The cool weather also brought the fair! Or vice versa? I love the Mississippi state fair and always have. I’m sure it’s not so different from other state fairs, except maybe the free biscuits with sorghum syrup and petting baby alligators. Alexander and I went the first night it was open. We spent time with cows, horses, rides, fried food, games (winning prizes!), and as bedtime approached and we’d spent nearly our last dollar, watched an aging somebody rock and roll for a very appreciative crowd. As my boy finished his soft serve and leaned his head on my chest, he told me he liked the music but it was making his heart beat. We moved on through the darkened animal pens and found our car by a trailer full of cows.

Now it’s a Saturday in October. I need to get to the studio to finish a commission, but really I’d rather pack up the travel easel and hit the road. Maybe you could meet me at one of those fields with lines of modules? Paint, picnic, ponder?

Happy Hot June.

Wall unit AC working hard and it’s not yet 8 in the morning. Condensation obscuring the jungle that’s growing out there through the window and very happy birds enjoying the day before it gets too hot. Summer. “Heat Index” of 110 yesterday. I did NOT paint outside.

The other evening Alexander and I were playing some form of tennis when he put his little hand up and said, “shhh! what’s that Imah?” We stopped and listened. At first we both thought it was a duck in the woods just going to town, then I realized it was a very opinionated frog. “Frogs don’t quack!,” he said, “they just say ‘ribbit’.” I thought of the “frog songs of Mississippi” cassette my father had and wondered if it was still in my parents’ hall closet. It is!

Last week he and I had three heavenly days up in the Delta with our dear friends the Fooses. Alexander fished multiple times in the pond right out the front door, ate the fish he caught and I cooked (and Helen cleaned), picked blackberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, made “shooters” out of bamboo sticks, swam in the pool, loved on the dogs, watched the 5 baby swallows with his binoculars, was devoured by bugs despite multiple applications of spray (ugh). Not a bad few days of heaven for a little boy (or his Imah).

Now he’s gone for a summer trip to see some of his far away relatives and I’m missing that boy. The AC in the studio seems to be fixed and I have to say I’m staying in there for my painting time till the high stays below 97.

The next few days will be huge for me and my siblings. We’re moving our dear lovely mother from her home, the one she raised us all in, to a nursing home. One task assigned me by the band of brothers was to decide which paintings, pictures, et al we should take to her room. Whereas I’ve had most of the past year to prepare myself for this move as she’s descended deeper into confusion and physical decline, it somehow endlessly surprises me. It is a mixed bag: hoping for a safer, more interactive experience for her and at the same time mourning such a final thing as this move. Much of me is like that lately, trying to hope for the good parts and work through the hard parts. Or maybe that is life and I am just in a place of raw clarity for the moment.

How is summer for all of you? hot? slow? busy? full? transitional? Let me know in the comments below. I am trying to be better at the business side of this business, so I’d also love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, feelings, musings and criticisms. Oh – and suggestions for staying cool.

Stay cool,

Ellen

And painting. The paintings seem to be stronger, more hopeful, more peaceful. The babies in the work are turning into little boys. I want to tell them, “stop growing!” but they would say to me as Sender does, “I can’t!” Chickens are coming back - just maybe because there are chickens in the studio backyard now! And they’re laying! And dogs. The dogs I love and miss, stray dogs that wander the neighborhood, Junior, the dog who loves his chickens and protects them. (though when they first started laying Junior gently took one of the eggs and put it in his little pile of yucky tennis balls he’s loved all the fuzz off of. He did not break it)

The New York show in March was a success and I’ve been asked back for next Spring. The artist residency I did in October on the Eastern Shore of Maryland will be happening again as well. The boys and I are building a paper mache’ dragon in the studio.

I’ll be offering painting workshops here and there through the summer and would love all of you to come. Also feel welcome to come by the studio and visit. I can make coffee and might have snacks. Also, I’m gearing up to do a whole bunch of on site landscape painting this summer. Come join me. We’ll drink lots of water, cover ourselves in sunscreen and bugspray, get really stinky, and paint our hearts out.

