Coming Back

This morning I'm honking into my Kleenex, barking out ragged coughs, and slouching around the house in my wooly socks and slippers.  And the thing is, I'm feeling much better.

What is it about taking a nice winter vacation?  Why can't I just pack my bag, go have fun, and be done with it?  Why must I be a magnet for other people's viruses?  It happened last year in Mexico, and this year it happened again, after our cruise into the eastern Caribbean.  I'm not sure If I was infected by our chatty team trivia players from Memphis, or from one of the many coughing and sneezing fellow travelers in the Fort Lauderdale airport, or even from other human sardines on the airplanes.  It's a mystery.

It doesn't matter.  Colds happen.  And they spread.  Now my dear husband is sneezing and coughing and stretched out full length on the sofa.  I used up all the cough medicine, so I need to go out and buy some for him.

But back to the trip.  It was good.  Windy, but good.  This was our sixth Holland America cruise, this time from Fort Lauderdale to Aruba, Curacao, the Panama Canal, and Costa Rica.  We were supposed to have a day at Half Moon Cay, but there were 40 mph winds and high seas, such that the ship could not safely tender in, so we had an extra day at sea. Oh well. The cruise accomplished our greatest winter goal, which was to warm up and to see green. 

What I like best about cruising - coffee delivered to our cabin in the morning and then sitting on the little verandah to drink it,  the incredibly pleasant staff, walking around the navigation deck looking at other passengers and whatever else is out there in the sea (other ships, islands, flying fish), playing trivia in the Crows Nest, cocktails in the Crows Nest, catching some sunshine, meeting interesting people from around the world, seeing new places and wild creatures. Seeing masses of Pepto-Bismol colored flamingos standing in a salt flat was a wonderful surprise. I also enjoy having time to read.  This time I plowed through three enjoyable books: Life after Life; Life Itself; and Miss Hargreaves.

Things I don't especially like - worrying about how the cat is doing back home, sleeping in a strange bed, constant time zone changes, constant commercials for spa services and consumer goods, clueless people in the buffet lines, loud music piped into every public space, toxic individuals at dinner, the mild vertigo I get from the rocking of the ship, getting there and getting home again.

Anyway, I took a few photos, some of which follow.

A Month Off

I see that I have not posted for an entire month.  In fact, while I have not been doing any painting for portrait work, just some sketching, I have been busy with other pursuits.

At the beginning of the month we spent a week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We've traveled there several times, because we crave sunshine during gloomy January, and for the whales in Banderas Bay,  for the interesting art galleries and for the food. It is also fine to be able to walk outside without bundling up for the cold or worrying about slipping on ice. 

This time we made it a priority to try new places to eat, a little off the beaten path.  I found myself falling in love with all sorts of tacos, pork carnitas, fish, barbeque shrimp.  All were delicious.

We've been back for a while now , and the sun already feels like it was long ago.  I've been busy with mundane things since we returned - replacing my nearly dead iMac and printer, figuring out how to use the new equipment, and purging parts of my wardrobe that no longer fit or are useful. 

What follows is a handful of photos from the trip to Mexico.  Maybe I can figure out a way to incorporate some of them into paintings.

Back Again

The end of summer, a sad time, and exciting as well.  The summer flowers in my yard all have started looking ratty. I had to pull out the impatiens, not because of frost, but because we had so much rain and humidity that they either rotted or some bug or fungus got them.  But the mums I popped in to replace them look fine.

At the end of August I drove to Michigan for a much anticipated artist workshop.  It turned out to be something of a disappointment to me.  I still admire the artist's work, but her style of teaching was not one I liked.  To my mind she was ultra critical and negative, and at one point I wrote in my notes "I do not feel safe."  That would be emotionally safe, since she was prone to suddenly calling on class members out of the blue, and then showing them up to either be not paying sufficient attention or able to discern what it was she was after.  I did enjoy her demonstrations, and getting to see her work up close.  I made a new friend. I learned to use a GPS.  There were good things, but since I came home I have spent essentially zero time in the studio - which must change.

