Author Archives: Jo Ann Brown-Scott

The Creative Epiphany – Moving Back To The Future

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Living creatively means always keeping your options open. It was Yogi Berra who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  See more of his “yogi-isms” at www.yogiberra.com/yogi-isms.html  After realizing he was often being quoted, he also said, “I didn’t really say everything I said.” Well I agree – neither did I.

As many of you have heard me say, I live in a very active 55+ community in Lincoln, California. This is an idyllic place, situated at the western fringe of the Sierras in northern California. We enjoy rolling hills and delicious scenery that feeds our souls and fills us up. San Francisco is just over an hour to the south and west and Tahoe is equal distance to the north and east. We have the best of both worlds and everything in between. Wine country and Yosemite are our neighbors.  The people here are intelligent, delightful, supportive, and for the most part enlightened about life and how it works. Many high-powered careers have settled down here. Wisdom comes with years and we live around a wealth of wisdom and insight. When my husband died two and a half years ago I could not have hoped for a better place to be to lick my wounds and recover.

But now I am planning a move. HUH? What? Why? AND WHERE? But you see I have a history of never choosing the easy, predictable path. Call me crazy, but do call me. I am “all in” this thing called life. 100%. Let’s get goin on the next part.

I am moving back to Denver, not where I was born but where I was born again when I arrived as a young woman to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder. For me, an Ohioan, the west was wide and free and full of promise, so I never looked back and proceeded to settle right in.  My mother, brother and sister eventually joined me. That  was the pivotal decision of my early adulthood. I have never regretted it and I am more at home in the Denver and Boulder area than I have ever been in any of the other five or six states across the country where I have moved for marriage and career.  The Rocky Mtns. are my comfort zone. My art career took hold there and provided me with the second most pivotal decision in my life, to pursue lifelong careers in various fields related to the arts.

So. I have decided to move “off the reservation” as we affectionately call our community consisting of 6,783 homes here in Lincoln. We also refer to ourselves as a campus, because living here does fit all the required criteria of a campus. We have many amenities, many avenues for continued education and pursuit of hobbies, umpteen  social events and sports available, trips to the city and local entertainment right here as well.  We gather, we learn, we socialize and we party. Life is full. Life is precious. Every single day counts.  We value time. Most of us would trade our most valued possessions for more quality time. We take nothing for granted,  because we see it all and we know that time is not to be wasted.

And as with any community we have our lovable eccentrics, our local celebrities, our tragedies, our celebrations, circumstances and stories. Have you ever been cornered by an enthusiastic “Viagra-ed up” 75 year old man who is determined to have you go home with him under the pretense of seeing his backyard waterfall? I will grant you that things move a bit slower here and yet they do still move – the same wild-eyed infatuations that you see in the eyes of testosterone driven sixteen year olds are evident everywhere – just a bit weathered over time. And you know you can out-run them if you want to. Conversely there are amazing specimens of physical fitness who defy the odds and continue to be all that they can be. We offer the full spectrum of human beings – don’t discount us because we are 55+.

Perfect strangers here will strike up a conversation with you in the check-out line at Safeway over any number of different personal subjects and ailments, offering lessons learned and warnings and pointers – how to prevent this and that and what to do for what, when some wierd new “thing” happens to you practically overnight, as things do when you are over 55. Everyone is eager to be helpful.

And then you notice in the check-out lane next to you that some elderly gentleman is handing out dog biscuits to anyone who will take one, announcing proudly and loudly that he has some great dog biscuits, pulling an endless supply out of his bulging pockets, nibbling each one as he extends his handfuls to virtually no takers. You just have to shake your head and realize that this could probably happen anywhere – it perhaps has nothing at all to do with Safeway being located in a 55+ community, does it?

I could go on – but I will just say that I am returning to Denver once again not for a love of my life but for the simple love of life itself. For me. I would like to live off-campus now. I would like to live among all age groups. I would like to not constantly be asked how old I am. I would like to blend in and make age a little bit more irrelevant. Instead of being a teacher of art, I would like to once again be a student of art. I have a lot I want to learn.

