Heeled

 

Just as a photographer without a camera is a blind man, an artist without a sketch pad is disabled.

The wonderful thing about any artist is that the mind behind the brush or paint or pencil is the most important tool but with all of the things a person has to do to keep modern life turning even the mind of an artist can get overloaded.

"To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces. "

The words are Sherlock Holmes’ but the thought is worthy of any artist, you gotta have material to make your creative process work.

If you aren’t collecting images every time you got out you are inviting that day when there is no material. Then the brain racks itself to pieces and you don’t want that. There are so few artists we can’t afford to lose one for lack of fuel.

The weather in Oregon makes for jokes, “You don’t like it wait a few minutes.” But if that really is true you have to carry some sort of information storing equipment with you. There are lost of few minutes in every day and if you don’t have some way of recording what you see, you’ll miss it.

I come from a place where the weather never changes. You have hot, hot and dry, hot and windy, Tornado, and hot. From May to late October the weather gets hot and stays hot. You can get out, if you weigh less than a hundred pounds and like the sun, but if that isn’t your cuppa tea them you are forced to stay inside, hiding under the air conditioning until the fall finally comes.

But here, we get more changes in a day than Dallas sees in six months. And there are no Tornadoes to run you into shelter.

I bought a hat shortly after I moved to Oregon, seemed the smart thing to do to keep the rain and the cold off my aging head. It’s somewhere in the back of the van. I haven’t looked for it in years. The truth is once you get used to Oregon rain you just let it fall on your head and go about your business.

Sure during the brief month or so of winter I wear a hat. Specially now that I’ve had my run-in with the Croaker, but if I ever fully recover I’ll toss it again. The weather is just too mild for a lid.

So I grab my camera instead of my hat when I walk out the door. There is so much to see that I can’t afford to be without it one, single time.

Okay, I did go out without it one time; it was a coupla months after the Quack got her hands on me and I was still feeling pretty feeble. I went out to the store and on the way back encountered a herd of elk feeding not one hundred yards from the road. No, I won’t tell you where. I want those big guys to come back so I can make up for missing them the first time.

How many elk have you missed?

If you aren’t carrying a sketch book or a camera you probably missed a bunch. The world just keeps on turning in spite of how important we think we are. I know, it came as a shock to me to know that the Sun doesn’t revolve around me.

I live out in Barview. I hear that used to be a pretty primitive part of the rancho, bars, sailors, fights, booze and certain ladies of flexible ethics, shame I missed that. But Barview can still provide an amazing view or two.

There’s a section of Cape Arago which runs along side of the bar and allows the folks in cars to get a new Chamber of Commerce view each time they drive by. I’ve never seen a place so changeable. But you can bet after the first time I noticed it, I’ve had my camera in the car.

I have shots of a chimney which used to be there and is no more, I have the dredging barge and the tug boats in the channel, I have a bunch of shots of buoys bobbing on the water and the sunsets are not to be believed by people who do not live at the edge of the world.

I have more frames, scuse me, old-timey reference, these days its files, I have more files of that area than I do from the fifty-five years I lived in Texas. I have them because I never found hot and dry all that interesting.

What makes you stop and stare? Are you getting it down on something? The problem with life is that it keeps moving, on and on, no matter how hard we try to stop it. If you don’t catch it right now, it is gone forever.

You wouldn’t want time to pass you by, now would you? That’s right, you are an artists on the cutting edge of creation and never let a bit of moss grow on your south side or any other side for that matter and you are a son and a daughter of the rolling stone, no disrespect to Sir Mick and the rest of the guys in the band.

So get something you can carry and carry it! The method doesn’t matter nearly as much as doing it. And you are going to do it, aren’t you?