Rising Green (new watercolor paintings)

Here in Vermont, the journey through the month of May into early June brings new foliage to the softwoods and grasses, in layers and layers of variegated greens-- almost too many to be believed. As a painter I find myself obsessed, if only for three weeks. Here are a few recent paintings, made before the woodland colors darken and blend into those of summer.

Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and graphite on paper, May-June 2016.

"Sunrise and Old Western Songs" (Digital 45)

In the spirit of the vintage country and western music I love so deeply, I’ve put together a single -- a digital 45--featuring two new original songs. One is a ballad of the wide open spaces. The other is a Bakersfield-style honky tonk shuffle. Both were conceived and recorded with old-school sounds in my mind’s ear--  sounds, already old then, that I remember coming across the 1970s  AM radio airwaves late at night. And yes, lots of steel guitar.

                                                 sketchbook page by KMB

Books on a Bus

I love it when the world tells you just what book you need to read next. Two weeks back, after a day of lakeside watercolor painting in April sun, I settled happily into my seat on the bus home from Burlington. The bus got crowded at the next stop, and I moved my pack to make room for a well-muscled, sun-burned guy of about thirty. He wore faded jeans and a gray tank shirt, had pierced lips and nose, and carried a large duffle bag.( I know, you are maybe thinking Queequeg here, but that’s not where I’m going with this.)

We exchanged quick hellos. I went back to writing in my journal. Before much time had passed, I heard the pop and hiss of a can opening, and then got a waft of modern, hoppy micro-brew beer. When I happened to glance his way a bit later, I saw that he was reading an old book in what looked like a hand-tooled leather cover embossed with gilt letters in an old west -style font.

I couldn’t help but ask him about it, and he seemed glad to show me: A TEXAS COWBOY,OR FIFTEEN YEARS ON THE HURRICANE DECK OF A SPANISH PONY, By Charlie Siringo.

 I knew I had come across that name, and recently at that, but I couldn't quite place it. The young guy and I had a short conversation-- he was friendly but taciturn-  on subjects ranging from country music to racist language in old books, and then on to dairy farming ( “I’ll tell you,” he said, “It”s not bad work, but I think the state of Vermont should maybe not romanticize it quite so much. Puts a lot of bad stuff in the lake..”)

When the passengers thinned out, he moved to a free seat. I went back to my journaling. I wrote the name “Siringo” in a margin.

Later that evening at home, I picked up a book I had just finished reading, “Ranger Doug” Green’s SINGING IN THE SADDLE, the definitive study of singing cowboys. I was pretty sure that’s where I’d recently come across the name of Charles Siringo I checked the index. Yep. I found the pages referenced and got the jist: Siringo had been a cowboy, a Pinkerton detective, and a New Mexico Ranger. His 1885 autobiography was likely the first book to mention a cowboy singing in the saddle…

I jumped onto my laptop and placed an Inter-Library Loan request.

I would have read Siringo eventually, I’m pretty sure.  But a beer-drinking stranger on a bus made sure that I got around to it sooner than later.

quarry ridge- poem, music, photographs

Last spring I went for a long trail run up into the trails around what once must have been a small-- perhaps family operated-- quarry. I was inspired by the first real green of spring, the sense of opening, the hazy mystery of distant hills and mountains seen through trees. I took quite a few photos along the way, and as I ran home words and sentences began to form. Over the next few weeks I sculpted those words into a  poem.  Over the following winter I made the accompanying music, with lap steel, laptop, and kalimba, keeping in mind the idea of an ancient journey that leads into timelessness.

Here are those elements combined, in the form of a short video:

quarry ridge from Kevin Macneil Brown on Vimeo.

April Vernal- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and map sections on paper, 2014.

Poised at season's edge....

                                       Dawn, Eastern Uplands- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
                                             watercolor on paper, 2016


It may have been the winter that never was here in Vermont, but I suspect there will be a bit more winter mixed with the spring that arrives this week.  With most of my work time devoted to the third draft of a book  right now, I'm taking a moment, on this quiet Sunday morning, to share a look back and a look ahead.
Letting winter go, I share this short video combining most of this year's winter watercolors with new music for lap steel and laptop:

and winter light spilled slowly... from Kevin Macneil Brown on Vimeo.

On my sonic easel is a work in progress. This section was made with steel guitar and kalimba. The idea is of a journey in an ancient time.

