the flops, aka shitty first drafts

In her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott refers often to the “shitty first draft” as she encourages writers to get something, anything on paper as a way to begin. It rarely is anything worth keeping.

The lesson applies to painting, too, and when I’m working on paper, the shitty first drafts get tossed onto a shelf or cut up to use as gift tags or to collage into other pieces. Paintings on panels get multiple layers, so there is a long process of adding and taking away until I’m pleased with what’s appearing on the surface. I started those cloud paintings during my recent artist residency at Cedar Point Biological Station as a way to get started with something. I also played around pressing leaves into paint, using dried stalks as tools for making marks and sprinkling sand into wet paint. None of these experiments yielded anything worth sharing, but were part of my exploring the place in my work. The puffy clouds will either get cut into pieces or covered with additional layers until they are unrecognizable as these particular works.

I did make two paintings explicitly based on the shapes and colors of the landscape at Cedar Point and share images below. While they’ll both get signed and probably framed, I’m really only happy with one of them. The second painting has an ease about it while the first one feels overworked. It’s also true that what I see as overworked may actually appeal to a particular viewer because it’s a bit more literal and does have some whimsy about it.

one of two paintings on paper based explicitly on the Cedar Point landscape.

Another painting on paper based on Cedar Point. I prefer this painting for the flow of the composition, the variety of textures and the sense of ease it conveys.

Books and boots

After hiking with a group of students and artists at Cedar Point Biological Station last Tuesday, I realized my sneakers weren’t quite sturdy enough to support my aging ankles when climbing on rocky trails. After a few more days of sketching, painting and hiking a bit, I decided to spend Saturday exploring Ogallala. I visited the farmers market and enjoyed a cold brew from Slow Lane Coffee. I visited the local library and found a book I thought perfect for reading during the evenings at the station, The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker. When the librarian on duty told me I could only use it at the library, a waiting patron offered to let me check it out on her account. I was grateful for this display of hospitality and returned the book several days later after reading a wealth of prompts to contemplate.

Gotta love this turquoise bike parked at the entrance to Ogallala’s public library.

In addition to scouting local libraries, I seek out local independent bookstores and found a gem of a shop, Hokes Bookstore, which had a good selection of titles focused on the region. I didn’t clean out the section with my purchases, but made good additions to my personal collection of Nebraska literature and guides. To get familiar with a place, I want to know more of the stories and learn about what makes it distinctive. Discovering what grows and who lives here, and how those have changed over time are topics worth exploring.

When I strolled into Bomgaars, I was pleased to see that boots were discounted, so after trying on a few pairs, settled on the arch and ankle support offered by the Ariats pictured above. I’ve worn them nearly every day since I bought them and feel much more sure-footed on the rocky trails around the station.

A few days later, I received a package. A friend had thought of me while reading a book and insisted on sending it to me while I was away from home. Thanks, Ann G., for What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas. With its descriptions of friendship, aging, betrayal and forgiveness, it is a guide for appreciating the present moment, finding absurdity and humor every day, and celebrating love.

So while I may be striding with more confidence today, I’m also stopping often to watch, listen and learn.

Change of pace; change of place

Settling into a new place for a short time reminds me to slow down and pay attention, and that’s one of the reasons I’m interested in participating in artist residencies. I spent last week and will continue through the next week as a guest at Cedar Point Biological Station, a former Girl Scout camp that the University of Nebraska-Lincoln purchased in the mid-1970s and has used as a biological station since then. For a few years, artists have been added to the mix of classes, research projects and naturalist training workshops that meet here every summer.

While I’ve started many paintings on paper and have spent part of each day working in the lab-space-turned-studio, I’ve also spent a fair bit of time just watching the grasses and flowers, the American pelicans on the lake, the cardinals and finches and turkeys visiting the feeders, the lizards and butterflies and dragonflies that flit across the trails. The skies are vast and ever-changing. Last night lightning flashed across the lake while above me I could see stars and the Milky Way against blue-black sky.

Rob Walker begins his book The Art of Noticing with this passage: “Pay attention,” Susan Sontag once advised a young audience; she was speaking of the creative process, but also of living. “It’s all about paying attention. It’s all about taking in as much of what’s out there as you can, and not letting the excuses and the dreariness of some of the obligations you’ll soon be incurring narrow your lives. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others, It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

Slipping away for a short time from my everyday routine helps me recalibrate and then return with more attention and eagerness. It’s one reason such a trip is so restorative. The paintings I make during my stay may not turn out to be anything more than exercises and experiments, but for me they’re only a small part of why I’m here. Having the time and space to really slow down, sometimes just stopping to watch the play of light on grasses and flowers, or to appreciate the lizard or butterfly accompanying me on the trail, or to look up at the variation of cloud shapes, shades of blue, the light of millions of stars are much better reasons. And they’ll remind me to do the same thing back home.