Just a few days after I got back from the week long workshop, we flew to Montana, rented a car, and spent five days at Yellowstone National Park.  This was the first time we got to use our senior passes, bought for $10 at an office in Madison a year or so ago.  Neither of us had been there since we were children, so we were happy and anxious to revisit the iconic park.  The weather was interesting, sometimes very warm, sometimes freezing, mostly according to elevation.  I wore shorts and sleeveless tops, and jeans, wool socks and multiple shirts, all in one trip.  The scenery was stunning, and we enjoyed out stay at the Old Faithful Inn Show Lodge.  The only thing I missed seeing, that I remembered from childhood was bears.  No bears.  But we saw lots of bison, elk and deer, so I was happy.

Under a Volcano - a Week in Costa Rica

February in Wisconsin wears me out psychologically.  Christmas is long over.  Gray skies and snowdrifts have lost their novelty, and spring isn't particularly close.  I get tired of wool socks and lots of layers of clothing.  I grow really tired of scraping ice off the windshield.

So, since we retired, we have tried to take one or two trips around now, to get a chance to expose our winter white skin to the sun, to smell flowers, and to hear birds.  This month we traveled with UW Whitewater to Costa Rica.

It was great, though the trips there and back were long and tiring.  Still the people were nice, the weather was good, and we saw things we had never seen up close and personal before.

First new experience, volcanoes.  The highland of Costa Rica have six active volcanoes, and we saw two, Poas and Arenal.  We saw Poas first, and noticed first the thinner air, as we had to hike to the crater.  I was also surprised how misty and foggy it was, though I realize now that fog and mist is common in a rain forest.

The crater is filled with rain water and sulpher, which bubbles and spits.  Sometimes it was visible, and sometimes it disappeared into a cloud of mist.

Arenal has the perfect cone of a cartoon volcano, complete with steam venting from the summit.  We stayed at a resort whose widows all faced the tremendous cone.  It was stunningly beautiful, and vaguely threatening.  In 1968 it erupted, killing 88 people.  Currently it is classified as resting.

This was the view from our room.  I loved the giant crotons that served as a privacy hedge.  In the morning the evening flocks of white egrets would fly across this scene, and roost in a tree near the small river that flowed nearby.  That river water was off limits, since it also housed caymen, but we did take advantage of a swimming pool filled with very warm hot spring water.  Heaven on aching knees.

Thing seemed to be blooming everywhere, and there were lots of birds and butterflies to go with the flowers.  I could resist a couple photos of flowers.

In this area we also visited a coffee plantation.  The pictures that follow show coffee cherries, workers sun drying beans, and our guide Jose with samples of coffee. The coffee served everywhere was strong, smooth and flavorful. 

I'll continue with a few more highlights of our eight day trip in a day or two.

Enchanted April - Part One

There is a movie from the nineties about a group of English women who are run almost to the ground by their gloomy lives.  But when one of them sees an advertisement in the newspaper for an Italian villa, she decides to leave darkness behind and head for warmth and sunshine, and she finds three others to share expenses. Their lives are changed by the soft beauty of the place.  My husband and I recently returned from a short cruise on Holland America's Eurodam that began in Barcelona, Spain, and covered much of the Italian Riviera, including Castle Brown in Portofino, the setting for the film Enchanted April.  I cannot resist sharing some of my photographs from the trip.

My dear husband is of the opinion that one should spend all his or her time actually looking at scenery, people, artwork.  But ever since I was old enough to hold a Brownie camera I have loved taking pictures.  On a cruise like ours that zips from place to place in a whirlwind, I find that my photos allow me to slow down and savor what I saw, remember it, think about it.  Dream about returning. I love my photos.

We arrived in Barcelona a couple days early so that any delays would not jeopardize our embarking on the ship on time, and also to rest a little and sight see. This photo was taken in our hotel room, the Hotel Indigo.  Immediately I could see that in this city style is important.  There is color, pattern, design, everywhere.  This graphic suggests the organic forms of the architect Antoni Gaudi, whose buildings are the epitome of Catalan Modernism style.

                           La Predrera, a Barcelona apartment building designed by Gaudi.

        La Sagrada Familia cathedral, also designed by Gaudi, and still under construction.



Gaudi designed all sorts of elaborate, almost surreal looking buildings, but our time was short. And certainly there is pattern and beautiful design everywhere - from the sidewalks under foot, to public sculpture to tile work and mosaics in building old and new.

 The old Cathedral of Barcelona, which is beautiful inside and out, and is surrounded by public art.

                Book art, spotted in a shop window in the old Gothic Quarter of Barcelona.

This is the old bull ring of Barcelona, with magnificent tile work all round.  Bull fighting has been banned in Catalonia, so now this structure has been converted into a shopping mall.

