This morning, it couldn’t quite make up its mind re rain but then the sky opened up to blue and the car pointed northward.
I wasn’t convinced I’d get a chance to paint without getting rained on, so I headed up to Bennington. Wandered around the Old First Church’s graveyard where Robert Frost is buried and looked at a lot of other interesting gravestones. Many of them had quotes on them, including Frost’s with its oft-cited “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world”. There’s a nice little trio of birches planted near the Frost family graves.
I thought this was an interesting snippet of verse made more interesting by the problem of gravestones being vertical rather than horizontal:
Could modest worth elude the grasp of death
This virtuous fair had ne’r resign’d her breath
She ne’r had wing’d the long, the glorious flight
To seats of bliss, to realms of sparkling light.
Then I drove down 7 enjoying the views of Pownal VT. This led me right to The Clark. I went in and got tagged (being a member includes free entry) and filled my waterbottle before walking part way up the hill. There I sat in the shade and painted while people walked up and down the path. I could watch them visiting with the cows who at one point took over the paved path. A woman walked by with two chihuahuas and I soon heard serious barking but the cows didn’t budge. As the trio walked back past me I mentioned I’d heard some attempt to do cow-herding? The lady laughed and said these were city dogs and had never encountered cows before but now they had. And hopefully the experience would have tired them out for the remainder of their trip home.
Here’s what I painted, first in my sketchbook and then two on paper. Little kids were curious as were many adults. One boy asked me LOTS of serious questions: what was the second pot of water on the ground for (brush cleaning)? why were there no cows (will do them last. He pointed right to the spot where the cows SHOULD be!) had I done the painting lying on the grass too? (yes). A couple people told me I’d “nailed” the clouds. One lady told me she did acrylics because she didn’t get how to keep the colors separate in watercolors. Ah…
For more photos, here’s a Flickr album to click on:
