It seems that climate change has gifted Oregon with an early summer, though I think most Oregonians are reveling in this sunny treat with a sense of foreboding, because the less it rains now, the more likely we will have another long summer of wildfires and smoke. Still, who can resist the beauty of a fecund land exploding in lush splendor.
This below is a small painting done as a study for a possible larger piece. It is the old boat ramp at Maddax Woods in West Linn, the rails defunct now, but a remnant of a time when larger boats were built at this site and launched into the channel this side of Goat Island. (The channel was once called Clackamas Rapids for some reason, but there are no sign of rapids here now.)
A study of a small copse of birch trees off Rosemont Road. The painting is somewhat bittersweet, not in and of itself, but because it exposed a failing in me that I had not recognized: I recently heard someone use the word copse pronouncing it like the TV show "Cops". I had encountered the word often in reading, but never in spoken language, and in my mind had always pronounced it "copes". I think there are a lot of words like that, ones we understand from reading but do not use when speaking, and I fear now that I am probably mispronouncing many of them to myself. I know I am not alone; once I heard my wife use the word albeit, but she pronounced it as if it was German ("all-bite") and I didn't know what she was talking about. When she spelled it out, I said "you mean 'all-be-it'?" It isn't being wrong that bothers me, it's being wrong my entire life and not realizing it. Like trying to paint or play golf, just another lesson in humility.
And then a couple of attempts that didn't make it:
