“A Year in Bloom”

 

a journal

 

Lynne Schulte LaValley

 

copyright 1998

 

 

September, 1997

 

I am overjoyed to finally get a studio outside my home, and move into my space with the window looking out on the train tracks in the old red mill building.  There are other artists here, and the light is wonderful. I  do my first painting on September 10, after a couple of days of unpacking and moving in.  I haven’t painted in a year and a half.  I’ve been busy, getting married and planting the gardens around my new home in Thetford.    I’ve never painted flowers before - somehow, they never appealed. But now, with the house and garden and a wonderful new husband, flowers suddenly makes sense; they seems to fit.  On the practical side, I can take them to the studio.  There’s just so much landscape you can paint by looking out the window.  But I am afraid that the demands of teaching and home will overtake me, and I won’t get to the studio to work.  And I know that I need to paint in order to feel whole. When I hear about the group project, I feel that this commitment should keep me heading down the road  to the studio. I decide to do 365 paintings - a number so overwhelming  that I simply MUST work to keep my commitment.  I start, with no other goal in mind than to keep putting “one foot in front of the other”.   I find that it’s not so hard to stop after school, and that after a cup of tea, my energy returns and one or two pieces get done before I head up 91 home.  I don’t think much about them, just tack them up on the wall.  I have very quickly given up on my first idea to simply focus on those delphinium blues I love.

 

October, 1997

 

The garden is giving less and less.  I buy flowers at the co-op, I pick them by the roadside.  I decide flower-related things are OK, and pick grapes and leaves and buy bittersweet, which I have always loved. I pick winterberry and discover Kangaroo Paws.  I realize that the documentation of this project is important, and start to become aware of staying day for day, on target.  I write it all down in the calendar.  There is a semblance of order to all this!  Amazing!  Winds are getting colder, and I paint dry flowers, dead flowers, and spend one afternoon painting every single last flower I can find still in bloom in my yard.  It is amazing how many there are.  I don’t think I would have even noticed before.

 

November, 1997

 

I work sporadically this month, less days, more paintings each time.  I try to go each weekend and catch up.  I try different flowers, an iron one, an embroidered one, and near the end of the month buy the bunch of pink and white tulips that spawn so many paintings, doing them over and over until they are just petals fallen to the floor.  I decide I like lilies better than daisies.

 

December, 1997

 

There are a few flower buds on my Christmas Cactus!  Right on time!  I go up close to them and paint this small miracle.  There’s snow on the ground and it feels so right to paint holly and poinsettias while I listen to holiday music.   The poinsettias travel back and forth to home several times.  But my favorite is the rhododendron and winterberry from my yard.   A few days before Christmas, after seeing a colleagues Christmas cards made by Xeroxing her daughter’s drawing, I decide to try it with my holly and poinsettia paintings.  Little did I know what I was getting into, but I was pleased when they told me that  my card was  “the one that they didn’t throw away”.  I travel during vacation taking only colored pencils and discover that there are pansies in bloom in Maryland!  Thrilled to find them, I draw them at my son’s kitchen table when I’m not holding my new grandson, and there in Frederick, complete #100.  I am amazed that I have come this far.

 

January, 1998

 

It’s New Years Day at my mothers house, and I manage one more prismacolor, an unusual plant with interesting leaves and an intense orange blossom.  Intrigued with the plant, I take a rooted cutting home.   I’ve been gone from the studio for almost three weeks and when I walk in, I’m almost  knocked over by the sight of the Christmas Cactus in full bloom.  I see this plant as a lesson about being in the right spot - for six years that plant has never bloomed like that, but there in the cool room, in the window by the tracks, that plant found a growing heaven.  When I look at my wall, now full with more than a hundred pieces, I think that I found it too.  I take a last look, then take it all down and start all over again.  I discover anemones.  I LOVE anemones.  On the 20th, we go to court for a financial decision related to my husband’s ex-wife.  We win a little, lose some.  The feeling is leaden; the flower I struggle to paint afterwards is gray, and no amount of work can brighten it up.  Later on that week, I get lost in the birthday carnations that Eric (my stepson) gave Christina, his fiancée, and I do 10 watercolors.   The feedback from my Christmas cards and the financial strain from court causes me to decide to try making cards from some other paintings to sell.

 

February, 1998

 

I’ve sold almost all of the initial group of cards by the end of the first week.  Now the insanity begins as I go to the copy store, sell cards, paint more flowers, visit a printer, design letterhead, business cards, address labels, then paint some more.   In between all this, I get cold feet because of the financial outlay to get professionally cut and printed cards.  As I am about to back off, a check arrives from my studio mate, Anna, to go on and get what I need.  Her faith in me and the ability of my cards to touch people lift me up and I continue with the business.  At the end of the month, I am six paintings ahead and am in love with lilies, godetias, crocuses and one fabulous apricot rose.   I paint the poor plant from my mothers cutting, which is struggling.  I paint the orchids my husband gives me and return it to him as a card on Valentines Day.  I amazed to discover that rather than demanding  extra time from me, Tom has given me the gift of time with his support and love and help. And so I  drown in flowers and almost forget that it is February outside.

