“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” – A. A. Milne
I guess our main challenge in these days of pandemic is staying safe. But we seem to be equally challenged with keeping it interesting – despite the restrictions. This is where I am really grateful for all the Potomac River access paths we have in Piscataway Park, which I’ve taken to walking on a mostly daily basis. I’ve found it a little difficult to paint during this period, but after meeting with my art group I was inspired to haul my paints along on a walk and paint one of my favorite spots down by the river.
My friend Linda has a beautiful garden that I tried to paint
twice this season. I say ‘tried’ because I think both times, I failed to
capture the actual beauty that she created. Linda is the real artist here and
trying to paint her work did kind of make me feel like a bumbling amateur. Both
times I tried, it made me think of Plato’s denunciation of art as a copy of a
form that he disliked for further removing one from the reality or truth of
something. But, although I didn’t quite capture it, it seems like the counter
argument to Plato is that at least the copy of the form will remain when the
real form has long since withered. Also, in the process, I got to spend some
pleasant hours exploring the ‘truth’ of the beautiful flowers.
So I have been painting more. My successful artist friend says he paints every single day! His work is quite beautiful so I presume a side benefit is ‘practice makes perfect’, but I’m afraid right now I’m motivated because it gives me something enjoyable to do. I like being outside and I like walking my dog. So my methodology is often to walk the dog while carrying my travel easel and to pause when I see something interesting to paint and then paint it. There is some necessity to work fast because the light will change too much if you don’t. That works for my dog. There is a special term in French for this painting outside activity: Plein Air. This landscape of a farm road was painted earlier this week.
I have a lot of memories Piscataway Park’s Marshall Hall site, former site of an amusement park and Southern Maryland gambling mecca, and also the current site of burned out historical mansion. I remember going there as a child in the amusement park days and once accidently wandering into a slot machine building where no one under sixteen was allowed. My husband worked the toy helicopters there as a teenager so that may have been our real first meeting, although I don’t actually remember riding the toy helicopters. I liked the mini-roller coaster better. My son was married there in an outdoor winter wedding where it was only about 10 degrees F outside. My late mother-in-law was born there in a long-gone house where she remembered as a baby sleeping in a room with snow blowing in through the cracks in the siding. There are still old amusement park rides rusting in the woods. I got the chromium for my element collection from an old rusting truck where the chrome trim was practically the only thing left. I remember riding my bike down to the site in 1981, when the mansion caught fire, with baby Piri in the rear bike seat, arriving in time to watch it smolder.
There is now a rutted old dirt road remaining that winds past the Marshall family cemetery and really doesn’t go anywhere. At the end of this road, I painted the scene of some trees overlooking the Potomac.
