Aloha !
Back to my studio in Bolinas to create more paintings and dream up my ideal Art Gallery, after a peaceful flight back on Thanksgiving day from beautiful and lush Kauai !
Arrived pretty exhausted after the Celebration of Craftswomen and it took me about 3 days to really be able to function fully and enjoy what makes tropical lands so wonderful: the weather, the vegetation, the slow pace and the food… the ocean water, friendly enough to spend time just floating and looking at the palms moving in front of all the spectacular formations of clouds constantly passing overhead…
This trip was a gift for my birthday from my sweetheart and it was a blessing, indeed. I felt very special and very much cared for.
I have a lot to be thankful for and I pondered that on the way back, flying high above more clouds on Thanksgiving day…
On Kauai, northern island of Hawaii, the first thing one can notice as soon as arrived, besides the heavenly temperature, is the amazing number of chickens on the loose everywhere ! You can also enjoy their liveliness from extremely early in the wee hours to twilight, because the roosters have a lot to brag about…
They are pretty fearless too… And they do cross the roads… regularly, and mostly successfully, though some of them end up flatter than they started but it’s somehow rare.
Anyway… as I said, they are everywhere, and that is because in 1992, the hurricane Iniki, among other damages, destroyed chicken coops and freed a lot of them, permitting them to return to the bush and thrive in liberty !
Of course we went around the one road that goes along the coast and discovered the island in an every day exploration of its various treasures… The coast can be wild and rocky:
or sandy and of easy access, depending on places. Our favorite spot was the Salt Pond, where some local women are still collecting salt, which is not only used in cooking but for blessing ceremonies as well. We brought back a little box of it.
Some places are surfers heaven…
And others are painter’s delight:
Of course I spent a lot of time “painting”… in my mind’s eye !
everything grows strong and lush, all over the island, and it goes from tropical gardens:
to wondrous alleys of old trees …
Beauty is everywhere… did I mention the chickens ?
By now, I’m sure you got the idea: I really loved it ! Eventually there will be painting work done about Kauai… I’m afraid it even takes precedence over my “mudflats project” !
Everywhere I go, there is something special that fires my brushes up and makes me want to run to the art store to get more canvasses ! I relish that urge, that special tingle that gets me to start drawing, then brushing colors toward a scene that has to get painted by my hand, or I could say has to come through me and become a painting ! It’s something among so many blessings for which I am truly, deeply grateful.
I have to tell you, many things in nature get me awestruck pretty frequently and I’m one known to take hundreds of photos of wild grasses on the side of the road never tired of their incredible diversity and delicate beauty !
Talking about grass… there is something that I’ve been fascinated with for many years: the crop circles phenomenon ! All those astounding patterns created by unknown artists, some say not from Earth, that keep appearing in large fields over the world… !
They are positively mind blowing ! You can see a lot of them wonderfully photographed and recorded @ http://www.temporarytemples.co.uk/imagelibrary
The enormous scale and the precision, as well as the speed at which they appear are confounding, and it seems to me that they are becoming more and more elaborated, many of them representing now recognizable forms of animals or figures.
I am so intrigued by them ! They are a form of Art and I wish to get to know how and why and through whom they get to us !
However, without knowing how they get here, I can spend hours looking at them, I think they are beautiful before all other consideration…
Many thanks to all of you for your own way of being you and being part of my life, Mahalo, as they say in Hawaii…
More later…