Farmer Mike

Acrylic washes on paper by Phillip Hoyle
after a Navajo petroglyph design

As a child I listened again and again to the story of the country mouse and the city mouse on the 78rpm recording Mom bought us kids. Neither city nor country mouse understood how the other could bear to live where it did. I dubbed myself a city mouse; actually I preferred the designation city slicker. Even though I’d had early childhood fantasies of farming with my grandpa, by high school I knew better about myself. I liked country scenes but not country life. I couldn’t imagine farming as a vocation; my early-formed citified sense of myself was too strong. I didn’t even want to live in the country, let alone farm the fields. I needed something else for myself, something visionary, urban, and arty.

In adult life I enjoyed living in ever-larger cities until we ended up in Mid-Missouri, a young family with two children living outside the city limits. The town wasn’t all that large (under forty thousand) and the country seemed lonely and deserted to me. Even though I was astounded with the views of ridges and hollows swathed in morning mists, sunrises and settings of amazing hues, and an abundance of multi-shaded green grasses and trees, I was nervous the whole time we lived out there. I locked doors and wondered who had just driven by on the road and why. My country-reared wife thought it was funny given that all the years we lived in cities I had rarely locked doors. I just felt uneasy in the country, like if I needed help, no one would hear my cries. And yard work seemed too much like farm work for the lawn was way too large.

As a parent I wanted the best for my kids; wanted them to have full, wonderful lives. I didn’t push them towards anything particular, but I did harbor distrust of some lifestyles and occupations. My daughter seemed to like living in Missouri. She has lived there most of her life and—like her dad—seems to prefer living right in town, close to work, close to schools, close to the library, close to her friends, and close to neighbors. My son Mike has lived most of his adult life between Colorado and Missouri. Well, listen, I’ll tell his story from my parental point-of-view.

The artist and musician emerged early in my son Mike’s life. He had a beautiful singing voice, loved to dance, and drew and painted with exceptional talent for a youngster. I was pleased he might become an artist, something my father had cautioned against. I could easily imagine a life in the arts as being a fine choice for my son.

But Mike liked outdoors activities as well as music and art. Unlike his sister and his parents, Mike became a country mouse. I wasn’t surprised. I’d known for years the little boy who adored his farmer grandpa Vance, who was even built and looked like him. I’d known the kid who backpacked, canoed, and explored caves. I’d known the teenager who in his old Chevy van went off to the farm to help his uncle plant corn and then returned for the harvest. I’d known the young man who later returned to the farm with his growing family to work for his uncle. I’d known the young man who moved to a commune where he raised organic carrots to sell in the commune store. Of course, he did lots more there: taught art in the commune school, fixed things around the place’s several houses, but he also repaired fences, helped with livestock, planted, weeded, and harvested. You know, farm stuff. Still, I’d persisted in thinking of Mike as a husband and dad, an artist and musician, and of course, my son.

After a year at the commune the family returned to Missouri where they lived in the country adjacent to a national forest. There they raised chickens and goats and a garden. Michael found a job at a native plants nursery some thirty miles away, down near Brazito. There he kept machines running, helped harvest prairies, sorted seed, assisted customers, and eventually planted and transplanted the great variety of flora, and coordinated the work of the other employees. His family moved into town to cut down on the commute. Then, about four years ago, the firm’s beautifully-illustrated, full-color catalog listed my son as the nursery’s Farm Manager. Heather, his wife, told me Mike was terribly embarrassed. She was proud of him and entertained by his modesty. I still enjoyed his music making and his painting, still thought of him in those terms. 

Last fall Mike told me that the past couple of years he’d been taking trailer loads of native plants and seed to a farmers market in St. Louis. Then he and his family started searching for a country house to buy. With the generous help of a family friend, they bought one on twenty acres—a steal of a deal—and prepared to move back to the country.

I planned a trip to celebrate the graduation ceremony of two grandsons. During the last phone call before I left on my trip, Mike told me how busy he was and how elated he felt living again in the country. I looked forward to seeing their farmhouse, barn, orchard, and pasture.

“Will you get goats?” I asked.

Michael said, “Probably not.”

