year new year

2008-01-01T14:16:00.000-08:00

Point Vicente, EVR.

Christmas message from La Boissière!

2007-12-24T12:34:00.000-08:00

Ron Notto, Chats transparants, 2007, app. 28x32 inches, oil on canvas, 2007, one of three.

The other two cats in a kitchen are in the message.

Coco and the Duchess of Alba

2007-12-24T12:12:00.000-08:00

Acrylic on canvas, 12x12 inches; apologies to Francisco Goya.

detail

Peras amb Vi Negre

2007-12-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

Tres guapas, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 24x24 inches.

Notes for a Spanish Progressive Dinner~

My great-grandmother, Victoria Buenaventura de Avila de Gil was born on her family’s rancho near Jolon, California and baptized at Mission San Antonio de Padua in 1871.

This painting was done from her wedding photo...

Her parents were Maria Linares Avila and José María Gil, whose parents and their parent’s parents were Californios from the time of the second expedition of Juan Bautista de Anza sent west from Tubac by Carlos III in 1775.

The name José María Gil is first recorded at Mission San Antonio in 1782.

Spanish records of the Gil family are first found in the city of Santander, in the province of Cantabria.

There are Gils throughout Spain, most notably in Galicia where they married Hibernian Celts, and in Andalucía where they married conversos from Málaga and Granada.

Gils first appeared in the Americas in Chile in the 16th century.

Gramma Vickie's favorite dessert was Peres amb Vi Negre, an ancient recipe from Catalonia, from where, according to family legend, pear seeds were sent wrapped in the mantilla of the Duchess of Alba so that José María Gil would plant pear trees in the new world and the love between them never forgotten.

07advance08

2007-12-21T11:01:00.000-08:00

at hour Norethenjemsiphere, 1:o8AM, 22dizciembres2oo7, tunuit, rmatins, sunreturns, YAY!

Down in the old country

2007-12-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

Hatchett Peak from the parking lot of the new conveniance store, EVR, 8 December 2007.

The Grapevine, EVR, 9 December 2007.

Smoke not fog

2007-11-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

Malibu from Redondo, 7:22am, 24 November 2007, fonecam.

We went down to the water yesterday and watched the latest Malibu fire for awhile. All that wind swept smoke has blown on shore this morning, but there's some marine air, or something like, so the ash isn't airborne and lung infesting, it's just wet, and falls to the ground where they say it's good for dichondra and grampa's driving range, something to be thankful for, what do you think?

Rinaldo Alessandro Niccolo Notto

2007-11-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Portrait of My Friend at Seventy, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches.

This was to be your birthday present,

but I could not send it, cannot give it up,

it will always hang above my desk.

One drawing, three details

2007-11-07T10:35:00.000-08:00

28 October 2007, ink on watercolor paper, 11.25 x 30 inches.

Left detail.

Center detail.

Right detail.

The Sycamore Tree

2007-11-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

The world is pigeon gray: warm underneath but cool above at the feathery end of the blowing fog where low clouds grab and drag Hokusai wave tops across the surf, across the beach. Wet sand flies along The Esplanade, grainy spitballs that scour concrete and skin and clothes.

I sit and dream on a bench with the dog, watching people, staring out to sea, running the Philip Glass Akhnaten prelude through my head, wondering at the perceived distance, (quickly closing but without danger of collision), between the two converging points of an empty container ship on the far horizon and the ketch leaving the harbor.

I am looking at the sea but thinking of the sycamore tree in the yard, trimmed naked yesterday by three men wearing plaid shirts and khaki pants.

My hood is up, my hands are in my pockets; the dog is quiet in the weather.

A mother wheels a baby carriage, a jogger runs by, a few tourists from the United States lean on the rails of an embankment taking photographs of the coast.

An old and beautifully sun creased beach town woman passes, her tightly bound coral head scarf is the color of her lip gloss; the scarf is just damp enough to mash her hair and stick the curls and rayon together like the frothy coat of the rheumy yellow spaniel she walks after a crab cake lunch with a friend at New Tony's-on-the-Pier.

She looks straight ahead and down The Esplanade as she walks her dog, she is used to being looked at, salty spray dots her blackout shades, traces of Shalimar, cooking oil and chardonnay steam from her turned up Burberry collar.

The dogs in the wind make eye contact without incident.

“Come Monty”, she says, changing her leash hand to search for what I guess to be a half gone package of Tareytons. Coral nails are revealed, blue veins and a large pink diamond, and with a quick inhalation, her nose flaring imperceptibly, she clutches a wad of tissues in her pocket, and remembers smoking cigarettes so very long ago.

I watch her walk on up The Esplanade, turn east towards Avalon Boulevard and I imagine she stops for a tin of Altoids at the corner store, ties Monty to The Sea Breeze rack, (“Stay Monty”), then walks into the warm darkness of the market, eyes the tobacco shelves behind Mr. Habib and buys a pint of Tanqueray along with the mints.

She leaves and passes the car detailer from The Inland Empire on his way to the beach with his daughter and a football and she will pass the skateboarder, whom she remembers from a loud time last August, when the boy broke all laws of sound and physics between the buildings in her narrow street, and then further on she will walk up the stairs to her apartment humming something, she can't quite remember the name, from Martha and the Vandellas .

I stay close to home and watch the raven above the squirrel in the hang man’s sycamore and yell at the little dog to kindly shut the fuck up.

Though they will kill each other if you let them, they will not hurt you I tell her, I will not let them hurt you.

It’s dark early now, there are no more leaves.

