For Chet

Train and Road through Mesa. Oil on Linen. 12 x 24.

This is an early painting from last winter and one of the first I painted when I returned to painting full-time. I painted this scene because my aunt and uncle had a farm near here and this stretch of the world is their special place. They raised their 4 kids here and all of them were deeply involved in the community, from the school board to the fire district.

Wednesday their son, my cousin Chet and the fire chief in his region, died while fighting a brushfire on the Wahluke slopes. Today is his memorial service. This painting is about a mile from where he grew up and where my uncle Don still farms.

Chet is younger than me and the first cousin, in a big, big family of dozens of cousins to die. So I've been thinking about life and what it brings us. I've decided 3 things in the past couple of days:
  • Always choose kindness and generosity. Focus on that choice.
  • Reach out to people and let them know that they're special and they matter. Thank them.
  • Do what you love.
My sisters and I and our cousins will be there today to honor Chet's life and what we'll see is a local community overwhelmed with both sadness and with hilarious stories about Chet. He was 46.

Comments

Deborah Paris said…
I am so, so sorry to hear this news, Lisa. I know this is a difficult time for your family. But, you've chosen to take some very life affirming lessons away, which is a good thing.
June 28, 2010 at 11:20 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My favorite love poem - West Wind 2 by Mary Oliver

Image
for Dan on Valentine's Day West Wind 2 by Mary Oliver You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and your heart's little intelligence, and listen to  me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a  dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks --- when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming---then row, row for your life toward it. Still Waters. ©2010. Lisa McShane.
Read more

My favorite art inventory system

Image
Over the past couple of years I've looked at and played with a lot of computer programs for keeping track of artwork. Here are past blog posts on the subject: Art Inventory Systems, here's what I've tried and then this Update on Art Inventory Systems Alyson Stanfield has also written about this riveting subject on her great blog here . I come to these systems with built-in bias. I prefer a FileMaker based system to an Access based system because I think it's a more powerful and smoother software to use. I'd worked for a nonprofit that used Filemaker and it's what I know. I also prefer a system without goofy graphics. I'm an artist. I care how things look. If I open up software every couple of days I would like it to be clean and simple and not ugly. But computers evolve and the next direction is to the cloud. That is a system where software doesn't live on your computer but you access it via the internet. I operate on 3 devices: my iMac in my
Read more

#artinthetimeofcorona

Image
Tenino: Flooded River; Dalles at Dusk , 2020, Oil on Linen, 24" x 60". Shown here with Andrew Vallee sculptures. Hey check out this great blog article from Metropolitan Frame! It's an interview of me and where things are at with my work, given the virus. Metropolitan Frame is a custom frame shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota that produces most of the frames I use these days, including the one above. Their work is flawless and fits my work well. Click here for the article, #artinthetimeofcorona
Read more