Ripened Color
by Bernadette E. Kazmarski
The field of grass
In October has reached its full maturity;
As the wrinkles of a face
Share the joys and sorrows of a life’s journey,
The field in the shadows and highlights of its grasses
Holds the colors of all the seasons.
The amber of ripe stems
Is toned with the warm, rich lilac
Of a winter sunset.
Shadows hold the deep bright blue
Of the early summer sky
Blended down to sienna
Borrowed from leaves in a winter pond.
In the highlights, the bright delicate green
Of new leaves on willows
Mixes with the yellow
Of silver maple leaves in autumn.
poem copyright ©2000 Bernadette E. Kazmarski
Sometimes creative inspirations mix. This poem was inspired by what I discovered while painting one of my first ever en plein air paintings.
I've roamed the local woods and fields for years, reveling in the light and shadow, colors, movement, the changes in each day as the seasons ran their course, and constantly edging me closer and closer to painting the landscapes I saw. I took photos, on film, of everything I possibly could because, of course, that moment of crescendo of light and color and composition never happens again. I worked from these photos for my first few land and waterscapes.
One lovely October, after the loss of two of my cats two weeks apart within the past month, I knew I needed to escape the perceived silence of my home—though I still had seven other cats, but that made no difference—and the constant reminders of their absence everywhere I looked. I looked at my remaining cats and knew a literal time out would do me good. I drove to work through some very inspiring scenes and regularly stopped to catch a photo that I'd one day want to paint. But by that time I really wanted to try the freedom of painting en plein air, in the open air, outdoors, feeling the wind and sun, cold, hearing grasses and leaves rustling, birds singing. When I pulled out my photos to work I was always disappointed that those sensations of the outdoors were vague memories thought I tried hard to pull them to the present in my studio.
So rather than going for one of my rambles and taking photos, I packed up a rudimentary outdoor pastel painting kit, told my cats I'd be back a little later, and walked out into the warm sunshine of a Saturday late morning headed for the places that filled my vision at the thought of painting outdoors.
The featured painting in this video was my first attempt that day, and the one where I learned all the lessons of the myriad colors in, well, everything. I didn't see those in my photos, no matter how I enlarged them. But as I stood at my easel, blank pastel paper and boxes of pastels at the ready, I found all those unexpected colors in the highlights and shadows of individual straw stems of dry grass as they waved in the breeze. I had all my autumn colors at the ready, but little did I realize autumn contained far more than warm ripe earth tones and bright warm primary and secondary colors. How had I missed this all those years I'd actually been there and looked at these places? Violet? Bright blue? In dry grass? Spring green? But the addition of tiny flecks of those colors gave my grasses, the field, the leaves and trunks of trees, more dimension than I'd ever accomplished in a painting, and...life.
I had taken a photo of the scene before I started, as I still do just to document it and if I needed to finish it in studio later. But I kept those pastels sorted and kept the colors sorted in my memory as well. When the sun had moved and changed all the shadows and even the tone of the light I had to leave. I looked at my painting on my front porch, surprised at what I'd accomplished, knowing I wanted to continue as soon as I went inside, while it was all fresh in my mind.
My cats greeted me and I blabbered about what I'd discovered, and we all went up to my studio so I could work some more. I remember that I pretty much finished it right then, though even then I let paintings sit for a few hours or days before I decided they were really finished.
When I came home I had momentarily forgotten the reason I'd needed to leave, but even as I came in the door I thought about those two beloved cats who would have been right there watching for me when I walked to the front porch, and happily taken their places to observe my work and hang out in the studio. That change from the blank wall that was their absence to memories of them and imagining what they would be doing was immensely healing.
When I got the photos back later that week and compared them to my painting, I could detect tiny amounts of those unexpected colors in the grasses, and I know I would never have noticed that as I worked only in my studio.
I found then and still find so many lessons in this experience, about the nature of grief and responding to it, about not just looking but seeing, not just existing but experiencing with all our emotions and senses, stepping out of our safe space, acceptance, healing.
I had no success in drawing or painting until I began to paint my rescued cats, and I realized I needed a deep bond with my subject to really study it and create a work with life. Then I built my skills sketching and painting my cats until I was ready to move to my next favorite subject, the landscape I'd wandered since I was a child. And though I was happy with all my in-studio familiarity, the loss, the grief, I will always say those two pushed me out the door that day, and welcomed me back. And we were all better for it. I have continued to build on it even to today.
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