Corpus Christie December 9th
San Domingo Ranch i Beeville County in Texas is owned by Patricia Dougherthy. She has several strong connections with Sweden and visited my museum on southern Gotland last summer. The past weekend she had arranged a Wild Bird Festival where I did a talk and a smaller workshop in how to paint birds. We arrived a couple of days earlier and I had a chance to get acquainted with some of the local birdlife. Due to the drought there where no fresh water and therefor no waterbirds on the ranch. I managed to make some studies of Eastern Bluebirds, Green Jays and Cardinals, of which there was plenty of. During nighttime the gasflares was burning in the distance, this is in the very midst of the fracking country.
The ranch has a lot of history and Patricias father was Dudley Tarlton Dougherty who ran against Lyndon B Johnson for the senate in 1954. Later he gathered several important politicians at this very sight in order to try to stop the US to enter the Vietnam war with regular forces on the ground. He also warned John F. Kennedy to go to Dallas in 1963. One could still feel the wingbeats of a part of our twenties century history.
We where guided on the beautiful ranch by Baldy, a Pawny Apache that was born and raised on the property. His mother has worked for the Dougherty family for all of her life.
On the program was also a couple of different raptor shows and in turned out that it provided some excellent opportunity for the participants of my workshop to paint som live birds close up. So we put a young Gyr falcon om stage and painted it for the whole day. Not really a filed experience but it was probably more productive than trying to chase Green jays around the torny bush country.
One of these shows was called Last chance forever and was primarily a rehabilitation center that took care of injured birds. Two young girls, identical twins was assisting the founder of the organisation. At one point when one of them was holding a wonderful golden eagle I came to think about an old painting by Hans Holbein the younger, where a prominent man is holding a lanner falcon. Our fascination of these raptors haven´t changed over time but the the social structure certainly have. When I watched there faces coming close together at one point I got inspired to do a painting. We will se what may come out of that, I at least took some photographs that may result in a painting.
The sometimes dirty political play around the presidency of the United States haven´t changed a lot. Obama is however still alive but his wings are partly cut of, he is presently a lame duck.
Now I am down on Padre Island on the coast of the Mexican Gulf. With waders, gulls and lots of waterfowl.