Thoughts on the Third Draft

Third drafts, I find, can be somewhat geological. With the story and characters --mostly-- what they will be, I now come across veins, lodes, and layers of theme and mood, character and development.  Through rewrite and revision I can polish and clarify, connecting and revealing these things. It’s like discovering secrets within my own book. The third draft is also a good time for digging deeper into historical research and map work—fine-tuning details of background and location.

 After this, in the drafts that follow, a painterly metaphor might better describe the process— working with subtle tints and brushstrokes that will bring out detail, shadow, and highlights.

  -KMB

Colorado Sunset (watercolor painting)

A place, a moment--its shapes, colors, textures, light, shadows-- can be held inside for a long time before it shows up in a finished painting. The western view at Vista Verde Ranch in Clark, Colorado, has a particular resonance for me, vibrating with its beauty and power, with family memories and a sense of personal transformation.

On a December visit a couple of years back, I painted every day, filling a medium-sized watercolor sketchbook. Over the years I have painted watercolors from those sketches, mostly of the high peaks to the east and north.

A few days ago,though, I had a strong urge to paint a particular sunset that I had sketched loosely from the porch pictured above. (The place where I began and finished each sketching day, with wanderings in between.)  I consulted my sketchbooks and memory, then, on good watercolor paper, made the simple sketch below, leaving plenty of room for sky:

After that, in afternoon light, I chose and mixed my palette ( Payne's gray,  ultramarine, yellow ochre, permanent rose) and painted until finished:

                                             

                                WINTER SUNSET, VISTA VERDE RANCH- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and graphite on paper, February 2016.)

Sketchbook Visitors with Stories to Tell...

I’ve written here recently about the fact that I tend to draw more than paint in the mid-winter months. This has a lot to do with the light—or lack of it-- in my studio. It might also be a response to a landscape that seems less about color and more about line, light, and sparse shadow.

This past year I have noticed something new happening in my sketchbooks. I draw every day, sometimes practicing ideas and techniques, sometimes rendering landscapes or nearby objects. What has surprised me, though, is the way people have begun to show up in my sketchbooks. They arrive as characters, with a back story that reveals itself as I draw. As time goes by, these characters and stories linger, and I begin to see where they might be going.  

The surprise in this is that I end up with people and events to write about. I’m finding this a new—and welcome—part of my writing process.

Below is a selection of some of these visitors. A few I have already written about; most are waiting in the wings until I finish the current book, Liam Dutra mystery number five.

-KMB

                                     Sketchbook pages by Kevin Macneil Brown, 2015-2016

Winter Morning Music

Like many endeavors, it begins with the second cup of coffee. It's a  cold January morning-- clear, the temperature below zero-- and sunlight spreads across  a snowy landscape, finds my window, suffuses the room.  I hear a cluster of tones inside me, and putting my coffee mug aside, take my steel guitar from the case. Steel bar in hand, I play the notes. Next, I rummage in my studio until I find the old Yamaha digital reverb-- 20th century vintage, seldom used of late-- that seems to be the tool I need. Within minutes I have a signal path to my computer, and I hit the record button.I begin to play, all the while internalizing that suffusion of winter light, letting it spread into the sounds I'm making.




Later that day, out on a trail run, I keep that music playing inside me as I explore the changing light and shadow of the winter day.  -KMB

                                     Photos by KMB

Mid-Winter: Snow, Light, and Paint.

During the Vermont winter, I find that the available light for watercolor painting is limited in duration. I do more drawing than painting during December and January.
But there are times when the light is right--and that's when I act quickly to paint the things that catch my attention. This year the snow did not arrive until January, making it all the more welcome -- and inviting to paint.

                                                Worcester Range, Morning, After Snow

                                         

Worcester Range, Morning Alpenglow

White Pine and Hemlocks in Falling Snow

Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and graphite on paper, 2016.

Liminal Reflections

                                            SAILBOATS, LAKE CHAMPLAIN
                        Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and graphite on paper, 2015

Winter weather appears to be on the horizon at last here in Vermont, after what seems to have been the longest autumn ever.  This calm stretch has been strange, but it has also offered extended opportunities to contemplate big skies, bare light on the bare landscape, and reflections on waterways that seldom remain open and free of any ice so late into December.
Reflections, light, and water were important to me in 2015, coming up again and again in my painting and writing. So, as the year ends, it seems fitting that I take some time to go inside and reflect upon the currents, shapes, shadows, and light-falls that have guided my explorations.
Among these thoughts are those of deep gratitude for you who follow the words, images, and sounds I share. It is an honor to have you partake of these offerings, these energies I receive and transmit as best as I can. Thank you for your part in the confluence!
I look forward to new adventures and explorations in 2016, including the publication of the fifth book in the Liam Dutra New England mystery series, THE ISLAND OF ANCIENT LIGHT, sometime in the fall.
I wish you all wonderful things, for right now--and the year ahead!

