One Single Impression -- Thinking

Seeking to know
the unknowable,
express the ineffable,
we mark divisions
(head and heart),
draw boundaries
(mind and soul),
posit oppositions
(thinking/feeling),
struggling to bottle
experience in the container
of language.

©sgreerpitt
Sunday July 12, 2009

One of the core principles of anthropology and sociology is that language is the primary interface between the human being and reality; that in order to know something, to think about something, we have to be able to capture it with words.

One of my favorite books in graduate school was Structures of the Life Worldby sociologists Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann (Volume I, 1973), a work in phenomenology which painstakingly examines the process by which humans use language to label, process and socially construct reality. Anthropologists/linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf went so far as to suggest that peoples that spoke different languages inhabited different realities -- an idea is called the "linguistic relativity hypothesis." [An aside: a wonderful novel that makes this hypothesis a key plot point is Juniper Time by Kate Wilhelm (1979)].

Twenty seven years of experience since graduate school supports the truth of these assertions about the necessity of language for thinking. But, and this is a big "but," there is a whole world of experience that goes beyond the grasp of "thinking" that cannot be encapsulated in language. The meditative techniques of Buddhism and other disciplines aim for that experience out side of thinking.

Beyond that there is the experience of being in the world. We may not be able to communicate this experience that transcends language, but it is there, we know it in our souls.

Painting "container" by sgreerpitt July 2009, using Corel Painter.

a peep in the night

Last night while we were watching TV we left the backdoor open. At one point I looked up and noted the dozen plus moths that had plastered themselves to the outside of the storm door. Then I did a double take. One of the light attracted little bodies was not a moth. So I carefully stepped outside with my camera to get a picture of this little Mountain Chorus Frog (formal name Pseudacris brachyphona, but more commonly known around here as a "peeper") whose little 1 1/2" body was plastered to the glass. Sorry about the poor focus.

bored out of my skull

I am definitely not suited to inactivity. Yesterday morning, on the last day I was caring for Pam and Mike's animals (see the sweet photos of Dip, Tuggles and two of the kitties from Wednesday), I hurt my back lifting a much too heavy bucket of water. Totally my fault. I knew I shouldn't lift that much weight. I could have made two trips, but I was being lazy. Fifteen minutes later I was doubled over in pain.

After limping across the lane home, I tried muscle relaxants and heat, and fell asleep in my wonderful recliner. But by noon, I woke again in more pain feeling feverish and nauseous and began to wonder if it was more than muscle spasms (appendicitis crossed my mind).
So John gave up his entire afternoon of grading papers to accompany me to the doctor (as driving myself was out of the question). Hours of waiting and several tests later the verdict was simple muscle spasm. Off we went to the pharmacy with prescriptions for prednisone and more muscle relaxants, and very strict instructions to spend a day or two in my recliner with a heating pad -- absolutely NO scaffold climbing!

At first this morning it felt nice not to have to be rushing around getting all my stuff ready to go paint. I spent a little bit of time in the morning at the computer getting caught up with the on-line class I'm teaching. [The students this summer are unaccountably inactive, nice for me, but not so good for their grades.] But an hour in the computer chair was a bit much.

So the rest of the day has been spent, as ordered, lounging in the recliner with the heating pad. The SyFy Channel (why did they change the name??) was running a marathon of one of my favorites "Eureka!" and that was entertaining for a few hours. I napped a little. Ate way too much. Even low fat, sugar free pudding is not so good for you after the second serving!

You know you're bored when even Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson can't engage your attention. I found myself fast forwarding through portions of "Last Chance Harvey." The movie has it's sweet moments, but I had little patience for the pacing. I did particularly like Harvey's response at the end, when Kate asks him "how is this [relationship] going to work?" and his response is "I don't know. But it will. I promise." Optimism, commitment, faith -- all good qualities for starting a relationship.

So here I am blogging. I can already feel a few twinges and know that it will be back to the recliner and heating pad in a few minutes. It's almost time for my evening call to my mother, and then it's not long until SyFy Channel (again what's with the name change?) airs a new episode of "Eureka!" so I suppose I'll make it through until bedtime without expiring of boredom.

