birdspot

Costa Rica, April, 2011

Where one might see a bird, I am looking at a riot of colors, and shapes made by those colors. In this I see enthalpy. Enthalpy, borrowed from its proper place in thermodynamics, is the sum of a system’s internal energy plus the product of its pressure and volume (H = E + PV). It is such a beautiful, delicate equation. This living palette, a being so capable of moving fluidly through space, this bird, wherein colors move from hot to cold, is a system. Systems are ripe with enthalpy (H). They have internal energy (E – both potential and kinetic) and exist in specific, variable states (PV). In science, the transfers of heat – the changes in enthalpy (∆H) – are quantifiable, knowable, and useful, but as a general property, enthalpy is shrouded in its futility. I am gawking at ideas I can not truly measure. The fluctuation of color temperature on these birds is enough to melt my mind.

Such are my heat-weakened thoughts as I sit on the deck of our lodge. We are north of Boca Tapada and somewhere vaguely south of the Nicaraguan border, and it is hot and humid in a way that makes my mind attempt to get out of my body. I drink a Coke, sans ice, and curl my bare feet back from the line on the wood floor where the afternoon sun is advancing. As usual, I have been up since 5 a.m., slapping at flies and sweating. The three of us have already spent eight hours walking through the lowland rainforest here, and have a probable four or so more before calling it a day.

The Coke is at least cool, and only sans ice because there is none to be had, not because I am worried about the water. I am not worried about the water here. I am wary of the sun, though, and am sitting as close to the edge of the open deck as possible without leaving the shade. I want to be as near to the bananas as I can. There is a banana bunch hanging from a tree in front of me. On those bananas is a stream of brightly colored birds. What I am trying to say is that I want to draw the birds.

Enthalpy is a difficult concept: How does one define the boundaries of a system? Do I decide that colors end at the edge of a form (a bird), or do I extend them outward, affecting other systems of air or environment, all the while themselves affected by the green of a bromeliad, the highlights of a tropical sun? I know what the current art school response is, but I also don’t care. I could redefine my interests in terms of thermodynamics (classical, statistical, or chemical?), but come on, be realistic. My head hurts, and in any case I don’t have the energy.

And what am I doing drawing parrots? I kind of hate parrots, and believe me, I have my reasons.

With cola-fueled electrons bouncing a bit, my thoughts jump from enthalpy to entropy. Entropy is easy. Its evidence sits there now, on my physical palette. Rivers of colors, at first pure and distinct, pool and run together to discover conflict. From time to time, I have to exert work to keep the palette together; the chaos of overly-mixed watercolor is not pretty. Basically, it starts out neatish and and ends up a swirly muddy mess, as it full well wants to be. This is the inevitable decline into disorder. The entropy of the physical palette is obvious.

Entropy also exposes hierarchies within a palette – let’s face it, certain colors (we should say pigments at this point) are more powerful than others. Some are domineering, some quietly recede in social settings, and some are passive-aggressive.

Phthalocyanine colors (phthalo green, phthalo blue) are bullies. Phthalo green is meaner even than phthalo blue, and phthalo blue is the one that painting teachers warn you about. They are paints that creep into all your other colors and let everyone know, peacock-style, exactly what you are using. They are pigments that every painting student has awakened to find mysteriously all over the bed sheets, your face, and your roommate’s clothing. You are not sleeping with your roommate, and dammit you did not steal that particular shirt, this time, but there sit those garish blue-greens, everywhere, in all their poisonous glory.

If ever there was a reason to use Pthalo blue and green, straight out of the tube, these parrots are it.

Images, top to bottom:

Brown-hooded Parrots, watercolor on paper, 11.25 x 12″.
Brown-hooded Parrot sketches, ink and watercolor, smallish.
Palette I, watercolor on paper, also smallish.
Palette II, watercolor on paper, also smallish.

A sketch, with marks scrawled and scratched onto it, is a small act of bravery. Ink shows us thoughts, not things.

When I look at a drawing, and follow its lines, I see straight through history and culture. We read drawing as easily as we do writing, and it can expose an artist’s mind. It’s pretty scary to show your work publicly for this reason, at least for me. Indelible lines, for better or worse, record the exact moment they were drawn: learning and exploration sit in plain view. Clumsiness and elegance intertwine. There is, however, surprising flexibility in the medium, despite the fact that every mark put onto a blank sheet shows when the drawing is complete. Is it boldly defined in a few strokes, or pulled slowly out of emptiness? Is it preparatory to something larger, or is it a finished piece, a finished idea?

Studies of a Dead Hermit Thrush, ink on paper.

I’m out looking for sparrows and such in Southeastern Arizona. Internet is sporadic at best, I am exhausted; I may be some time…

Common Pauraque sketches, ink on paper.

The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival ended, taking with it new friends and birding company and its hum of vendors and activities, vaporizing in a palpable whoosh. Its impact remained (and will continue throughout the year), as the Valley returned to its own hum and rhythms.

I stood near a levee near the Rio Grande, fully alone after four happy, hectic weeks, with the characteristic smoke plumes of burning crop residues on the horizon. Beyond the fields and mesquite and the silhouettes of flying cormorants (3 Double-crested, 1 Neotropic), the river wound, out of sight and inaccessible. There were two White-tailed Kites following one another, flying like gullish raptors (or raptorish gulls?). Mexico was so close, calling me to cross.

I was in a foul mood. I had spent eight hours sitting, hanging around, and generally feeling like a twitchy idiot, hoping to see a Rufous-backed Robin at the NABA Butterfly gardens in Mission, TX. Excepting the lovely Ruddy Ground Dove at Estero Llano at the beginning of my stay, this was the only species being reported that I had never seen before. At about 9 am I had a quick glimpse of two robins/thrushes – shadowy bits of robin-like shapes – way back in the tangle, but not enough to definitively call Rufous-backed. The bird was not seen that day, except a couple minutes earlier, a bit farther up the path, and then only briefly and by one person. Logic dictates that that was probably what I saw, but deductive reasoning is nothing in an empirical world, so for all intents and purposes I saw nothing. I knew it would probably resurface again, maybe the next day, when I would not be there. Beyond this irritation, a nagging issue festered in my mind. That issue was Mexico.

I glared out at a border of water I could neither see nor hear. I have visited the Rio Grande Valley a number of times, often walking along this river, working very hard to find new birds, these “rarities”, and have loved all of it. Blue Mockingbirds, Gray-crowned Yellowthroat, Rufous-capped Warbler, Golden-crowned Warbler, White-throated Thrush, Roadside Hawk, Crimson-collared Grosbeaks, Rose-throated Becards, White-collared Seedeaters: these are some of my most treasured visual moments. I dipped terribly on Blue Bunting, but that was all right, then, so why so thoroughly pissed off, now?

How odd, such deep fury, gathering under that gentle hazy sky. I hated birds, and birdwatching, and stupid little drawings of birds that every last one of my former colleagues probably felt sorry for me over, and while I was at it I hated everyone who got to stay on their path and keep painting and their teaching positions and their spouses and do normal things like have children and laze in the sun eating raspberries and shellfish, hearing the world out of both ears while drinking wine and not dreading their next visit to the dermatologist…perhaps you see where all this was going…and for that matter, cheers to the institutions that cemented a culture of painting that exalts free and liberal use of highly toxic solvents in crowded, under-ventilated spaces, full of drones who think it is really cool to be a painter.

My most crystalline, special hatred sprang forth for that very first day I held a paintbrush, loaded with oil paint, when the paint told me what to do and a twenty year love flowed from there, an unquestioned love that moved from wrist and fingers through to ferrule and gently splayed bristles, running along a track of pigment and binder, soft on one edge of a stroke and thick on the other. The paint whispered to me then as Mexico whispers to me now: Leave everything else behind.

The first day alone on a solo year-long project is perhaps not the optimal moment to collapse into a pathetic heap of histrionic self pity. The facts are there; I am not without reason to do so, but I made a vow that afternoon to not lose my mind on this trip. I dumped my grief at that amazing river and left indulgence in its flood plain, though I held on to a bit of my newly found anger. A movement caught the corner of my vision, and I was on it, bins up, without thinking. A Common Pauraque had lifted up from the road and into the dusk. To Mexico: please wait for me.