Seated Scribe, Gentile Bellini, c. 1480

2007-11-06T19:06:00.000-08:00

Ah!

Caught napping!

Ha ha! Yes. I fell asleep.

The morning is gray, no shadows, the fog is thick. There's a chill: things and the ground are wet, and for the first time this season the doors are closed to keep the chill from the sea off the dog's back and my bare legs. The hood is up on my sweatshirt, I feel monkish. Sounds are blanketed under the clouds and the yaking of the ravens and gulls and wild parrots in the magnolia behind the lattice becomes intimate to me, like an audience murmuring before the composer raises his baton.

But I will wake up now, make tea, stream some music and work till Santino brings lunch.

Nothing too loud.

Three drawings, nine details

2007-10-19T10:51:00.001-07:00

5 October 2oo7, ink on watercolor paper, 7 x 22.5 inches.

Right detail.

Center detail.

Left detail.

7 October 2007, ink on watercolor paper, 7 x22.5 inches.

Right detail.

Center detail.

Right detail.

10 October 2007, ink on watercolor paper, 7 x 22.5 inches.

Left detail.

Center detail.

Right detail.

Leaves

2007-10-06T15:05:00.001-07:00

Camera phone, Sycamore, 9:30AM

Two paintings

2007-09-16T11:38:00.001-07:00

El Redondo Avenue, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 36 inches.

The Hollywood Hills, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 36 inches.

Notebook drawings. 13 May - 20 June, 2007

2007-09-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

Cagnes-sur-Redondo

2007-08-10T15:06:00.001-07:00

A day with MSPaint. It looks better when clicked and enlarged.

The Pacific: The Sea

2007-08-07T10:36:00.001-07:00

Above are details of below,
The full Courbet,
The full Carmel,
Or Balbec waters,
At Redondo?

Acrylic on canvas, 3-5 August 2007, 7x14 inches.

But before all this I had drawn back my own curtains, impatient to know what Sea it was that was playing that morning by the shore, like a Nereid. For none of those Seas ever stayed with us longer than a day. The next day there would be another, which sometimes resembled its predecessor. But I never saw the same one twice.

~Place-names: The Place, À la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel Proust, Volume I, 1919, (Moncrieff-Kilmartin), page 757.

Acrylic on canvas, (1 through 5), 2-7 August 2007, 7x14 inches.

Work in Progress

2007-08-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha, 1855.

Albert Floyd Wilson

and

David Emilio Martinez:

cousins, full members of the Tribe.

Acrylic on canvas, 22 July - 1 August, 2007, 14x11 inches, w.i.p.

Meditations on a Roman wall

2007-07-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

The original fresco: The Garden Scene from the House of Livia
at Primaporte, circa late 1st Century bce.

Watercolor on paper with gesso petals, 13 July 2007, 7x7 inches.

Ink on watercolor paper, 14 July, 2007, 8x8 inches.

1 through 4 below, acrylic on canvas, 18 July, 2007, 8x8 inches.

Snailhead

2007-07-13T15:10:00.001-07:00

Note book drawing from 26 April, 1997.

I've added some thoughts to the post of 17 May, 2007. They can be found here, under the painting of Snailhead.

Live Earth Day

2007-07-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

Untitled, 7.7.07, watercolor on paper, 7 x 7 inches.

Little Deer Creek, 1983

2007-06-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

Little Deer Creek, 1983, watercolor on paper, 9x13 inches.

Reproduced with permission of The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Cropped and enlarged.

After breakfast, when Michael went into town for supplies with Peter Rochia, I walked down behind the stone house Peter had taken that year he was in from Rome, walked down to the creek with my paint box, a straw hat and a fresh bag of spliff, and began painting in the hot Nevada City sun.

I started with the grid Peter convinced me was the trick to Renaissance compositions and meditated a moment on Botticelli’s figure of Mercury; he stands magically, all gravity denied, a torch in his hand, lighting the left hand side of ‘Primavera’, looking away from Venus and the Graces into the mysteries of the whatever art must truly lie beyond the frame, and I divided the paper with a 5H pencil, never my usual rule, figuring the golden mean would be revealed subconsciously beneath the manganese blue and cobalt violet in an honest account of the dense willows and aspens hiding the froggy rivulet with a screen of summer color.

It was the Fourth of July. I worked through the afternoon, Michael and Peter came back with food. We grilled chicken and Peter made a pasta sauce with tomatoes and lavender from the garden. This use of the herb was a novelty to Michael and me in those days. John Campbell and John Seaver stopped for dinner and we drank far too many bottles of the Chianti Peter had shipped over from Italy, watching the fireworks from Grass Valley shoot into the stars above the ridge.

I finished the painting at the drafting table at home in Noe Street, in the room that became the bedroom, without the hat or smoke, but with the rattling window left half open for any fog and breeze that might keep my memory fresh, and dry the sweat of the work of it. I painted on weekends then, it took 3 or 4.

Bob McDonald tagged the painting for an exhibit at the museum in Santa Cruz. He was the director there, intent on enlarging the permanent collection. The museum bought ‘Little Deer Creek’, hung it with a Warhol and a Jasper Johns, alongside work by Crawford Barton, Terry Allen and Joe DiGiorgio, and, to my surprise, it was selected by the viewing audience as the most popular of the show.

Greg Reeder took the photograph. Not quite close enough to show the extravagant focus of the neo-pointillism I loved and labored over in those days, but if you angle your screen just right you’ll get the color and feeling I was trying for, even some evidence of Peter's grid.

Marla Novo at the Santa Cruz Museum was kind to send the jpeg today.