-KMB

from THE ISLAND OF ANCIENT LIGHT ( Novel in Progress)

Over the past summer and fall I have been working on THE ISLAND OF ANCIENT LIGHT,  the fifth novel in the Liam Dutra New England mystery series.

 I finished the first draft a few days ago,  and I would like to celebrate by sharing a short excerpt here.
This scene finds Liam, a historian and writer with a penchant for stirring  up troublesome old secrets, at the beginning of a quest that takes him along the shores of Lake Champlain:






  …The morning brought good omens for my excursion up the lake in the Sea Nymph. They were bird omens, pretty much my favorite kind.
 Three massive great blue herons pterodactyl-ed over me in the silver-gray mist down at the marina in the quiet morning— the first herons I’d seen all season.
  A few minutes later, with the fourteen-footer and 50-horse Evinrude outboard chugging out into the smooth and silver lake passage, the mist breaking up to reveal a soft summer-blue sky above, I spotted an osprey, the mostly white fish hawk patterned with dark brown--massive, crook-winged, and powerful-- winging directly overhead.
 Both the heron and osprey feel like familiars to me, and sometimes they seem like guides in my line of work as a historian, writer, researcher.
  The heron knows how to hunt wisely and calmly: waiting and waiting in stillness at water's edge, then grabbing its prey decisively when the moment arrives.
  The osprey is always in motion, seeking its meal from a long view high above, then-- after finding it-- diving suddenly, explosively, into the water’s surface tension; grabbing with sharp talons and pulling up the dripping, struggling prey.
  I’ve found that both methods can work well when investigation and exploration—-the finding of lost things, lost stories— is the mission at hand....

    - excerpt from THE ISLAND OF ANCIENT LIGHT, a novel in progress by Kevin Macneil Brown (Coming in autumn  of 2016.)


                                                     

                                         
               The Liam Dutra Series is available in print and kindle editions at amazon.com:

       


                                                      Kevin Macneil Brown's Author Page

  

October Ridge (Poem and Painting)

                                          October 6, Morning- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
                                          watercolor on paper, 2015.

At the place below river bend you will find

the stone sluice, gray with shadows

that morning sun will soon submerge.

Turn north here, and toward

the quartzite mountains.

The wooden gate has fallen and rotted,

 but it’s still there,

 beneath a rusted galaxy of  dead leaves released

 by October wind and rain.

The climb toward the ridge will be a long one,

but you will arrive

at a grove of great beeches—you will know them by their

copper shimmer.

Reaching this high place, please, if you would like to,

write some words on the empty sky revealed

through and between

the trees above and around you.

 I would feel blessed if you would wait for me here:

 I am wandering somewhere along that ridge,

 and my heart is full to overflow

 with the dream of our reunion.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Memories, Boats, and Reflections.

This summer I have been making paintings of boats, in particular following a fascination with their reflections on water in different conditions of sunlight and weather. A few days back I had a small epiphany when I realized-- and remembered-- one strong source for this.

When I was a boy I spent long summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where both my parents were born and raised. Back then, walks to the working harbor with my Grampy Brown-- John Brown-- were the very best part of my summer days. In memory I can still see the chaos of many boats along the piers, the patterns of reflection and shadow, the colors and motion of light and shade on the  never-still water.

Now, at Lake Champlain--mostly at Perkins Pier in Burlington, Vermont-- it seems that I am exploring,through sketching and painting,  some part of those mysteries and possibilities that I felt back then in Gloucester at seven or eight years old.

 The light and wind are always changing. Boats at moorings do not sit still. But there's plenty of summer left, and the beautiful angled light of autumn to follow. I figure I will  never run out of images to paint. 

And I find myself happily surprised to be learning how deep surfaces can actually be.

