What is the Most Important Thing Today?

November sky at dawn

A new day dawns.  What is the most important thing I need to do today?

I have been thinking lately about my yearning to paint and my ongoing failure to make this happen.  Once again, I need to re-commit to making art a higher priority in my life.

So often I find just the right advice I need in the book I happen to be reading.  Yesterday I reread Ted Orland’s The View from the Studio Door:  How Artists Find Their Way in an Uncertain World, and I was inspired by these quotes:

“Art is mostly a product of hard work. . . . it’s more important to be productive than to be creative.”

He says that to be an artist “means finding a way to live your life so that you can engage again and again the things you care about the most.”

“. . . to make your own place in the world, you’ll probably need to create a life in which working on your art becomes a natural part of your everyday life. . . . There’s no predicting how any individual life will play out, but there is a guiding principle for reaching the best of possible outcomes: stay at work on the things that are really important to you, and you will reach your potential as an artist.”

 

Tied to the Sky

“Sun came out today, which raised my spirits to a considerable degree.  How our bodies and minds are tied to the sky!”
— Molly Gloss, Wild Life

Nearing sunset on the Olympic Peninsula

Those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest suffer from sun deprivation especially in winter.  These sunny summer days are noted and appreciated because we know gray skies will return.  Although I like clear, sunny days and blue skies, I think it is passing clouds that make sky-watching a rewarding pastime.  Nature gave us a dramatic presentation as we approached sunset on our drive home from the Olympic Peninsula.

Through the car window

Over the Hood Canal Bridge

 

The Sky, the Sky!

Waiting for sunset at Golden Gardens

The sunset sky over Elliott Bay, Seattle

Another rare, cloudless evening watching the sun set over Elliott Bay in Seattle.  We enjoyed a picnic supper at Golden Gardens and then stayed at the beach until the sun went down.  A perfect summer day.

” . . . the vastness of the sky will naturally lead the mind to contemplate infinities; it is wholly apt to associate the sky with expansiveness of the spirit, with joy and freedom and holiness.”
— Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

 

 

Road Trip to Olympic National Park (Part 3): Rialto Beach

“There was no end to the joyful exaltation on this edge of oscillations.”
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

The Pacific Ocean at Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park

The last half of our Olympic National Park road trip took us to several Pacific coast beaches.  We stopped at Mora Campground on the way to Rialto Beach to pitch our tent, as we planned to have a picnic supper at the beach and stay until sunset.  We didn’t want to have to set up our tent in the dark.

Our campsite at Mora Campground

The beach was two miles from the campground.  We passed the Quillayute River as we neared the end of the road.  Straight ahead was the endless ocean, the mighty Pacific.

Quillayute River

Sea stacks at Rialto Beach

Fourteen shades of gray

“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.”
— Henry Beston

This was my first time at Rialto Beach.  It’s a wild coast, with waves crashing and casting up sea foam onto the pebbly beach.  Sea stacks added interest to the horizon line.  Weathered driftwood lined the upper beach.  The water was cold, but irresistible to children (and adults).

Rialto beach

The wild shores at Rialto Beach

Our beach chairs

Driftwood

The sky

Waiting for sunset

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
— Victor Hugo

The Enchantment of the Sky

Blue sky with clouds

Summer sky with clouds

“The enchantment of the sky, ever changing beauty almost ignored.  Beyond words, without fixed form, not to be understood, or stated.  It ravishes away dullness, worry, even pain.  It graces life when nothing else does.  It is the first marvel of the day.”
— Florida Scott Maxwell, The Measure of My Days

” . . . the sky is always untamed and its infinite shores always stretched beyond our reach.”
— Peter Loudon, Drawing Closer to Nature:  Making Art in Dialogue with the Natural World

“A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers, a sea without sails.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Journals, June 24, 1840

A February Face

So much going on in our February sky

“Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing

I love this mention of a “February” face.  Can’t you just picture it?  So full of fleeting, stormy emotions.  Just like our February skies.

Dramatic, dark gray cloud amidst a paler blanket of gray

I love the glowing light of the sun on these gray-sky days.

The Grandest Spectacle of All

Glacier Bay, Alaska, 2009

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
— Victor Hugo

The Floor of the Sky

My daughter in Wyoming, 1998

“Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.”
     — Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Fragments of Blue

Blue iris, blue sky

 

Blue iris backlit

 

Translucent petal of blue iris

 

Fragmentary Blue
by Robert Frost 

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)–
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet. 

The blue irises are stunning.  Perhaps these fragments of blue in blooms do whet my longing for the infinite blue of the sky.

What is Pink?

What Is Pink?
by Christina Rossetti

What is pink? A rose is pink
By the fountain’s brink.
What is red? A poppy’s red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? The sky is blue
Where the clouds float thro’.
What is white? A swan is white
Sailing in the light.
What is yellow? Pears are yellow,
Rich and ripe and mellow.
What is green? The grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? Clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? Why, an orange,
Just an orange!

I pulled a few photographs from my archives to illustrate this poem:

What is pink? A rose is pink . . .

What is red? A poppy's red . . .

What is blue? The sky is blue . . .

What is white? A swan is white . . .

What is yellow? A pear is yellow . . .

What is green? The grass is green . . .

What is violet? Clouds are violet . . .

What is orange? Why, an orange . . .