Instead of no one showing up at my door on Halloween, next fall I would like a couple dozen trick or treaters, because I usually have great candy to offer – no dog biscuits at my house.

And here are my marbles – I haven’t lost them.

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The Creative Epiphany – The Zone

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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You creative geniuses out there know that there is a phenomenon that only occasionally shows up in the creative process, where you find yourself in a rare and scintillating zone of “I can do no wrong!”. You are on fire with the flames of creativity and you are unstoppable. You are vibrating with new ideas that flow from some unconscious place within you and manifest their brilliance in whatever you touch.

Maybe you are writing, painting, photographing, designing, inventing a new dish, building a thingamajig, composing a song or even just looking for a solution to a creative dilemma – and then things begin to flow in such a smooth and effortless stream of one great action after another that you are not sure where the genius is coming from. Certainly not from you, you say to yourself. You know it is your hand, your arm, your mind, but still it seems that you are channeling this golden path of creativity that is leading you and perfectly  answering your unuttered questions about what to do next.  Every decision you make is the right one, you are tingling with adrenaline and you can’t seem to work fast enough. In a  relatively brief moment in time – far less time than it usually takes – the “on fire” you completes the task at hand with effortless inspiration.

I remember one of the times it happened to me. Colorado. Summer day, windows open. Barefoot and painting in my upstairs studio. I had been able to sleep – sleep really well – the night before. I was alone. There was not a sound except the slight rustling of leaves outside. Then it happened like a breezy gust that suddenly kicks up for no apparent reason – but it was not wind. It was a kind of energy that visited me. The frenzy lasted a couple hours. When it stopped and my painting was complete I knew that I had been under some kind of creative spell – some un-nameable thing had visited me. The painting was one of my best ever.  I wish I had it to show you but it is long gone.

Through the years this unusual energy has taken hold of me a handful of times. I cannot summon it. It arrives unpredictably of its own power. I welcome it – I smile at its arrival – and I wring out every last drop of it while I can. Once in a while it lasts a day or more. I don’t require its arrival to do a good painting, but on the occasions when it arrives I do a spectacular painting. I still wonder “What just happened?” as I look at my creation. Who did that?

I believe you must know what I am talking about – because this energy, this zone, this goddess of  creativity is remarkably well traveled, and she is always scouting around for busy, preoccupied people to visit. She will arrive when you least expect her, obtain your undivided attention, leave her mark with you and then she’ll be gone as if nothing happened – but everything happened. I guarantee you will have profound evidence of her visit.

The Creative Epiphany – Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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They – whoever they are – say that our lives are shaped more by the prayers that are not answered than the ones that are. When I say “prayer” I use that term loosely – because I think of the word “prayer” as a visualization, a power of positive thinking, a goal strongly sought after, a long-term dream you have chased. But indeed it is a focused request to yourself, or to your higher power, and/or the universe or your soul for something you greatly desire. Well that is kind of a scary thought. Makes you start going back over all of your unanswered prayers, trying to remember what happened or did not happen after you realized that one particular prayer and probably others were never answered. I would guess that in some cases what came instead was a far better thing, and perhaps in other cases it was just a void. Nothing much seemed to take place. But at the time you had no perspective. You were so far under the mountain that you could not see the view.

But let’s just say that, lucky you, your dream sort of comes true. Maybe it isn’t the total 100% super duperest extra special perfect version of your spectacular technicolor  dream, but it is this —- close —- to the dream you always had. What are you inclined to do with that? Did you believe you deserved the absolute perfect answer to your prayers? Are you that entitled and that lazy in your requests to the universe? You must have the best, the very best, or nothing at all? You don’t return a gorgeous and rare rose because it has one split petal. Or maybe you do. Are you going to snub your nose at this gift and curse the imperfection? Or are you going to feel blessed that it came, even in a less than ideal form, inviting you to expend a bit of elbow grease and effort to mold it into the almost impossible version you wanted? Maybe it’s a test – because life does send us tests – to see how badly you really wanted what said you wanted.

