I must have looked tense.
Robin sat in my office across the desk and said, "You need to do something to relax. You need to do yoga or meditation."
I sat there not wanting to hear that I needed to do anything.
Robin went on about all that she and her husband Ben, a poet, did together to take care of themselves. Ben did mindful walking, a form of slow motion meditation. I saw him often, walking around campus, but I thought he was just another poet trying to get from one place to another and either did want to get there or didn't know why he was going.
I am a painter not a poet. In my mind there is a big difference.
I told Robin, "I fly fish and I wade streams. When I am crossing a stream I can't see the bottom and the water is moving. I have to balance myself while testing each rock for stability. I do this navigating under low light and in bad weather and often on unfamiliar streams. I do mindful wading."
Months later after I lost my job and we moved back to Oregon and I set up a new studio and after I began working on new paintings, this conversation came back to me. Crossing over moving water under difficult conditions, unable to see the bottom while maintaining the very best balance seemed an important theme that I needed to explore.
Then this April at 93, my dad, Vernon, died. He crossed over from this side to the other. I wrote in his Bible that we placed in his coffin, "Dad, remember that Jesus hung out with fisherman." I drew a leaping trout below the words and told my dad goodbye.
Mindful wading indeed.
"What I see in nature is often fleeting and elusive.
What I think about in the studio is creating art that is composed and clear.
In between those two competing visions is my expression of that tension, in other words,
my work... my nature..."
Works in this gallery are selected from work completed in 2002-2003.
Read excerpts from an interview with Richard Thompson about My Nature, conducted by art historian Dr. Mary Drach McInnes.
"Approaching the river in the evening, as the light fades and the trees become shadowed silouettes, one can see tiny specks of light rise and fall above the water. These tiny bits of light and color soon come into focus as mayflies beginning their ritual mating dances before falling to the water to lay their eggs, spent and colorless. Tiny blue winged olives dance and spin along with thick bodied yellow drakes and giant 2 inch long 'white gloved howdies.' These latter mature mayflies have deep blood red bodies and and long wings and tails by which they gracefully surf all the various air currents above the cooling river water. As long as the evening light holds one can see this dance, see the spent mayflies fall to the surface, and see deep swirls as each fallen body becomes food to a trout. The river's song and dance"
The works in this gallery were completed from Spring 2000 to Fall 2002.
"One thing into another, parts to the whole...
the color of the water is the color of the sky...
the movement of the water is the current which produces the current that lights the room...
the color of the trout is the color of the world...
and vice versa..."
Work in this gallery was completed between 1996 and 1997. This is the last body of work done in my studio in Austin, Texas.