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This year (2010) I was paired with poet, Glenna Luschei, during the Plein Air Painting Festival. We met in the early morning when the mountains were still in shade. As the light covered the mountains, I painted and Glenna composed this poem:

 

Layering the mountains

Glenna Luschei

Under the dawn

              buttermilk sky we come upon that winding

road which leads us to a new season.

 

All voyages require preparation and this one commands

an easel, campstool, a case  of  pastel

      nubs arranged by color.

 

jewels out of the Arabian nights.  A parasol

     for the fierce sun and a camera,  Every traveler

 

carries a camera, even a painter, or especially a painter.

 

We watch the sun break through a cloud.  The poet claims,

:this is the most beautiful time of year oak trees backed

 

by golden hills.  The artist spikes the gray on canvas mountains

    with orange and yellow pastels.  She says,  "On the foreground

 

more intense colors.  Move back colors get softer, gray.

If it waits too long to rain the hills will all turn brown."

 

Rain is coming to bless us,  We can smell it feel it, prickle

on the skin.  Rain will not desert us, old friend from far back.

 

Something about to happen,  That road holds promises for us.

We enter it together, many layers of pigment signal a long life,

 

each stop, more pastel.  No turning back Everything will change

on the Coastal Range. 

 

We will not be the same as when we started off.

 

We enter Reservoir Canyon Road which the rains will fill,

where our dreams will overflow,  It has the capacity to hold

 

all we desire.The artist says, "This road leads us back

into the painting."  She paints into the morning.

 

The poet takes her leave from the campsite, the easel, the stool,

the jars of fluid.

 

the parasol and the camera and that beautiful box of pastel jewels.

 

Light hearted, the poet skips away with only a number two pencil

and one piece of paper.                                                                                                  

 

 

  Glenna Luschei

 



During the Plein Air Painting Festival sponsored by the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, a poet is matched with a painter. They spend several hours together, the painter painting and the poet creating a poem. An evening session presents the newly created painting with the poet sharing their poem. Last year I was paired with Nixson Borah, who created the following poem as I painted at the Johnson Ranch Trail:

 

September Light and Shade

 

                                    We are bound to our rectangles,

                                    she and I.  She draws colored patches

                                    —a quilt against the growing cold—

                                    with dry sticks of colored dust

                                    as I scratch words in trails of ink

                                    that leave aerial views of vineyards

                                    framed by my journal’s page.

 

                                    I explore the terrain while she sits

                                    on the ground, under a broad straw hat.

                                    I walk a creek-bed of cracked mud

                                    that's studded with stones.

                                    Under a massive cluster of poplars,

                                    a collapsed truck lies rusting,

                                    heavy as dropped fruit.

 

                                    In the distance, the Irish Hills

                                    pale against a sky dulled

                                    by incipient fog. The space

                                    between here and there

                                    is layered—detail overlaps mass,

                                    intensity comes before gray.

                                    Wind from Morro travels

                                    the road toward us, bringing

                                    a soft rasping of leaves

                                    as if chapped hands were washing

                                    with dirt, wanting rain. In an hour,

                                    the trees will be silent silhouettes.

 

                                    She loves the Venetian moment, 

                                    this modern daughter of Monet,

                                    when late afternoons mellow

                                    to amber, butter the trunks

                                    of sycamores and illumine

                                    even oak leaves with gold.

                                    Rounded hill slopes,

                                    powdered with dry grass,

                                    become the limbs of a Titian nude

                                    seen through honeyed varnish.

                                    Racing to beat the shadows,

                                    she pays homage to this light. 

 

                                    Disciplined, she has chosen

                                    the characters she wants in her play

                                    and taped-off her proscenium.

                                    Nothing is admitted from outside it.   

                                    Left out are the collies and Labradors

                                    exercising their owners. Ignored,

                                    this wandering poet-observer.

 

                                    Her drawing board is a fragile shield

                                    against the wind that strives mightily

                                    to overturn it and smear the pigments

                                    onto her lap. Darkness

                                    will soon obliterate the scene.

                                    But against all chaos and destruction

                                    she has assembled a golden defense.

 

 

            Nixson Borah

            Atascadero