nature – Page 5 – Elizabeth Bradford

Category: nature

May 19, 2011

Mountain Journal

It’s mid-week in mid-May and I have the good fortune to find myself on a little adventure. After school I drove up to the mountains to the lovely, rambling house of friends. They loaned me their mountain house so I could transact some business in the vicinity. Lucky for me, it’s very cold so I’m sitting by a blazing, snapping fire with a glass of wine, and taking time to write in unfamiliar and friendly surroundings, far away from the rest of the world.

This house is built to accommodate four children, their spouses and fifteen grandchildren so it’s jolly even when it’s empty– echoes of optimism all around me. The house sits on a hundred acres designated as Stewardship Forest and on the walls are hundreds of photographs of easy, happy family times, collections of arrowheads, wild turkey feathers and stone age tools. It is a place that’s all about love of family and love of the land.

I’m tucked in amongst the books and the stonework, socked in by fog and toasted, on the front side at least, by my cozy fire. What a luxury to be alone with one’s thoughts; to be removed from routine and exploring new places; to be alone on a mountaintop. This big echoing house must be startled by its lone guest, accustomed as it is to a huge family that enjoys its time together. Big and empty as it is, it’s doing its best to embrace me.

In the morning the house is still cold. I have clearly not decoded the furnace. So first thing I start a fire in the wood stove from last night’s coals. In my robe, with a cup of coffee, I prop my feet in front of the fire. Outside, the house is blanketed in a smoky white fog and the fire and fog trigger a favorite memory.

I am 20. I have been camping at Linville Gorge near the falls with my boyfriend. We have spent a cold night sleeping on a 30 degree incline, deep in our down bags. This is the boyfriend I let slip away, though he earnestly held a ruby engagement ring out to me in the front seat of a Toyota in city traffic. Upon waking in Linville Gorge with the sound of the falls all around us on that long ago morning, we broke camp and drove away in search of some creature comforts. We found a rustic restaurant with a hearth and a blazing fire, and early on that foggy mountain morning we gratefully ordered huge breakfasts and produced our own bottle of campsite-chilled champagne to go with it.

In memory there is laughter, firelight, bubbles and complete relaxed pleasure in the company of another. How, I have asked myself many times, did I allow myself to discard that for the company of less joyful, more tortured souls? Thousands of firelit mornings lie between this one and that. But none so crystal clear, with a sense of wholeness and happiness. I was accepted as I was. I was encouraged to be more wholly myself that I ever had been. I was truly loved by another joyous and playful soul. In my innocence and ignorance I did not know the purity with which a boy first loves. Instead, I presumed a good deal less.

But I have, as a kind of marker, that memory. When I feel that whole and happy again I will recognize it and cherish it. And should that not happen I will simply hold as dear as a blood red ruby in a small box the memory of that morning. I believe the value of memories is as great as the pleasures of the moment, or the anticipation of the future.

The fog is lifting and I have my first sighting of what might lay beyond this porch. It promises to be a splendid day.

May 6, 2011

Story Of A Barn, part 1

the cotton barn c. 1976

At the edge of our farm there stands a small, old cotton barn. Built around 1890 from pines cut down on the farm and processed in my great-grandfather’s sawmill, it has been slowly sliding toward decay for a long time . One side was non-existent, its framing bones showing, wisteria vines curling skyward through its voids.

My son, Gordon, at about age 16, became deeply interested in graffiti as an art form. He pleaded with me to allow him to cover the bare side of the cotton barn with OSB so he could have his own graffiti wall. I relented, and for a time the barn, on three sides, was a rustic remnant, and on one side, an explosive artwork.

Gordon was also becoming deeply interested in composing, performing and recording music around this same time. He decided one day to make a sound booth in his room using his closet. Clothes tossed out, he lined the walls with soundproof foam. I would look up from my chores to see an unending stream of young people in various states of dress and body decoration carry their instruments up the stairs to spend a day in one of our closets.

Time came for Gordon to leave the south, and head to New York to college. He hatched a new scheme: persuading me that he should be allowed to rebuild the cotton barn as a recording studio. I think I hoped it would draw him back home when he was finished with college. I knew it made sense to allow some improvements to the crumbling ruin I had no time or money to bother with.