I saw the beautiful old house when I went there for the graduation party. Two evenings later I returned and Mike gave me the grand tour. Walking past the garden, he realized no one had gathered the asparagus that morning. After we took a nice basketful back to the kitchen, we put the chickens and ducks into the hen house. In the corral I met the new cow and her calf. By then it was pretty dark; we returned to the house.

The next morning we went back outdoors and walked the pastures. Mike had rented part of his land to a neighbor for a bean field. Mike wanted it farmed for a couple of years to get rid of all the European grasses. His plan is then to seed it in native plants to return it to its old state. He can make more money by harvesting it as native prairie. In fact, he could make a lot more money off it and graze the cow there as well. When we stopped by the corral, Mike showed me his new tractor pointing out its advantages and disadvantages. He spoke of it like my Denver friends talk about their new cars—with pride and great satisfaction although, also like them, saying he paid more than he’d intended.

When we walked through the orchard of pears and apples, peaches and plums, something in his information and in his enthusiasm brought into focus what I’d been hearing for years. Mike was becoming a farmer—a real one who loved to plant and harvest, to feed himself and others with the fruit of his labor, to become the husbandman of his own Garden of Eden, and to drive his tractor. He had his own acreage, his own place, an image that had also surfaced at times over the years. This man, who as a child had wanted his parents buried so he would have a place to visit them, now had the place, a farm where he could feel secure on the face of the huge and abundant earth and eventually spread his parents’ ashes. The farmer in him was now connected to the soil.

Heather told me how they had felt so wrought up at the realization they were becoming landowners, something they had never really dreamed. Their conceptual solace came in the notion that they were now caretakers of a bit of the earth put in trust to them. And they are both caretakers: she of the animals, he of the land and plants. With this in mind, they’ve become farmers as well as musicians, dancers, painters, and writers. Now I am a farmer’s dad.

I talked again with Mike on the phone the other day. He told me more about the farm, about pears, nectarines, plums, apples, and peaches. He mentioned several goats and bees too. The garden is producing. They haven’t been able to sell much yet, but thankfully, there is no waste. With five people and all the animals, everything gets eaten. Mike now farms four days at the nursery and three days at home. Heather cares for the cow that produces milk for the table and for making butter and cheese. The orchard is ready to burst even though it is just a fraction of what it had been years ago. The bees are making honey. The hens and ducks are about ready to start laying eggs. And to my deep joy and his, farmer Mike, my son, continues to paint and to play his guitar, sometimes even to his goats.

Denver, 2011

His Own Vocation: A Short Story by Phillip Hoyle

Judaculla Dream
Mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

The grandfather sits alone in his apartment, smoking a cigarette, enjoying a CD of anthems by the Baroque composer Henry Purcell. He is intrigued by the unusual qualities of the English voices: the exceptionally fast vibrato of the soprano, the overwhelming resonance of the bass baritone. He wishes he owned a stereo with larger speakers so he could hear more sonorities of the orchestra and organ. Still, he is contented, drawn into the music and the memories it evokes.

As a boy, he lived for music. He conducted the London Symphony Orchestra standing before the front room mirror. He heard choirs singing in four part harmony when he closed his eyes at night. He listened over and over to his favorite recordings of Harry Belafonte, Barbara Streisand, Mahalia Jackson, and the Wings Over Jordan Choir. He learned art songs from his voice teacher plus jazz and pop standards from his father. When the school choir sang Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and Faurè’s “Requiem,” music seemed the most important thing in his world.

His dad offered him two words of vocational advice. First, “Whatever you do, be sure you really enjoy it.” Second, “Don’t be a musician.”

The grandfather realizes his dad feared the alcohol and drugs that seemed indispensable to so many performers. He wanted to save his child from temptations that might lead to a life of dissipation. Although his advice was meant to help, it missed the reality of his son’s dreams.

When the CD ends, the grandfather loads a collection of songs by Dinah Washington. Although her life spiraled out of control like the experience his father feared, she thrilled her audiences and left a tremendous legacy of recordings. The grandfather loves the sassiness and tonal accuracy of her voice. He chuckles at the words of the old blues numbers, their subtle and blatant allusions to sex.

In his childhood he enjoyed sex with boys his age. Mostly they played kickball, war, and tag. When they were older they camped, hiked, and hunted. Always they played sex games. Eventually even that changed. In junior high school, he studied art, music, and languages while his best buddies followed their interests in sports, wood shop, and girls. Oh, he liked girls, always had a girlfriend with whom he attended school functions. He followed the rules about how many dates were necessary before you hold hands, dance close, or kiss at the end of an evening. But he continued to miss having sex with guys.

When he was fifteen, his family moved to another town. A member of the church youth group, a real jock, came onto him. Their nine months of vigorously satisfying sex seemed an extension of childhood into adolescence. Their affair ended, though, when the friend moved away at the end of the school year.

That summer, his dad talked with him and his sister about another church youth who was so effeminate the dad was afraid he would be taken to be homosexual when he went to college in the fall. He went on to say, “Neither of you will have that problem.”

The grandfather recalls that at the time he had thought his father imperceptive since he had just spent the school year having sex with a guy. Now he realized that, like the vocational advice, the words may have been wisdom arising from the father’s view of what constituted a successful life, or his dad may have been expressing a deeply hidden dread about his own son cloaked in a concern for another. Whatever the truth of the interaction, the son knew he was different and realized that the difference caused his father anxiety.

Dinah Washington sings her blues in a voice that seems almost too full of joy. Her playfulness doesn’t match the grandfather’s mood. He wants a different feeling, so scanning the shelf, selects an album by Sting. He loads the CD, taps another cigarette from the pack on his lamp table, and lighting it, draws in the rich smoke. He relaxes in the chair, cushioned by the music. He likes the singer’s rough yet rich voice, the range of expression, the variety of lyrics. When Sting mentions losing his belief in the holy church, the grandfather’s thoughts again turn to the past.

The dad’s love for the church led him to hope his son would become a preacher. Responding out of a desire to please his father, the son attended a Bible College. He assumed he would become a minister but by the end of his junior year realized he didn’t want to tell other people what to think or how to live their lives. He changed his major to music. Happy to support the work of others who did enjoy preaching, he entered church work as a choir director and religious educator. Eventually the son was ordained, but he continued associate ministry, pursuing his preferred emphases in music and education.

Once the father attended a Bible study the son was leading. Afterwards, he said, “You’re a good teacher even if I agree more with your conservative students than with you.”

Over many years the son pieced together an interpretation of his father’s support. For instance, the father seemed gratified that his son had married and reared children. He was happy that he pursued his music within the church. He seemed pleased his son held responsible positions in large congregations. The son could hear his father saying these things even if without great enthusiasm and realized this pastiche would have to satisfy his need for his dad’s approval.

The grandfather wonders what the dad would have made of his son’s leaving both career and marriage. What words of advice would the father have proffered had he lived long enough to see his son living in a major city far from his family, working as a massage therapist, painting pictures, and writing about his homosexuality from a religious perspective?

The song changes, inviting the grandfather to wonder what he may have said to his own son that hit or missed the truth of his life. The old man lifts the phone and dials as he puffs away on his cigarette. He listens to the ringing.

“Hello, Able?” he greets his son. “How are you doing? ... How’s your wife? ... Your kids? ... Your work? ...” The two men, old and young, talk candidly. Their conversation proceeds with warmth, laughter, and occasionally surprise. The grandfather asks, “And how is your artwork going?” He hears of new paintings, developing ideas, and a proposed art show. Satisfied, the grandfather hangs up. He leans back into his feelings as Sting observes, “How fragile we are.”

Denver, 2006

Meet the Artist: an artist statement by Phillip Hoyle

[I am including this statement for your information. It was written for publicity at the Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown, Colorado, a co-op gallery I have recently joined and a place where many of my petroglyph paintings are on display. I am adding to it a photo taken in Evergreen, Colorado, just a few miles away. The gallery is related to an arts organization located in Evergreen. Check out the website of CMAG where you can learn more there about the gallery and the larger organization.] 


Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver where he works as an artist and writer. His formal education emphasized music and religion, and his work has included directing choirs, stage productions and children’s arts events. He began making collages over thirty years ago. He still does collage and for several years has been working with acrylic paints on paper.

In the mid 1970s the artist studied Ute petroglyphs in the Gunnison River drainage of western Colorado. The designs in his “Ute Petroglyph Series” are from those sites. Many are reproduced the same size as the originals using acrylic washes and a resist medium. In the past ten years he has incorporated several other petroglyph traditions into his paintings.

Phillip studied painting with several artists through the Oklahoma Art Workshops, Tulsa, OK, and has shown his works in art shows in Tulsa, Denver, Colorado Springs, Aurora, and now Georgetown.

[I am standing next to a very life-like sculpture in Evergreen fantasizing that I'm having tea with some Cardinal. He looks so kind! The sculpture is titled Morning Spirits. It stands in front of Java Groove and was featured in Sculpture Walk 2004. The artist works in Niagara Falls, New York.]






[Here is another piece explaining the petroglyphs in a little more detail.] 

Forty years ago I saw a group of Ute petroglyphs in western Colorado, designs carved on boulders, depicting animals, plants, and abstract designs. I was fascinated and began studying them, drawing them, and reading about petroglyphs in other places. I began doing artwork when I wanted to hang a crayon rubbing I had made of one of the designs, for without the Colorado sun overhead or a sandstone cliff background, it looked awful. So I took up collage to present that petroglyph and many more. About ten years ago I finally figured out how to paint these designs and am still doing so using acrylic washes and sometimes mixed media on watercolor paper.

Denver 2014

[For an even more complete statement, refer to my post on October 28, 2013 titled "Painting Petroglyphs."]

Searching Old Places

Central Kansas years and years ago helped support a buffalo
 population. They were long gone when my great
grandparents homesteaded there. Central Kansas petroglyph
of a buffalo. Arcylic washes. Phillip Hoyle

I drove to the farm years later, after my grandparents had died, so I could savor the place as an adult. I hadn’t been out there for nearly twenty years and wondered, among other things, why I was moved to go there now and what I might find lying around that could serve as mementos for my sisters and me. I was not disappointed with my discoveries.

The drive from Junction City seemed to move me back to earlier days. Out toward the river bridge I glimpsed the mill where Grandpa and Grandma had sold eggs, milk, and cream. As I passed the historic St. Paul’s log cabin church in a roadside park off Interstate 70, I recalled scenes of Kansas pioneer days I had learned from Mother’s stories and from books that had so enriched my childhood imagination. The rustic, adz-formed logs suggested lives of self-sufficiency supplemented by the interdependence of neighborliness, values that still support farm life in parts of America. The engine pulled hard as the car ascended the steep grade past the rock quarry. I glanced at the gated entryway and remembered going there for target practice with my 22 caliber, single shot rifle, a gift from my oldest sister’s fiancé. As I drove on I recalled a ride two friends and I caught on a road grader one summer day when we were walking the ten miles from the farm back to town. Our ride ended on this hillside when we spotted the car that was coming to meet us.

Beyond the quarry entrance, the road leveled off in an upland pasture and continued a mile or so. I felt a thrill when I came to the edge of the hill above Clark’s Creek that afforded a sight I had always loved: the Flint Hills, their grass-covered tops and wooded bottom lands, their peculiarly flat summits and steep slopes, the results of hard cap rock. I slowed my pace to take in the lush green of trees, grass, and planted fields. Steering down the serpentine road reminded me of Sunday afternoon trips to the farm, riding in Dad’s '54 Ford, the backseat crowded by four kids who like pioneers claimed and defended their territories.

At the bottom of the hill, I turned south up the creek, driving past the newer St. Paul’s Lutheran Church (the log cabin’s replacement) its walls and bell tower built of native limestone and a graveyard out back with the memorial markers of some of my own relatives. I wondered if the peonies were still growing where my grandmother planted them but chose not to stop to investigate, I wanted to get to the farm.
I hoped I’d recognize the turn-off that would keep me running parallel to the creek and felt relief when I did. I turned onto the gravel road trying to stay ahead of the white dust kicked up by my tires. Luckily a slight breeze tended to carry it to the side of the road, but not everywhere. When sharp turns slowed my progress, the limestone powder engulfed me. With closed mouth and shallow breath, I uttered a prayer of thanks for city life and paved streets.

The road took me past Wetzel School with its one room where my mother had attended eight elementary years and, turning two more corners, I saw the Wetzel family cemetery. I was getting close to the farm now. Seeing the terraces in the fields on the creek-side of the road stirred a feeling of satisfaction and a sense of rightness about my choice to drive out to the place. Then, as I rounded a bend in the road, I saw the driveway and turned up the lane.

