Walk with a painter

“Fishing with a painter” may have been a more appropriate heading for this post along with this image of a watercolor I painted in 1988. Titled “Pike Alley” it has remained a favorite of mine and was done from a number of slides I took while on a fishing trip to a remote Canadian lake 32 years ago. There was a real brute lurking under all that sunken timber and he was still there when we left! Ahhh, Canada! Prints of this painting are available.

“Go out to walk with a painter and you shall see for the first time groups, colors, clouds, and keepings.”

Many moons ago I came across this quotation attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson and have used it extensively in my marketing materials. Unfortunately, my source has vanished but probably is buried somewhere about nine strata down in this compost heap I call an office/studio! A librarian in Hawaii once emailed me on behalf of one of her patrons who as an avid Emerson fan, was unfamiliar with this quotation, and was questioning as to where I may have read it. I’ll be eternally grateful if anyone out there has a clue to its validity. Any takers?

So, what can we derive from “Emerson’s” quotation? I think he’s trying to say that artists are more constantly “visually attuned” to their immediate surroundings, certainly in my case it has led to near disasters! I can’t count the times my wife and I would be out for a drive, particularly on a country road, and I’ll be distracted by a red-tailed hawk flying overhead or a wonderful old barn just sitting there waiting to be turned into some mouth watering watercolor. As I drive off onto the berm or over the rumble strips she usually gets my attention by saying that, “One of us had better drive!”