About this time, a new Gordon began to emerge. This boy, with no knowledge whatsoever of building, became a student of construction. He turned to his father for advice and counsel. He read. He enlisted the help of a friend’s father who was a structural engineer. And because he lacked better, I became a sometimes carpenter’s helper.

Often all I did was clean up the jobs site, or move things from the barn to another space. Sometimes I removed nails from old weathered barn wood, or handed up the sheets of tin to reroof the building. I came to relish the shared goal, the time spent watching Gordon’s spirit and imagination at work. When he came home for breaks from college he would work until the light was all gone, sometimes with my help, growing faster as he lost the light to try to propel the job as far forward as he could. I began to sense that the barn project was one way in which Gordon could grasp with both hands his home, and do all he could to set things right. Lacking money, materials, and knowledge he gave it heart instead.

On the last night before he would leave to return to New York, he would always push himself into the night, dirty and tired, tucking things away. I hold in memory one powerful image from those days. It was late January, the last night of winter break. We had worked so hard we didn’t feel the chill. The sun was setting in a cherry blaze behind the field across the road. We both stopped to go look at it. As we soaked it in a hawk came from behind us, flying low toward the sunset. A golden halo formed around its silhouette.

Another scrap of memory I cherish– we were both stooped over at the foundation of the barn, just under the drip line from our new roof when, at my feet, I found the first arrowhead of my whole life. “Untouched for 5000 years” as my friend Frank Bragg would say. I grabbed it and cherished it like a gemstone. But after graduation, when Gordon filled a moving van and climbed into the cab to go live in Brooklyn, I gave it to him. His is the native spirit, the hawk spirit, with whom it should always reside.

October 24, 2010

Journal entry

10-10-10 It’s 8:15 a.m. and I’m facing east, sitting on the beach. The beach is completely serene and satiny in this light. The sound of waves as they dissipate has a long sheen to it as well. The beach has few people, no clutter of human furnishings– just pelicans on their long horizontal flight path. That’s what I love about this beach– the depth and wideness of it, and the emptiness. So, in words I save this moment, sewing it into a bag I will carry with me into winter, early darkness, repelling chill, small spaces. I will take out the bag and open it to breathe back in the missing pieces of the 360 degrees of my life.

August 27, 2010

Liminal nights

In the liminal space between summer and fall, in the margin between darkness and dawn, I like to get up and go to the open window. The night crickets and frog sounds are combined with the early bird sounds. The air has a bit of cool damp attached to it. The traffic is still. I imagine all the drivers asleep.

Sometimes in that space I will go out to the hammock on the porch. I think there must be something like womb memory that overtakes me in the hammock because once in it, I immediately fall into a thick and healing sleep.

Some mornings, waking up early, closer to fall, I open the windows and the air that enters the house has a bit of chill to it– mountain stream chill. This time it’s just past the full moon. Last night the moon rose late, and was the color of a persimmon. Getting up, there were forty shades of darkness in the landscape, but my attention was grabbed by the white distorted disks of flowers on the Rose of Sharon, floating like apparitions in the darkness.

I took the time to name the colors around the shrub. The distant trees were black, the land black-yellow-green, the near trees black-turquoise. To make sure I seized that moment, without turning on any lights, I climbed into a hot bath in the dark and watched the light change toward dawn, sitting there.

Looking through some old drawings in my journal the other day I came across a little sketch I did after sleeping on the sugar beach of a five acre atoll in the Caribbean. Full moon. Huge palms casting deep shadows. Bright sand. I wrapped myself in a white sheet which the wind played with like a sail, like the distorted disks of the Rose of Sharon, dancing in the darkness.

August 17, 2010

The summer day to carry forward

Today was the last day of my summer vacation. I wanted to mark it with some appropriate ritual. After a summer of hard work and focus, I wanted to spend at least one day in relaxed reverie deep in the woods. My friends Suzi and Dick had told me they knew of a hidden waterfall, tucked away in the remotest parts of a state park, so I asked them if we could spend the day there together.

