December Water Colors!

December Water Colors!

Summer in the tropics!. There is a subtle shift in the feel of the air. Drier breezes and increasing sunshine bathe the rain drenched land. The Green/Winter/Wet season gently ends in early December – and it was right on time. 

I spent the last days of November with my good artist friend, Marie as we relaxed while finding time to also paint.  She came over to do more experimenting with watercolor. And she jumped in masterfully!  That got me started!

I began work on my new Reflections series…beginning with a study of the window reflections in Frank’s house.   I was still working on it when Billy "like my son" called.

He had several guests now visiting him at La Princesa hotel and asked if I wanted to join them for a day at the beach. I thought about it. My Achilles tendon surgery and other medical events had kept me off my feet and mostly confined to my home for the past six months. And nine months had passed since my last glimpse of the Pacific. It was time. 

I said yes. There is nothing quite like the Pacific southern zone of Costa Rica.  

We headed for Playa Ventanas.  This jewel of a southern Pacific beach is a well kept secret and named for its two ‘window’ like caves through the peninsula on its northern edge. It is always exhilarating to watch the frothy surf surge through the caves.  

  

 

Playa Ventanas was actually the first beach I visited over ten years ago, when I found and bought my house. I visited it again with my sons and daughters in law when they helped me move here Christmas Eve, 2008. Most importantly, it was the beach where Frank and I had our first date – and where I first found myself falling in love with him. Ah the special kept memories from Playa Ventanas. 

While everyone was enjoying the water and sun I took out my sketchbook and looked around for something to paint. The coconut palm tree right above was perfect. Using just four paints in my sketch palette, I relaxed into the simple pleasure of playing with my brush. It felt soooo good.

Ventanas Palm Sketch, jan hart

A few days later, I found myself heading for the beach once again – to celebrate my 76^th birthday at another  favorite spot called Villa Leonor, just south of Uvita. This time my friend Brenda came with me to enjoy the Sunday barbeque and the peerless seared tuna. While Brenda swam and played in the 78 degree surf, I selected a stand of Bijahua blue leaved plants set against the jungle background.  I smiled remembering so many times I had painted this subject over the past years. Even from this very spot. Still, no two are the same.  I really saw the yellows on this, my birth day.

Beach Birthday Sketch, jan hart

The two December watercolor sketches sit beside the almost finished Reflection painting in my studio. There, whenever I walk in or out the front door, I can glance over to them and kind of catch them by surprise. Often it is during  one of these brief visual encounters that the normally silent right brain or Artist’s brain points out the one stroke that is needed for finish.

Frank's Window Reflections, jan hart

Seurat - My Life Hero

Seurat loved the tortillas Frank made for him.

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. And some even have feathers, fins or fur and four legs.  Seurat is my four-legged hero.

At fifteen, he is showing the signs of a life well lived with cataracts, some difficulty hearing and a desire to sleep a lot. Still – he has not lost his zest for life.  Which is why he is my life hero.

I met Seurat when he was about 2 years old and living in the Española New Mexico Animal Shelter. I was looking for a companion for my aging sweet German Shepherd, Livvie.  I describe the meeting in my Chapter 4 of my book,  “A Woman Awakens:Life, AfterLife” 
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Seurat's first free days in Española

“Seurat’s fur was dotted black on white, thus named after the artist Georges Seurat, a nineteenth century pointillist. I’d hoped to find a Welsh Corgi, but discovered something almost as rare in northern New Mexico, that being a dog that wasn’t a mix of area favorites: Pit Bull, Mastiff, Rottweiler or Chow Chow. When I asked about the dog sitting off in the corner of the fenced kennel that contained smallish dogs, the attendant explained, “He’s not very sociable; been on the street a few years. Gets along with other dogs, but doesn’t like people. He is scheduled to be ‘put down’ tomorrow.”

I looked at all the noses and wagging tails on the other side of the chain-linked gate and then returned my gaze to the dog in the corner. Such a sad sight. Suddenly he lifted his head and focused on me, then uttered a long eerie howl. I replied to the attendant, ‘I want to see that one more closely.’

Seurat with Livvie, 2006

Once Livvie had approved the choice—after meeting and visiting him—Seurat was neutered and Livvie and I brought him home a few days later. It took two months to fully convince him that I was Alpha and he could not go out a door in front of me. Or growl at me.”