About time I updated this site, don’t you think? I got a call yesterday from a gallery owner saying the money she’d tried to send me for a painting sold had been returned because my studio address was wrong. Where am I?

Here I am. I’m sitting at the kitchen table of a little trailer house outside Lexington, Mississippi. From the window, through the AC condensation and dew on the screen, are the black-to-yellow greens of kudzu and the trees it’s smothering back and the too bright morning sky of sun trying to get through haze. The sounds of trucks on the highway hum out front. Sometimes the steady thump of someone’s super bass has a surreal effect like Pink Floyd’s footsteps moving from one end of the trailer to the other. The music from the juke joint in the woods across the highway has ceased for now. Seems to go strong till about three in the morning but the AC mostly drowns it out so when we do get a break and can crawl into our beds it really doesn’t bother.

Much has changed since I last updated my site. So much. A few highlights:

1) (most importantly, so indulge me) Alexander is big and tall and funnier than ever. As he’ll be four in January he will not accept the description of “3½”, rather preferring “3&frac34.” he is fun and active and wild and gentle. And a terrific conversationalist. Now in pre-K with terrific teachers, he’s interested everything: the hows the whys the wherefores. On his bike (with helmet of course) he flies! The dogs ask him for dinner if we’re not paying attention and I’ll look up to see him getting out their bowls, measuring their portions while he has them sit and wait, tails wagging. Do they wonder where their little baby went like we do?

2) The economy fell apart. Oh, maybe you already knew this? Folks have been lovely about still being interested in my art, and we’re all in this together, whatever kind of tea parties we might like. I’ll take mine with petit fours from Campbell’s Bakery, please.

3) My mother became old. I guess this is normal, I just didn’t expect it. Her mother seems to have done this as well. Any chance it might happen to me? It started with some good (and I don’t mean good) falls in the winter and spring and has become progressively more challenging. I described it to my Jenny Levison as feeling like one of those nightmares which is both in slow motion and so fast you can’t catch up. So … round-the-clock sitters, my brothers doing an amazing job of taking over the nuts and bolts, lots of conversations about wanting to drive again.

4) My studio is now a part of One To One Studios, down in the Millsaps Arts District, just around the corner from Sender’s school. I got a call while I was in New York for figure drawing classes in January saying we were losing our studio space in Fondren and I’d need to move forthwith so I’m quite grateful to Austin Richardson and the work he’s doing to manage One To One. It’s quite inspiring to be around so many young (and I do mean young) visual artists, musicians, and others whose roles I haven’t yet determined.

And 5) I’m back on the ambulance. That is why I’m sitting at this trailer house kitchen table with my coffee and grapefruit in this little glow of filtered morning sun. The ambulance is out front and thankfully hasn’t been cranked up since a little after midnight. My partner Ozell is sleeping still, even through the prisoners mowing and weed-wacking. I’m working for a rural service under a friend from paramedic school. We ran into Tim and his lovely family at Saigon, the Vietnamese restaurant in Jackson, around mid-summer. I wasn’t thinking of getting back into EMS but as soon as he described the company he manages up here in Holmes and Attala counties, I got the itch. Tim got a call from me a week or so later and now I’m getting to know the folks up here and this lovely landscape. I’ve mostly been stationed just west of Lexington. Not far from my friends over by Bee Lake. The terrain changing from steep rolling kudzu-choked hills as we drive highway 12 towards Tchula, to flat-spread fields of corn, soy beans, and a little cotton. Scattered here and there are water towers sticking straight up, silos of different shapes and purposes, little houses like this one, mobile and non, but mostly this simple shape with the slightly pitched roof. Like all those houses, churches, in the paintings. The tight economy has definitely nudged the farmers away from the king to hope of some profit from corn this year. There are still a few fields though of the lovely stuff and this is the time of year when it shines. We’ll see if the modules will be seen this year.

And so where do I find myself really? Where can you find me, and yourselves?

