John Michael Keating

I paint oils and watercolors in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in Northern California. Posting my original artwork and writing.

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A few months ago my friend Isabel Navarro Sánchez told me that she had nearly finished writing her new novel. Would I allow her to use one of my paintings for the cover of the book? Well, of course, and with pleasure and gratitude.

The Silence of The Willow (El Silencio del Sauce), with its intriguing cover, arrived in my California mailbox a couple of days ago. The novel begins with a woman who disappears and continues as a story about daughters and mothers, about secrets, jealosies and vengeance, where home is not a haven, nor a refuge, but a place of menace and danger.

It has not yet been translated into English, but I’m enjoying the shadows and suspense and I’m sure Spanish speakers who love elegantly written mysteries will enjoy reading it too.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

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Green Song 4: Benediction – Watermedia & pencil - 8 x 11 in.

You don’t have to imagine where home is any more than you have to imagine the dirt under your feet. You’re standing on cement or asphalt? Jump up and down a couple of times. You’d prefer more solid evidence? Well, in April, the crew of Artemis II on its voyage from earth to the dark side of the moon, sent us photographs of a blue sphere spinning in the immeasurable darknes of space: photos of Earth, their home, your home too, my home, our home.

Where in the photos is the border between Russia and Ukraine? Between Israel and Gaza? Can you see Washington, Tel Aviv or Moscow? How about a forest or a freeway, or a house? Even less visible is a white-haired man in a little town near the edge of an ocean. He’s in the last chapter of a long life and for months he has been drawing the flower a friend gave to him in December. At that time, the gift was a brown sphere with two green sprouts emerging from its crown. But it grew, and to his surprise, he grew as well.

At first the flower was an “it.” Then in March it became a “she.” In April she became a “you.” And the artist who draws the “you” is not the same as the one who saw only an “it.”

Most flowers bloom in Spring and wither in Autumn. You opened your arms during the dark days of Winter. You never seemed as lovely and full of grace as when you began to wilt. Now your green has turned to brown and your petals look like shrivled butterflies. Sleep well in Summer and bloom again when rain and snow return. I’ll be here at home and welcome you with brushes and colors.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

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GreenSong 3 – Pencil, ink, and water media – 8.5 x 11 in.

As the days of March grew warmer in the foothills, we began to forget Winter. Winter, however, did not forget us. “Spring,” we laughed when we awakened to the songs of birds we had not heard since October. “False Spring,” we sighed as our days and nights turned white and cold again.

This flower, a gift from a friend, ignored the winds and white drifts piling up against the windows. On the coldest days it seemed to grew taller. Green fingers sprouted, searching for light. Every day I contemplated it, listened to it, drew it.

Years ago when I used to offer classes at the college, I would suggest to my students that drawing is not only the act of seeing, of observing with our eyes whatever the subject might be: flowers, clouds, skin, whatever. But drawing is also an extension of our fingers, as if we were touching the subject, embracing it. What I have lately been learning from the flower is that drawing can also be an extension of our ears. During these weeks of companionship, the flower and I seem to mirror each other; I oberve it, it observes me. It listens to me, I listen to it. To my surprise, the flower sounds like it is singing.

Do you remember when as a child you first held a conch shell to your ear and were amazed to hear the sounds of the sea? The flower makes a sound like that, like a sound light would make if we could hear light. No, no, I thought, I must be mistaken, flowers don’t sing. The amazing sounds are only feathery whispers of snow piling up against the windows.

Then again, perhaps they aren’t.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

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A Dance in the Key of Green: Adagio – Watercolor, pencil and ink – 7.5 x 11 in.

“It’s an amaryllis. Why not just take a photo instead of going to all of the trouble of drawing it?”

A fair enough question. It’s difficult to imagine a world without photographs, and if I could imagine one, it’s not a world I’d like to live in. So why draw? Well, drawing takes time and requires a lot of paying attention. Your doctor has probably already advised you that slowing down is good for your health. Believe her!

Around the Winter Solstice a friend gave me a brownish, spherical thing, half-buried in dirt. I knew what it was called, but why name it? I just sat and looked at it for long whiles, especially on rainy days, as if it were something that had appeared unexpectedly from another planet.

I like drawing with a pencil and colors rather than taking photos. The slowness and deliberation of drawing allows you to pay attention, to wait, to be patient, to listen. To learn.

To learn what?