-KMB
 

 Boats in morning light at Perkins Pier.  Watercolor sketches by Kevin Macneil Brown, Summer 2015.

summer light seen from front steps (watercolor painting)

Last week, a forecast of afternoon thunderstorms led me to abandon plans for a day of lakeshore painting.
But the light and shadow of a summer afternoon, seen shimmering right from my front steps, captured my attention. I made two sketches, and then realized I wanted to paint what I saw. So I did.
The thunderstorms never arrived, at home or at the lake.  But as it turned out, I was happy to be reminded that sometimes the front yard is exactly far enough to go.
 -KMB

HOUSES IN SUMMER, MONTPELIER, VERMONT

Sketch  and painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, graphite and watercolor on paper,  2015.

River Morning

           River Morning, July

             Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and graphite on paper, 2015.

Viridian of river, a current

strong enough to float blue slate

beneath the three mile bridge--

the bridge (sap green) that Hopper painted

in watercolor circa 1934.

Sun-splash on gravel bar

sandpiper flashing, silver

and buff in morning light

that song

a floating bell

the floating stone

is gone now

skimmed or sunken, like

space or time or memory.

Black locust, yellow birch, butternut

thicket to shade the curving

shoreline,

dark boughs holding, then releasing,

the veery’s sweet and spiraling

summer river song.

- Kevin Macneil Brown

Book Launch and Trailer for SUMMER AND THE STEEL BLUE SEA

The Kellogg- Hubbard Library in Montpelier, Vermont is one of my favorite places. As a writer and reader  I go there to explore, dig, discover, and enjoy. It's an honor to be presenting my latest book to my community and the world beyond, beginning right here in this wonderful library.



SUMMER AND THE STEEL BLUE SEA by Kevin Macneil Brown- Book trailer from Kevin Macneil Brown on Vimeo.

On Writing a Summer Book

I wanted to write a summer book. My favorite summer fiction unfolds with atmosphere, sense of place, mystery, adventure, and plenty of the great outdoors. And outdoors is where I like to read in the summer: beach, backyard chair in the sun, maybe with a cup of coffee on the porch if it’s a cool, rainy day. With all this in mind, last spring I decided that my eighth novel would be a summer book-- thus I would write the complete first draft over the course of one summer.

   

I had been pleasantly surprised by by the number of readers who suggested that I write a sequel to HIGHWAY IN THE BLOOD and bring back Buck Hawkins, the steel guitar- playing accidental sleuth who narrates that 1970s-set novel. I was out on a trail run in May of 2014 when a full idea for story-line, setting, and most of the characters arrived all at once-- just as the ferns were unfurling and the maples leafing out to full green. I got the first draft written between May and August, writing in the mornings, letting the story resonate and deepen further during warm- weather runs in the woods and along Vermont back roads. As with HIGHWAY, I had a great time opening up my own memories of Vermont and New Hampshire in the 1970s. And of course, with Buck being a  working musician-- as was I during that era-- there was another  aspect of memory that was especially fun to delve into.

  

SUMMER AND THE STEEL BLUE SEA took 5 drafts, written between May of 2014 and April of 2015, making it the first of my books to be completed within a year’s time. (This feels like some sort of milestone to me--though of what, I’m not exactly sure.)

 I hope readers will  pick up on the beach-read vibe I intended, and that--in any season--they will enjoy the unfolding mystery, adventure, and sense of time and place that went into the pages.

   -KMB

You can find a preview and link for purchase here:

  http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Steel-Kevin-Macneil-Brown/dp/1506148069/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431774522&sr=1-1&keywords=summer+and+the+steel+blue+sea

When It's Sunset on the Sugarbush (A new song for spring)

Spring has been especially late in arriving here in Vermont. While the ground has softened and the ice has left the lakes and ponds, snow showers keep on coming just about every day. The grass still has some greening to do, and the maple buds are still closed up and tight.
While waiting,  I've been immersing myself in old western swing, enjoying gigs with my cowboy band, Big Hat, No Cattle. One result of all this is a new song I've just finished writing and recording-- a new old-school western tune with a New England  maple sugaring theme.
Here's a relaxed living room video of the song, along with a link to the recorded version, which features some western-style steel guitar. I hope you enjoy!

All of which might be a good segue into what's coming up soon: SUMMER AND THE STEEL BLUE SEA, the second novel in my Buck Hawkins mystery series, will be out in early June. Buck is a steel guitar player, a Vermonter who plays western music.  Final edits on the book are in the works right now. Please stay tuned !

-KMB

Cantos 1-3 (watercolor paintings)

                                          Canto 1- Teresa of Avila
                                                 

                                            Canto 2- Julian of Norwich

Canto 3- Hildegard of Bingen

Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2015.