By the time you are in the second half of your life, that life that has blessed you with many gifts and unexpected delights, you really ought to be able to look back and see the larger picture. It should be  obvious that if all of your wild-eyed, crazy-ass, howling at the moon prayers had been answered the results would not have been as blissful as you imagined. You thought you wanted this and then that. You wanted what you wanted and you wanted it now. The clock was ticking – you got impatient. When Where and How were your dreams going to come true? You asked for a person or a thing or a time or a place or a cure or a circumstance or a winning ticket. And you didn’t get it. What happened instead? If you made wise decisions based upon what you knew you could realistically have, rather than what you perceived as all the ways the universe had slighted you, I would be willing to bet the results were spectacular and satisfying. The weavings of time may seem enigmatic, but in time you see the threads are carefully woven for the quality of the entire tapestry.

The Creative Epiphany – Life’s Texture

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Life is long, if you are fortunate, deep if you are a thinker, wide if you are an adventurer, lofty if you have dreams and greatly, intricately textured if you are given a gift such as the gift of creativity. Everyone is given a gift of course – it is your mission to discover what it was that was awarded to you free at birth and nurture it and employ it well. I claim, most humbly, to have a life that encompasses all of those above mentioned dimensions. My life is never dull; always rich with fascinating people and wealthy in experiences. The days are not long enough, the nights are dark but stunningly visual. Although I am certainly not wealthy, by all other criteria I like to think I have it all – I do have it all – and I feel fortunate and lucky and rich in the details of life.

As I write this on March 1, 2013 I have had a supremely rotten day. One for the books. At one point I was able to remove myself from the action and watch it unfold right before my eyes as if it were happening to someone else, and I was mildly, oddly entertained. In a “dark comedy” kind of way. What was happening was so ironic – so perfect in its awfulness given the circumstances and perfectly badly timed – so poetically pathetic and so much like a film. I wondered what she would do – that woman I was watching who speaks so eloquently about attitude and motivation and life-changing epiphanies. Was she going to be brought to her knees? Was she going to crumble? Could she walk the walk of the talk? Would she cry? Would she have a molten meltdown?

The day is not over and so I don’t know. She seems ok right now but there is still the night – the 3am wake up when everything looks darker than pitch and seems hopeless. Oh yes there are others who have it much worse – she is well aware of where her puny problems rank in the hierarchy of human sufferings. Yet still they are HER problems, and she is the one dealing with them. She can’t hire anyone to take over – it is her life. She can’t be anyone else because they are all taken, as the saying goes.

As does everyone else, I look to myself for answers, and that is a full time job. As dawn breaks I will probably gain confidence that I will be fine. The complicated nature of life and the simplicity of the answers will strike me, and I will figure it all out. As always I will find comfort in people or creativity or mundane tasks. That’s what we do. That is what she and I do – the me, myself and her. We go about our day and let things un-complicate all by themselves, which is what often happens. As the ball of yarn spins out of control and unravels in crazy, loopy textural tangles all across the floor of our life we are already considering that it cannot be left that way, and we know we’ll have to wind it up again.

The Creative Epiphany – Gone

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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I am gone – I left the island in the dead of night with a stiff breeze behind me, embarrassed almost to be leaving because who in their right mind would leave, and flew back to northern Cal. I didn’t really want to leave and my dread of the long night ahead of me on the plane was punctuated when the person next to me spilled a full glass of tomato juice all over my carry-on.  I took it as an omen that I was going to hate the trip home. I really didn’t want to leave, or did I already say that. The island life is alluring, delicious, sensual, colorful and it grows on you. You roll around in the ambience, like a dog on a good smell, wanting to get it permanently into your pores. It is sensory overload 24/7. I wanted to really be there – not just visiting. I met a lot of new people who I already believe will be friends, I painted, I wrote and I thought a lot. We took day trips, we went to street fairs and markets, we visited art galleries and many beaches.  I took about 7 million pictures and told myself I was absolutely allowed to stand there on my beach of choice for over an hour if I wanted to, attempting to capture the perfect wave in one magnificent photo.