 

March, 1998

 

It is winter outside but it is spring in the studio.  The space is aglow with daffodils and with pussywillows from my wetlands.  I paint them over and over.  We start preparing for our first show, the Norwich Women’s Club Floribunda.  Tom and Chris build display panels; Jason and I make cards.  On the first day of the show we are flabbergasted by how well we do, but disappointed the next day as a raging snowstorm keeps most customers away.  We sell cards as I paint in front of a display of all the paintings completed so far.  The paintings all eventually become cards, and are some of my favorites.  I’m now in several stores!

 

April, 1998

 

There are only four calendar days in April where I don’t paint or work the card business, including while I travel south to Maryland.  The siberian squill and crocuses are up and get painted, along with an Easter lily and the pansies I bought to plant.  In Maryland, it’s fully spring, and I paint wildflowers on a mountaintop, lilacs, and rhododendrons.  In Rochester, I paint daffodils and a magnolia tree from the stone bench in the Poet’s Garden in Highland Park.  I haven’t been here since I was a girl.  It’s a special remembered space.  At my sister’s new home, we try to identify what is emerging in her yard, and I paint four watercolors of her flowers. These later become a private collection of cards for her.

 

May, 1998

 

My friend, Linda is married on the second of May, and I can’t go to New Mexico for the wedding.  So on her wedding day, I paint two red carnations and a red rose, the flowers her new husband brought her on their first date.  I am with her while I do this, so close.  Later, I will make these pieces into cards and prints as a gift for her.  On the seventh, I set up my booth in Queechee Arts and Crafts Center!  I’ve started making prints now, and place some in Artisans Workshop in New London. The garden is growing and every day there are new flowers to paint - the drift of forget-me-nots, the crabapple tree, lilacs, lupine, and on the last day, finally, my first poppy.  It’s wonderful to be outdoors.  I usually paint watercolors there, and oils in the studio.

 

June, 1998

 

June starts well but the end of the school year and a trip to a wedding in Indianapolis leave little time to paint and I end the month nineteen pieces behind.  The best part was painting in my mother’s yard and in the rain at my brother’s in Pittsburgh.  I feel like I’m just treading water, and I start to worry that I will bomb out.  The worry is not enough to pick up the paintbrush.  I’ve painted before when I was this busy, and I wonder what is happening.  I think it is the knowledge that I can “catch up” in the summer that makes me lazy, but I don’t like it.

 

July, 1998                 

 

July is crazy-busy.  Just  the right conditions for me to get going again.  I paint straight through in free times during workshops in St. Johnsbury and in Massachusetts with Peter London. By the 22nd I catch up at #316. and then slip behind again.   I am surprised by how well I do on location; this wouldn’t have happened before in my career.  I show my paintings to the director of the galleries at Windhorse Commons and am delighted to have her schedule me for a show in April. Now I know what I will be painting when I’m done with this series (more flowers)!  In St. J’s, I paint in Elaine’s fabulous gardens but find the best time is the time I slip away to a quiet boat landing and do simple wildflowers in the grass.  I realize that I can feel the day, the mood, the sense of the year when I look at my paintings.  They are more a journal than writing could ever be. I can feel the breeze, remember how  I lost light too soon, feel the grass or concrete I sat on, remember  the walk to gather wildflowers.  At Peter London’s class, I  give myself permission to NOT do flowers, and of course, flowers appear in an important piece.  I share my work with my house mates; our place is awash in color and we find that we have made a real home for a week. 

 

August, 1998

 

We start August with a trip for Tom and I to Maine, short, but just us.  I think every couple should have a honeymoon once a year!  At our motel , we are amazingly surrounded with flowers, sunshine, and the sea.  It is ideal, and I manage a few paintings.  Just before we leave, I paint the elusive Turk’s cap lily.  This year, I sprinkled lots of seed from these in my garden, but had not been able to find one in an appropriate place to paint, though I saw them all over. Just before we left for Maine, I painted sunflowers, and now I take the one they choose and use it to create place cards for Christina and Eric’s wedding.  This is my personal gift to my stepson and his bride.  As the end is in sight, it gets harder and harder to paint, especially from #300 to #350.  Sheer willpower keeps me going.  It doesn’t help that the garden is now generously providing all kinds of vegetables for me to deal with.  School starts early and I can’t imagine how I was able to paint all last year while I worked!  I collapse exhausted each night. On the 28th, 29th, and 30th, I put on a big push,  and complete 11 paintings.  On the 30th at 4PM, I finish #365.  It is an orange hawkweed.  I deliberately choose a humble flower to finish; I don’t want anything grand.  Tom and I open a left-over bottle of wedding champagne to celebrate. Je suis fini. 

 

When I reflect, sometimes tears come to my eyes because of this journey.  It is so clear how much can be done if I just start and see what happens.  This has been about work and discipline, about love and support and the beauty of flowers.  It has been about having faith that all will work out in the end and about being willing to walk through doors as they open.  I wouldn’t have given up this experience for anything.

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