No, not the 1993 film with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.
Today’s odd offering is actually about Andrew Wyeth, risk, and the bright bleakness of winter.
Last June, when I visited my dear friend Leslie in Wiscasset, Maine, we attended a show of Andrew Wyeth’s work at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Portland. And when you see his sketches and compare them with his final paintings, it is sort of astonishing how he managed to load so much intention into those abstract watercolors. This is the way Wyeth worked: the barest note was enough to bring the whole symphony to fruition.
Look at this split-second sketch of a painting called Brown Swiss, and below, the completed tempera painting:
Most of us are familiar with Andrew Wyeth through his most famous painting, Christina’s World, which is meant to portray his disabled friend Christina Olson — who would not use a wheelchair — crawling through a Maine meadow (although his more slender wife, Betsy, was the model). I love all of Wyeth’s work: the bareness of his Maine landscapes, the microscopic attention to detail, and most of all, his barely concealed fascination with death. But most of all I’m thrilled by his approach, which shows a primal fearlessness that seems to be the whole point of art. Here’s what Wyeth has to say about his process with Brown Swiss:
“I really think Brown Swiss (1957) is one of my best things. And a lot of people, critics, said, ‘It’s good, Andy, but my eyes just go to that white house. It’s almost falling off the left side.’ That's just what I wanted — awkward, off balance. I remember I worked on the painting for months — to the point where I had all the literal truth, the workmanship, almost over-studied. But I’d never gotten wild during it — out of control — given it the fire I felt.
“One evening just before dinner I mixed up a huge bowl of ochre color and raw sienna, very watery. Then I stepped back and threw it all over this huge painting, color dripping down. Then I rushed out. If I’d seen it drying all patchy, maybe, I have tampered with it — and doubted. The next morning I found I’d made it. I take terrible chances like that. Sometimes I miss, and it’s awful — chaos. But I’d rather miss sometimes and hit strong other times, than be an in-between person.”
The quote is from The Art of Andrew Wyeth by Wanda M. Corn, published for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 1973. I bought my own used copy for $10 at Green Apple Books, also in San Francisco, on May 16, 1975. It has been on my shelf for 50 years, during which time I’ve opened it again and again to draw inspiration from Wyeth’s work: not only his astonishing photorealistic technique, but his reflections on how he created his paintings. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when I was working as a visual artist, his words reminded me that the most important thing we can do with our creativity is to let it surprise us.
But what brought us here is today’s “holiday”: Groundhog Day. The story, of course, is that on the second of February, the groundhog emerges from his/her burrow. If the sun is not shining, it means that Spring is right around the corner. But if he (or she) sees their shadow, the message is bleak: six more weeks of winter. In Maine, that’s saying something.
Wyeth had his own narrative about this painting. But for me, it’s all about irony. The table is set; sun is streaming through the northeast-facing window. You can almost smell the scrambled eggs and coffee. But despite the clarity of light, nature is offering false hope. Rough, frigid days lie ahead.
It’s interesting — and challenging — to hold two opposite ideas at once. On the one hand, I’m still trying to live with the kind of fearlessness that Wyeth embodied, and that (I like to think) defined my own brief career as a visual artist, and later as an author. I think first of Mr. Raja’s Neighborhood, an epistolary book so personal that I asked my much-admired artist friend Michael Pedroni if I dared publish it.
“You can either do it,” Pedroni advised, “or spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened if you had.” And that’s been my credo ever since — my path to avoid becoming, as Wyeth put it, “an in-between person.”
Living in Kathmandu in the 1980s; learning to downhill ski in my 40s (thanks, Big Laa); canyoneering in Zion; circling the globe without airplanes; flying across America in what was essentially an aeronautic kayak; trying (and failing) to climb the Grand Teton (sorry about the LA Times paywall)... Those adventures, on the one hand, cultivated a mindset of fearlessness that I imagined would be the rudder of my life.
And then, on the other hand, came Parkinson’s. During the first few years it seemed to be progressing slowly, manifesting primarily in my gait. But as the fourth anniversary of my diagnosis approaches, it’s making itself better known — a proper introduction, as it were — and catching up with me in ways I didn’t expect: random tremors in my arms and legs, episodic anxiety, Bradykinesia (slowness of movement) while turning around in the shower or getting dressed. All of this makes it ever more difficult not only to take risks, but to perform the everyday motor functions associated with everything from survival to joy (see above). I do manage to get out on my eBike almost daily, a death-defying regimen on the avenues of Oakland.
Increasingly, though, the only risks I approach without trepidation are the ones I take on the page.
So yes, I can see my shadow. And though I may still have plenty of bright, productive days ahead, I’m aware they are numbered. There’s something on the horizon, but it’s not Spring.
And here’s something that doesn’t help: When the toxic clown in the White House froze government spending, he also froze the work of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS): The subagency of the NIH researching cures for diseases like Parkinson’s. Thanks, asshole. Unlike Bill Murray, you’re not growing wiser through repetition.
So much for my bleak/bright tribute to Groundhog Day. For my next Substack on 16 February: some very good news.
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Oh, my. That photo of you in Santa Barbara. For a moment I'm there, transported by a photograph. There was torrential rain. We hopped a ride on a bumper of a passing car just to cross the street for surely we would have been swept away. No sun on our backs that day.
Good thing we're not Groundhogs, scuttling back in our burrows upon finding the sun on their backs. We brave the shadows before us, the sun gives proof of our connection to what is.
-Michael-
Traveling east from Doha twice denied I turned back west. After two more wonderful days in Doha, Lisbon is my current delight. Oh, I could live here.
Thanks for the story on Wyeth and the personal share Jeff. It pains me to know of your hardship with Parkinson’s but thanks. I will surely call upon your take on everything when my life inevitably and pushes unwelcome surprises on me in the coming years. Until those days, I will look for fearlessness as both motivation and antidote and forward to another day of hiking and biking with you! Great read and a greater job. Thx.