First: looking is not one-sided: it’s a partnership, a dance with what you observe. Whatever you are drawing is also looking back at you. We don’t notice, yet the world observes us.”

Second: I called my friend’s gift a “spherical thing.” But it’s more than a noun: it’s a verb. In other words, it’s an energy: it’s not just a being, but also a becoming.”

Third: Dancing is an energy field you share with your partner. You become a flow and it becomes you.”

There’s more to share, but I’m running out of characters and spaces for this post. Besides, it has stopped raining and the world on the other side of the window is beginning to turn white.”

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Other links:

[this post on my website] [about my new book]

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A Gift in the Key of Green – Watercolor – 8 x 11 in.

Days of cruelty and hatred, days of fear and greed, days of gunshots, insults, tears of children: frigid days of grieving families and laughing prison guards.

Our Greek ancestors would call a time like this an Age of Iron. Such ages are only mere flickers of earlier, kinder times. Humans have “grown so wicked they will worship power; might will be right to them, and reverence for the good will cease to be.” Edith Hamilton wrote these words in a time of war, in 1940, her precursor of now, our own dark times, our wars against each other.

What to do? How not to hate those who hate you?

To celebrate long winter nights, a friend gave me a brown sphere, about the size of my fist. It had papery skin and green, blade-like wings emerging from its crown. Just looking at it helped to calm my hatred, anger, and frustration. I put it in a pail of dirt on a window sill, gave it a drink of water and began to draw it. After a few days it looked like this, phallic and vulvic at the same time.

In the next few posts I’ll draw for you how it opened itself and how I listened as it whispered and unfolded its arms.

Meanwhile:

The temple bell stops but the sound keeps coming out of the flowers —Basho (1644-1694)

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

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A Butterfly in Disguise - Watercolor on Paper - 6 x 11 inches.

This morning in our town I watched an angel and a woman walking on Maple Street. Unaccustomed to the fall of leaves and to the laws of gravity the angel stumbled and fell.

The woman watched in silence as it struggled to its feet.

A gray wind from our next storm scoured a row of trees above us and filled the air with a cloud of leaves, like a flock of red and yellow butterflies.

Astonished with wonder, the angel watched the butterflies (I mean the leaves) in wide-eyed amazement, mouth open, as if it had just beheld the Easter Bunny. Then it fell over backwards on its rump.

The woman smiled, murmured something, watched the angel gain its feet and wobble toward a white-haired man – a fellow walker, fellow-stranger – under the bare branches.

Without a backward glance at the woman, the celestial creature, with incandescent gaze and utter trust, offered a gift in its tiny hand and placed it carefully in his.

“Good girl, Iris,” said the woman.

Not far away, only a few blocks away, the dictator’s masked gunmen prowl the streets. They “deport” men and women, children too, into unmarked cars and “military vehicles.”

The stranger walks away in the direction of the troops. The angel’s gift floats above his hand, as precious as all these mornings in Autumn.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

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This Saturday on the 15th of November I’ll be signing and selling copies of Double Vision, Waking Dreams as part of the Nevada County Local Author Showcase.

The book is a beautifully printed collector's item: hardbound, 160 pages, featuring 80 watercolors, oils and sketches. It’s an unusual book by an unusual artist-writer, with stories — word stories, picture stories, and stories about stories

It retails at $39.95 and makes a fine gift for an artist, an art student, and any art-lover.

Nevada County Local Author Showcase Saturday, 15 November, from 11:00- 3:00 Madelyn Helling Library (at the Rood Center) 980 Helling Way, Nevada City, CA

Hope to see you there!

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about the book]

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Water Prayer by Mira Clark – Oil on canvas – 24 x 24 inches.

During these recent months of life in our “Sweet Land of Liberty,” how many prayers of gratitude do you think God receives? For example, prayers such as, “I give thanks for my life and health and for the lives and health of my friends and family.” More likely, I imagine, God gets lots of petitions, of wishes to be granted, such as: “Please God, let the Packers beat the Cowboys.”

Other than Abraham offering to God the life of his son Isaac, how often does God get offered anything at all? Something simple, let’s say, such as my colleague Mira Clark shows in this admirable image. “What is the woman offering?“ a friend asked. “And what is it that symbol above her hands?”