Barcelona has lots and lots of graffiti, but the city seems to have embraced it as public art, and many of the walls and metal security doors that secure shops are spray painted.  I saw this "Bye Bye Barcelona" image in several places and wondered about it.  It turns out this is an ad for a documentary available on YouTube with the same name about how tourism is changing the city.  Not everyone is happy about the thousands of foreign tourists who visit every year.

And it isn't just the shops, museums or architecture that is appealing here.  The city seems well planned, with wide streets, parks, fountains, bicycle and scooter lanes, and a tram system. 

There seems to be plenty of green spaces, park benches, places to take walks with family or dogs. The men in the lower photo were playing  an enthusiastic game of Bocce Ball in a park.

We saw as much as our jet lagged selves could in about a day and a half, both on foot and on an open topped bus tour, but playing tourist is hungry and thirsty work.  Luckily the city is filled with shops that sell small plates of food to be shared called tapas.  This is an example of one of our explorations of tapas. We could eat something different every day for years and never try everything that is available.  So little time, so many tapas...

This is only a little taste of what we saw in Barcelona.  Later I'll share some photos from Italy.

Hunting Pictures

Last week my husband and I took an early autumn vacation to Canada.  We flew to Calgary, then boarded a train, traveled thirteen hours to Kamloops, where we spent the night in an old but prettily refurbished hotel.  Then another twelve or so hours on the train through the Rockies, alongside Thompson and Fraser rivers filled with salmon returning to spawn and die, to Vancouver.  We spent a couple days there before flying home to our disgruntled kitty.

The entire time I kept trying to capture a little of the beauty I saw speeding past with my little "point and hope" camera.  It's hard shooting through a window, although sometimes I elbowed my way to the open viewing platform where folks with pricier gear set up shop.  Sticking my head out in the fresh air, I imagined how giddy dogs feel when they push their heads out open truck windows, ears blowing back, tongues flapping in the wind.

Anyway, today I visited my local consignment place and found a little book called Natural Histories: A Bestiary, by Jules Renard.  There are charming pencil drawings by Toulouse Lautrec that accompany word sketches of turkeys, geese, swallows, squirrels and many more animals.  But the first little essay charmed me completely, and spoke to my need to travel, to take photos, and to paint.

The Picture Hunters

He jumps up early from his bed and sets out only if his mind is clear, his heart pure, his body light as a summer garment.  He carries no provisions.  Along the road he will drink fresh air and inhale wholesome smells.  He leaves his firearms at home, content with keeping his eyes open.  His eyes serve as nets in which pictures are caught.

The first one he snares is that of the road, showing its bones of polished stones and broken veins of its ruts, between the hedges laden with blackberries and small wild plums.

Then he catches a picture of the river.  Whitening at the elbows, it sleeps under the gentle stroke of willows.  It glistens when a fish turns up its belly, as though a piece of silver has been thrown in; if a light rain falls, the river has goose flesh.

He picks up the picture of the moving wheat, the toothsome clover, the meadows hemmed in with rivulets.  He seizes in passing the flight of a lark or a goldfinch.

Then he enters the woods.  He did not know that his senses could take in so much.  He is soon impregnated with scents, he misses not a single muffled sound, and his nerves attach themselves to the veins of the leaves so that he may communicate with the trees.

Before long he is vibrating to the point of discomfort, he is in ferment, he is afraid, he leaves the woods and follows from a distance the peasants returning to the village.  

Outside, he stares for a moment, with eyes ready to burst, at the setting sun as, on the horizon, it divests itself of its luminous garments, its scattered clouds.

Home at last, his head full, he puts out his lamp and, before going to sleep, delights in counting up his pictures.

Obediently, they appear again as his memory calls them.  Each one awakens another, and the new ones constantly join he phosphorescent band, like partridges that, all day pursued and divided, come together in the evening, and, safe in the depth of furrows, sing and remember.

Figures in the North Woods

For a number of reasons, I never took a workshop in 2012.  This year I was determined to not repeat that mistake.

So, I signed up for a class with Robert Burridge at Dillmans Resort four hours north of here, near Lac du Flambeau.  The class description indicated that the emphasis would be on drawing an undraped model, then painting in acrylic, and using collage elements, to create abstract paintings.

