Sanctuary Painting

Eastern Oregon. High desert. I grew up on a cattle ranch in this country of extremes. In the summer the mercury often climbed to 110 degrees. Everything — plants, animals, people — became very dry. After days and weeks a thunderstorm passed through. I watched the terrible beauty of lightening strikes and then fires in the hills. I rode with my dad driving cattle to the cattle camp and beyond. There were thirst and dust and horse flies, but also cold, clear water from the spring and a cool relief when a cloud passed over. I can still hear the quaking aspen in the breeze and the flat slap of the beaver’s tail when we came close to her home. I can still smell fresh grass near the creek or dry grass, sagebrush and Juniper trees on the hill, mingled with the sweat of the horses. At the end of the day we returned to the cabin. The amenities included water from the spring, a wood Sheepherder stove to cook on, and a pot of beans we kept in the damp, cooling willows near the creek. I still can smell the beans warming and the potatoes frying. We were at the ranch house during the winters. We slogged through snow and muddy fields. Again, there was no inside plumbing or electricity until electric power poles marched into our village, so we sat around a table lit by a kerosene lamp and watched the moths circle the light. Necessity did not wait for warmer weather so I had to go to the outhouse in weather often 30 degrees below zero. What do you do without T.V or telephones? You draw. You play with dogs and cats and chickens and ducks. I loved to ice skate and pull my sled on long walks in the private countryside. The winter smells and sounds were different than in the summer. Tules , willows, and grasses had their own smells and sounds. I could ride on the hay wagon while dad fed the cattle and breathe in the dusty smell of winter hay. And sometimes the world became perfect and quiet after a new snow. The point of this description is to tell you of my envelopment in nature when I was a child and its profound influence on me and on my art. Even though I have lived in the Bay Area most of my adult life my awareness was shaped by being one with the natural world. I worry that in our country and in many parts of the world it becomes less and less possible to feel that we are one with nature. If we lose this we lose a spiritual part of ourselves.