During the first two months of my relationship with Seurat I discovered that he was very bright and even seemed to understand my thoughts as well as my words. He was also stubborn – but merely a match for my own stubborn streak.

He came within a day of being taken back to the shelter because I didn’t think I could trust him not to bite me. His growls were sufficiently intimidating to make me wary. In desperation I ttold him that though I really cared for him I would have to take him back to the shelter because I was afraid he would bite. He seemed to listen intently. And from that day, that talk, he did not growl at me again. He got it.

2009. Sitting and looking out over the Costa Rican hills

When I moved to Costa Rica on Christmas Eve, 2008 Seurat and Livvie came with me to my new place. Seurat seemed to love all the new smells and scents – but often sat at the edge of the yard looking out over the valley. It seemed that he was thinking as well as watching. 

Livvie passed away in 2010 and Seurat became my sole canine companion. He took his job of watching over me quite seriously. His protectiveness was severely challenged when Frank and I got together. Though Seurat liked Frank, he didn’t like us spending private time together. Frank, another dog lover was able to change their

dynamic by sitting next to Seurat on the couch and talking softly and directly. “Seurat, the trouble we are having is because we both love the same woman…”  Seurat listened and there was never again a problem.  And he listened again when we asked him to accept into our family a starving shepherd mix female rescued from the streets of San Isidro . He accepted her completely on the day we took him to meet her.  He had objected strongly to another dog and a puppy in the months before. Seurat was definitely opinionated about both people and other dogs.

Though I admired Seurat’s obvious intelligence and ability to understand, it was the example he set for me during illness that put him up on the hero-worthy pedestal.

Seurat, constantly attentive

When my Achilles tendon ruptured in mid-May, 2018, I had emergency surgery to repair it. I was to be in a fiberglass cast from my knee to my toes for four weeks. It was a difficult time and I was cared for by friends and my neighbor/like a daughter Anita since I could not walk. Seurat became even more attentive to me. He was never more than a few feet away from me whether I was resting with my casted foot elevated or moving to another room on a knee scooter. He followed me to the bathroom and watched me while I slept from his bed in the corner of my room.  After the cast came off, I developed a wound infection that kept me off my feet for an additional four weeks – and Seurat kept his vigil. I felt constantly comforted by his watchful presence.

Suddenly one morning Seurat collapsed and was having difficulty getting up off the floor and to walk. His head was cocked severly to one side. I was terrified at the possibility that I was losing my dearest friend to some kind of neurological demise. He was after all 15 years old - or 105 in dog years. Fortunately, a friend arrived who could take Seurat to the Vet,

who gave him 3 weeks worth of medicine (prednisone) and the diagnosis of either a middle ear inflammation or my worst fear, neurological decline. I took over his 4 feedings per day, which at first meant feeding him by hand since he couldn’t move his mouth well.  Slowly he improved. While sick, he still continued his job of watching over me from room to room. A month later – just about when I was allowed to again put weight on my healing foot, he was acting pretty normal except for a slightly cocked head and some persistent weakness. 

The thing that impressed me most, however, was his heart. He just never gave up.  While he was still stumbling and walking wobbly, he would follow Frida out the back door and try to run up the road. Of course he only got a few feet the first time or two – but he didn’t stop trying. 

Such an inspiring attitude about life. I took to my own heart his example of persistence and courage. It was Seurat, this little dog with the big presence who helped me to endure the 89 days until I was able to take my first tentative steps, aided by a cane. I celebrated silently, with my eye on Seurat.

Seurat showed me how to keep going. 

He is my hero.

Scarlet Red

I first used the color scarlet in a painting in New Mexico. I’d always been reluctant to use any red as a landscape color because I thought I’d never actually seen it in nature. My artist’s life was based in the Pacific Northwest—ever green—where comforting and languid blue-greens and analogous hues overwhelmed the seasons. As close as I ever came to red was burnt sienna—a neutral, earthy almost-orange. Sure, I occasionally dropped in a bit of Opera (hot pink)—but only for exuberant rhododendrons in spring, or bright candy in a gum-ball machine.

Then I moved to New Mexico.

