Photography

My Mother

/ Merilee / 2 Comments

My Mother

She was one of those people that can only be described as “superhuman”. She could do anything. When she decided she was going to do something, she did it. Immediately. No waiting around thinking about it. She just did it. Whatever that “it” happened to be, it was always perfect.

She could sew like a dream, upholster, taught herself how to cane furniture. She was an excellent cook. Her garden – forget about it. Flowers that were huge and amazing.

She was my biggest supporter, knew me better than anyone. She always nudged me to paint. “You need to be painting…” is something I heard all the time as a kid and a teen. It was my mother who looked at one of my photographs when I was around 10 or 11 and she said, “Oh. You have an eye for composition.” I didn’t understand what she meant, but the fact that she thought I took good pictures meant everything. I lost her to a brain aneurysm in 1993. I miss her every day. I took this photo of her not long before she left us.

Tell your mothers that you love them. Appreciate who they are, just as they are. Never take them for granted. Ever.

Happy Mothers Day

Desert Moonset with Headlights

/ Merilee / 4 Comments

When I go to the desert, there are many things that I see over and over and over again.  They are views that are like family.  Sometimes when I see these things I think, “One day I’ll paint that.”, even though I immediately tell myself that’s just dumb.

“Why would you paint that?  How could you even begin to paint that?  No one will understand why you chose to do it, so why?”  But I keep looking at it thinking how beautiful it is.  And how that particular view gives me an odd sense of comfort.

When I go to Tecopa, which is where I stay when I go to Death Valley, I always stay in the exact same room.  It’s my room.  My home-away-from-home.  I get up very early in the morning, usually around 4:00.  I go outside to look at the sky to see the Milky Way and the stars while coffee is brewing in the little coffee maker I take with me.  When I look to the west, I always see the headlights or taillights of a car or a truck driving up or down Highway 127.  I like seeing the headlights appear and disappear as the vehicle drives behind the mud hills that line the road as it goes through this portion of the Amargosa Basin, on it’s way to the tiny town of Shoshone.  If the wind is just right, I sometimes can hear the engine of the car and I always wonder, where the heck are you going at 4am???  It’s four o’clock in the morning.  Where are you going?  But they are always there, no matter what time it is.  The headlights. They are like friends.

A couple of days ago, something inside me said, “It’s time.  It’s time to paint the headlights.”  So, armed with a few terrible, blurry,  half-assed iPhone pictures and my mind and memories equipped with feelings and visions from probably close to 15 years of seeing this every time I go to my room in the desert, I decided to paint it.  For Valentine’s Day.  It’s something that is close to my heart.

Oil on canvas

20″ x 24″

Tecopa, California