The symbol is obviously important, and I’m not sure what it means. Does that matter? Instead of the symbol, let’s imagine something else, anything: a bird’s nest, for example, or a small brass bell dusted with snow, or a bouquet of cypress roots, or even a cocoon of maple leaves about to burst into . . . ? Is the symbol as important as the gesture itself? For me, the gesture, a radiant woman offering light and water, is sufficient, the crux of the image.

We’re aware that we are living in a swamp, bombarded by government lies, deliberate cruelty, and hatred as matters of official national and international policy. What can an individual offer instead? How about Truth, for example, kindness, love, and light as well? Since God already has these things, why not offer them to other humans instead?

More of Mira’s thoughtful images appear on her website: miraclark.com

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

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Mr. Death – Watercolor - 8 x 11 inches.

Long months of living in Spain led me to imagine that Death is Feminine: La Muerte, twin sister of La Vida. What a surprise to dream one night that Death has a husband.

You and I first met each other in the house of Death. At the time he was not at home. We knew his house is never far away from wherever we happen to find ourselves. In this case, his cottage was almost hidden in a cluster of leafless maple trees. Light seeped into every empty room. We couldn’t find a toothbrush, or a light bulb, or a stick of furniture, not even a roll of toilet paper. I held you close to kiss you, but you said, “No.” I kissed you anyway. You said, “Yes, yes.” We pressed into each other and only then felt the presence of the owner of the house. He was metallic, as gray as clouds in January, as immobile as a sculpture of Tutankhamen on his throne. “Mr. Death,“we asked, “why don’t you allow yourself a more stylish coat of paint? Would basic black be a cliché? “And those little shoes. Who shines them for you? Please forgive us, Sir, we were so absorbed in discovering each other we forgot you arrived to terminate our lives.” The house’s roof and walls suddenly evaporated and we found ourselves in rain and darkness, pressed together, like a pair of maple leaves, swept away in a storm with a thousand other leaves. Since then I’ve tried to find Death’s home and you, who kissed me, but after many years I’ve not found either. Perhaps one day, another storm will blow us back into the house and we two leaves will be pressed together in a folder in the cabinet. “A last question, Mr. Death: when you close the drawer on what had been our lives would you please shut it on us gently?”

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

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The Edge of The Woods – Oil/Canvas – 33 x 44 in.

I know the truth. Forget all other truths. No need for people anywhere on this earth to struggle. For what? Poets? Lovers? Generals?

Look: it is evening, Look: it is nearly night. The wind is level now, the air is wet with dew. Soon all of us will sleep Beneath the earth, We, who never let each other Sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

This painting was born during the 1990’s out of deep foreboding. On the other side of the world from my home, the Soviet Union had collapsed, and in what had been Yugoslavia, Serbs and Croats were at war, killing each other, as if to say, “we no longer have to hate the Soviets, let’s hate each other.”

Here in Freedom’s Land and Bravery’s Home, we are living Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet upside down: “How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.” By presidential fiat, what had been our Dept. of Defense is now our Dept. of War. Against what? Against the usuals subjects, of course: whatever and whomever is not like us, especially those with skins darker than ours.

On a deeper level, we struggle against the Earth, our own Mother. Deeper still: we struggle against kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, gentleness, against whatever is deemed “not manly.”

At the center of the painting a woman embraces a man and sings a song he doesn’t want to hear: “I want a whole man, dear one, not just a half. Look: the sun rises at the edge of the woods. Look: it welcomes us to dance together in the snow. Embrace me and the woman inside of you. Embrace all of our sisters too, or your tomorrows will be only dismal repetitions of your yesterdays.”

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

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What is a Vision? Have you ever been struck by one? Been frustrated by not being able to draw or paint it? Whatever your answer might be, would you be interested in seeing Visions from eleven professional artists? If you're curious, and in Northern California during September, you're in luck.

I and ten of my colleagues will be sharing our Visions at the Seven Stars Gallery in Nevada City. The artists include Mira Clark, Gary Graham, Della Haywood, Aram Larsen, Molly Molly, Douglass Truth, Lil McGill, Margaret Lindsey, Ben Vierling, and Alison Kenyon.

The exhibition, presented by the Nevada City Odd Fellows, runs from Thursday, the 4th of September until Sunday, the 28th, at Seven Stars, 210 Spring Street. You can meet the artists at an opening reception on Thursday, 11 September from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

The Gallery will be open Thurs. -- Sunday from 11:00 until 5:00. Come in a have a look.

(Poster image by Margaret Lindsey)

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

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Farewell, Madrid – Ink and watercolor – 8 x 11 in.