To their credit, Suzi and Dick know how to live. They immediately embraced the idea of spending a Tuesday in the woods with me. They offered to pack a picnic and a bottle of wine and to show me their hidden treasure. It’s hard for me to leave my work ethic behind, so I had both watercolor paper and a canvas to carry into the woods. Dick led the way. We walked through a creek at a couple of places, and landed at the top of a waterfall. The woods were so old and lovely that the forest floor was covered simply with a carpet of fallen leaves, lush mosses and mushrooms in dozens of shapes and colors. There were several clear paths one could use to find the way to the bottom of the falls.

We chose a big table rock in the middle of the creek to spread a towel on. We ate the wonderful picnic of summer salads and fruits and enjoyed the bottle of wine. We washed away the stickiness and humidity of the outside world in the cool stream, and after lunch settled in for napping, reading, writing and painting. Sometimes the sun would shine and the water would sparkle, its transient patterns exposed for a moment. Other times a cloud would cover us and the woods would take on a moody feeling.

In the woods I quit thinking and was only struck by the true existence of Eden. I knew I wanted to express the motion of the water, from left to right, leaping over stones, turning sharply, bouncing light. I wanted to show the solidity and the three dimensionality of the boulders. I didn’t care if it was right or important to anyone else, or profound, or if it won me recognition. I only wanted to connect to it, and re-express it. I wanted to dance with that creek and play on those rocks, and remember this day all winter, and maybe all my life.

July 8, 2010

My Old Friend

Call me corny and predictable, but I’m a huge devotee of Monet. I know, there are a thousand bathrooms in a five mile radius where a Monet poster hangs. I know. But I fell in love at 13, and I never recovered.

My parents took me to NYC that summer. We went to the Met. The way I remember it, and the way I describe it to my 14, 15 and 16 year old students is: coming around a corner in the museum, my eyes glazed over from Masterpieces, I saw my first live Monet. All my synapses fired. I went into shock. The way I remember it, it was a small painting, with color like a bucket of jewels. I’d never seen color act as a participant in a painting like that before. That was what it was ABOUT.

I know– color is the easiest way into a work of art. Everyone, except for possibly the color blind, can be touched by color, regardless of their insensitivity to the other aspects of a work. But, in my soul, I am a colorist, and that little painting was screaming in my language.

On my last trip to France, five years ago, I had some pilgrimage duties planned. I went way out of my way to visit Giverny. And I planned to end the trip at L’Orangerie. I was devastated to discover that the restoration of L’Orangerie was still ongoing and it was closed. So, on this trip to France, I set aside one afternoon to make up for that missed opportunity. I had seen isolated pieces of Les Nymphaes at various museums all over the world, and I’d seen studies for them. But I had never seen them as Monet intended them to be seen, all together.

I felt a real rush of empathy when I saw the sign at the mouth of the gallery “Silence”. Indeed. I wanted to allow my soul to drop down into wordlessness and to float into this work. Nobody else seemed to have that impulse, however. I kept wishing I had a special pass to come after hours and stand in that space alone, and allow it to subsume my field of vision and sweep me up. It had to do that in spite of elbows and voices and cameras and other folks with a more relaxed interest.

Over the years I’ve read a lot about this particular work– the work of Monet that I’m most interested in. I’ve read that it moves toward abstraction possibly because he was quite elderly and his vision was failing. But seeing the ensemble live I was shocked at the explosiveness of the abstraction. In my journal I wrote that they were “more wildly and vigorously abstract than I’d expected– as violently flung down as a Pollock or a de Kooning .” They had a topography that surprised me as well. Encrusted and multi-layered. Thought and rethought. I took photographs of abstract details. But at a distance the work locked together like the dials on a safe. They were definitely not the work of an artist whose vision had failed. They were infintely sure-footed and wise.

I sat down and found myself settling deeply into the trunk of a reflected willow tree. It held me for an inexplicably long time– not billiantly colored, simply a dark textured vertical. It was sinewy, rope-like, male and archetypal. There was more in this shrine to nature and art than I had expected .

How nice to still find surprises in one of my oldest relationships.

