Learning To Draw Water....
an ongoing journey
In the autumn of 1965 I packed all of our worldly possessions into my little red Volkswagen. My beautiful baby boy, Aaron, and I left Portland, Oregon and headed south to Berkeley, California where we would make our new and lasting home.
Young youth is so very brave.
Half a century later, after years of being mom, art student, illustrator, painter, photographer, traveler, grandmother, teacher, student again -- falling in and out of love more than once; working as a traveling sales lady for an art school while earning a BA & MFA in Painting, to become a life-long practitioner of oil and watercolor painting ... After all that time, energy and love I put forth for family and Bay Area friends, I sold my studio home and moved back to Oregon, to the small town of Sisters, a place I'd visited many times but didn't really know.
Happily, I found a house I could afford that would work as a studio and began exploring. So here I am…still curious, still working and studying - drawing and painting, clouds, light, trees, grasses and water. I try my best every day to make beautiful paintings of our ragged, rugged landscape and share the wonder that surrounds me.
The name for this site grew from my first year in Sisters when I spent some months learning to draw trees..following the advice of Sister Mary Corita in her classic , Learning By Heart ..... I set out to do 100 tree drawings...(little ones, but still) Every morning I sat at my breakfast table making little sketches of ponderosa pine trees, the branches, cones, and structure of the pines and others in my view until I had filled many pages. One afternoon I biked out to the nearby forest with my sketch pad & pen. I found an almost comfy spot on the ground and looked and looked at pine needles, to my delight, I made drawing that was at last a fair description of the huge forest. I had found a clear path on my sketchbook journey.
Throughout the following year made more than 100 similar little pieces (5 x 7's) of different subjects, the forest, the mountains known as Three Sisters, the Metolious River, Wychus Creek and other parts of this extraordinary landscape where I have lived these past 5 years.
The most challenging piece of my local landscape is the fast running water of the Metolius. I’ve studied woodcuts by Hokusi and Hirosige, paintings by Turner & Winslow Homer, looked & looked at other masters, and of course the river itself.
Not quite there yet.. But I’m happy with the struggle. I could well be at it 20 years from now...joyfully Learning to Draw Water.