CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’
The pervasive rains of winter tapped their threatening fingers at my window on that dark windy early morning of mid November 2018. I’d just finished what I thought would be my final painting of the year. Trying to divert my attention from the dingy realities of a gloomy coastal British Columbia winter, I chose the bright screen of my computer that early morning. The first e-mail I saw was from my paddling friend of many years, Anneke Schootman. She was in California and had felt compelled to send me a photograph.
She’d been hiking in the Eagle Lake area in the northeastern corner of California with her extended family. After a long, hot, dry climb through rock and dust, she’d found a tree as she’d approached a ridge somewhere close to 2,000 meters in elevation. Not familiar with such treks, Anneke had found the elevation starting to affect her. Approaching her personal limits of endurance, she’d begun to think of stopping. But somehow that tree had helped her on her personally testing journey. Her e-mail said it all. “This tree really spoke to me, as if it had protective outstretched arms that suggested all will be OK.” She’d sent me her photo hoping I’d paint the majestic tree on that Eagle Lake ridge.
I don’t usually paint images found by others. Rather, I paint from personal experience. But I have a reality in my life. I live with PTSD and one of its manifestations surfaces during the ravages of our coastal winter. The long dark menacing days of the season bring on a heavy malaise in me that I endure every year. For me, painting the summer light during the winter months is a great therapy, its simply good medicine. And so Anneke’s image was just what the doctor had ordered. For the next month I painted the bright colours of that California sky and hillside. Just like Anneke, I realized as I painted that “This tree really spoke to me, as if it had protective outstretched arms that suggested all will be OK.”
And as I painted, so too did the very appropriate title demand it be used. Surely, as my painting came to life, I was “ CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ “.