July 5, 2010

Vagabonding

Before I settle down to a summer’s work it’s good to do a little gypsy roaming. I just had a great break from my routine, exploring Provence. At first I enjoyed the companionship of wonderful friends at Le Beaucet in a delightful country home. We saw the sights, enjoyed the regional foods and wines, and were expertly guided, tended and fed by Mary James and Xavier (www.maryjames.net) .

In my journal I made a list of sounds and sights and smells that were especially vivid. And of course, tastes. There were many. It was a sensual feast from morning until night. Lavender and garlic in the markets, wild thyme disturbed by my feet on a hike up the hill, patinas that were rich and complex, cicadas in the heat, a tomato reduction dressing an eggplant that I will not soon forget.

The second week of my journey I took off by myself with my tent and sleeping bag to explore more unknown territory. Mary James equipped me with a giant map that I’d stop and consult about 40 times a day. Thank goodness France’s signage is very logical and finding one’s way is made simple. The un-simple thing is navigating a 10th century road in a car if anyone else decides to come from the opposite direction.

I circumnavigated Mont Ventoux and walked the streets of more hill towns than I can recount. I also took some afternoons to sit beside swimming pools in the intense heat. I chose campgrounds with pools that had splendid views so I could swim and paint and rest all at the same time. I’d paint a while, then fall asleep in the heat, water sounds lulling me. Then I’d wake up and paint some more. Camping allows for a lot of intimacy with the nature of a place. I loved going to sleep to the sounds of the cicadas, and waking to the dawn birdsong. Or seeing the moon through my tent’s little window. In the hotel at the airport all sound was muffled in thick carpet, and all moonlight masked by drapery.

What did I bring back? Recognition of how I love to sit by water. Recognition that French food is wonderful, but in the same way that North Carolina food, or any food grown and prepared with love is wonderful. I brought back a fascination with the textures of ancient surfaces– the way a thousand year old piece of cypress used as a supporting beam gets eaten away, but stays strong; the surface of stucco when it chips and peels and changes color; the immense shade cast by trees when they’re allowed to grow as tall as they want without being cut down for “progress”; the elegance of women who listen to their own inner voices instead of enslaving themselves to some kind of commercial standard of beauty and rightness; the energy, imagination and wildness of Cezanne’s landscapes, which made me feel timid by comparison; the brilliant engineering of the Romans, seen up close and still functional; the logic of good national road planning; the kindness of strangers; a few new words added to the vocabulary; a newfound love for the afternoon glass of French rosé.

But waking up this morning, thinking I was still in France, I realized I took away something else. Because I traveled alone, in the absence of conversation–in silence– I took into my body a group of kinesthetic impressions from the hundreds of miles speeding by under my car, the arcs of the many roundabouts, the textures under my feet, the buzz and hum of the life around me, the cyclical movement of the sun and moon.

Because I stopped each day to paint the place where I was, to examine it with care and attempt to represent the feeling of it, I brought it deeply into my consciousness. There was a kind of oneness that occurred between me and that lovely place that went deeper than tourism. This all came to me in a rush, before I’d really opened my eyes to the day, believing I was still in France . Swinging my feet out of bed I felt the smooth texture of my bedroom’s heart pine floor and that texture told my body I was not in France. Returning from a camping trip when he was 3 years old , my youngest son Stewart announced “I miss my tent”. I know exactly what he meant.

May 24, 2010

strawberry moon

yum

Tonight my brother called and invited me to pick my own strawberries. His patch has reached the point where it’s scantily filled and not worth hiring labor to pick it. So, at dusk I went to take a look. He told me that the end of season berries are the best. He was telling the truth. I ate the first strawberry I picked and it was the best I had ever tasted. His fruit has the added benefit of being organic, making the flavor even more intense.

I picked until it grew so dark I couldn’t tell which ones were spoiled. Kim handed me a gallon of their wonderful milk, and told me where to find the fresh squash. On the walk home I found a few squash that still had their blossoms clinging. A friend told me one afternoon, after a particularly tough teaching day, to “go home and make yourself a squash casserole and pour yourself a glass of wine”. Sounded like a good southern girl’s prescription for a return to sanity.

