Paradise in North Wisconsin

Oh, I love my artist friends. Here's Barry Van Dusen studying an open-winged damselfly. He's one of those people who has taken his bird ID skills and simply transferred them to dragonflies, fish, what have you. He's also probably America's top life sketcher. I can't imagine anyone who does it more, or better.
By now we were all up near Minoqua, diggin' the boreal scene.

The only sure antidote for having to lug your 47-lb. suitcase, which is crammed with six pairs of dress shoes and six different outfits, and attending those formal functions and making smileynice all day, is to walk in the woods. The LYWAM staff knows that, so just when we're all smiled and chitchatted out, they throw us on a bus, where we gab and laugh among ourselves for two hours, and we magically arrive in Serenityville, also known as Hazelhurst. Which is the Woodson family estate, which we are most privileged to enjoy for an afternoon.

Upon arriving, we walk through a forest where mysterious artists have gone before us

and one of our number pauses to paint the autumn-tinged landscape. I gave Lars Jonsson a copy of Letters from Eden, with an inscription that I hope helped him understand what his art means to me. It's not often you get to thank people whose vision has changed yours. Here, he's whipping up a nearly-instant landscape while the rest of us are yakking and dawdling along the trail behind him. Hats off.

Barry Van Dusen and Lars Jonsson compare sketchbooks.

Elsewhere, deadly fly amanitas push their buttons up through spongy loam.
We wander through a garden that must be tended by magical fairies to have so much color in mid September...
and catch one of the fairies, a snowberry clearwing, at work.
The garden's beauty, and the intoxicating scent of nicotiana and phlox, set the soul to rest.
Here's where the fairies live when they're not primping the flowers. Can you imagine having a playhouse like this, buried in the north woods?

My sincere thanks to the Woodson family, and to the amazing staff of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, for making all of us artists feel special and thoroughly honored for that magical weekend. Each person on that staff is a gem; together they are unbeatable. Let's face it: most of us artists work in comparative solitude, and with adversity waiting just outside the door in these economic times, life does not exactly roll out the red carpet for us every day. This kind of event, so carefully and thoughtfully planned and executed, is why they call Wisconsin the Heartland.

More Birds in Art

The trouble with the Birds in Art exhibition opening in Wausau, WI is that it happens too fast. You get there on a Thursday night, and on Friday you have four functions to go to, on Saturday you are committed for the morning at the museum for the public opening, and then they whisk you off to northern WI near Minoqua to a retreat, and on Sunday you go home. I did all that, and gave a public talk on Sunday. Pheeew. It was really, really fun but I am staggering a little as I contemplate my unmown lawn and house all primed for cleaning again, plus the fact that I leave Thursday morning for three days of pure fun and work at the Midwest Birding Symposium.

I didn't take many photos of paintings, just because I was overstimulated, but this one by Dutch artist Elwin Van der Kolk thoroughly charmed me.


I like paintings that have other paintings within them.


It's nice to see paintings that make me want to paint. There were a whole lot of those at the opening. It hangs through mid-November, so if you're within striking distance of Wausau, you should go!
courtesy of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum (stolen from their Facebook page)

Here's our Master Artist, John Busby, in the fetching salmon-pink jacket, along with my dear friend Jim Coe. Here's Jim's evocative painting of a redtail circling over Cindy House's well-painted backyard. (She is probably the only person whose backyard has ever been featured twice in a single Birds in Art exhibition. It is some backyard. One of the fringe benefits of belonging to our little Artists' Group.)

Cindy House was there, which automatically means that there would be a great deal of laughing done. She adheres to Murr Brewster's adage that "really, most things are funny." Here, from left, are Suellen Ross (she of the fabulous hummingbird nest watercolor), Cindy House, and your blogger.courtesy of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum (stolen from their Facebook page)

Cindy also creates a mood in her pastel paintings like nobody else. Her painting of her beloved turkeys going to roost on a January afternoon really sticks with me.That backyard, again. Isn't it beautiful?

My paintings were hanging in the foyer so I wandered around in the Birds in Art exhibition a lot because that's where the wine, cheese, people and sausage were.

That's also where lovely Debby Kaspari (Drawing the Motmot!), her matching sister Dorianne, and painter Jim Coe were.courtesy of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum (stolen from their Facebook page)

So now you can see my friends' work, and also how cute they all are. More from Wausau tomorrow.

I won't be posting on Thursday night--too bizzy. See you next week, if not at the Midwest Birding Symposium! Walk-ins are welcome!