Author: root_cms

My plein air painting date with Leslie Baum, August 29, 2020

I met Leslie at Humboldt Park on a Saturday morning in August. We found a shady, secluded area behind the baseball diamond near North Avenue and Humboldt Boulevard to set up our painting zone. Leslie brought two aluminum tables that unfolded from briefcases and a stool for each of us, as well as a small canvas bag filled with watercolor supplies for me to use. With our backs to the bleachers of the baseball diamond, we had a lovely view of some grassy wetland and several trees. We talked as we painted. The conversation flowed naturally as we recounted the last days leading up to the pandemic, how we were getting our groceries, and the story of how Leslie began teaching. Apart from a few curious park wanderers who asked what we were up to, the area was all ours. I made four paintings. It felt like a meditative exercise. I remember a quiet flow, looking and painting at the same time, not really thinking. I was inspired by clumps of yellow and lavender wildflowers, the negative shapes between slanted tree trunks, and many tiny buds on branches. We each took a break to take some photos. When we were done I walked Leslie back to her car and then walked toward home through the middle of the park.

August 29, 2020

Humboldt Park

We had been in quarantine for months, and I had been ordering flowers each week from a friend to help her stay in business.
Iris season had started and she brought me three dozen stems, covered in huge blooms—some warm and pink-yellow like a peach, and most a shimmering white that was nearly grey.

Leslie is the first person I had seen outside of my household in so long. She came to my apartment which stands along a grassy boulevard; we sat far apart, our voices carrying on the breeze to make conversation.

Irises have been a poignant point of focus as I’ve grieved the passing of my father.
Leslie has approached me with tenderness and compassion since his death, and she appreciates how long and unpredictable feeling our way through loss is.

I’m suspicious of images per se, and if they occur in my work, they are usually appropriations rather than inventions, but the voluptuous, lacy blossoms in these bouquets appeared to ask for a kind of impressionism in my looking. Drawn in powder, just a puff of an impression.

This year contains so much loss, personally and across the globe.
There was tremendous sweetness in Leslie’s arrival, our time working together, and then a puff and gone again, our drawings and a couple of photos she took as an easy residue.

May 31, 2020

in person remote Marshall Bvd Chicago

A friend on a bench. Brushes in pockets.
Plants are smiling and I, well, I’m a little nervous about them.

September 3, 2017

Garfield Park Conservatory

Pools of pigment
little fingers and wandering eyes glide by
as we sit among the ferns
returning to the present
each mark an act of resistance
to the here and now
until we part

January 9, 2020

Garfield Park Conservatory

I hadn’t painted since I was an undergrad. Unless you count the painting I did alongside my kids when they were toddlers. So it as with a little bit of trepidation that I accompanied Leslie out for our painting date. I had campaigned pretty hard to get her to come down to Urbana—but it was mostly to enjoy her company, no so much the actual painting. We scouted for sites at the big prairie park, but it was boiling hot and too sunny for the prairie. We settled on the cool shade of the Japan House gardens at the UIUC arboretum, and the coolness of my own front garden, under trees. Those fabulous pots of paint, and the astounding magentas and brick reds! The shared conversation and quiet intensity of looking closely—what a lovely thing that was. Bliss.

July 13, 2019

Champaign Urbana Illinios

A dab of color
A gaze of contemplation
A little smile

February 15, 2019

Edgewater Pink Building Chicago

What can be better than spending time with a friend, painting, in nature on a glorious
summer day

September 2, 2019

Humboldt Park

I’m so grateful that Leslie shared this meditative, creative and social practice with me! I’ve since moved to Los Angeles, but I love the idea of carrying on this tradition as a way to nurture imagination, build community – and of course stay connected to my thoughtful friend.

October 21, 2017

Humboldt Park

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

-Wallace Stevens

December 13, 2017

Garfield Park Conservatory