Two Crow Feather Woman

I have been too many years away from oils. I think I should enroll in a painting class when I retire (I have neither the time nor energy to enroll in a painting class right now. Especially the energy part). I could do with a whole new approach to oil painting, and I’m not too proud to say that.

I started this painting last year. I guess it isn’t too bad that it took me a year to reach a point where I threw up my hands and said, “I am DONE!” I also know that with oils, being “done” is rather relative. As long as it isn’t varnished, you can still come back and tweak it. But I am done looking at it.

I took two photos – the top one is with the flash and if you click on the thumbnail to view it, it looks as if I never covered the canvas board. Little pricks of reflection show the underlying texture of the canvas board. The second photo is sans flash, but the color isn’t true: the camera picked up on the yellows and washed out the blues and reds. But it better shows the layers of paint and that’s my main focus.

I used a palette knife for most of this painting. I’ve never done that before: painted with the palette knife. I used a brush for some aspects, but I wanted to understand the palette knife and I wanted to get away from my previous style of painting.

That is the photograph I was working from. A perfect clear summer day in the high desert, camped at the base of the big pink rock at Pike Creek, just outside of the Steens Mountain Wilderness area.

That is the Steens rising up in the background, some 4200 feet above the Alvord Desert floor (actual elevation: 9,734′).

I removed our rig, the camping paraphernalia and Harvey barking in the foreground. I left Don & Murphy, but they became explorers, not photographers.

I left Don’s moustache off. In fact, I just left his facial features off. Man & his dog.

It’s an O.K. painting, but… that’s all it is. <yawn>

I may come back to it some other day in the future. For now… I’m done. Although I do suppose I should sign it, even if I don’t like it.

Once upon a time (all good stories begin there, except those told to me by my oldest daughter. She begins all stories with “So.”)

So. There was this faerie that lived in the sagebrush land. She liked the desert and the desert creatures, and she could often be found sitting on a rock shaded by a quaking aspen tree, next to a trickle of water. In her youth, she was a beautiful faerie with delicate gossamer wings and flowing long hair. She faced no hardships and no long winters of the soul, only the hopeful days of youth.

But winter came to her. The darkness that creeps into our hearts as we age and as we face ferocious opponents took their toll on her beauty. She had her throat slit by barbed wire. An enemy took a swipe at her head with a hatchet. Age ravaged her skin. Her hair thinned and receded. Her wings were plucked during an escape from a predator. She lost her lover, her family, and most of her contemporaries.She battled illness and defeated it.

But through it all, Mitzi never lost her dignity and her soul. She reached into her heart to find strength she did not know was there. A deeply spiritual creature, Mitzi found faith to rise above her circumstances.

This is the almost-finished-Mitzi. She has a kestrel companion by the name of Kyree. She maintains her poise and grace with the serenity of someone who has had to reach deep into the dark places. She does not laugh often, but her lips curve slightly upward in a contemplative smile and her sense of fashion is flirty and joyful.

Mitzi is a survivor.

I will most likely be donating the finished Mitzi to a charity auction to benefit other warriors. Stay posted for more on that.

I just have to finish her chair, the one she sits on while she watches the seasons of the high desert go by. And when that is finished, I will announce her destination.

This starts with a mystery. My friend, Linda, moved out of her house over a year ago and let the bank have it. After many months on the market, it finally sold. I was excited: new neighbors?

Alas, no. A remodeler had purchased the house and was “flipping’ it. She was nice enough as she did her work and gave us her phone number in case of emergency, but she wasn’t a neighbor.

She sold the house in December. And it sat empty. New blinds went up. Yard work happened. But no one moved in. I was certain it was a rental, but no ads appeared in the paper or on Craigslist. A month went by and no one moved in. A second month has almost passed and no one has moved in, but the yard decor has grown and there’s a satellite dish on the roof now.

Yesterday, I found a note on a paper napkin tucked between my front door handle and the door frame. “Call me about your mailbox. I want to replace the post.”

Well, Yay. My mailbox is an old rusted out piece of metal attached to a post that has dry rot right at the base. When you touch it, it wobbles dangerously. It has been like that for 8 years. The neighbor’s mailbox rusted through and the door fell off.

I offered to share in the cost of the post, but he would have none of it. He just wanted to put in a new post and he had to buy a new mailbox, but he wondered if we wanted to buy a new box, too, or trust the rusted one to stand up to the transfer to the new post.

Let me just say I have always wanted a new mailbox. My husband has stonewalled me because he knows I’ll probably paint flowers on a new one. And suddenly I have a neighbor who is offering to put in a post and I can buy a new mailbox and he will attach it for me? My husband doesn’t have to listen to me nag and whine? And he doesn’t want any money for it?

I died and went to Heaven.

I also went to Home Depot and bought a mailbox for $18. A white one, so I could paint on it. I just told my husband I was going to “paint the street number on it.”

His look told me that he thought decals would work better than paint, but I already had a plan.

I decided I was going to paint my animal “totem” on the box.

I don’t exactly believe in totems, but if I have one, it is in the family corvidae. I suspect it is actually Raven, because of the Raven that met my daughter & I on a recent trip to Nevada to deal with some serious issues. Raven appeared at a California reststop and posed for the photo I now use us my banner for this blog. And the visit to Nevada went as Raven would have liked it. I cannot blog about that, but Raven is a clever bird.

So are crows. And crows remind me of my mother in a round-about way (hence this blog).

I have always liked crows except when they are dive-bombing a raptor and cawing raucously. I very much like ravens when I am up in the woods and they lift off from a tree, croaking and turning to watch me. Ravens warn you in the woods of other things.

It’s a longer story than that, but suffice it to say: I think if I had an animal totem, it would be in the family corvidae.

I like it. I could add another feather, but the mailbox isn’t for my alter-ego. It’s for my husband and I. The average passer-by who can see all the bird feeders (and birds) in the yard will assume we just like birds (and they would be right). My husband might roll his eyes, but he would have to notice it first.

My neighbor won’t have a clue.

Oh, yes. It’s a rental. The man who is putting in the mailbox post is the new landlord. He didn’t advertise the rental but is renting it to coworkers. He doesn’t trust Craigslist.

They put in a bird bath, so I hope my new renter-neighbors love bird.

Quiz: if you had an animal totem, what would yours be? Do you know? Do you have the faintest clue? Do you believe in totems?

And bonus question: what is Raven’s status among Native Americans?