Insider info. While considering what image to post with the lyrics to my song, rather than create an entirely new painting, I found this favorite 1998 watercolor of a friend's backyard garden in the Schaerbeek neighborhood Brussells where I landed and exited my European tours. Thanks to Monique and Arnaud for such extra hospitality.

Traditionally, at this time of year, my Roswell Incident song takes precedent because that scene is set at the beginning of July. My Oppenheimer song waits till early August because, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This year, however, an onslaught of publicity is about to crest for the new Christopher Nolan movie about JRO. So, while there is still plenty of UFO/UAP press, which never seems to go away, I've already written plenty about my Roswell experiences and thoughts (at least at the time of my writing). So, while this post is not actually about Oppenheimer, it's timely and I do love the above photo by Phillipe Halsman of JRO. So...

Where does the creative process begin? What is the initial spark that kicks on the ignition of an idea, unleashing a string of things that weave a form begging to take shape on the material plane?

A fragment of bird song turns George Meredith's head and he watches a skylark ascend, singing. He turns what he beholds or imagines into verse. Years later, Ralph Vaughan Williams reads the poem and is compelled to compose a piece of music for violin, the lark, and piano. Marie Hall helps Vaughan Williams illustrate the flight and song of the lark through the medium of her instrument.  Later, the composer orchestrates the piece and that is mostly how we know The Lark Ascending today. "The silver chain of sound" reverberates from bird song to idea to poem to duet to orchestral piece to all of the recorded and unrecorded interpretations and inspirations since. 

In 1982, while living on 5th Street in Santa Monica, I watched Sam Waterston play J. Robert Oppenheimer on the BBC Series, and thought, "I must write a song about Oppenheimer". The process of writing the song commenced.

The only book I could find about the Manhattan Project was Robert Jungk's  personal account, Brighter Thank A Thousand Suns. I checked that book out of the library with a copy of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. The Holy Sonnets, especially XIV, gave me the idea for the framework and form of the lyrics and musical parts along with a literal quotation.  The rest of the song worked its own way out.

I had no inkling at first thought that I would build the song around the concept of Trinity, that I would regularly perform the song at anti-nuclear rallies over the next couple of years, or that a decade later I'd become friends with two physicists who'd worked on the Manhattan Project and knew Oppenheimer. One of those men was Francis Low (who accompanied me on piano in empty classrooms as I was reviving my vocal chops) and he worked at Oak Ridge in Tennessee. The other was Tony French who I was shocked to learn (when I finally asked him exactly what it was he did at Los Alamos) that he was Edward Teller's assistant. I've since wished that I'd asked him more but at that moment, I checked my curiosity.

I also never could have guessed that someone I gave a copy of my brand spanking new Souvenir CD (for which I finally recorded the Oppenheimer song) would take my conceptual framework and, without acknowledgement, turn it into a libretto for an acclaimed opera.

But that's another story. But not unrelated to the question of where ideas come from, the creative process, and working through that process. And it is work. A lot of work. But not the kind of work that you can always point to or assess by how many hours are spent on sets of tasks laid out on a particular schedule. Working through the creative process is a matter of opening up to chance, following your nose, picking up books at random, turning left instead of right down an unfamiliar street, and browsing, lots of browsing through printed words, pictures, videos, recordings, and whatnot, and paying attention to something that leaps out and says, I am your next step. Pay attention to me.

That's one part of the work. Grazing for clues but not too intently.

I often graze on rather than read books and I am not a fast reader, unless I’ve found a page turner. I read contemplatively by which I mean that I'll read a little and then reflect on it. Inevitably, I'll go down rabbit holes, looking up words I don't know, chasing down references. One distraction after another. I don't mind so much because I enjoy grazing books and am easily distracted.

Every once in a while, I’ll re-read Ray Bradbury. I love his poetic fiction but his introductions are worth the price of each entire book and are directed squarely at writers, or really anyone involved in the creative process.