Between parenting my child and my mother, and working as a paramedic, and trying to keep this becoming middle aged body from becoming anymore middle aged, I am still painting. The process of this life keeps teaching me lessons and I am working on working them in my images somehow, though at times I want to be an abstractionist and live only in the color and light and dark and balance and imbalance. But I guess that’s what we do anyway, and it all is in the story. This story of our lives of light and dark and brilliant color and balance and imbalance.

Tuesday I had driven WAY up to Merigold with the dogs and my paints. Jenny Smith has put together a great group of works, including Baxter Knowton, Ginny Futvoye, and Lisa Dyess. Not much had sold when I left, in stark contrast to the last Merigold Marketplace, before we all got so scared to spend money. Yikes! Maybe the spenders came the next few days?

After the opening and supper with friends, I headed back south down Highway 61, cut over to 49 south, then wiggled a while on Bee Lake Road to find my favorite place in the Delta under a sky choked with stars. The dogs were so excited they could hardly contain themselves. I was too.

Michael and Beth Foose have given me food, shelter, friendship and a place to paint since Beth was my EFM mentor six or seven years ago and invited me up. I love painting there. All of my clotheslines and cotton fields are based on those surrounding their home. It’s the land Mike grew up on, hunting, fishing, his family farming. And it’s the land he came back to when he married Beth. He and Beth and friends pulled the vines off the old house, cleared the yard, planted gardens, hung up a clothesline, and raised Beth’s daughters out there, home-schooling for several years. Lucky girls!

Now the girls are nearly grown and they only get time there on the weekends, but they invited us to share Thanksgiving there.

I painted a good bit of Wednesday, though I do confess to a luxurious morning of sleeping to a reasonable hour, having coffee and visiting with this lovely family (sans Michael, who was healing the sick elsewhere) before setting up. As the sun set I washed brushes and folded the easel. I left my by-then-exhausted dogs inside and drove south to Yazoo City. I picked up the essentials: ice, a crossword puzzle book for the girls, and a chocolate bar. Then I heard the train whistle a-blowin’! Is this a country song? No, it was Denise and Alexander on the Amtrak!

They had taken the train up from Jackson, a perfect 50 minute train ride. We threw their bags in and drove north, slowing for several deer, possum, and a raccoon on the dark country roads. When we drove onto the levee at Gumgrove, familiar and unfamiliar dogs were dancing around the car to greet Alexander and his moms. Sender greeted them all, then entered the warm light of their kitchen where we found the whole family, including Michael, Alexander’s cowboy. Michael taught Alexander how to gather wood and start a fire in the wood stove. They then read a book about guns. How great is that for a little boy with two peacenik moms?

So when we finally heard movement Thursday morning it was Michael we found stirring about, much to Sender’s delight, making coffee (much to my delight). “Michael!,” says Sender, “There’s a pond outside!” The men then went out and gathered more wood and came back in to make more fire. After a little breakfast, Michael took Alexander and Denise to tend to the horses. This included a ride in the back of the big pick-up truck.

The rest of the day was just terrific and more terrific, as you can imagine. It even included painting time for me, a great nap for Alexander, and Denise and I got to take a walk together.

Oh, and there was that terrific dinner too. Including pecans gathered and cracked and picked and pied right there. And a custard pie we all had some of before the rat terrier mistook it for a rat and absconded with the rest. We were sad to load up the car as the sun gave a stellar (hmm) show on the other side of the house, dipping over the levee through the trees on the banks of the Yazoo River and showing off in a cadmium blaze.

Alexander asked as we headed to our own beds that night, “Imah, you want to go see Michael next time?” I’m not sure when he thinks of “next time” as being, but I hope it’s soon.

Certainly there are messes – toxic spills – to clean up.

But the swamps are full of sunning turtles, alligators, cypress knees, and are ceaselessly cleansing our world of its toxicity. Clotheslines hang on lines and smell of the holy spirit. Farmers are making more money for growing crops without toxic sprays. The troops are realizing that the American people DO support them, even if we don’t support the wars, and are themselves organizing against our presence in places where we are not wanted. People around the world cried with happiness and hope on election night at thought of what this means for the children of God’s green earth. The world wants to love America and now feels it can again.

