Blog

It's been over forty-five years since you passed away, and I have never written you. Not because I don't know your address, it's just that I have spent most of my life believing you are absent. While that may be true, life for me has carried on and I have experienced life - you know, that thing that is both painful and rich and sometimes both. You may never hear these words I am writing you today, or maybe, just maybe, you know what these words mean even before I write them. Meanwhile, it's probably good for me to do this... no therapist suggested it, I just wanted to.

Of course I could write a book! But the one thing I'd like to tell you about is my wife, Kathie. She hails from West Tennessee, but I have solidly converted her to the East Tennessee mountains. You'd like her. She comes from a long line of hard-working, blue collar, hammer-throwing, dirt-loving people. Like you. She has raised three kids that would pop your buttons (one of them named after you), wants to be outside as much as possible and is truly extraordinary with people.




But in the past several years she has rediscovered a way of seeing things that, while she always had it, was covered up by the routines of living. She's an oil painter. A Plein Air oil painter. Which is to say: she has a backpack filled with easel, brushes and mineral spirits sitting at the back door waiting for her to load the car and head to the fields. Or mountains. Or waters. Or anywhere that grabs her.

I am not sure exactly how to say this next part. It's the thing that makes me stand back and wonder at her. The great artists (I imagine) not only see the landscape, but receive it. They don't just reproduce what they see in a colorful way, they let the landscape enter them. I think it is Kathie's way of, may I say, contemplation. It's a slowing down and a sort of participation with what is front of her. She is not trying to make a statement or be productive with her work, she is receiving it and being received by it. When painting, it feels as though she is carrying on an unhindered dialogue.

About five times throughout the year she participates in a Plein Air competition. Yes, I know, it doesn't sound like something that a Comtemplative artist would do, but hear me out. For four or five days she hunts down different venues that speak to her, carries on her dialogue with the landscape, and then moves on to another. At weeks end a judge will choose a few outstanding pieces from the 30-40 painters and art enthusiasts will have the opportunity to purchase.

Receiving an award or sale simply tells me this: Someone else sees the unhindered dialogue that Kathie experienced and they want to participate also. There is a story that is written, and they want to read it!

"Once Upon a Vine", Finger Lakes Plein Air Festival, Canandaigua, NY, Second Place

After being married for almost 33 years, you can imagine how her life has worked on me. To watch her live in the wonder of this life she has been given, invites me to live open to what or who is in front of me too. In short, she helps me to love better. Now, I will be the first to say that I am not all that good at it... but I'm turned in the right direction.

Love,
Buddy