His introduction to Dandelion Wine opens as follows:

“This book, like most of my books and stories, was a surprise. I began to learn the nature of such surprises, thank God, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.”

A couple of pages later, he continues:

“Thus I fell into surprise. No one told me to surprise myself, I might add. I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of bushes like quail before gunshot. I blundered into creativity as blindly as any child learning to walk and see. I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true.”

I firmly believe that creativity demands hours of practice and the discipline to settle down and do the actual work of designing, building and polishing any creative form. But when it comes to conjuring ideas, I surrender to magic, instinct and discovery.



Worth listening to:
The Rest Is History Podcast— Oppenheimer: The Father of the Atom Bomb and The Witch Hunt.
 the BBC Series

It’s warm enough now, thank you.
Mid-June
New moon
Fireflies rise up

(Mosquitoes, too,
but it’s worth a few bites
to stand outside
near the fairy lights.)

Blink bright
from twilight shaded shrubs
awakening to night

As a mockingbird sings
first songs to hatchlings
under clouds of a storm
that passed without rain.

In the soft almost dark
I am standing in memory
with a bottle and lid
in my smooth little hands
chasing tiny fleet bulbs
butter yellow
yellow green
teasing me
on again
off again.

I capture a few bits of
exquisite light
brief life in flight
for a plaything lantern
extinguished by morning.

Then
everything seemed plentiful
and most things everlasting
like summer

Now
bugs of lightning
flies of fire
flickering
dwindling

each one matters






©2023 Suzanne McDermott
All rights reserved

As far as painting goes, copying is not stealing. It's not forgery (unless you have that intention combined with extraordinary skills that go well beyond painting). Anyway, I work with and teach watercolor and while nothing is impossible, it's damn near impossible to forge or copy a watercolor exactly. That's not the point.

Painters have been copying other painters' work for ages. In fact, I have occasionally wondered whether the Lascaux caves were originally an art school of sorts. Constable copied Van Ruisdael. So did J. C. Dahl. Degas copied Delacroix. So did van Gogh, along with Millet and Gaugin. Hockney copied van Gogh. And then there's Kehinde Wiley. I could write lists and lists of examples.

My 2002 watercolor above was the first copy I ever made of an historic painting. Why not start with Vermeer? I learned an enormous amount about how far I could push color and how (and how not to) make and scale a copy by using a grid. As I tend to throw myself into things head first and then learn through an experiential process, it took me a while, too late, to realize that I'd screwed up the grid proportions which threw everything out of whack and hence the wonky result. But that's something I've paid attention to closely since and am able to warn my students about now. So, rather than Girl with A Pearl Earring, I call it The Understudy.

In reference to literature, Boris Pasternak once said that "Translation is very much like copying paintings." I think that's true.

When we copy paintings, we become acquainted with the painter at a depth almost beyond language. We learn about composition, color, value, but also how the painter made that stroke. (How did she make that?) We have to push ourselves and our technical abilities and learn to think and make decisions in motion because with watercolor, the element of time is critical. It's exciting and demanding.

Because we're not forging and usually still learning (that never stops), the eventual result is a piece that is very much our own. In making a copy, the copier's experience, stylistic tendencies, process and commitment are thrown into high relief.

“If you fail in copying from a master you succeed in birthing an original art." 
—Kushal Poddar

Copying oils and pastels in watercolor is challenging but copying a watercolor is an absolute rush. I am extremely proud of some of my watercolor copies including my Dürer Young Hare. I recently almost passed out while copying a Morisot watercolor.

I love teaching watercolor using the method of copying. Not only can we learn everything that I've described above and more but we learn about the lives and work of artists and cultural history. I've also found it to be, potentially, one of the quickest ways to move beyond the beginner phase.

I'm teaching two small online master classes this summer. They are not for beginners but you don't have to be advanced either. You only have to understand the basic principles of watercolor, color and drawing. I want to offer a quick remedial lesson or three for the interested but insecure. I haven't quite worked out how I'll present that but expect to do so any day now. I have a list of people to notify  when I open for summer registration.