And did you hear McCain speak on election night? I heard graciousness. I heard no trace of the toxic divisiveness. I heard a voice reaching across the chasm, ready to work as a team to clean up the mess.

I choose to believe that 2009 is a year of living with the turtles and the clotheslines and the soldiers and the children and even the politicians. Cleansing and cleaning and hanging out the laundry. Putting it back in order and organizing better plans for the future. Maybe soon that future will involve the validation of Alexander’s family too.

Tonight I’m back from a painting demonstration/talk in Vicksburg and there talked with my Hungarian friend about a need to paint in the swamps. I painted in Mr. Morris’ swamp last week and have promised her, when it is warmer, to take her there and up to Bee Lake. She made magical watercolor huge swamp scapes before she fled Katrina. Now she’s working so hard to learn a new media and a new environment.

So in the spring we will load up our little green turtles (matching Honda Elements) and seek out cleansing solace in the cypress cathedrals. Swamps and Renewal!

I’ve been doing a little traveling, pondering, communing, and of course painting. Three days in New York, nine on my mother’s land in the tidewater area of Virginia, five of those with Alexander and Denise. We’re leaving on a jet plane tomorrow and heading back to Mississippi to get a taste of the 100-plus temps.

I’ve had to leave a few canvases here unfinished but I’ve attached images of the pieces I’ve done these last couple of weeks. Mostly notes taken on the tidewater, but two are looking out over the Hudson at Lady Liberty. While I painted there at Battery Park a lovely man played the saxophone on a nearby bench and a frenchman posed obliviously for hours while on his cell phone.

Looking over the water, whether in the big city or here in the boonies, has had a most serene effect on my soul. Alexander’s been a regular two-year-old inside but down by the water he is totally calm and engaged, seeking crabs, playing motorboat. Ahhh. I’ll try to carry this peace with me.

We drove in to Olympia Tuesday night after several days in Portland with friends and family, and before that we’d been with other friends and family in Seattle (too briefly) and Spokane.

Some of the Portland highlights were with Alexander’s next youngest cousin on my side, James Langford, almost five, and his dad, my oldest brother William. William works one of those odd nursing schedules, leaving him off a few days and home with James. Monday we met at a beautiful city recreation center, where we swam in the coolest kid pool ever. Wheels to turn and pipes here and there spouting different shoots and sprays; lots of really shallow area for Sender to get comfy in before he really got bold. That afternoon we took a bus into the downtown area, rode a streetcar, and discovered the library’s wonderful children’s reading room. We then took the bus back to Multnomah Village to meet our hosts Kara and Alex, William and his entire family (Cheryl, Elizabeth – 13, John – 9 , and James, and Casey Parks(!!) and Kate for pizza, noise and chaos at the Lucky Labrador brewery down the street from Kara and Alex. Very fun. Alexander slept great that night! Another highlight involving cousin James was the Portland Zoo on Tuesday! It was way too cold and Alexander refused to wear his hood and mittens so it eventually all went south, but for a while we were so delighted to be so close to big fruit bats, giraffes, chimpanzees, elephants! Wow. Alexander was running around freezing but so excited he didn’t seen to mind at all. He’s such a big boy now, almost two!

It all goes so fast. Yesterday we had a tiny little baby in our arms. Today he’s exploding with language, covering his mouth when he makes fake coughs, climbing up every possible obstacle. We’ve moved on from the days when he called everyone “Mama,” including the dogs and my brother Robert, to calling only Denise “Mama”, me “Imah” and Uncle Robert something like “Rah Rah.” Vivaldi sounds something like “Baldy.” I wonder if he was.

It’s been quite a long time since my last update of this site. Life has certainly been rich.

At the end of June I went back to work with our local ambulance service. I never updated my bio on this site but nearly three years ago I had a little head injury from a bicycle accident and was unable to work as a paramedic due to about six months of vertigo (yuck – don’t recommend that). The painting business had been going well and I let my certification lapse. I found, however, that I really missed EMS (emergency medical services). This year I jumped through multiple hoops and went back, first as just an ambulance driver, and then, after passing the practical and written national registry exams, as a paramedic again. I love being back. It means even more late nights at the studio and even less sleep but I feel like the work informs my painting in a crucial way.