There it stood—the farm, but it seemed much smaller than I recalled. Most of the buildings remained: house, cellar, smokehouse, well, granary, and tractor barn. The garage barely stood, seemingly propped up by an open door. Gone were the stock barn with its hayloft, the corral with its loading chute, the chicken house with its pungent odor, the brooder house where we kids were amazed at the fast growth of chicks, and the lean-to south of the house where Grandpa fed calves. A new fence surrounded the farmyard, and sumac had invaded the fenced-in area around the house. A large hole gaped in the west wall of the kitchen through which, I surmised, the old wood cook stove had been removed. Mindful of snakes, rats, and rusty nails, I carefully entered the ruin.

I didn’t find much as I walked along the strongest looking boards, just an old pie crust crimper on the cracked linoleum floor. But seeing the painted walls of the kitchen reminded me of sitting at breakfast listening to the farm market report on the plastic radio with the round dial. Seeing peeling wallpaper in the dining room reminded me of eating dinner around the big oak table with Grandma’s crocheted tablecloth, Fostoria glassware, and on holidays, pickled herring. I glanced through the doorways to remind myself of the sizes of the rooms, five in all. Of course, the furniture was long gone, some of it in my apartment and my sister’s homes, stoves in neighboring houses along the creek, pictures hanging on family walls, and the old clock still keeping time but now in Kansas City. I quietly left the house wondering just how much longer it would stand out here all alone.

As I exited through the hole in the wall, I faced Grandma’s rock garden. It was overgrown, but the rocks still were in place along with some plants she had tended. I decided to take a few items with me: an Indian grindstone I had long admired, a strangely shaped rock with a hole in it I found fascinating, and some iris bulbs. I wanted the stone bench as well but realized I wouldn’t be able to lift it by myself—hoisting the grindstone had been challenge enough. I imagined my granddad bringing rocks to Grandma’s garden: the grindstones he had found near the creek, quarried stones for the bench, and more. I had never really thought of him as an individual in relationship with Grandma. He must have loved her to bring such gifts both large and small.

I glanced at the cellar but decided not to go into that pit. It was just too creepy, and I had seen a snake there when I was a little boy. Walking away, I stopped at the smokehouse door, gingerly opened it, and glanced inside. I remembered seeing Grandma’s canning paraphernalia and the old hand-cranked milk separator in there, but they were gone, the room now standing empty. I wandered across the lane towards the ravine. The fence around Grandma’s garden had been removed, the rows that had produced beets, beans, corn, carrots, turnips, potatoes, and rhubarb eroded flat. When I opened the wooden top of the nearby well, I surprised and was surprised by several black snakes absorbing the sun’s heat through the old boards, safe from preying hawks. In the confusion and hurry, one snake fell into the water. I hoped it would be able to climb up the well’s rugged stones so the water would remain potable. I wondered if anyone still drank from the well.

I opened the gate to the barnyard. Cows had been grazing in this area that used to be open when the house was occupied. I envisioned Grandpa’s old wagons, plows, the tractor, the privy, and other now-missing items. The stock barn had five doors on the ground level—three on the east, two on the west; the hayloft had its main opening on the east, a smaller one on the north and, I believe small windows high on both south and north ends. I thought the barn huge when I was a kid but looking at the foundation now, realized it barely had room for Grandpa’s three cows and two horses along with their gear, feed, and mangers.

I remember a muscular man who helped Grandpa once when he was storing hay or straw. The guy stood on the hayrack, lifted the bales, and easily threw them above his head into the loft through the east door. Grandpa then used a hay hook to pick up each bale, moving it to the part of the loft where he was stacking the load. I had played among those bales by climbing boards nailed to the wall and carefully stepping from the crude ladder to the loft floor. I recalled the odor of the bales and my discovery that straw didn’t itch as much as hay.