If you'd like to be notified, please sign up here or email me here with questions.

"When you have practiced drawing for a while... take pains and pleasure in constantly copying the best works that you can find done by the hand of great masters."      —Cennino Cennini

Today, my Miss Tallulah turns seventeen. 17 years is a long time to live with another creature and we have been together since she was a dusty, flea bitten kitten.

Tallulah was born under the house next door to my studio on Peachtree Street in Nashville, Tennessee. There were a few stray cats that my next door neighbor, Aubrey fed. One was a kitten who, at a week or two old in April, had been carried to Aubrey's back door by an older cat. By fall, I decided that the strays should at least be fixed and vaccinated for Rabies before winter and Aubrey agreed to split the bill.

The kitten was more interested in food than being shy so was the easiest to trap. As she turned out to be a female, her recovery time from surgery was at least a week. Aubrey's son loaned me his dog's carrier.

The short story is that I released the kitten after her recovery then trapped the extremely feral cat we thought was her mother. That cat, who saved the kitten's life and doted on her, turned out to be male and positive for Feline Leukemia. The veterinarian did not want him released back into the "wild" and as he was not a cat who could be domesticated, insisted that he be euthanized. It was one of the worst things I have ever had to do and he is buried in the yard under his favorite hunting spot.

The kitten had to be isolated and tested for Leukemia at three and again at six months. I had two healthy cats in the house and the original plan was for the studio to be a cat free zone. Well, I thought, okay. Six months. She sat at the front door and watched for her parent cat for weeks.

But here she is still at large, scrawny and nipping at fleas.

As her months in the studio wore on, she learned to entertain and help with art history research.

And then, of course, by the end of her six month quarantine, she was as much a part of my heart as she was of the studio and she's been within feet of me ever since.

A few years later, Tallulah moved into the house and was warmly welcomed by Ginger Ale and Alonso and they lived peacefully and happily together...

Until the day came when it was just the two of us left together which didn't seem to bother Tallulah much. She looked at me as if to say, Now, you are all mine!

A perfect comfort and companion she has been and quite the impressive traveler. She's accompanied me to California and back, to South Carolina, from Asheville to Raleigh to Beaufort to Lake Gaston, NC, Falls Church, Roanoke and Lexington, VA, Pennsylvania, Cape Cod, and rural Connecticut. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Here is a random photo log.

I almost lost her twice. Once to raging hyperthyroid disease alleviated by surgery. Another time to a saddle thrombus from which I managed to nurse her back from paralysis. Neither of those incidents would have been manageable without the generous help of my dear friends and members of her fan club. She and I thank you all very, very much from the bottom of our hearts. We love you.

Tutti has always been a good sleeper but these days she sleeps many, many hours on end and very deeply. She is on medication for high blood pressure, supplements for arthritis, and eats home cooked meals prepared by yours truly.

or Spring at last!

Either way you look at it, Spring Is Here (which is the title of a wonderfully morose Rogers & Hart song).

I walked out for a stroll on the stroke of the Spring Equinox to listen to a dozen versions of the song and chose Sinatra's first studio recording arranged by Alex Stordahl as my fave. Ella's version is a close second and Vic Damone wins hands down for the most interesting arrangement composed by someone never credited.

Anyway, on that stroll, a caravan of SUVs packed with high school students sped up and down my road and several times around the roundabout honking and whooping Someone called, "Hey, Cutie!" at me. Most of the bodies were halfway out the car windows except, thank god, for the drivers. Spring is here, indeed!

It's cold here but quite pretty. I've been wading (happily) through centuries of landscape paintings for the master class I'm teaching. I make a demo for each lesson and while the above looks very much like driving into Philadelphia along the West River Drive, it's actually a slightly clumsy copy of a mid-19th century oil of Ville d'Avray.

If you might be interested in joining the next time I open that or my Watercolor Through History course, or would like to learn more, please visit my Learn page or just get in touch.