I spent weeks ahead of time going over the materials list, covering full sheets of watercolor paper with white gesso, figuring ways to get as much as I could into as portable a format as I could. I made sure my electronics were charged, that I had cords.  I took drawing supplies, paint, collage materials, adhesives, a bucket, in short, the works.

There were some issues.  I forgot that there is no cell phone service at the resort - it's remote.  And anyway, even if I was in Lac du Flambeau, or Boulder Junction, my yearly contract and payment was up.  So, the phone stayed in my suitcase.  I had my iPod Touch for checking weather, email, and for showing people wee photos of some of my art, but realized when I got there that I had the wrong recharging cord - for the iPad, instead.  Oops. I was able to borrow one from another student.

My drawing materials were OK, and I had enough paper, but I should have brought my gesso to use as white, and to cover up the things I did that I never want to anyone to see outside the classroom. I definitely should have brought bug spray - the skeeters were fierce.

But it was an excllent week.  I admire Robert Burridge's work very much, and it was a great opportunity to watch him work and solve problems. My roommate, whom I had never met before, was congenial and fun.  It rained, but not so much as to make life miserable.  I got to hang out in a classroom that overlooked a lovely lake, with eagles and loons on it.  People loaned me gesso.  Thumbs up.

My only quibble - many of the tips and stories were repeats from another class.  It didn't hurt to have some of them repeated, but I would rather have had more time with the model - she was lovely, calm, and altogether a professional.

Anyway, I probably made a couple dozen 3-8 minute sketches of her in charcoal, pencil and ink.  These are just a few that I liked. They're larger than I usually work, and I am determined to find a large sketch pad that has toned paper.  For now, I plan to tone a few blank pages for the local summer session of figure drawing that will be held starting Monday at UW Whitewater.

A Week of Sunshine

Fort Lauderdale 'gator guy

I have been spectacularly unproductive this month.  Living in Wisconsin in February is often like living under a milk glass bowl, on a white glass plate, in the refrigerator.  It's colorless, cold, and slippery.  So, I was glad that we had booked a week on a Holland America cruise in the Caribbean for February. 

We flew to Fort Lauderdale a day early, just in case there were travel complications, and to avoid having to rush around.  It turned out to be a good idea.  There is that moment when you get off the plane someplace warm, and it just hits you.  You don't have to wear every piece of clothing you own.  Anyway, we walked on the beach, ate some seafood and downed a couple beers after we arrived.  Then the next morning still had time to take a tourist boat tour of Fort Lauderdale.  Who knew so many people are wealthy enough to have huge yachts?  No photos of those, but I was entertained by this man who told us everything we needed to know about alligators in Florida.  He didn't flip this bad boy over and put him to sleep, but he did show us the critter's pearly whites.

Diver at Grand Turk

In years we have been able get away in the winter, we usually have spent a few days at a resort in Mexico or Jamaica.  We decided to try a cruise just to see more places. Our first stop on this cruise was Grand Turk.  In many ways I would have been happy to sit like a slug on the sand, but we signed up for a boat trip on a semi-submersible.  I loved all the fish this guide was able to lure to the windows.

Our ship was on the left, the Westerdam.  This was our third cruise with Holland America, and  I was much less confused than on the previous trips, since the ships are arranged so similarly.  I like the smaller cruise ships because the lines are not as long, and they are easier to navigate.

Entering the San Juan harbor

I like being up high in the ship when we enter a harbor, so I usually go to a lounge called the Crows Nest.  This photo was taken through the window glass, which might account for the darkness, though the day was overcast.  I enjoyed our tour of Old San Juan, the El Morrow fort national monument, churches and folk art museum, the Museum of the Americas.

The museum featured all sorts of exhibits of costume, musical instruments, decorative and religious items.  I was taken by this carved hand with saints on each finger.

St. Maartin

St. Maartin was another island I had never seen before, and I was charmed by the turquoise water and white sand beaches.  We took a bus ride over to the French side of the island for some beach time.  I was startled when our bus hit a mongoose on the road.  Apparently they are an invasive species, brought over from India years ago to help control rats in the sugar cane plantations.

Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Our last stop was in the Bahamas, at Half Moon Cay, an island leased by cruised lines.  In many ways it felt like the least authentic of all the places we stopped, but the water was blue and the sands were white, so I would be foolish to complain.  

So now we are home, in the ice and snow and white world of Wisconsin winters.  I'm hoping my breif respite from flannel shirts and woolie socks will hold me until spring arrives.