St. Stephen's Green, Dublin (Photo: Derek Speirs for The New York Times)

Some things I’ve learned this week:

• You can’t carry oil paints on a plane, even in checked luggage.
• The Regina Airport staff are helpful and kind as they tell you about an un-staffed desk with forms and Ziploc bags just outside airport security that promises to courier your prohibited items back home.
• If your Air Canada flight from Toronto is late leaving and you only have 1-3/4 hours to connect at Heathrow for Dublin, you are never going to make it. And neither Air Canada’s  flight attendants nor so-called Heathrow customer service staff  are going to be the tiniest bit helpful to you or any of the dozen or so other travellers in the same fix.
• You can use the time between landing and the next available flight three hours later to accept and move on, and Heathrow’s Internet services to cancel your plans for the next two days and make new ones.
• Which will allow you to replace the banned items so you have something to paint with.

I am on my way to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, Co. Monaghan, Ireland, called Ireland’s premiere creative artist residency for all types of professional artists. It was created when Irish theatre director and playwright Tyrone Guthrie gave his 11-bedroom family home and estate to artists to be used as a retreat. Wikipedia says, “In a tranquil, beautiful setting amid the lakes and drumlins of County Monaghan, everything the eye can see is private in the gated 500-acre (2.0 km²) fully wooded estate. In the ‘Big House’ (as it is affectionately known) everything is provided for, including delicious food much of which comes from their own organic gardens. The dinner each evening at 7 is always a buzz of chat and discussion that is a welcome interruption to the strong creative work vibe that surrounds the centre. Each bedroom includes writing desk and a chair and has its own charm and character with a selection of books, paintings and a view.” I have wanted to go to the Centre for years, and in September my application to do so was accepted.

I thought I had the trip all worked out. Arrive in Dublin mid-afternoon on Tuesday, collect a rental car, and spend two days easing out of jet lag while exploring Ireland’s southeast coast, where I’ve never been, before a comfortably-timed drive back to Dublin Airport and a Friday bus to Annaghmakerrig. The oil paints and airplanes changed all that, and instead I have a city holiday with shopping and art galleries and a new haircut and replacing the paints. Travel is always an adventure.

Some other things I’ve learned:

• People in every possible circumstance are kind and helpful when you tell them where you are and what you’d need. Desk clerk at Bewley’s Hotel Dublin Airport, driver of the hotel shuttle bus, sales staff at K & M Evans art supplies, cashier at Dunne’s Stores, you made my day.
• What you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts. I will pay for one night’s guest house night that couldn’t be cancelled for free, but I won’t pay for the car.
• Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet. When I emailed my regrets, the second night’s guest house hostess responded, “What a shame but I had a feeling that might be the case, no harm done. Hope you find the sanctuary you require when you finally reach your destination, God bless and enjoy your airborne St Valentine’s Day. Have a wonderful and productive time in the TG centre!” Caitriona of Cuasnog, may you live long and prosper.
• As Steven Pressfield says in The War of Art, a professional ships. Andrea at Peter Mark hair salon in Grafton Street gave me the best  haircut I’ve had in 20 years, never minding whether she will ever see this customer again, because that is what she does.
• St. Stephen’s Green park in Dublin has flowers blooming in February.

The inspiration I cooked up last week waits in my luggage. I hold faith that Irish rain water and a good stir will be all it needs to rise.

Studio at work

In my studio today I’m making inspiration. It isn’t a mystical process. It’s more like making bread. Workmanlike. Yeast, water, flour, seasoning. Maybe it’s more like making bread without a recipe. How much flour? Unbleached? Whole grain? How much of each? Now, mix. Too soft. More flour? Which kind? Mix again. Knead. Rise. Punch down. Knead again. Rise again. Bake. For how long? How hot should the oven be? If the bread isn’t good, I could throw it out and start over. But oh, all that work and time! Never mind. Begin again.

Last summer I had an idea about the way a particular feeling might look. It was just a glimpse, caught in the back of my eye. Not knowing quite what to do with it, I let it be, thinking about it sometimes but doing no more with it than that. By December it seemed to tell me what shape it might want. Then the trick is to turn the idea into a painting.

When I begin a new piece I set up the thing I will end up describing. I take its picture. I manipulate the results in my computer, and through that process I arrive at an image that is the beginning of the work. The painting is never the photograph, or the thing I set up. Or the image I originally had that quick look at.

And I wish that arriving at any image was as easy as saying it.

So here I am, placing objects on a board, setting lights, moving the board around, trying different angles and different ways of fastening and more and different lights. My first attempts at showing what was in my imagination look like nothing. No rhythm, balance, interest, life. No meaning. Move the objects. Re-arrange the proportions. Move the lights. Once more time.