One perk of spending the day in the recliner, is that I've had plenty of feline company. I've been so busy since starting the mural, that I haven't had much time to create "lap time" for my kitties. I like being a "cat mattress" for a day.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--15 Windows and doors

From my perspective I didn't do very much today. I was having a lot of trouble with my back and hips, and had to take more than the usual number of breaks off the scaffold, to rest my back. However, from the observers' point of view, I covered a lot more canvas with paint today than I have on other days. That's because I was doing some large areas that can be painted quickly with a small number of hue/value/intensity options.

Today's painting focused on windows and doors. Today I masked off, and painted flat surfaces of glass. After those dry well, I'll go back and do the details of the dark metal frames and fixtures, and add more details to suggest more reflection.

I also worked on foliage of previously painted trees, added a sycamore behind the Allied Health Building, and painted in an old, gnarled maple tree. I love sycamore trees because the bark on upper trunk and limbs is stark white. In the winter they are very dramatic, and in the spring they are still visible under the light foliage. By this time of the summer, however, their white branches are hidden by heavy foliage.

The painting has reached a point where I can look at it and say "yes, this IS a mural." What I see on the wall, minus a few tiny details, actually looks like the proposal I gave the committee. I wasn't entirely certain that I could, in fact deliver what I proposed, never having done anything of this scope and detail before. But I think it is really working.



I've also come to terms with my inability to produce perfection. I used to think that it was a failing that I didn't keep working and worrying over a painting until every detail and drop of paint was perfect. Now I realize that perfection is a chimera. A painting isn't a photograph. Good is good enough.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--14 Getting it right

When one paints three dimensional objects on a two dimensional (flat) surface, one needs to manipulate the hue, value and intensity of color to make the objects appear three dimensional to the viewer.

Forbes Whiteside had an exercise that taught students that one has to not only change value (light and dark) but also hue and intensity, to reproduce a three dimensional object. He gave us wooden cubes (about 3"x3"x3"), had us choose a color that we liked and mix up a batch of that one color with which we would paint the entire cube on all sides with the same solid color. When the paint was dry, we set the cube on the table on a neutral colored backdrop. The task was then to paint a picture on our canvas that looked just like our cube did sitting on the table. The most interesting thing about this task was that you almost never got to use any of the original color you used to paint the cube in the first place. The effects of light, shadow, reflected color, and dimension, all required you to use colors lighter and darker (value), bluer/greener/redder (he), and grayer (intensity) than your original color.

It is both the perspective (the lines converging) and the use of color that makes the Allied Health Building appear three dimensional. I finished the bricks today, and will move on to windows and doors this week.

As I came in this morning, I stopped and took a new photo of the Administration/Coca-Cola building, that I could use as reference for painting the stone work on that building. Below you see a portion of the building as it appeared this morning, and below that you see, today's painting of the stone work on the building.



I wasn't sure how the stone work would look until I tried it, and I kept having to get down off the scaffold to get some distance to make sure that what I was doing was creating the right effect. I think it worked pretty well.

Here's the overview of today's work:

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--13 Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)

Getting a little carried away with Pink Floyd references, but good music is good music, and there's a lot of bricks in this painting.

Another day of working diligently on the Administration/Coca-Cola Building and the Allied Health Building.

The Admin/Coca-Cola building has lots of green details, that got added today. Punched up some of the cream stucco. The painting is very slowly beginning to look like the actual building, although there is quite aways to go yet.



Added many more bricks to the Allied Health building, adding more decorative detail, and laid down a background for the side of the building.

I had to field a lot of questions and respond to many comments and compliments today, as there were many new people coming into the building for the new GED classes that Adult Education was starting today. A reminder to me, that I need to have most of the work done, before our students return in early August, even though the deadline for completion is not until September.

The whole thing is really looking like a mural these days.

One Single Impression -- The Stranger

Strangers in the Troutdale Dining Room

Faded wooden floors,
chintz curtains flutter,
enticing aromas
waft from kitchen,
two lone people
adrift, waiting dinner.

A smile,
a word,
a laugh,
tendrils of connection
centripetal attraction
pulls strangers in.