The walk home was in the quickly deepening darkness. Looking up I noticed the lopsided waxing moon, crisp and white against the sky. At that moment the sky was light blue, but dusky, in that indescribable passage that is so hard to capture in a painting. By the time I crossed the road darkness had taken over. Strawberries and milk before bedtime. Windows open with their screens in place– healthy bug and frog sounds to attend my sleep.

May 9, 2010

John Borden Evans at Christa Faut Gallery

Last night John Borden Evans opened at the Christa Faut Gallery. It was great to see his newest work in the company of his many friends and fans here in the area. His work always has a strong resonance for me, because we have both chosen rural lifestyles and our environments have much in common.

John often creates diptychs. I recall one from a show several years ago that was immense, and divided in two parts so it could be transported. In this exhibition he had one diptych that was a small work on paper, and another that was midsized. It amused me that it hung next to a painting that was on a single canvas, but split in half by the black line of a tree trunk, so it read like a diptych as well.

This work had John’s usual wonderful quirkiness and intense sense of texture. There were paintings with his own iconography I’ve come to expect– the stars and their auras, abstracted in this show to look like jewels. There were animals arranged in pastures. But there was also a new thing going on– a quieter, more serene and restrained approach to the land in several of the paintings. They were empty of animal life, and focused on balance: of verticals and horizontals, of smooth with rough, of darkness and light. A favorite was a snow day painting, as usual, abstracted with abandon, but all the same, reading with the truth I recognize as a student of the landscape. It conveyed the way the snow peaks out and exposes the contours of the forest floor normally hidden in the grayness of a thousand bare tree limbs. The texture he created to describe the trees in the foreground was perversely horizontal, when the obvious direction for them to have been painted would be vertical or diagonal. It married serenity and intensity, smooth and rough, white snow sky and darkened forest,truth and the myth. All were suspended in quiet equilibrium.

April 20, 2010

subject matter

The newest piece on the easel is a large painting I started a month ago. It’s been a slow and delicious process bringing this piece together. It’s slow, because I’m using tiny brushes on a large surface to create the kind of texture I want. It’s delicious because it’s about very early spring and the colors involved have the aura of magic about them– delicious because it reminds me of earlier times. Its edge is its subject matter. It’s a painting about a barn. I tend to shy away from barn painting because that subject is so hackneyed and sentimental that it offends. It did occur to me that those sentimental barn paintings’ emotional source is the same source I’m tapping into– a sense of loss.

The barn I’m painting isn’t anonymous. It’s Fred Washam’s barn. Fred and Sarah were my dear neighbors for 30 years or so. When I was a young mom I had a studio and office on the second floor of the front of my house and I could look down on Fred as he drove up the highway on his tractor to his brother Joe’s farm, and then watch Joe do the same going the opposite direction. The brothers farmed until they couldn’t farm anymore. Fred, always wearing a smile, was the kindest person. A photograph of him hangs in the Bradford Store– Fred as a young man beside a team of mules. He died of Parkinson’s Disease and grieved us all. Joe lived into his nineties, in the house where he grew up, just leaving us this past year.

Sarah, Fred’s wife, was the consummate farm wife. Her flowerbeds were spectacular and the subject of many of my paintings in the 80’s. When it was Halloween she would invite my children to come for treats and there would be homemade cupcakes and candies. She even made, from scratch, the host we used for communion in our church. I know it’s a strange comment, but it was a lovely and evocative host, with character. There was something of the Mystery baked into it. Not at all like the cardboard chips in other churches.

To paint this barn is not to say “look at this sad remnant”. In my heart it says their legacy lingers. The love and kindness these neighbors invested in me, my children, and in all the neighbors and their children is not lost or forgotten. The barn still stands solid and generous upon the land, and Sarah’s cherry tree blooms in glory in front of it. The big oaks that sheltered their family, their lives and laughter are still there. As long as I’m here to paint about it, in some way they are still with us.

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Mountain Journal

Story Of A Barn, part 1

Journal entry

Liminal nights

The summer day to carry forward

My Old Friend

Vagabonding

strawberry moon

John Borden Evans at Christa Faut Gallery

subject matter

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