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The Artist’s Almanac
March, 2008
Fey/adj [ME feye]
1b: marked by a foreboding of death or calamity
2a: able to see into the future
Merriam – Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition
I am sketching the ruins of my favorite Mission, San Juan Capistrano. Set against an azure sky
against the distant Laguna Hills, its adobe walls reflect the sun of a calm California afternoon.
Only the crows disturb the quiet, perching on the crosses, trading irreverent insults across the
ruined church.
Ruins of Mission San Juan Capistrano
Bill Puryear, Photographer
Painters set their easels in the arched cloisters to catch the afternoon light and a photographer
poses his Contessa in the ancient courtyard. Curious tourists meander, imagining the day two
centuries ago when the earth shook and the church collapsed, fatally trapping forty worshippers
under the rubble.
The sun-drenched stones of the Roman Forum must look like this. Why do ruins enchant us?
Tintern Abbey, Delphi, Glastonbury, Angkor Watt, Mayan Temples - why do they all have such
compelling beauty and power? I stand aside from time for an afternoon.
Time is waiting for me when I get back to the hotel and get the phone call - severe tornadoes have
swept wide swaths through Tennessee killing more than fifty. The final toll is not yet known. My
beloved Wynnewood is destroyed, along with the venerable cedars that shaded it for two centuries.
Last month’s Almanac dismissed February as a mess - sodden and glum: but is she revengeful as
well, to wreak such retribution on us? I have now to eat my words -‘a change is good as a rest’
and regret invoking Sam Johnson’s ‘Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse
to better.’
Did my picture of Tom Spencer’s tree at Castalian Springs direct the funnel to it? And as to the
‘primitive man who sought … the recesses of his cave’, a homeowner was pictured this week
installing a precast concrete cave in his back yard. All mere coincidence, of course, but uncanny.
We are not superstitious like the Scots, who considered fey folk as cursed.
These ruins are not beautiful. When I finally saw it for myself I felt a part of my soul twisted out.
A journalist friend, Marjorie Lloyd, describes her impression: “When we went out Tuesday night,
thinking we were covering a fire and then got to Castalian Springs, I told Julie (her editor) it
looked like Armageddon with the orange-red sky and the slashed trees everywhere. And then the
people started wandering down the road.”
A rescue worker searching the ruins reaches to pick up a doll from the wreckage. Then it moved a nine-month old child, who had suffered only scratches, but who had lost his mother.
Wynnewood After The Storm – David Wright, Photographer
Wynnewood was a Stagecoach Inn on the old Walton Road from Knoxville to Nashville until
1825. When the route moved south of the river, it became a popular mineral springs resort.
Northern and Southern troops took turns camping under its trees during the Civil War and Jesse
James signed its guest register.
Its location commands a view across the creek where the salt licks attracted buffalo. They came in
their thousands, trampling and pawing the dirt for a quarter mile around. This in turn attracted the
Indians, who came to hunt them and then the French market hunters, who came to exterminate
them. Long before recorded history an Indian village with temple mounds, enclosed by a parapet
and watch towers, spread across the valley. History fills this place.
Mr. George Wynne was the last of the family to occupy the home. Before he moved he showed me
a faded old letter from a neighbor girl, my grandmother Mary, inviting young George to come and
take dinner with her and her family the following Sunday. I lean close against the logs silvered by
two centuries and smell the fragrance of time.
No more will I sense the calm beauty that surrounded me as I turned into the old road at Castalian
Springs and saw spread before me the peaceful meadows along Lick Creek, leading my eye over
the plank fence and through the cedars to the old inn.
Wynnewood Over Wildflower Meadow, Bill Puryear, Photographer
John O’Donohue writes, We turn the mystery and strangeness of our world into our private
territory. We make a home out of the world. It is only when something goes wrong that we are
hauled back to the edge. Quite abruptly the familiar map has melted and territories that were sure
ground an hour ago don’t exist any more. … It is only when a hammer does not work that you
suddenly realize it is a hammer.
While we can participate in beauty, we can never possess it. Our sleep of unknowing is often
disturbed by suffering. Abruptly we awaken to the devastating realization that the givenness of
things is utterly tenuous. Even mountains hang on strings. 1
The survivors of the earthquake in California found no beauty as they lifted the stones from their
family members. The ruin must have been just as grotesque to them as are the mangled trees, toys,
and plastic trash scattered below Wynnewood today. Yet beauty survives today at Capistrano.
San Juan Capistrano – Bill Puryear, Artist
Wynnewood presents the artist with several challenges, foremost being its long, striated, horizontal
frontal axis, facing north and perpetually in shadow. I have always found it a difficult composition
to paint, but now I must try. Returning from California late Wednesday night I am up painting by
sunrise Thursday, signing the canvas at sunset Saturday
Perhaps two centuries from now people may be able to experience Wynnewood as I have. A
painting is but an icon of its beauty, which lives now only in memory. Beauty is free and will not
be chained by appearances of reality, for Beauty is reality, and appearance but its shadow.
Wynnewood – Summer 2007 – Bill Puryear, Artist
Footnotes
1.
John O’Donohue, Beauty – The Invisible Embrace, New York, 2004, 49-50
Venues
Art In The Garden - A Garden Party to Benefit Cragfont – Castalian Springs, Tennessee, 5-8
PM, June 14th 2008 – Music in the beautiful gardens at their peak of bloom, with wine, hors
d’oeuvres and sales of fine art by Southern Light Artists – Joel Knapp, Frank Gee, Bill
Puryear, David Wright and guest artist, Wanda Choate.
A proofed, numbered and signed limited edition of Oil Giclees of the 12x24 painting,
Wynnewood – Summer 2007 is available from the artist at a price of $600 framed, $450
unframed. All proceeds, net of costs of printing and framing, on orders received prior to
April 30, 2008, will go to the Wynnewood Restoration Fund.