Beauty in a dirty February parking lot
sometimes the scene won’t leave me
until I render her properly.
sometimes beauty strikes
in a dirty february parking lot
and I am reminded,
she is everywhere.
I woke during the blue hour this past Tuesday. I shuffled out my bedroom door to find my parents awake, reading their Kindles and sipping their first cups of coffee. It was our second morning staying at the Poplar Haus cabins on the Gunflint Trail and I was still adjusting to sleeping in a different bed. Aching slightly from riding a snowmobile the day before, I was stretching my arms high above my head when I saw that across the lake the sky was a deep lavender and the birches were painted the kind of pink only found in a winter sunrise.
We were facing West, that was my cue to find a glimpse of Eastern sky. Sure enough, as I tiptoed out the front door I was met with the most spectacular cloud show. I called for my family and Spencer to quick come and look (everyone in my family is familiar with me accosting them to quickly come spectate at the colors in the sky). My dad of course came out to take pictures. When he arrived from his walk up to the trail he said “it would be prettier if the road was a snowmobile trail instead of blacktop.” To which I responded, “and that is why we paint…”
Yesterday, back at home my afternoon opened up so I pulled my chair up to my workbench and tapped open my phone to scroll through the photos I took over my recent vacation to see if I wanted to attempt to render any of them. Of all these images, one reached right through the screen, grabbed me by the collar and begged me to bring her to life.
The funny thing was, it wasn’t one of the breathtaking sunrises or sunsets my dad had captured, it wasn’t an image from our trek on Poplar Lake that I took on my CampSnap. It was a photo I took outside the Grand Marais Co-Op of a patch of grass I found starkly beautiful against a heavy slate sky.
I got to work. It was one of those paintings that came together seamlessly. I almost painted it on my 7x10 inch block but as soon as I’d wet the paper, I felt the piece request larger paper, so I got out my 12x16 one. I had enough patience to let my paint dry, I was in flow. I had enough self-control not to overwork the piece. It felt much like my own style, it didn’t feel like I was trying to make it be something else. But came out beautiful just the same. It was unexpectedly satisfying, the kind of painting that had me wanting to keep doing more like it.
image vs. finished painting
What struck me most was that I took a candid photo of wild grasses in a patch of snow at the edge of some dirty asphalt and that was the image that begged to be rendered. It turned out as contemplative as it felt haunting and very much alive. As I look at it now I realize I could interpret it differently today. I could put more grasses there or here or I could change the hues or I could make it more like the photo or more abstract. But this was my rendering. This is the work of an artist. Finding beauty in a dirty, February parking lot. Seeing it as sacred, as if God himself breathed some holiness into something completely mundane. That’s the thing isn’t it? I didn’t experience it as dirty in the moment. That patch of grass reminded me of so many beautiful things I have witnessed in film, in books, in memory, in dream. It was something that needed me to see it, to remind me that beauty is everywhere, it is always, and if only we would stop, it could breathe a little life into us.
There’s something happening here…
I think I might be in the process of creating a new body of work. It started with something so very simple — grass. I have been spending the last few months just noticing the way it moves, the way it captures wind, it’s liveliness, its freedom, and a reminder of dormant life in the dead of winter.
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