I see all the colors around me and know I will never again paint as I have before.

 

Susan Rothenberg. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1988. Oil on wood, six panels, 

each panel 10' 6 3/4" × 46 1/8" (321.9 × 117.2 cm)

Years ago, I heard Susan Rothenberg give an artist's lecture at the Albright-Knox in Buffalo, New York, her hometown. She stated that when she left New York City, after marrying her husband Bruce Neuman, also an artist, and moved to his residence in New Mexico that the light of the day and night in this new place impacted her future artwork. 

As per the MOMA's (Museum of Modern Art) webpage, "There, Rothenberg incorporated a new perspective into her painting, introducing a high vantage point inspired by the landscape. In addition to painting her environment and what she saw out of her window ..." They quote Rothenberg stating, "You see things from different heights here, the topography changes—sometimes you’re looking down on the land, sometimes you’re climbing up the land,” she said. “So a kind of shifting of perspective came into my work.”

Susan Rothenberg. Dogs Killing Rabbit. 1991–92. Oil on canvas, 7' 3" × 11' 9" (221 × 358.1 cm).

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I have made huge changes to my everyday life. I see all the colors around me and know I will never paint again as I have before. A week after the last day of school in the interior of Alaska, having shipped all that I wanted to bring forward, my companion and I boarded a plane and moved to a warmer, sunnier place. This was a year in planning. My son and I started outlining all I needed to achieve and do starting last summer till now. Too,  I collaborated with two long-standing friends who made similar moves a year(s) earlier.  

I have learned not to share everything too quickly on the web as sometimes, unfortunately, boundaries may be crossed from a public positioning to the private without my consent. It is the two sides of a coin; wanting to publicly present & promote one's work and wanting to simultaneously sustain domestic privacy. Family and personal friends have the details and for now that is where it will stay. That is of course until I start writing poems or painting scenes that disclose my location via my creative consent. It is a place where sunlight dances on flower petal leaves like moonlight dances on the open sea.

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There are many Little Free Library bookstands throughout my neighborhood and the city. Recently, I nabbed from one twenty or so New Yorker magazines labeled from last year to just last week. I have a long-standing affection for the magazine and was quite pleased with my haul (I did return with books to restocked the two shelves). I spent most of last Thursday flipping through and reading one story / poem or another in each issue; moving is exhausting and requires restorative reading. 

One poem echoed many of my own thoughts regarding my recent change of address. Here it is:

One Vessel

I've had the time of my life, friends,

living quietly like a snail in a pocket.

It's a rather simple tale, really,

as elegant and amoral as a Latin poet's.

I loved the sailboat and the airplane rides. 

I loved the fossil of a mouse.

The sweetness of growing

into a man whose dreams-

like leaves or a bird's nest-

came to life.

But times have changed, 

and the snail now lives

in a single unit 

with pillows and lamps.

The woe is going, 

and the demons of the woe.

On the front lawn, a queen lays

eggs to build up the bee colony.

A crow pecks at an orange. 

My breast is strong from morning swims.

I take unto me new things

to keep in the vessel,

and let go of others.

                                     - Henri Cole

Yes, "I take unto me new things to keep in the vessel, and let go of others." Moving is both a beckoning to let go so as to make space for new things and a holding onto what has walked forward with you over the decades; the ceramic bowl you've had since before you gained your driver's license and the photos of you as a girl reminding you you have always been a poet.

Here, I have a quartet of long-established women friends. We are very similar as we each shelter our long days of solitude. I spend mine whispering prayers written with the nib of a pen or the hairs of a paintbrush. Until, that is, one of us breaks the spell and invites the other for a walk-about which includes procuring paperbacks from Free Library boxes, a long conversation over lunch while celebrating the pickles served with our meal or dinner out on the town with both them and others to whom flowers will be given.

I have a major art project due before the end of July. It will take most of my creative time from now till then to sketch it out and complete it. This is a collaborative project with a poet and her book publisher. I see now that I am glad I waited till I moved to begin painting it. I, like Susan Rothenberg noted above, not only have colors all around me, I have a new perspective. One that looks out wall-length windows from high above. The sun and moon rising seem closer to me at my desk. The colors they craft in the sky, along with stars, clouds and soaring birds, both of feather and metal, shimmer with pastels and luminosity. 

How will all of this parade across my painter's page or poet's notebook? Oh ... that is the joy! I don't know yet as now I only have those few and simple inked and painted prayers. Soon there will be more.

Flowering cactus in a neighbor's yard.

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