A bottle of wine,
talk of work,
dreams found,
and loves let go,
until the sinking sun
sends each spinning
a separate trajectory
into the dark,
life’s gravity
fixing different orbits,
yet trailing rosy clouds
of memory
for years to come.

©sgreerpitt
July 5, 2009

Pen and ink drawing by sgreerpitt of the Troutdale Dining Room, July 1977, reproduced on a note card.

For more intriguing poems on the prompt "the stranger" see One Single Impression

peaceful and (mostly) quiet Fourth

Most of our neighbors have headed out of town. Our nearest neighbors and closest friends, Pam and Mike headed out Friday morning with both their (grown) sons and their sons families for a family reunion in Virginia. So we are taking care of their two doggies and three kitties for a few days.

About five years ago, while on vacation they left their dog Dip (aka Dipstick and "the Dipster") at a Kennel, and when they returned the kennel owners convinced them to also bring home with them a homely little mutt that had been abandoned. The scruffy terrier was so ugly he was cute (see photo right), so they named him Fuggly. However, way back then, I misunderstood what they were calling him, so I've been calling him "Tuggles" for five years -- Mr. Tuggles when I'm being formal. I think I like my name better. Fuggly/Tuggles the terrier is constantly finding new places to dig himself out of their yard. They manage to keep him confined for three or four weeks, before he finds a digs a new hole. He likes to come over to visit with me when I get home from work.

Dip on the other hand has always been leery of anyone other than his family, but suddenly this week, he's decided that I might be an okay person. This isn't just about food, because I've fed him before. I guess old age is mellowing him (he's about 10 or 11 years old now).

Even though Dip and Tuggles spend most of their time (from spring through autumn) outdoors, they are used to lots of human company, because Mike and Pam have the most wonderfully relaxing backyard, with fabulous deck, pool, and hot tub, and spend the majority of their non-working hours outdoors with the animals. So in addition to doing the morning and evening feeding, I'm trying to spend an hour or two with the dogs so that they don't get too lonely while their humans are away.

Today I lounged on the deck and got caught up on some reading, while having plenty of opportunity to pet the dogs, and cuddle the cats.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--12 Another Brick in the Wall

Yes, Pink Floyd is playing as a backdrop for this post.

The college was closed today for the Fourth of July holiday, and so I had the whole place to myself. I bought a speaker dock for my iPod, and cranked the volume up. Had to keep reminding myself that a scaffold is no place to start dancing!

On the Administration/Coca-Cola building, I was moving the masking tape around, and laying down different sections of the building. I did several more major areas and then left them to dry while I moved on to add bricks to the Allied Health building.

The Allied Health building was begun a couple of years after I came to work at Southeast (1996). It made partial use of an existing structure (the old Letcher County Public School system bus garage) that had been unused for some time. The building houses several science labs used for Anatomy and Physiology, Biology, Chemistry and the Physical Therapy Assistant program.

The building is rather plain architecturally, being a single story box. The only really interesting detail is found in the variety of patterns of brick work -- both horizontal and vertical patterns. So I felt that it was important to try to reproduce at least some of that detail.

What you see in the overview picture below took me more five hours to accomplish. The brick details accounted for nearly four hours of that time. I'm less than half way finished with the brick on that building. So I still have lots of fun to come!

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--11 Laying foundations

We have a guest photographer today: Chris Jones who handles public relations for the college, came over from the main campus to get some actions shots of me up on the scaffolding. I actually am painting while Chris snapped photos (working on a tree), but we had to do a little "posing" so he could get both my face and the image on the wall.

The photo to the right is cropped from my favorite. What is not apparent in the picture is all the paint smeared on the legs of these overalls -- I tend to use them to wipe brushes dry when a rag or paper towel is not handy.


The foundations referred to in today's title are the background coats on various parts of buildings that I began laying in today. In Chris's photo (above) (and in mine at the bottom of the page) you can see the Allied Health building where I painted a rosy cream color (Unbleached Titanium, Titanium White, and tiny amounts of Cadmium Red and Naphthol Crimson) to suggest the mortar between the bricks which will be painted later. In my photo to the left, you can see two different colors, a cream and a light gray, that have been applied to sections of the Administration/Coca-Cola Building.