A morning in late November, leaves scattering in the wind, shorter days, colder days, Madrid exhaling the last sighs of summer. My last day in Spain. I didn’t want to say goodbye.

John Singer Sargent, it was said, often chose a subject to paint by walking awhile, pausing, then spinning around once or twice, trusting. He’d stop and then set up his easel in whatever direction he happened to be facing. In a similar mood, I wandered through streets and alleys in the old neighborhoods with a sketchbook and no goal in mind.

By chance I found myself on the north side of the Prado. Crowds milled about, awaiting turns to enter the museum. Attracted by sunlight on the hillside, I sat on a stone bench and drew for an hour or so until the shadows lengthened. My bum got cold. I was getting hungry. Time to move, but the drawing felt empty. No problem: I’ll just take a photo of the scene and use it for reference later. Then I remembered: I don’t have a phone! It was stolen 3 months ago at Chamartín Station when I arrived in Spain.

Now what?

Stand up, stretch. Trust. I approached a stranger in the crowd. Would you help me? I showed him my sketch and explained the problem. He was a tourist from Mexico City and spoke no English. He agreed to take a photo of the scene with his phone and send it to me via email. We chatted about thieves in our respective countries, and laughed a lot. Hours later when I returned to my hotel, there was his photo on my laptop.

Madrid, city of my heart for more than 40 years, you are a parenthesis: On my arrival, you steal from me; when I depart, you offer me a friend.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

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A Boy in EMERGENCY - Mixed media - 5.5 x 8 in. (in a sketchbook)

The silver crescent of May’s first moon rises over the valley to the south of the hospital where a silent ambulance waits below a sign in red letters: EMERGENCY

In an x-ray room at the end of a long hallway a technician in a blue smock assures a white-haired woman that the fracture in her left foot will heal but not soon

Awaiting his turn with a therapist a man whose bride of sixteen months ago has left him is enduring a panic attack and stares blankly at a wall in a crowded corridor

The father and mother of a boy who has been crying about a rasping pain in his lungs are slowly being swallowed by their cell phones and slowly they disappear from sight

Two female EMT’s strap a roofer who has fallen off a ladder and fractured his pelvis to a gurney and wheel him past security guards and sheriff’s deputies into the ambulance

The white-haired man of the white-haired woman waits on the far side of a waiting room with a book and pencil and pen observing nurses pushing women in wheelchairs

Nurses give the roofer pills for pain and tell him that this hospital has neither doctors nor equipment to treat his wounds but he will be taken care of in a trauma center in the valley

Crying softly, the boy lies down to sleep and a nurse covers him with a sheet as the white- haired woman receives a metal four-legged walker to replace the foot she has broken

The ambulance with the EMT’s and the broken roofer pulls away from the curb and descends into freeway traffic toward the May moon crescent still rising in the twilight far to the south of the hospital.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

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Picasso – Minotauromaquia – Etching – 19 x 27 in.

Those who were paying attention in 1935 knew that it was a dark year. The economic catastrophe of the Great Depression raged throughout the world. Josef Stalin killed hundreds of thousands of his fellow Russians and deported millions more. In Italy the Blackshirts crushed any opposition to Mussolini. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles Hitler began rearming Germany. His Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their citizenship. In Spain, generals in the army began plotting to overthrow the Republic.

Those who were paying attention also intuited that 1935 was a tremor, a shadow of a bleaker darkness yet to come. In 1936, Franco and the Spanish generals staged a coup d’état; the resulting civil war would not end until 1939. Hitler’s armies invaded Poland in that same year and began constructing the death camps to which in 1942 he began deporting Jews, gays, Blacks, the disabled and other perceived threats to his regime.

In Picasso’s print of 1935, all the figures, except one, are paying attention. A half-human/half-beast is hungry. Two women gaze at a dove. A man tries to escape up a ladder. A girl-child confronts the monster with her innocence. A beautiful matador lies asleep on a panicked horse, unaware of the menace around her.

Ninety years after 1935, another darkness and other monsters are everywhere. Even here in the United States of Amnesia. I have a dream: The girl awakens the woman and shares the light and flowers. They make a bridle, mount the horse together and challenge the beast. It drops its sword. The women break the blade into bits.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

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A Quarrel and Forgiveness: Mixed media – 8 x 11 inches.

