Audrey Bechler's Paintings

Friday, October 19, 2018

October news

It has been several months since my last communication. I have not dropped off the planet or gone into recluse. I have been very busy and have done so many things I can’t remember them all. This last weekend I went with two other Ya Po Ah residents to Astoria a small city on the Columbia River. The weather was perfect, sunny and warm. We drove up through farm land of rolling hills mostly nut farms, fruit trees, vineyards and cattle. The trip back was along the coast. It is beautiful, long stretches of beaches, but I like the east coast better. The west coast is windy and rains most of the winter. I prefer granite shores, inlets and islands and the four seasons of weather. I do like the variety of plants and trees here and spring is especially beautiful. The people here are friendlier and I don’t think I could find a better place to live anywhere.

Doug and I drove across the country with most of my paintings and I had to put them in storage here. For the last two months I have made several trips to the storage place and brought back many paintings which are now hung on the walls of the halls of Ya Po Ah. There is a lot of room with eighteen floors. I am lucky I found a person with a car that likes art and is having a great time finding the residents that want paintings in their space in the halls outside their apartments. He put up posters in the elevators and had people contact him and he is keeping a record of where every painting is. After we get the paintings, sort them out and record them I hang them in my hall and people come, chose what they like and bring them to their floor. Right now there are about 35 on my 14th floor and there are about 100 on the other floors.

Chris is very busy and I don’t see him as much as I would like. I go to the farm about once a week. With all that goes on here I haven’t painted much. There are many scenes I want to paint as I am always excited about what I see around me in the environment.

Photos below

in my room

in the hall

door to my studio apt

hall

packed and stacked in Maine

farm land

fall color

plums on the ground

climate change march

German festival in Mount Angel

Astoria

strange structure in river

pelican on structure

seals resting on docks

Sunday, September 2, 2018

Time on the East Coast

I am back from a wonderful month on the East Coast. For me in all the places I have been, I love Cape Ann, the Newburyport area and Maine the best. It is physically the most beautiful. I so love the old New England architecture, the winding narrow roads, small villages with little downtown shops markets, a post office, and a church the granite shores, islands , inlets and ocean. Granite is a beautiful rock, quarried years ago, now the deep extracted pits are full of water. Many of the quarries are close to the ocean where the stone was loaded onto ships.

I experienced many synchronicities. I saw a Winslow Homer show at the Bowdoin art museum, Andrew Wyeth at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, as well as a premier showing of a movie documentary Wyeth Bold Strokes. The director was there as well as people that were in the movie including Helga. This film will be on America Masters, PBS in Sept. The next week I saw a film I Claude Monet, a history from the letters he wrote, narrated with images of the paintings that corresponded to information in the letters. I also attended an opening of a show of paintings of an artist friend . I saw a replica Viking ship over a hundred feet long that crossed the ocean and was in Rockland for a couple of days.

I did Paint the Town, an event where artists paint a scene in Waldoboro and then the paintings are hung and there is a reception, with lobster and good food , after which is the auction, a fun day. There were three pot lucks with friends. I went swimming and kayaked in Back cove.

The last weekend I spent with friends on Cape Ann. We stayed in a B and B in Lanesville My childhood and teenage years were summers in Rockport MA, an artist colony . We visited our favorite places, and went swimming at Good Harbor Beach. There is a retrospect show at the North Shore Art association of paintings by Don Stone, who died 2015. I was familiar with his work from my time in Rockport and latter when I myself was in a few National shows and I was a member of the Rockport and North Shore art Assoc. It was great to see so many of his paintings about 135?. He was an inspiration for me. I always respected his talent. The trip back to Eugene was long., delayed flight, missed connection, and I thought I lost my camera but found in a couple of days later in a pocket in my back pack. My friends at Ya Po Ah were glad to see me back. I love my friends, on the East Coast and the West Coast and to be able to stay at my old homestead that Doug and Christina now own. Life is a miracle. Doug cooked breakfast and Christina dinners. All I did was wash dishes. I do appreciate everything done for me but I don’t always let people know that.

I don’t consider myself a social person, I like my time alone. However the people I know bring me so much joy, and we need each other, we contribute to each others learning, loving and cooperation, accepting, our differences, accepting our faults, shown to us by others, so we can understand ourselves. We need to live long to appreciate what we have, to connect the dots. Here I am in the last act of my life. Behind the scenes are the ones that have assisted and taken part, like in a movie that in the end lists all the people that did their Jobs to make that movie, This is your life. I thank you all.