Eventually something begins to emerge. It doesn’t look like what I glimpsed in the summer, but it looks like something. Fiddle, photograph, re-arrange again, fiddle, photograph. Now I see something I didn’t expect to. Out of the new vision I have a new idea. Begin again. The first image might work. So might the next one. The one after that – I can hardly breathe for possibility.

I thought this might be two hours’ work. Four hours later I realize I have only started. By this time the process doesn’t seem so workmanlike. Though it certainly feels like work. It feels as as if through the exercise of vision, concentration, will, and sheer belief, I’m beginning to make something where before there was nothing at all.

Not that this small beginning  means I will go from here to making art. That’s the next leap of faith. Between now and then this pixelated representation of an idea will go through my computer, a photo printing process, translation into drawing on a board, and the application to the drawing of oil paint using flat hogs’ hair brushes, by someone who often feels she has neither ever done this before nor any idea what to do next. And who can fail completely at any step of the way.

But today all that is ahead. Today I’m making inspiration.

What makes inspiration for you?

Late sun on buttes

There’s a painting on my easel  that’s been there too long. 40 graduate students in the class in library and research skills that I teach for University of Maryland University College are waiting for grading and feedback on their last major assignment in the course. I’m too far behind in my Goods and Services Tax returns for comfort, and that means I’m also behind in my bookkeeping. By the end of the week I will have in seven days attended four meetings of organizations I’m involved with. One, Prairie Wind and Silver Sage – Friends of Grasslands, I chair. Another meeting had me contributing to the development of Saskatchewan arts policy and driving eight hours to Regina and back to do so, staying in a slightly uncomfortable hotel overnight on the way. I have an important travel date coming up in 11 days, and it involves more getting ready than just the usual packing and preparing for those who will live here and do cat care while I’m away. There’s no sun and I’m tired and slightly dispirited, and as a result I’m neither efficient nor effective. My usual method of dealing with this is to push harder. But instead, I’m going to the beach.

No, there isn’t a real beach nearby. This is the semi-arid grasslands, and despite an unusually mild winter resulting in unseasonable melt, there isn’t real water. This is a beach of the mind.

I’ve never been much for lying around on beaches with my eyes shut. That’s boring. Nothing to do, and it’s too hot. The beach I loved first was Gurteen Beach near Roundstone, Ireland.  I was privileged to live only a few miles from there on the Island of Inishnee for three months in the winter of 2003, and Gurteen became the place I went to walk on the hard sand, stare at the sea and nothing for miles, and be buffeted by all weathers. That’s the kind of beach I have in mind. And to find it I’m going into Grasslands National Park.

Despite my discomfort with doing nothing, going to the beach implies at least some indolence. So today I’m not planning to set strenuous goals for physical activity or getting lost in the hills. I’m just going out on my favourite road, down into the valley towards the Two Trees trailhead and back up again.  It’s quiet here, and I’m alone. A few deer scatter when they see me, and a jet trail arcs southeast across the sky. Otherwise the only presence is the wind.

I walk. I’m trying to breathe, to leave my fatigue and feelings of pressure behind, just to stroll and look. It feels a bit uphill, even though I’m going downhill, but I’m concentrating. Concentrating on going to the beach! How counter-productive is that? No, don’t think about productive. It’s the beach.

Slowly I begin to feel the rhythm of my stride, and the Grasslands beauty becomes more visible. I reach the bottom of the hill and make the loop to come back up, and I realize again how much I love it here. Everything seems so far away. The wind drops and there’s almost no sound at all. Just the echo of a few cattle in the valley, and coyotes several valleys further away, and a pheasant nearer than the cows. Everything seems distant. From under the late day cloud the sun comes out, turning the buttes all golden. As I walk up out of the valley, the coyotes, closer by now, set up a pure Hallelujah Chorus of howling. I stop to listen, and to smile. Now I’ll head home, feeling if not completely restored, more relaxed. I’ll do the next thing needed, and soon I’ll come to this beach again.

If you have a beach of the mind and you want to share it, visit Alison Gresik‘s Design Your Art Committed Life blog and post it there. This beach stopover was her idea, and she should get the credit.

Snowy owl on fence post (Photo credit: Robert W Harwood)

I’ve been counting snowy owls.  It isn’t an organized or recorded count; it’s just become a kind of game. For some uncertain reason, perhaps to do with birth rates and food supplies in their normal far north, snowy owls are appearing in unprecedented numbers in southern Saskatchewan this winter. And once you know they’re out there, looking for and finding them is really fun. Snowy owls will sit on fence posts and trees, but their favourite place seems to be the tops of power poles, where they look like finials on giant newel posts. My counting record so far is 10 owls in about 90 minutes.