The process begins by selecting the area to be painted and masking around it (to provide nice sharp architectural edges) with blue painters tape. Basically this amounts to sketching out the design with pieces of tape cut to length. A little tricky to get right. Working so close to the wall, I'm not always sure I have lines plumb. In this case I erred slightly on one edge, but it can be fixed easily when the adjoining, slightly darker wall is painted. After the foundation area is painted, the area has to dry completely, especially if it is necessary to mask over it to do an adjacent area. So I selected two, non-adjacent areas on the Coca-Cola building to paint today, and the entire front of the Allied Health building, and will allow them to dry overnight.

While those foundations dried, I went back to working on trees, laying in two additional large trees. Also, I added in the base color for the river that runs between the two parts of the campus, detailed areas where light reflects on the river will be added later. Leaves for the trees will be added after the branches are dry.

It felt like I spent a lot of time today, getting down off the scaffolding, to get a wider perspective on what I was doing, and making notes of what to work on tomorrow.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--10 The hills are alive

The plumbers came, the pipes got fixed, and everything was back to normal (more or less) by 2:00 PM. So after a quick lunch it was off to the college, to get four or five hours of painting tucked into the day.

The cliff and hills in the background behind the Belinda Mason Building are off in the distance a mile or two away, but the hills in the other two-thirds of the mural, are close by, and embrace the college snugly. So while it is not only acceptable, but actually desirable for the background of Belinda Mason to be in a different color palette (slightly different hues and grayer in intensity), it is important for the rest of the hills to have a consistent range of hue, value and intensity.

This means mixing up very large batches of several colors and laying them all in across the entire area in one session. Like most painters, my painting experience involved working on canvasses three or four feet wide and two to three feet high (for landscapes -- the opposite dimensions for portraits). One does not mix large batches of a single color for canvasses this size. So I am engaging in a fair amount of guess work when it comes to how much of a color to mix up for an area as large as the mountains (approximately 11 feet wide and varying from one to two feet in height).

The first photo (right) shows stage one. I started with an intense, bluish-tinged dark value green for the deep shadows under the bushes along the river bank and across the hillside (a combination of Hooker's Green, Pthalo Green and very small amounts of Mars Black with a large dollop of matte medium). Perhaps I could have used a bit more than I did, but I was able to lay down some shadow across the entire area with one batch, so my guess work was pretty accurate. I had to move the scaffolding to three different locations to cover the area.

Then I mixed three different greens: 1) a medium value green with a blue tint (Permanent Green Medium, Hooker's Green, and tiny dash of Cobalt Blue), 2) a medium value yellow green (Permanent Green Medium, Hooker's Green, Cadmium Yellow Medium), and 3) a lighter value yellow green (Permanent Green Medium, Hooker's Green, Cadmium Yellow Light and Titanium White). One problem I am having with this project is that colors that seem very light to me on the palette, and on the wall when I'm standing a foot from the wall, appear darker from the floor (and even darker when photographed). The nice thing about working with acrylic paints is that one can always add lighter colors on top to nice effect. Light colors always appear closer to us than dark colors, so it does not hurt for light colors to be built up on top of darker colors.

I applied the color by dabbing and stippling, rather than stroking the brush. Stippling is a technique, where just the tips of a stiff brush come in contact with the painting surface. There are brushes designed specifically for stippling, but any good stiff bristle brush can be used in this manner. The result as you can see below gives the impression of the foliage of trees. Later I will add detail in the foreground of the hills, suggesting some individual trees with different shapes and types of leaves.


Like with the earlier dark shadow under layer, the scaffolding had to be moved into three different positions to reach the entire area. All this took from 3:00 PM until 7:00 PM, with thirty minutes for clean up at the end.

end of a long summer day

Today prompted my husband to quote frequently from "Grampa Simpson" as it was a day "not so much interesting as long." We spent the entire day from first light until supper time, waiting for plumbers who never came. "Tomorrow" they say.

To refresh my spirit I wandered outside a bit catching the last lingering fingers of sunlight on our lawn and on the creek.

Then I said good night to the pure white morning glories* as they folded up their petals for the evening.

*my best guess as to what these flowers are, if you have an alternative identification, please let me know!