But now, as the James Taylor song says, “Say nice things about me – cuz I’m gone.”

The seduction of color hits you at every turn in Hawaii. Those of us who are hooked on it, who must have our daily fix, who lap it up and eat it whole with juice dripping down our cheeks as we photograph it, who live and breathe it and cannot possibly get enough of our junkie habit, our COLOR drug of choice, well we are happy as hell on the islands.

The paintings I finished over there in lala land were like alien creations – colorful, wild and a little bit too free even for me. Like craft day in the loony bin. Kind of mindless and silly with metaphorical smiles. Abstract to be sure, and I know it was my hand that painted them because I watched it happen, but somewhere along the way they went all goofy and the color became almost the only thing. It was fun while it lasted, however. I worked fast while held in the zany clutches of some island gremlin and lost my common sense as I flung the paint around. I guess that would be called painting with abandon. A good thing, really, to be able to unleash that inner 3 year old and give her an afternoon purely for her enjoyment. She got her wiggles out.

But she grew up fast on the ride home when that tomato juice hit the fan. It seemed symbolically rude. Like a smack in the face that said, “Ha Ha, nanny nanny foo foo – you have to go home now.”

And so I did – I took my toys and went home.

Wow is it drab here at home in the middle of February. When I returned from the island, the barefoot confetti life gave way to the black frost bitten gerbera daisies in the pots around the patio. Spring is still a way off here.

But I have pictures to prove the validity of paradise and what it does to you. Wanna see some?

And don’t you know when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around.  55 degrees seems like freezing as I leave baggage claim and load my stuff into a friend’s car for the drive back to Lincoln.

Was that place a dream?

The Creative Epiphany – Painting Away

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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There is a certain charm in painting away from home “on location” as they say – remotely – in a studio not your own. It is liberating – everything’s arranged differently and it forces you to leave your routine behind and get loose. Where’s the paper towels? Do you have a squeegee? How about some light blue violet? The light is best at this window except the ants are crawling across my canvas.

The locale offers you new colors to consider, new views, new sunsets and exotic fruit. That is all true and on steroids here in Hawaii. The visual display begins with breakfast and continues throughout the day – kinda makes you want to take notes, and you do – mental color notes. You wish you had more paint. You wish you had more time. You wish.
Purples with sunset orange, pineapple, lime, papaya, mango – all translatable into colors splashed on canvas. Juicey and delicious.

To have two paintings completed before lunch seems ridiculous. That just never happens at home. To be certain that they are truly finished by mid afternoon is crazy fun. To see colors flowing from some resource you had no idea you could use, as if channeling the island ambience just for yourself, is a delightful discovery. Being away is an epiphany.

The Creatve Epiphany – Making Waves

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

So many waves, so little time. Waves of joy, waves of happiness, waves of nostalgia – we can hear the surf pounding as we lay in bed at night. Reports of high waves and strong surf over on the Hilo side. Here along the Kona coast the sand at Magic Sands resort beach just down the road was eroded away with big wave action a couple weeks ago leaving the magic to stand on its own but now the sand is already coming back. It has to come back – for eons of time it has weathered enormous surf and it is still there. It figures out how to come back.

Humpback whales migrating parallel to the waves with their babies on their way to some far off destination where plentiful food and safety for their young can be found. Traveling close to the coast to avoid ships and sharks, stopping in this cove or that to allow play time in warm waters. The whale watching boats are busy – I have a thing about chasing whales. Not a yearning to do it but a yearning to just leave them alone. We see whales from this lanai, not up close and personal but we do see them. You hear stories about crowds of people squealing with glee at seeing a whale up so close you can look him in the eye, and yet I prefer not to participate in that group grope. It offends my sensibilites, and I identify more with the whales than the people.

