We were sitting on the porch of our cabin in the Adirondacks last week when the sky grew dark and the wind started to pick up.
My phone had pinged me earlier with a tornado warning for the area, but it could not have prepared me for what came next.
The lightning struck, followed by booms of thunder that shook the ground. Tucked between huge pines, we took cover inside as the rain started pounding down.
Alongside the fear that crept in as I realized the power of the storm was an extraordinary amount of awe at what nature is capable of.
Just days before, I was in Canandaigua, painting a scene of water lilies under a bridge. It was sweet. Quiet. Serene.
Like so many of the landscapes I’ve painted, the scene I was capturing was, in a word, healing.
The contrast of that scene to the one I was in the middle of on my porch in the Adirondacks was, to me, the epitome of nature showing its many sides.
There’s the healing side — the one that provides respite, fulfillment, and connection.
And then there’s the power side — the one that reminds us of the relentlessness of water, the capacity of clouds, and the strength of wind.
The tornado did touch down about 20 miles from where we were. We lost power and cell phone reception, and we had front row seats to the lake as the water level rose about 5 inches.
I didn’t sleep much that night. When I woke from what little sleep I did get the next morning, I couldn’t stop thinking of the power that nature holds, and how I could express the intensity of that power — and the feelings it conveys — in my paintings.
I gathered my easel and supplies just hours later and ventured to a familiar spot, Singing Waters, to paint with my friend Meg.
The day after that ruckus-making storm, there were no gentle, singing waters here.
Instead, there was a powerful whoosh of root-beer colored water and foam rushing over the rocks. It was anything but quiet. It was roaring.
We set up quickly as there was still a threat of rain in the air, and I began mixing colors to match the scene — not the pretty blues of a quiet stream or the glinting golds of the sun reflecting off the lakes that I’m used to painting.
This was different. It wasn’t necessarily pretty. It was powerful.
What I captured on the canvas that day was quick and scrappy, but what I captured in my body and my soul was the feeling of the entire experience — the coursing of the blood in my veins as I felt the rushing waters; the feelings of change and growth that penetrated my heart as I felt the power of the wind; the inspiration and drive I felt pulsing through my hands as I furiously painted.
As I sit here writing this this morning back at my home in Bloomfield, there’s a light rain. It’s quiet, and I can hear the birds.
Nature. It’s healing, and it’s destructive. It’s fulfilling, and it’s draining. It’s pretty AND it’s powerful.
It is the very essence of humanity; of the women who create that humanity.
Walt Whitman said it, but between women and nature, we embody it: We contain multitudes.
In Colorado in May, it hit me just how vast mountains could be. During the storm in the Adirondacks last week, it hit me just how powerful nature could be.
And while my painting up to this point has been a practice in capturing the light and letting the strokes heal myself and those who buy and take in my art, it hit me just this week that my painting can also hold power.
Through painting, I can express the feelings that my body cannot contain any longer. I can tell stories that go beyond the serene.
Like the rushing waters, my paintings can roar. We, as women, as humans, can roar.
We can use our power, for good.