That record was set last week on a trip to Swift Current, the nearest larger centre to Val Marie. Swift, as it’s known locally, has only 15,000 residents, but it’s the biggest place within three to four hours in any direction, and you get really used to that highway. The outing was to join a small group of artists celebrating the accomplishment of Canadian painter Gregory Hardy by meeting over dinner at Miso House, a Japanese/Korean restaurant in the city (Japanese/Korean! Here in the wild west, home of dinner plate-sized beefsteaks for supper! And delicious too! Who’d have imagined!), and a larger group attending the opening reception at Art Gallery of Swift Current for Greg’s solo exhibition currently on view there.

What a pleasure that was. Being with people who share a common belief in the importance of art and the way it can change lives, and recognizing excellent artwork by one of them – you don’t do that just every day in this remote grasslands I’ve chosen. I love my life here, but I also need to know that my spiritual kin are still connecting and sharing. So over the hills and plains and highway potholes you go, counting snowy owls, then a few hours later you drive back in dark and drifting snow. Glad to go, glad to come back. You wish you could see the birds in the night as easily as in the day. Though they don’t belong here, their being here makes a difference.

Wherever I go when I go away from here, and no matter how much meaning that going has, it’s always good to come back, to a land where snowy owls sit on power poles. Like the snowy owls, the place we count, the place we belong, is the place where we are.

The artists who exhibit with Grasslands Gallery are some of the most talented and inspiring people I know. This occasional series introduces them and their work.

Cora Macaulay, "Grasslands Palette", o/c, 9" x 12"

When I first met Cora Macaulay I didn’t think of her as an artist. I thought of her as my best friend’s mom. But the friend I’m talking about is the internationally-exhibited watercolour painter Catherine Macaulay, also a Grasslands Gallery artist. So maybe Cora’s step toward the easel wasn’t such a big one at all.

Cora Macaulay has been painting a long time, but she didn’t start at an especially young age.  Cora began at age 65, nearly 30 years ago. I still remember sitting in a restaurant in Saskatoon one evening in the fall of 2003 when Cora announced, in her low-key, the-opposite-of-self-aggrandizing way, that she had taken up the activity. Catherine and I turned to her, almost open-mouthed. In my memory, she smiles and says that she bought her paints with her first old-age pension cheque. She says she’s quite enjoying herself.

In Cora’s words, “At one time I was coordinator for community college classes. A request was made for a class in oil painting. When the class was set up, there was room for me to become a member of it. That was the start. I liked it, and decided this could be a good hobby.”  Asked what kept her going, she has no uncertainty: “My growing interest in what that “hobby” had to offer. And an invitation from the newly formed 55 Plus Art Club was accepted without hesitation. With Catherine by then seriously involved in the art world, to learn something about it myself seemed a good idea. What wide horizons it opened up for me!”

When Cora first began painting, she and her husband James still lived on the farm, in the small two-bedroom house they’d been in for most of their lives together and where they raised their family. By that time the house had an addition, a bright wood-panelled back porch. Here Cora set up her materials and began to work. She took classes, met with her Art Club friends to paint and critique each other and find places to show, and she produced lots and lots of art. While Cora found most of her subjects close to home in the sweeping land forms and wide skies of her native Saskatchewan, she also travelled and painted from what she discovered in other spaces.

As Cora says, she painted, “Landscapes and skyscapes. Early in my painting days an adjudicator told us to paint what we know. I’m a realist, but appreciate the originality and use of colour in all types of work. I like the variation of light and shadow and how they affect colour.”

Cora painted for the next two decades. Her artwork was exhibited regularly in her city and regional environs, and in the 1990s a solo exhibition toured to 24 communities in the province of Saskatchewan with the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils‘ Art on the Move program. In 2004, her Art Club visited Grasslands National Park, and a tour given them by Lise Perrault, local rancher, artist and early staunch Park supporter, resulted in Cora’s Grasslands series.

Time and change chase all of us. By 2009 when I opened Grasslands Gallery, Cora’s artistic output had slowed almost to a stop. At age 91 she found prolonged periods of physical concentration difficult and getting out to paint almost impossible. But she had one painting left from the Grasslands series, #4, and she gave it to me to hang.

It sold almost immediately. So did the next piece she let me have, another older work. And the one after that did the same thing. But this third one was freshly-made for the occasion. Inspired by her new audience, and willing to paint when she can and in small sessions, Cora Macaulay is back with us. She’s making gorgeous painterly depictions of this amazing Grasslands landscape, some of her best work yet, and while her production is slower now than it was a few years ago, her lovely small oil paintings never last in the gallery very long before they are purchased. Cora again: “My picture content is simple, little need for interpretation. I hope anyone who has one has it hung visibly with their eyes straying to it often.”

At 93 years of age, Cora Macaulay makes one painting at a time. Sometimes she doesn’t know if she will make another one. But who can say anything else? And if Cora Macaulay can decide to follow her dream as far as it leads, can’t we all?