A Rainy Day In The Studio
Oh, how I adore a rainy day painting in the studio!! When painting in my studio, there is no lure of sun and shadow, no warm breeze caressing my body and soul bringing sweet smells of summer into my nostrils. No lure of soft green grass to make me kick off my shoes and feel the grass underfoot. No need to look for the subject matter which I refer to as the ah ha…moment; which is the trigger for my imagination and the creative juices to start bubbling up inside me. No hurrying to chase the light, to determine the perfect shadow, color, and values.
Outside there can be so many distractions. For me, they are limitless…
Last week I was plein air painting with two of my artist friends at the Moore Farm in New Durham, NH. We found our spots, got our easels set up and here comes our distractions…
Two very sweet female goats come sauntering out from where I do not know and were curious about us and our set-ups. After giving them some loving, (they especially love rubs near their eye bone sockets), we attempted to paint. These lovable creatures just wanted some loving but as they got to know us they became bolder. Toward me, especially I might add…I’m an animal lover, animals just sense it.
Then, their true “naughty goat” personalities came into play. Quick as lightning one of the girls took of my friend’s cadmium yellow top off and started chewing it …yellow paint all over her mouth! We retrieved the cap, cleaned her mouth up and then they came to my easel to visit me. One goat liked the taste of my sap green on my palette and then took to licking and gnawing on the three legs of my French easel. She was just the right size to fit under my easel and kept lifting it up occasionally which was challenging trying to put paint on the canvas! No steady hand here! While one naughty girl was doing this, the other naughty girl was behind me and decided she liked the canvas tie on my apron and chewed it right off! Now, apron flapping in the breeze and trying to get any sort of painting on my canvas while my easel was rockin’ and rollin’ was difficult at best!!
I had to laugh…., once again, life is stranger than fiction!
These are just some of the funny and somewhat extraordinary events that seem to happen to me when I am plein air painting. Not always, of course, but I’d say 50% of the time when I paint outside, some interesting and strange things happen to me. As my husband always says and laughs about, “You have an uncanny ability to attract the eccentric!” So it seems to be.
This was my attempted plein air painting for the morning. I had to do a few touch-ups at the studio and of course, I had to include a photo our new frisky friends!
So now you might better understand how I feel when I say I love a rainy day painting in the studio!! The quietude of painting in the studio affords me tunnel vision and allows me to concentrate in a way I cannot seem to while amongst all the many lovely distractions in our natural world! I wouldn’t trade them for anything… it’s part of the great pleasures of this unusual job of ours called artists!
