A Flower Blooms: My Journey in a Landscape of Art
By JoEl Vogt
3/5
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About this ebook
What is the good life? JoEl Vogt has been exploring that question ever since her first childhood discoveries of seemingly vast, untamed land stirred a longing for a wild sanctuary of her own. In this memoir, the painter, art therapist, and grandmother traces her lifelong relationship with nature and her passion for landscape painting. She has contemplated the good life, defined it for herself, and manifested her dream of deep immersion in wildlife and art. Together with her husband, local friends, and a few lively chickens, JoEl has created an artist’s haven and home deep in the Missouri Ozarks, where she paints the colorful land and sky.
“The land is like a canvas—not blank, but full of possibilities. New discoveries inspire new ways to connect with the land. The quiet, unhurried pace of living allows time to follow my whims and fantasies. Being here has changed me. The peace of quiet, rainy days, the stirred-up electricity in the air during storms, and the clarity and joy of sunny, cool days, have woven into the fiber of my psyche. In the country, I’m a much more enlivened version of my normal self.”
This book is filled with her beautiful paintings of this magical place, as well as insights for defining and pursuing your own dreams. JoEl’s journey shows that the path to fruition is worthwhile—even when it winds through heartbreak, loneliness, several unruly groundhogs, and an indomitable population of ticks.
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- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Alright. Not a lot of art information but more of an artists personal biography
Book preview
A Flower Blooms - JoEl Vogt
A Flower Blooms
My Journey in a Landscape of Art
JoEl Vogt
Copyright 2018 by JoEl Vogt
Green Mountain Farm Press
Lincoln, Missouri
Paintings JoEl Vogt
Photographs Copyright Ethan Hirsh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.
First Edition
Printed in the United States of America
Cover and book design by Claire Crevey
ebook ISBN 978-0-9997402-0-0
Smashwords Edition
Licensing Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal use and enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please visit Smashwords.com and purchase a copy for yourself. Thank you for respecting this author’s work.
eBook by e-book-design.com
Additional Praise
JoEl Vogt’s eye for color is what heaven should be. The memoir is a companionable guide to an artist’s life and development. This gem of a book will bring readers back to its pages to savor it all.
Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007–09, author of Words of a Prairie Alchemist
In A Flower Blooms, JoEl captures the true essence of nature as she invites readers into her senses. Her gentle awareness of every season, through every hour of the day, in the grand scheme of the wild forest as well as the minute details of each leaf, draws us in and lets us experience this peace as it flows through her narrative and rests, embodied, in her art. Thank you, JoEl, for this work of love.
Sami Aaron, author of Experience Your 54 Senses
The ‘good life’ JoEl found is on a small piece of heaven in the Missouri Ozarks. The valley she describes emits a peacefulness rarely found anymore. She found a country road that led her to a place where she belongs.
Dianne Peck, Ozark historian and writer
Dedication
To my family and all who treasure the natural world.
Contents
Prologue
One: How It All Began: Identifying and Pursuing a Dream
Two: Learning a New Way of Living; Developing Knowledge and New Skills
Three: Deepening My Connection to the Land by Learning More about Its History and People
Four: Exploring Closer to Home and Creating a Sense of Place
Five: Enhancing What We’ve Been Given, Pursuing What We Love
Six: How I Finally Made Time to Create More Art
Seven: My Art Evolves
Eight: Each Season’s Gifts
Nine: Living the Good Life
Ten: Conclusion: For Anyone Attempting to Follow Dreams, and for Dog Lovers as Well
Appendix
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
The year was 1951. I was eight years old and had just moved to a new town. For the first four years of my life, my father had been fighting in the Philippines in the Second World War. After he returned home to Tulsa, our small family moved to Houston, where he had found work.
Four years after that, we moved to Cleveland. This new environment was very different from hot, humid Texas. I was extremely curious about my new world and anxious to explore. While my parents were busy moving in, they were only too happy to send me outside to play. In those days, allowing children to wander around a neighborhood alone was quite normal.
I soon discovered a deeply wooded ravine with a small stream that meandered through moss-covered stones. This remote and mysterious scene seemed like the stuff of fairy tales.
COLOR STRUCK
Decades later, I found the Ozark landscape evocatively familiar, capturing my attention.
Acrylic, 40 x 44 in.
I imagined that Tarzan might live here. There were vines to swing from, if only I knew how. Surely fairies made homes here and danced in the stream’s sparkling spray. Perhaps they made beds from the moss.
Birds sang and followed along, keeping me company. Tiny flowers waited to be picked and admired. I was captivated and excited but also slightly anxious. In fairy tales, there are often dangerous elements mixed in with the good ones. But these worries didn’t stop me, and exploring became my passion.
On one excursion, I met a new friend. She had a big swing with long ropes tied to an old oak tree in her back yard. It flew out high above the ravine I had been exploring. Thrusting my legs into the sky, I soared above a cliff edge, nearly brushing treetops in the valley. The weightless delight was exhilarating.
Another day I discovered a vacant lot filled with ripe blackberries, which I immediately stuffed into my pockets. When I finally stopped to look up, I realized I was standing on a high point and could see across a misty valley. In the distance, an entire city was spread out before an enormous lake. This was an Alice in Wonderland moment.
I had discovered Cleveland and Lake Erie on my own. Suddenly my parents seemed so far away — and somehow unnecessary, if I could have such exciting adventures entirely by myself. At the same time, I wondered if I had gone too far.
I wandered around awhile, trying to retrace my way home. A neighbor was outside planting her vegetable garden and noticed that I looked a bit lost, so she called me over to see the garden. By then I knew home was nearby, so I stayed to see what she was doing. Seeing my interest, she offered me some lettuce seeds and invited me to visit as often as I wanted.
I planted the seeds beside our house as soon as I returned home. In a week or two, tiny plants appeared. This was a new experience: seeing life emerge from seeds placed in soil. After checking impatiently every day I received my reward: the miracle of food I could eat. My mother made a salad with the fresh greens and praised my endeavor.
I was instantly hooked on gardening and began collecting seeds anytime and anywhere. In autumn, maple seeds fluttered down to earth, and I secretly stashed them in several holes behind our garage. Today, more than 60 years later, there may still be several fully grown maple trees behind that garage — my legacy from our two years in Cleveland.
This period of my life formed a template for my future. After additional experiences of nature during my childhood, I promised myself I would someday have my own place in nature, somewhere I could visit regularly. Ideally it would be wild, untamed land. Today, I am an artist, and natural beauty regularly inspires my work.
Beginning in my twenties I spent many years searching for locations to sketch and paint outdoors. I longed for my own spot to visit in any weather, to experience all of nature’s wonders. After searching for decades, my wish came true.
I have had many roles including wife, mother, grandmother, artist, art therapist, and counselor, but my soul is connected to the earth. I am always delighted by a small stash of seeds, with its potential to grow into something large and valuable. This book is about my journey, my efforts to create the good life
on my small piece of heaven in the Missouri Ozarks.
I have tips to pass along about the good life,
that quest for the richness life offers. Hopefully my story will act as a catalyst for anyone who envisions a different life, in whatever positive direction it might lead. My greatest hope in writing this book is that my enthusiasm helps others clear away the cobwebs to better see what brings them energy and joy, and to pursue their dreams.
SPRING TREES
Springtime intoxicates with color
Oil, 18 x 24 in.
One
How It All Began
Identifying and Pursuing a Dream
After my two wonder-filled years in Cleveland, we returned to Tulsa. My parents were golfers and my experience of wildlife
in Tulsa was limited to the golf club where my family spent much