The Peace of Wild Things

Plein air underpainting and sketch.

My notes: the "Why?"
(Gesture and value sketches)

"Blessed" (11x14 acrylic on hardboard)
Artist: Cindi Moynahan-Foreman

"When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free."

 "The Peace of Wild Things," by Wendell Berry.

Live a Three-dimensioned Life

i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

© Wendell Berry. This poem is excerpted from "The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry" and was reprinted with permission of the author and Counterpoint Press for the website/podcast offerings found on OnBeing.

Plein Air Painting - "Roots"

I called this painting "Roots" (11x14 acrylic on hardboard)

"SABBATHS 1986 I

Wendell Berry

from A Timbered Choir


Slowly, slowly they return
To the small woodland let alone;
Great trees, outspreading and upright,
Apostles of the living light.

Patient as stars, they build in air
Tier after tier a timbered choir,
Stout beams upholding weightless grace
Of song, a blessing on this place.

They stand in waiting all around,
Uprisings of their native ground,
Downcomings of the distant light;
They are the advent they await.

Receiving sun and giving shade,
Their life's a benediction made,
And is a benediction said
Over the living and the dead.

In fall their brightened leaves, released,
Fly down the wind, and we are pleased
Top walk on radiance, amazed.
O light come down to earth, be praised!

What Your Eyes Saw...

"Hole In The Wall"
Artist: Cindi Moynahan-Foreman
Acrylic 11x14

I love this quote from Doris McCarthy, "You are actually constructing ......what your head understood about what your eyes saw."

More details of the painting:

Plein Air Practice #2

Water colour: "Mazinaw Rock"
Artist: Cindi Moynahan-Foreman

Mazinaw rock water colour study done in one hour. (5x4 on 140 lbs / 300 gsm cold pressed Winsor & Newton paper)

"Plein Air" Practice #1

11x14 Acrylic: Phase 1 (1 hour)

I thought it would be fun to post progress pictures of this "HoleInTheWall" practice piece that I started indoors. I am calling it a "plein air practice" when it is not a plein air at all! It's a landscape.

I am using the techniques I would use outdoors: quick value sketch; quick colour sketch; Light red underpainting and blocking in the darks then the lights - all done within one hour! (I am timing to see if I can complete it under four hours).

I will be adding yellow next and I hope to post the final painting shortly.

I had to scan it in two parts and I thought it was interesting to see the painting in two pieces then pieced together.

Acrylic:  "Hole In The Wall" (Incomplete)
Artist: Cindi Moynahan-Foreman