Last week I spent several days visiting my father in central New York State, where I grew up. He lives in a different town now, but I was staying at the house he and my mother built when I was young, mostly with their own hands, on a small lake. It was extremely quiet there, unlike the busy city where I now live. We went to sleep to the sound of bullfrogs, and woke up to songbirds at dawn. Wild rabbits grazed on the clover-filled lawn, and the woodchucks and chipmunks and squirrels paid no attention to us. I saw birds I haven't seen for a long time, like flickers, orioles, and a scarlet tanager, and whenever we drove through the fields and pastures of the surrounding area, we saw deer. At night, countless fireflies illuminated the edges of the woods, and crawled on our shirts like tiny, living flashlights.
Every day I walked along the shore, watching the fish in the still edges of the water, making a mental note of the plants in bloom. I was both in the present moment, and remembering being in these exact places at different stages of my life, alone or with people who are now gone or far away. There's a stone wall that my father built along the shoreline, and one place in particular where I always liked to sit. I thought about fishing there with my mother, and swimming with friends and cousins; I saw myself at seventeen, filled with romantic dreams, waiting for my boyfriend to come driving around the lake to see me late at night. I thought of standing in that spot throwing stones out into the water, as far as I could, the day we buried my grandfather.
The lake was impassive, reflecting my memories back to me, and also insisting that I notice what was going on right then. A catbird hopped in the the trees behind me; a chipmunk chattered. Large fish broke the surface farther out. Ducks flew low, quacking. And I saw the reflections of swallows in the water before I raised my eyes to follow them in the sky, flying at dusk just the way they always have.
I had brought my sketchbook and watercolors, and I did several drawings inside the house, which has remained almost exactly the same way it was when my parents lived there. We'd stopped at a farmer's market outside Utica and bought some fresh peas in the pod to shell -- we ate all of them raw. I'd also picked some crown vetch, which is in the pea family, and put it in one of my mother's Wedgwood vases, so the drawing became a sort of ode to legumes.
After returning home this week, I did the two small watercolor sketches of the shore. I don't know why exactly, except that I enjoyed trying to capture the delicate quality of the evening light and the stillness of the water, and perhaps it was my way of staying there a little longer. I don't think I've felt like I had the skill before to tackle this particular subject in watercolor, but the practice over the past couple of months has helped. I'm happy now to have these paintings in my sketchbook -- they take me back instantly to the place and its emotional feeling in a way a photograph somehow can't -- and maybe they'll be a step toward something else.
That's the challenge with subjects to which we're somehow attached. We may want very much to draw or paint them, or write about them, but because of the familiarity as well as the emotional charge, whatever we do may always seem to fall short of the mark. But as we make those attempts, over time, they also reveal a lot about ourselves: think of Van Gogh's self-portraits. About thirty years ago I did an oil painting of the same basic view of the lake as the second watercolor; it now hangs in my parents' house. It's detailed, accurate and well-painted. Most people would probably prefer it, and when I did it I was pretty pleased. Now, not so much. These little watercolors come much closer to the feeling I have when I'm actually there, and if I pursued that even further, maybe I could come even closer. The difference between the two has less to do with skill, and more with years of living. The place may be much the same, but I'm not the same person I was then.
I love your artwork, Beth, and the keen observation and poetic heart behind it.
Posted by: Pascale Parinda | July 16, 2019 at 08:18 PM
Lovely essay and art, I know those views well. Your depictions of the summer atmosphere there resonate with this other, former lake resident.
Posted by: Gerry B. | July 16, 2019 at 08:21 PM
...you may not be the same person, but your head remembers and relives those moments so eloquently and they are part of you and what you are Beth. This is just beautiful. I live this everyday as I live in a house that overlooks the farm where my mother grew up and lived in until her final days. There was not a day went by where she made sure she expressed her appreciation and gratefulness for the minutiae of the most organic and simple things of the central New York world. When I lived in Connecticut, she would randomly call me on the phone simply to tell me what a glorious day it was. Now, every day for me, every wildflower, every birdsong, every sunrise and sunset and those esoteric moments of the day that evoke memories make me wish I were an artist so I could try to capture those feelings on paper. Alas, that’s not my gift, but I continue to comment out loud, as I gaze at a miracle transpiring in my garden or breathing in that amazing morning air, even if no one is listening, just as I’m sure my mother did, on the simple beauties that surround me. What a gift my mother gave me. Are we not the luckiest children in the world.
Posted by: Anne Caton | July 16, 2019 at 08:23 PM
What lovely paintings of the loveliest of spots.
Posted by: Kate Reynolds | July 17, 2019 at 06:54 AM
I admire the clarity of your practice Beth. By this I mean the seeing, the artworks, the words, and your persisting and returning to where the deep feelings are no matter how complex and seemingly infathomable. That last word might point to your fascination with the waters edge?
Posted by: Vivian | July 17, 2019 at 07:25 AM
The lake images have such a lyric calm... Lovely that you put that seamlessly into the work, even when you doubtless had a whole world of feelings inside you, visiting home.
(The legume-homage, though--those pea pods are definitely moving slightly!)
Posted by: marly youmans | July 18, 2019 at 09:41 AM
Thank you, Pascale.
Gerry, it's great to hear from you! The lake has changed some since we all lived there, but the views are fundamentally the same and still bring the same memories and feelings. I was happy to see that there is more natural vegetation in the water now than there was for a while, and plenty of fish in the shallows, but I haven't heard a report lately on the water quality.
Kate -- yes, it is! Thank you.
Anne, thanks so much for your kind words, and for your comment. I'm so glad to know this about your mother and you, and like you I'm grateful all the time for having had a mother who loved and appreciated the natural world so much and gave that to me. I hope once in a while you call your own children and tell them what a glorious day it is in Chenango County! And because you're an artist in a different medium, I'm sure your feelings get expressed in music -- it's just not as literal a step as from landscape to visual art.
Vivian, thanks for the linguistic note, since I never really thought about that! And thank you for encouraging my practice and persistence, in more ways than art and words.
Marly, you live on a lake yourself, so you know its moods and the ways that presence insinuates itself into so much more than art. But the constancy affects us too, even when we're not nearby all the time. Thanks for your comment.
Posted by: Beth | July 18, 2019 at 03:07 PM
These watercolours are gorgeous, Beth and so full of the atmosphere, the feeling of the place as well as observant and intuitive. You obviously have a deep connection to this environment and it comes through in crystalline fashion in these paintings.
Posted by: Natalie | July 25, 2019 at 12:37 PM