Not only is it spring,  just hours after the equinox comes the New Moon in Aries. Any new moon is good for beginnings, the beginning of spring certainly is but Aries marks the beginning of the astrological calendar. A trinity of opportunity. No need to scramble for the perfect intentions. it may be enough to allow the heavenly energy to breathe new life into you.

Wishing you health and beauty through the coming season.

On January 31, 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis orchestrated a well-planned, surprise and hostile takeover of New College, my alma mater. On the heels of the takeover, at the first board meeting, the president of the college, a long-time faculty member, was fired without cause and replaced with a political ally of the governor at well over twice the salary of the ousted president, an amount which threatens the New College Foundation's ability to support the college itself.

As an alum, I have wanted to write something personal in response to what has and is happening but where to start has paralyzed me. So I've decided to make a brief entry here so that I can move on to other blog posts waiting in the wings. Then I expect to add to this post over time.

There has been a lot of press devoted to the ongoing developments but I have yet to see any reports that actually describe what New College is, or at least was. The disinformation and misrepresentation of New College has been heartbreaking. Admittedly, New College is rare and difficult to describe.

New College is a place in a particular geographic setting, with unique, historic buildings, adjacent to complimentary cultural institutions, all part of the larger history and culture that makes up Sarasota, Florida.

It is a community of students, faculty, administrators, alumni, patrons, government officials, neighbors.

What may make New College so difficult to describe is that more than an institution of higher education, New College is an experience. The experience of New College is an alchemical process unique to every graduating student.

As a for instance, I recently connected with a few local alums including a cultural anthropologist, epidemiologist, urban planner, Whole Foods manager, and me.

I will stop there for now and pick this up as I have time and can write about my personal experience, why New College is important, and why what is happening there is dangerous on a scale much larger than the campus and community.

Meanwhile, you can visit savenewcollege.org/ to learn more and read press accounts of and since the takeover.

Part 2
Coming eventually....

If I had a nickel for every copy I've made of Albrecht Dürer's Young Hare, I'd probably have a quarter. In honor of the new year, I pulled out one unfinished class demo of the watercolor and went to work. Finally. I like this one! (Especially at a distance.)

I don't know about you but I was not ready to hit the ground running on the first day of this calendar year. I needed time to do nothing, to rest and recover from the last year or three or four.

Fortunately, I prefer to live my life by the cycles of the moon and am reviving myself just in time for the first new moon of the year today at 3:55 PM. This New Snow Moon in Aquarius ushers in the Chinese New Year tomorrow which opens the year of the Water Rabbit.

By the way, today's lunar event is the closest new moon since 1030, which is notable although I don't know what, if anything, it means.

So if you've neglected to set intentions for the year ahead or fallen off the Dry January wagon or already quit going to the gym, not to worry. Now is the time for setting intentions with the natural energy of the first full lunation of the year plus all of the planets are going direct. How can you lose?

Hippity hop. It's time to begin.


Blog title is from Auden's As I walked out one evening.

I used another image by Cory Richards' portfolio of Franz Josef Land for these Arctic Terns.

I'm happy with the way this one turned out.

I can't stand rooting through scraps of paper in search of a subject to draw and watercolor. I have enough pieces of paper all over my studio and office.  They drive me crazy. No matter how many times I straighten up, the pieces of paper pile up and so I have to surrender at least somewhat.

About a year ago, I acquired a large stack of relatively recent National Geographics via Freecycle. These bound pages offer a much more orderly reference than miscellaneous scraps. Plus, I learn things.

For example, the reference photo of this Polar Bear comes from an article about Franz Josef Land. I'd heard of Franz Josef Land but was not sure where, exactly it was or that it is part of Russia.

My reference photo for this entry is by Cory Richards and the caption reads, "Polar bears eat mainly ringed seals and bearded seals, captured on sea ice. On land they scrounge seabirds, eggs, even grass. This animal grazed for days below Rubini Rock—then chewed up the remote camera."