Each call introduces me to an encapsulated story, a peak into a vulnerable time in each patient’s life, during which I learn as much as I possibly can about this child of god, what their life is like and what has led them to this moment, so that I can care for them as well as possible and then convey their story to the hospital staff for their definitive care. In addition to each intriguing call, the folks I work with in EMS are the salt of the earth. They all work ridiculous hours at not very much pay and often in dangerous and physically demanding conditions. Many of my coworkers also work on volunteer fire departments in their communities.

Before I took the paramedic recertification tests I worked as a driver with a paramedic named Billy Pickle. Besides having a great name, Mr. Pickle was a delight to work with. A compassionate care-giver, he’s also funny and smart. He’s a volunteer firefighter up near Carthage, Mississippi and grew up farming. I especially delighted in his stories of a pig and a cow he had at different times in his childhood. The pig he had first. When he’d get home from school he’s whistle and his pig would come. Billy Pickle would then get his fishing gear, hop on the pig’s back and ride down to the pond to fish. At some point his father told him it was time to eat his pig and that was that. Well, there were the stories of building the smoke house, the slaughter, etc, but that was that for the pig. Later, he had a 4-H cow with whom he had the same home from school, ride to the pond, fishing arrangement. Apparently in 4-H one is supposed to auction off one’s animal at the end of some length of time. Each Year? I don’t know. At any rate, during three of these consecutive auctions, Billy Pickle’s father bid hard and bought Billy’s solid black cow back for him to care for another year. The last time, however, if I have the story straight, the bidding was getting too high, Billy knew his dad couldn’t afford the price she was going for, and he told his father to stop bidding. Billy Pickle’s cow, weighing two thousand pounds?, was sold but the breeder who bought him invited Billy to visit her any time, and kept in touch about the beautiful offspring she produced.

Now that I’m working as a paramedic, I’ve mostly been working with Bernard, who’s been a basic EMT with AMR quite a while, and with whom I feel quite safe. He and I have a few differences of opinion about gun control, public schools, the Democratic Party, etc, but we agree on a surprising number of issues, like the dominance of the Kansas Jayhawks.

This summer Alexander turned one and a half and I turned forty. Swimming, cooking, sitting on the porch with friends from all over in Virginia at my mother’s house on the Ware River was a great way to celebrate the occasion.

A month or so ago we loaded up Alexander and the dogs and headed through Arkansas and Missouri on little back roads to find ourselves in Lawrence, Kansas where we stayed with my dear college friend Dan and his wife Angie. Denise hooked up with her classmates from college. She hadn’t seen them in twenty years and they all had a great deal of fun watching that historical/hysterical football game between Kansas and Nebraska. Alexander and I were overwhelmed by the enormous crowd and so watched the game with Dan and Angie on their fancy new HDTV, waving the wheat and hollering Dan’s personal Jayhawk cheer, “Kaw Kaw!”

We drove from there to Denise’s parents’ home in Peabody, KS where Sender added the words “cold” and “windy” to his vocabulary. He also added “Llama” when we went out to the Jones’ sheep farm and saw the chickens, sheep, goats and dogs I’ve painted so much over the years. It’s a little trickier to paint with Sender in arms on these trips so for a little while these trips are mostly research. Lots of photography and diaper changing!

Well it’s the second week of Advent, Chanukah’s just ended, and here we are on the opposite corner of the country. This bed and breakfast is a favorite of my favorite Pac Northwest artist: Nikki McClure and Denise and I were delighted to see her work hanging on the walls on our arrival last night. Jenny Levison has given us her calendar each year for the last several years. I highly recommend it.

The near future brings Sender’s second Christmas, a painting in the Huntsville Museum of Art, and some decisions about my long-delayed graduate education. I’m really hoping to find a suitable MFA program but if we stay in Mississippi, it looks like it’s going to be one of those super-expensive low-residency programs. I’ll take any suggestions!

Happy Solstice!
Ellen