The In-Between

Leave It

The first two of the series to be nearing finish. This is what they look like after today. I need to,let them sit there for a while before I make final adjustments or any other changes. The first one reminds me of a clown, a girl clown. The second one reminds me of a piñata.

Today was an interesting day, full of small gifts from the universe. I’ll get to that soon, but I’ll show some pictures first, because yesterday was a good day too. I went for a hike on one of my favorite trails and there were wildflowers and there was water and I needed that!

Columbines, meadows, penstemon, paintbrush, north fork of the Big Thompson River, and more trail scenes.

My friend Mel and I left early and got to the Dunraven trailhead, about a 50 minute drive from home on the way to Estes Park. We started hiking at exactly 6:00 am and we planned to get back to the car no later than noon. The night before our hike, there was a huge storm with hail and lightning and an intense downpour that lasted hours.

Hail and shredded leaves the whole length of the trail, and the river was high after the storm.

A few steps down the trail from the trailhead we ran into our first pile of hailstones. The whole way, the trail was littered with shredded fir needles and aspen leaves, and tiny purple baby cones from the fir trees. There were fresh white piles of hailstones all the way up to where we turned around, 6 miles up the trail, and then on the way back even with the late morning heat, the hail wasn’t melting in the shade.

The columbines, gooseberry flowers, wild geranium, paintbrush, penstemon, goldenrod, larkspur and vetch were all in bloom, the blues and purples and whites lined the trail and filled the meadows. It’s been about five years since the big fire up there and the undergrowth is thick, there are thousands of baby pine trees growing in the burned areas, and the place is regenerating so well. The trail was in good shape and very few muddy spots despite the obvious hailstorm.

We got a good 12 miles in, 6 miles up to the meadows before Lost Lake before turning around. It looked like the trail would be clear for a while, no snow in sight. We moved pretty fast, we got back to the car at 10:45 and I was home by noon after dropping Mel off at her place. In a few weeks I’ll go back up and go all the way to the lake, which is a 19 mile round trip.

Back at the studio. I got an umbrella to keep the direct sunlight out of my eyes while I work outside. The lilies are starting to bloom in the pots on the left.

Today it was supposed to get hot so I took the girls out early and did my run, then I went out to the studio to start working on the series before my back-to-back Zoom calls for 3 and a half hours. First I talked with Jill, we shared our series with each other and did some painting while we talked. Right after that, I talked with Ellen from CVP, we couldn’t get Zoom to work for us but we talked on the phone until the coaching call started at 1. Talking with Ellen was amazing, we have so many things in common along with our interest in tracking our family histories.

Ellen has been involved with CVP since 2020. She lives in the South Bay Area. She is of Ukrainian Jewish descent and we are the same age and both lost our dads in 2020. She doesn’t have a lot of information on her family or photos like I do, but what she does have are dozens of letters from her grandfather to her grandmother, when he was fighting in World War I. We talked about ways our family history discoveries have impacted us personally along with our art. She’s also writing a book that somewhat touches on the discoveries she’s made. We had a great conversation and will be keeping in touch.

The coaching call was great, with Insa as the featured coach, but I’ll have to watch the recording again, because I wasn’t able to focus on it that much after my talk with Ellen. My mind was all over the place, plus I was working on the series making little tweaks at the same time. Tomorrow I’ll watch the recording and pay more attention.

I’m hoping to get closer to finishing most of the series before I leave for Crested Butte, and I have to pack and get ready- a week’s worth of groceries, because there aren’t many good options for non-restaurant food there. I’ll be taking my friend Lori’s painting that she bought from me-she’s coming up to meet me in Crested Butte one day next week since she lives near Grand Junction just a couple of hours away, and it’s a lot less expensive than shipping it.

I’m so ready to start focusing again on what I learned from Insa last winter, and in her coaching sessions in CVP. I’m looking forward to growing more in my work over the coming year, having the time to paint and study, work on my process, and do the real work of seeing and expressing what I see in my brushstrokes and gestural work.

I always want to write more in depth about my thought process but I need to write during the day to do that. I always write these posts at night before bed and I’m tired. But I will share something for fun now. I made up a song for Gypsy on our walk the other day. Gypsy is one of those dogs who reacts to everything, and she has a bit of ADHD and maybe OCD. She bounces off the walls and tries to check out everything, every piece of trash, every dead squirrel, every lost piece of clothing, or anything that moves. If you know the tune of Whip It by Devo, that’s how it goes, but Gypsy’s song is called Leave It.

When some roadkill comes along, you must leave it.

When somebody lost their thong, you must leave it.

When you see another dog, you must leave it.

Now leave it, on the street

I don’t want to pull it, out of your teeth

Go forward, move ahead

Try to ignore it, it’s not so hard

To leave it, leave it there.

Gypsy with her eye on the bunny, and there’s another bunny waiting in the bushes. Velcro sees it too, but she doesn’t freak out and try to chase everything like Gypsy does. “Leave it!”

Have a good night, everyone, and thanks for reading.