One of the pleasures of drawing outdoors is listening. You hear the normal racket of buses, car horns and motorcycles in the streets, but if you are fortunate to be in a park with trees, sounds are softer. During the autumn months of 2024 when I was living in Spain, in Valencia, you could find me almost any evening in the Jardín del Turia with my pencils and brushes. It’s a park, almost 8 miles long, in an old riverbed. After a terrible flood in 1957, the Valencianos diverted the river around their city and now you will discover joggers, families and picnics, soccer fields, a concert hall, fountains, children's’ playgrounds, orange trees, the futuristic City of Sciences, yoga and Taiji practitioners, bicyclists and ponds. And an artist seated on a park bench at work.

As I was drawing the bridge, the wind rose. Dark clouds appeared. I heard doves murmuring. They were often out-shouted by the screech of wild parrots who, years ago, had arrived from Africa and had made their homes in the palm trees. From farther away came the sound of drums. Passing directly behind me was the clop-clop sound of horseshoes from four mounted policemen on patrol. Then, right next to me, a shout, a single word, “NO!”

It was a man and woman walking together, but apart. They were arguing in a language we all know: Pain, Hurt and other variants of a language called Love. They paused at the base of the ramp that leads up to the bridge, stared at each other in silence, then continued walking. They stopped between the saints and stared again at each other. Then she reached out and gently caressed his cheek. He took her face in both his hands and they held each other. I drew them as they moved away in each other’s arms toward the darkening clouds. Healing? I hoped.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Valencia Bridge – Pencil, watercolor, ink – 6 x 12.5 inches, Saints on a Bridge: Baldacchini – Pencil, watercolor, ink – 8.5 x 11 inches.

In Valencia there are at least a dozen bridges that span what used to be the river Turia. This sketch of El Puente del Mar dates from 1988, during my first visit to that lovely city. The bridge was built nearly 400 years earlier in 1591 to replace the previous wooden structure, destroyed by one of the region’s frequent floods.

Bridges: The city in northern Illinois where I grew up many years ago boasted four. They spanned the Fox River but not one was graced with an image of a saint. Nevertheless bridges still enchant me. Saints too. So you can imagine my fascination with this bridge in a Mediterranean port on the other side of the world.

I loved to draw the statues under their protective canopies, their baldacchini. I had little interest in the identity of the saints themselves, more interest in what roles they play. What do they symbolize? Bridges cross voids; ideally they create connections, trade and other peaceful relationships between people and places that are separated. The statues offer their blessings and protection to everyone who travels across to the other side.

In Autumn of 2024 when I made this drawing, news of the November elections in the US were a staple of European media, so living in Spain gave little respite from the flood of fear and hatred coming from demagogues and would-be dictators. But drawing can be an act of meditation: it offers time to reflect and contemplate. I was drawing bridges and saints in a city far away from my home. But in that home, saints and their benedictions had been forgotten long ago, and in my imagination, all the bridges were in flames.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

The Marionette & The Broken Man: A Sketch – Mixed media - 8 x 11 inches.

After the fall, after you slam onto the cement and sit in shock, immobile, how awful is the damage? Any bones poking through the skin? Any bleeding? Other than your pelvis and a bump on your head from the ladder, is there any other pain? Can you wiggle your toes? Do you call an ambulance first or your wife? Where is your cell phone?

Multiple fractures of the pelvis, too many for surgery. After four days in a trauma ward, an ambulance transfers you to a rehab facility. The physical therapist examines your chart. “Seven fractures of your pelvis,” she says, “including Lumbar L5, Pubic Ramus Rt., Interior and Superior, etc. You sir, are my broken man.”

Not since you were an infant have you been so helpless. You cannot sit up, let alone stand up, or walk. You cannot dress yourself or go to the bathroom by yourself. During the following weeks you learn the names of your drugs: Tamsulosin, Apixaban, Mehocarbamol, Melatonin, plus Oxycodone HC1, and Lidocane Patches for the constant pain.

The marionette. Where did it come from? Already here when you arrived? Does anyone other than you even see it? Yesterday one of the nurses glanced in its direction, stared, shrugged, then continued making beds. For the most part it remains silent except, in the middle of the night, it emits faint sounds of a harpsichord.

Then this morning, in the dark, a little wooden hand raises your chin from the pillow. A whisper: “The Sun is coming! Melting snow will nourish the oak tree and turn the gray world into green. You will walk out of this place. You will dance again.”

Then: “Take me with you! Don’t leave me alone!”

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]