When Mighty Oaks Fall......

the whole forest suffers. I thought about this today while walking at Carpenter's Woods in Philadelphia. Last summer one of the huge old oaks fell, taking away one more of what seems to be the favorite tree of birds, certainly of migrating warblers. And of course it destroyed everything in its path.

Today I saw another huge one had fallen, again taking with it everything in its lengthy path. Young trees as well as old trees, perhaps even endangering a tree that probably was its own age. As I said when a huge old oak falls it does a lot of damage. The innocent suffer.

Now I have strong political opinions, leaning more left than right but not oblivious to the huge faults of both parties and the even larger faults of our new 'party.' The unquestioned accepted doctrines of both parties are tiresome. But I don't give my political opinions an outlet here.

I can't help it today though. The fallen oak reminds me of the financial crisis and all the people who are still suffering in many ways from it. There is plenty of blame to go around for it, affecting both parties as well as the public, and always centered on greed. But most of the supposed causes, Fannie Mae, stupid and/or greedy home buyers, totally inept rating agencies, are all red herrings. The vast brunt of the blame comes back to just one place: the financial industry and its unbridled greed. And that greed found an outlet due to deregulation.

But the Obama administration is like the workers from Fairmount Park who will come in and try to clean up the mess. For whatever reason the Democrats seem unwilling to take credit for what they've done but they have in fact been the foresters who came in and cleaned up. And the answer for the future is a return to much stronger financial regulation.

And yet many people seem to blame the Obama administration rather than the financial industry which caused the problem in the first place. Though Democrats were also guilty in the rash of deregulation that took place over the last 20 or so years and led to this disaster they were small peanuts compared to the Republicans. And people want to let the deregulators back in, or even worse the Tea Parties who don't even seem to understand why regulation is necessary! You'd think the present crisis might have shed some light on this but in fact it's done the opposite. There is more and more call for deregulation. Remember deregulation caused the present crisis. A return to it will just precipitate another one.

Imagine if you ran a forest like that. You'd not only have to worry about cleaning up after fallen trees by yourself since there'd be no government agency to do so. You'd also have to worry about just about anyone coming in and cutting all the oaks down all on their own as part of their own libertarian, constitutional right. Perhaps they'd prefer to put up a circus and charge admission. Who would stop them? The fact is society, particularly one as large as ours, can't function without regulation.

If you're at all awake you've seen examples of regulation gone wrong. It can happen to anyone and often does. But in response I'd say this: have you ever seen a misapplied regulation that's caused the damage the removal of regulation from the financial industry has caused? I didn't think so. Underneath it there is no 'mortgage' crisis. The crisis is due to financial deregulation. It found its outlet through mortgages. In five years it will find something else.

On a completely different tack: two different watercolor studies of Common Yellowthroats done over the last week. Well maybe not quite so different. I just wonder how much more endangered birds such as this will become if the Republicans gain control of the House or Senate. A crisis is always used as an excuse to plunder something. Adios Environment.

Some Backgound, Or Not

Birds live in an environment, not in the idealized frame of a painting or drawing. So I've never been that fond of bodiless bird 'portraits' or bird 'vignettes', where they're centered on the page with a vague background that disappears into blank paper as it nears the edge of the frame. Consciously or not I think most artists who use birds as subjects, or even animals in general, make a decision about a background.

Should I use one? Should it be so detailed as to almost conflict with the primary subject but nonetheless be true to how the bird actually exists? Should it be something that's generalized from something real? Should instead the pattern of marks, patterns, colors, values in the painting become as important as the subject itself? Many questions and many individual answers.

Recently I've been trying harder to include a background that is representative of the one that my bird subjects live in. That was true in the Blue-winged Teals of my last post. But today, after I'd finished painting this American Oystercatcher, I just couldn't see how a background would do anything but detract from this. Sometimes you do a simple work, that seems to get the essence of what you're trying to portray. Then any addition seems extraneous and distracting. That was the case here.