The waves, as I sit here on the lanai writing as the artist I am, are a shade of Prussian blue with streaks of cerulean that lasts most of the morning, then becoming different depending on the afternoon weather of course. When they roll into shore you see that coke bottle green under the white froth of the curl. It is constantly entertaining; a whole day can slip away watching the waves as the day unfolds.

All the water that has ever been is still here and there will be no more. The water that flowed when earth’s time first began is here, the water that enabled life. We drink it now. The tears of Ceasar, the water that bathed Michelangelo, the liquid that quenched the thirst of many a tired traveler across mountain and prairie, the water that sailed ships and cleansed uncountable wounds. The story of mankind is in the water.wavesmuirbeachsurfsurf

In the mindless afternoon of ocean gazing such thoughts come to mind.
In a wave’s length.

The Creative Epiphany – Away

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

I am away. I love being away. This time I am on the Big Island of Hawaii, along the Kona coast visiting a dear friend.
The view from my transplanted office here on the upper lanai is spectacular – my “specific ocean” as I like to call it, displayed before me through breaks in the palm trees, changes color as the day progresses. Cerulean, Prussian, Pthalo, Ultramarine, Azure, and the default oldy but goody – turquiose. Those are the blues of my world.

Yesterday we drove to a small cove farther south, joining friends for a beach pot luck dinner, an “every Wednesday evening” kind of tradition for them. They say it breaks up the week, keeps them in touch and provides visual feasts for the eye – reminding them of the pleasures of living on the Big Island. The food was special – everyone throws something on the grill and then it is all sliced and placed on a platter so that everyone can sample every single delight. Tenderloin, chicken, sausage, Ahi, hot dogs and pork. As one of the guys played his guitar and some sang we quenched our thirst and devoured the gourmet foods, topping it all off with red velvet cake.

But without question the late afternoon show, happening before our eyes in several rings of the circus in Ki’ilae Bay, were the whales! Mothers and newish babies blowing their baby blowhole spouts, larger big boys displaying the classic whale tale shot for our entertainment and delight. Over and over it went, and just as the fireball shone its last light of shimmering gold over the water before it dipped into the sea, the biggest whale, positioned dead center in front of the sun, took a final dive flipping his tail for the adoring crowds.

Did I manage to get a picture of that fleeting moment? No. But it is forever etched in my mind. Some day when I am bored, or maybe a night when I cannot sleep, or perhaps I am just wanting to scroll through the mental camera roll documenting the most memorable moments of my life, I will remember yesterday, being away at dusk along the Kona coast.

The Creative Epiphany – Gangstas by the Pond

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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There is an especially large old oak tree down by the wetlands area near where I live. This tree towers above all others. In the “winter” months here in northern California’s rolling foothills of the Sierras, there is no real snow – you have to drive up the 80 about 40 miles on your way to Tahoe for the snow possibilites to begin. Here we welcome the rains of winter, and this year they have been scarce. The leaves of this majestic tree are still gone and you can see the enormous nests of the Blue Herons who reside there in the summer months. The nests look like they are about 4 ft across, and they are tangled up in the highest branches. The Herons have already returned, here at the onset of February, and one of these days I will get a photo when the light is right. By the time they get to their nests every evening it is almost dark and hard to see them. They have been out earning a living during the day, just like everyone else. But picture a half dozen gigantic birds, each probably 6 ft tall, standing in his/her nest in this mother of an oak tree, watching over the Safeway parking lot, the Starbucks, the Cleaners, the bank and the Jack-in-the-Box. There is plenty of traffic going on all day and night in that area. They seem fascinated by it. Not a one of them is pointed in the other direction.

Even in the low light of evening you can see they are blue – navy blue. They look as if they are dressed in gangster suits, all sraight up tall and somber. Motionless. Beady eyes watching. You kind of imagine them in dark sunglasses and an Al Capone type hat, brim turned down just right. And some Blues Brothers music.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unique

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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A regular customer at our Starbucks here in Lincoln, CA, often parked between a Smart Car and a motorcycle, but today going solo in the late afternoon.
photo taken yesterday, 1/31/2013