Ghost Ranch Red Rocks, Jan Hart, 2005

Suddenly, simmering reds glowed like embers in rock crevices. Washed upon the shaded side of the bloodshot rocks blazed countless scarlet exclamations, only visible to the eyes of those who were tempted to be hypnotized—like when one is drawn to the flames in a fire.

No more denial. Red was alive and thriving in northern New Mexico. Here was a land carved through a volcanic rift between the Colorado Plateau and the High Plains as a zone of red rock beds composed mostly of sedimentary sandstones and shales stained in every shade of red. 

Ghost Ranch Splendor, JH 2004

The real magic was in the interaction with sunlight; each sun ray could strike a hard red rock surface and bounce, carrying with it both color and light energy. Each bounce further charged it so that it was possible to see the glowing scarlet red embers in each shaded overhang or crevice. With over 325 sunshine filled days, there were plenty of opportunities to witness the magical phenomenon of reflected light and color. Red tinted light rebounded all over northern New Mexico. One time, walking up into Echo Amphitheater, the partially shaded sloped sandstone walls appeared to glow. Astounded, I wondered if the very air I was breathing was also red tinted – and what other mystic qualities I breathed beyond the hue.

As I became more obsessed with the phenomenon of reflected light and color, I even placed a bumper sticker on my car that read:  I Brake for Reflected Light. I always smiled when someone passed me on the highway and looked me over – my sticker might as well have stated I was stark raving mad. 

In my New Mexico days, and after them, I ordered Perinone Scarlet, Scarlet Lake, and Vermillion Red. Ached until the precious tubes arrived. And then I used them. Gone was any fear of using red – pure red – straight out of the tube. The redder the better.

It was no surprise that the color showed up in a dream vision several years later. While hospitalized for a staph infection in my spine in 1997, an entity who called himself Raphael spoke to me while surrounded entirely by brilliant scarlet (and a bit of emerald green).  After six weeks of hospitalization and time at home to rest, I made my way out to my studio to see if I could paint.

The Raphael paintings

Raphael 2, jh 1997

For the Raphael paintings I painted wet into wet (wet paint onto wet paper), a technique I rarely used this freely. But it seemed just right during this time when my brush felt like it was almost being directed in a way both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. The paintings came directly from my consciousness; swirls and shades of deep scarlet. I watched as the paints moved against each other and merged together.

I definitely was in a place of less control with these paintings. I was in another world.

Way past New Mexico, Scarlet Red remained tucked into my heart. It had become my favorite color – for painting as well as wearing.  I could almost feel my connection to something greater whenever my brush dipped into Peritonea Scarlet.  It showed me the way forward and eventually to Costa Rica.

In 2008, I was on the last day of a tour to see about the possibility of moving to Costa Rica.  

From A Woman Awakens: Life, AfterLife, page 60

Even though we were driving, I caught a glimpse of a glass-encased statue of San Rafael stationed over the door of the white church. Portrayed in flowing garments in the colors of faded scarlet and pale green-blue, he held a line with a fish on it in one hand. His hair was wavy and blonde. My heart skipped another beat.

I did not ask the tour guide realtors to stop, nor did I share any of my thoughts or incredulity with them, but I felt the subtle pin pricks of excitement along my arms.

The road wound up the mountainside through a couple of switchbacks. Just as the car lurched onto the steepest part of the bumpy road I looked ahead and saw a house painted bright scarlet red and softer emerald green.

Very calmly I asked if the house ahead was the one they were going to show me.

When they answered, 'yes', I stopped breathing. In my mind I was asking myself if this was really happening. How could this be? The colors. The exact colors.

Soon after my move to Costa Rica I noticed the color again at an ExPat gathering. It was the shirt- color worn by a gentle Canadian man named Frank. Two years later we married – and of course both of us wore shades of red. 

Published in 2017. For more information

Frank was my soul mate and the great love of my life. Still one of my favorite memories is seeing him dramatically mimic these words from the actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played the title role in a favorite movie of his, and then mine. Kinky Boots, 2005:

“Burgundy. Please, God, tell me I have not inspired something burgundy. Red. Red. *Red*! Is the color of sex! Burgundy is the color of hot water bottles! Red is the color of sex and fear and danger and signs that say, Do. Not. Enter. All my favorite things in life.”