Le temps des aurevoirs et des souvenirs aussi.

I find solitary activities  conducive to meditation.  Walking, which I do a lot of,  is one of those activities. I often get ideas and pictures in my mind as I walk.  For this painting I was walking along the marina, and a red rock on the ground caught my eye for the fraction of a second.  The red rock had three white blobs on it.  A random deposit from an artistically gifted pelican.  I stared at it for a minute or two and walked away with the image floating in my mind.  The  mermaid came first where the middle blob was, then the wolf from the top blob.  The wolf was quite insistant in its presence in my mind. I thought it an odd pairing,  a mermaid and a wolf.  Back at the boat, I drew the mermaid. She came in fast and easy, her shape, her face slid from my pencil .  All the while I was drawing I was nagged by the wolf, wondering  what else I could draw there. Even as my mind tried to wander there was only the wolf.  The little seahorse came easily enough.  the third blob had his shape anyways. He was an amusing little fellow who knew his place immediately.  But still  there was the wolf.  I wondered if there were wolves in Mexico. I drew him,  sitting and looking back at the mermaid and her seahorse.  I still wondered why a wolf  here and now.  That thought  nagged me enough I finally asked Google about wolves in Mexico.  I learned that  the wolf does indeed belong here, or belonged.  He is among the last of the Sonoran desert wolves .  By 2019 there were only 50 left in the world in a couple of preserves in California and Arizona.  But in Sonora they are extinct.  He is beautiful. With his brown and grey and white fur he would have travelled almost unseen in the desert.  I am glad and honoured he insisted in being in my picture, and I understand now why the pose he took.  It’s as if he is considering his place now as a creature as mystical as the mermaid.

December 27, 2020

I didn t have time to make separate posts here. I ll just keep adding to this one till that project is done.