Going Wobbly

“ Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.” [Isaiah 43: 18-19]

Spring Riffle, 11 x 8 1/2, oil on panel
Copyright  Peter Bougie, 2018
Photo by Nora Koch, copyright 2018 

       Painting a picture on location is an excellent way to live in the moment. It requires intense focus and concentration. It requires determination and the mental toughness to resist distractions, endure physical discomforts, and persist in working in spite of the dismay you inevitably will feel when you compare what you have painted to what you see – even when what you’ve painted looks good. Sometimes I console myself at the end of a session of painting by recalling that there’s a good chance my painting will look better when I am not comparing it to nature. That often turns out to be true. A strong composition will carry you a long way. Effects rendered true to nature, even dramatic light effects, set in a weak composition will not. In fact, it’s likely that the dramatic light effect you see will not look dramatic if it is set/composed poorly.

     Mind you, I’m not advocating for effects untrue to nature set in good compositions. That combination is unsatisfying in its own way. I am reminded of Degas’ criticism of the Impressionists (with whom he was sympathetic in many ways) about losing consciousness before nature. He mocked admirers of Monet’s Water Lilies for “going wobbly at the sight of a pond.” Plein air painting is in no way analogous to pointing a camera and taking snap shots. It is not enough to chase effects. You have to understand how to make a picture – and that is after you have gained at least a basic mastery of how to observe nature, and of your materials.

     This willow I painted once came up out of the dirt a pencil-thin shoot in a sand bar on the Rush River, in western Wisconsin. It did not set a course to ascend like an oak or a cottonwood. Willows are impatient. They seem to know they won’t last very long. And so, this one leaned to seek the light, to take advantage of spatial opportunities and to set itself against wind, frost and water. The leaning grows into a turning, twisting muscled gesture, a responsory comment to the conditions of light and the river bank; the company of other trees, the activities of reptiles and mammals, the flights of birds, and the metamorphosis of insects. I can’t cite the passage, but I recall that Thomas Merton[1] said something about how a tree praises God by being what it is. We praise God by being what we are, too; but we are more complicated creatures than trees. I mean that we can’t say to ourselves that we are sinners, and by being that we praise God.

     We probably think that we understand very well what trees are. I think we have a very limited understanding of what a tree is, not to mention everything else. We see all things as they are in a moment. But all things exist in a continuum. We can make a lot of accurate summations about a continuum with our intellects using information we gather with our senses, but we can’t literally perceive the continuum. We can observe it in its particular parts and reconstruct it in part – in very limited part - by reason. If we are really blessed – which means if God sends a gift – then we might have an intuition which causes us to make some leap. In case we are full of ourselves about our blessings, recall what Paul says: Who makes you any different? “What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting of it as if you have not received it?” [1 Corinthians 4:7] This is not an admonishment to squash the achiever or the non-conformist. It is a reminder that we do not invent ourselves.

     At the base of the willow grows new grass, drinking its fill, a little cloud of green. Across the top of the composition is the reddish brown reflection (not the reality) of unleafed trees on hillsides beyond, and where the water is moving in riffles and tremors it is a silvery blue gray calling back to the sky. A stalk projecting from the willow near its base has caught flotsam in the flood. It is an incongruous recollection of surfeit and natural violence.

“In the desert I make a way, in the wastelands, rivers.”

Detail, unamed composition, Rush River 

[1] Catholic convert, Trappist monk, contemplative, author, 1915 – 1968.