Clear skies and sunny with a high of 85F. Drought conditions continue. Rivers dwindle. The dirt has been parched and baked.

“Are you coming to the drawing tonight?” Gary Mayer asks me. I’m honored to be part of a Catskills figure drawing group with local artists such as Steve Burnett, Gary, Peter Mayer, and Sandy Finkenberg.
“No,” I say. “I’m going to a potluck dinner”.
“Well, you won’t find potluck in here,” he says as he steps up into his studio. “More like shit out of luck,” he laughs, highlighting a disparity between the lightness of his personality and the intensity of his work. He’s quick to laugh, good company and chatty, but this magnanimity belies the intensity of his imagery. “I have a wild imagination,” he frowns, nodding gravely. “I didn’t sleep a lot as a kid”. We have something in common. “Me, too,” I say. It’s a little exhausting. But I’m keen to keep him laughing because all the profile pictures I see of him make him look flummoxed, for want of a better word.
His general demeanor is nonchalance, however, like his image: hey, look at this shit I did. I don’t get it either. *Shrugs* The ad for his new gallery in Margaretville named Art Up is photo of a handwritten note, for example. I get the sense that his reward comes from expressing himself, while painting, rather than the final work being appreciated.
Continue readingSunny and warm with a high of 64F and a cooling breeze. Drought conditions. Browning grass begging for some rain. Sunny sunset down by the dwindling river.
Baking in the sun with a high of 78F and an empty sky, save for the odd wisp of stray cloud, and throngs of dandelions taking flight in the light breeze like the tutus of tiny ballet dancers. The sky becoming more crowded late afternoon. A pre-summer scorcher.
“Empty your mind. Be formless, be shapeless, be water. You put water in the cup. It becomes the cup. Put water in the teapot. It becomes the teapot. Water can flow, drip creep or crash. Be like water, my friend.” Bruce Lee (who never labelled Tree Juice Maple Syrup). Yet more water falling from the sky causing impatience, and a high of 55F.
More gloom with brief flashes of sunshine, and a chilly breeze for a high of 57F. Late afternoon, a giant, gray, spaceship-sized cloud moves in that sprinkles very little rain, and moves on quickly leaving a few scattered remnants of itself behind to bask in a blazing, fiery sunset. A remarkable evening.
A blazing sunny day. A high of 66F, but seemed much hotter, with fine cloud like a shroud until after 4pm when a thick pack of wadding rolled in and brought rain that got heavier in the evening, thunder, lightning, and a surprise tornado. Rain for the rest of the evening.
A scorcher: boiling hot, sunburnt arms, some interesting scanty cloud mid-afternoon that made the sky look like it’s going bald, and a high of 81F. Feels like summer, but the foliage is saying early spring. Daytime photo shoots for work, and soccer in Fleischmanns Park until sunset. (Dinner at Sam’s).
A bright, dewy morning with last night’s rain steaming into the sun. A warm, muggy day, with partial cloud cover and a high of 72F. A mass of clouds appeared just before sunset like a circus troupe had rolled into town for the evening, and tumbled around in the sky until sunset.