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“Drink and carouse with Bacchus or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods.”
— D.H. Lawrence

Most roads in the west of Ireland were designed for wagons and carts. If this watercolor were accurate, the car ahead of us would not exist, but instead, a flock of sheep. The composition needed a shape in the middle distance and a sedan seemed easier to draw than animals. High winds from the Atlantic and lonely landscapes are ever present here in this enchanted water-land of fens, brooks, ponds, rivers, lakes and bogs, and so are radiant greens, which I seldom managed to capture with my brushes.

Three brothers were traveling to Drumcliffe in a rented Mercedes to pay our respects at the tomb of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). His grave lies among a dozen others in an old churchyard under leafy shade with the mysterious shadow of Ben Bulben, the great mountain, in the distance. Yeats’ simple headstone reads:

“Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by.”

Four horsemen passing: Patrick, Tim, myself and our mystical companion, unseen but always present, the guide and protector of travelers, called Hermes by the old Greeks. Needless to say, he was excellent company during our travels.

The road out of Drumcliffe winds south along the windy coast. We had no destination in particular, just some fishing village or other where, at a pub, the locals would suggest a welcome place to spend the night, or perhaps a couple of days. Patience, Curiosity, and Gratitude are essential on Drumcliffe Road because the Road leads to everywhere: to Rome, to Mecca, even to Home. Even to “the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns . . . “

The Tempest begins with a storm that will wreck a ship and deliver its passengers into the hands of a vengeful magician, who wants to harm them. This drawing from my sketchbook shows the stage of the outdoor Elizabethan Theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland before a recent evening performance.

In a few minutes darkness will fall and the sound system will shock the audience with deafening blasts of thunder and flashes of lightning. Crew members of the ship will scramble over the stage trying to trim the sails, represented by the three triangular shapes. We have no doubt that the ship is doomed. Mother Nature helps too: rain falls steadily and I have to stop drawing because the paper gets wet.

Most of the audience has prepared for the storm with ponchos, umbrellas and raincoats. But the temperature is 41 and the rain is relentless. The actors suffer the most, especially the four who, as part of the play, have been enchanted by a magic spell and have to pretend that they are asleep in the puddles on the stage.

At intermission, stagehands emerge to swab off the stage. Rain still falls and many in the audience head for the exits. Connie and I want to stay for the rest of the performance, but we’re soaked and miserable. So we stagger up the street to our B&B, quaking with the shivers as if we had palsy.

The sketch is not a product, like Shakespeare’s play. It’s more like a rehearsal, a process of paying attention. Days later, I added ink and colors, like layers of memory. We didn’t get to see the entire Tempest, but now, how can we ever forget it?

“The world is overflowing with things to paint, waiting only for you and your imagination. Your final assignment of this course is to paint a watercolor of any subject you wish.” One would think that after three months of drawing and painting under my direction, the students would have been happy to be set free, to paint whatever they wanted and not what I told them to paint. But no, of all the assignments during the semester, this one caused them the most dismay. Why? I wondered.

A few said that “the real world was intimidating;” there were too many subjects to choose from. They felt lost: “How do you choose?” My advice was “if you’re in doubt, just paint whatever happens to be in front of you.”

That watercolor class ended a long time ago and I forgot about the assignment until one morning when I looked out of the window of my studio and saw the house next door getting a new roof. This painting has nothing to do with dreams or mythology or symbolism or any of the other things that make me wonder. It’s just the result of being in doubt and following my own advice.