Austin is still cool
A few words about tomorrow
“H-E-B Grackles No. 2,” 12x12 acrylic on birch panel. Sold.
I went for a walk in our neighborhood in East Travis Heights this afternoon, didn’t see many birds. The sun seemed particularly bright, perhaps because the particulates and moisture were being shoved out by the cold front. I don’t know. That’s not a scientific explanation, but I’ve notice the effect before on cold days. I picked up some varieties of oak leaves that still had a lot of red pigment left, and held up in the sunlight they really lit up. I’ve been using more umber tones in my paintings lately and I’ll be trying to capture these this week as I return to the easel.
Monday I’ll be looking for positive distractions from the chill winds blowing over the world, so I’ll start a new painting or two. I haven’t settled on a specific bird just yet, but for the past few weeks I’ve been really drawn to the little warblers and vireos that have been in the bare elms in our yard and the trees down on the trail by Lady Bird Lake. I’ll be heading down to Roy G. Guerrero Metropolitan Park, too, to see if I can find the Western bluebirds that have been visiting there.
“Black-Throated Gray Warbler, 12x12 acrylic on birch panel. Sold.
“Black-Throated Gray Warbler No.2,” 12x12 acrylic on birch panel. $325.
“Last Days at Twin Oaks,” 12x12 acrylic on panel.
My history with Twin Oaks Shopping Center, located at Oltorf Street and S. Congress here in Austin, goes back to about 1960, when it was a major commerical location. We lived in Johnson City and driving up to Austin you could see the capitol dome from just about anywhere. Things have changed. The site has been pretty ghostly for years now, except for the three magnificent twin-trunked live oaks for which it was named (I’m told there were still four of them until a storm took it down) and, of course, the temporary H-E-B location while the giant revised edition was being completed across the street. I submitted my painting for the Mexic-Art Museum’s Mix ‘n Mash: Ecos del Pasado/Echoes of the Past, which opens Jan. 31 and runs through February.
If you’re not already following Christopher Brown, author of the great new book “A Natural History of Empty Lots,” you should fix that right away. Buy the book. Read and follow his Fieldnotes substack.
If you’d like to see more of my paintings or explore links to my existence as a musician and author, check out my website at jessesublett.com. Instagram is good, too. I post my artwork at @jessesublett.visualart and book/music news at @jessesublett.
One of the great pleasures of being an artist/musician/whatever is meeting the people who really enjoy what you do. It reminds me that creating things is a worthwhile profession, and that Austin is still a cool place to live.
The artist and Scott Macdanz, Austin music aficionado and the new owner of “Black-Throated Gray Warbler.”
Well, that’s it for the inauguration. Till next time, stay warm, stay cool, be safe.