Turning away from the memories, I tramped across the old farmyard to the garage where Grandpa parked his red and black 54 Chevy sedan out of the weather. I gingerly entered the listing structure afraid it might fall over on me but still curious what might be inside. Not much was there. I saw lumber that was too new to have been my grandpa’s, a few boards and a lathe-formed table leg. And then as I was exiting I saw it—the item I had come for even though I didn’t know it existed. I saw the star, a hand-cut tin star nailed to the outside of the garage door. Grandpa had made a decoration to embellish his garage. I wanted to take that star but had no tool to remove the weathered nail. I touched the cutout recalling cartoon characters Grandpa sometimes drew on pieces of board, his utility with a knife and other tools, his eye for unusual shapes, his clean fields, his singing, his harmonica playing, and his storytelling. My grandpa was joyful and artful. I wanted to emulate him. He was the artist in my background—not the only one in the family, but the only man I knew who did artwork when I was a child, the one I needed to remember. I realized my images of Grandpa had never matured; I knew him only when I was a young child. My own maturing seemed to demand I develop a mature view of him.

When I went back to the farm, I was in my forties trying to sort through my life themes in order to produce stability enough to face mid-life challenges. The trip occurred about a year after my work partner died. Dad was retired, ailing. My children were in the upper grades. Church work was becoming more difficult and less rewarding for me. I had fallen in love with my best friend. My whole world was changing. In this trip I may have been trying to counsel myself in light of a lack of insightful advice from elsewhere.

The trip to the farm was my pilgrimage into a past of my own, woven out of images that I had never before joined.
Those images thrilled me with their moments of beauty and their potent stirring of memories. Sometimes they choked me like the dirt from the gravel road as their meanings wrapped around me. Embracing them, I celebrated past, present, and future.

Now I look back from a changing perspective that surely relates to being over sixty. Perhaps now I’m seeking a way to grow old by somehow accommodating the biblical image of being caught up into the arms of my ancestors, seeking a security founded in the past and one that can allay uncertainties.

The star I discovered on that trip still shines although I never did recover it. In fact, I now own only one piece of furniture from my grandparents’ home and a few old photographs. Sometimes we cannot carry with us all the furnishings of the past, but my life still remains full of memories of the people who lived back then and whose reality continues to grow and transform in my mind and heart. May I continue on the path lighted by that artist’s star, doing my creative work, just like Grandpa.

I sometimes visualize Kansa Indians riding horses out at my
grandparents' farm years before any German and Swedish
settlers arrived. Acrylic washes painting of a central Kansas
petroglyph. Phillip Hoyle

Going Green

My hazel eyes exhibit a pronounced red-green color weakness, the one I read about in biology, the one I’ve never been tested for. I realized more about the weakness when I said something about a green car that I was told was bright red. I lived in a world of my own perception, a world not much different than anyone else’s I knew. But the non-issue eventually became more unsettling. I began to wonder if I’d start becoming confused about red and green traffic lights. I never have.

In graduate school, a musicology professor told me both his parents were professional artists. He assumed he’d follow suit but was not allowed to when he started painting skies green. Since his parents couldn’t imagine an artistic career without absolute color accuracy, he was sent away from the studio to the music practice room.

My green-red crisis increased when I began applying myself to art. It wasn’t much of a problem in my first collages that featured only basic colors, but when I changed to collages made with magazine pieces, I faced a dilemma. Would I ever be able to distinguish the multitude of green shades? Would I make a fool of myself and make skies green? I could imagine it. To me many greenish shades appear gray. I did my artwork but shied away from greens. On occasion their employment seemed unavoidable, so I would lay out the pieces I wanted to put together and leave them arranged on a table. Day after day I’d stop by to glance at them in order to see if they still went together. Finally I would glue them to the ground but always with a sense of insecurity.

I gave one-such collage to an artist friend of mine. I knew he’d like the subject and the way I worked it, but I was unsure he’d like the greens I put together. I must have said something about hoping my color blindness didn’t ruin the piece. He studied it and announced, “The artist who put these greens together isn’t color blind.” I wondered if he was right, if I could really become an artist.

I liked the affirmation and realized, given time, I could determine what greens go together. I was determined to do the work no matter that my fifth-grade teacher made fun of my drawing and no matter what red-green challenges my color blindness might create. People with all kinds of disabilities still live lives full of skills and activities they are naturally ill prepared for. I could overcome my weaknesses.

I recall one autumn afternoon when Myrna and I set out on a drive from Jefferson City, MO to Columbia. We crossed the river bridge and wended our way through the river bottom. As we crossed Clear Creek, Myrna said with wonder, “Look at that tree.”

I looked and saw a hillside of green. “Yes, it’s pretty,” I replied, “But what tree did you want me to see?”

“The brilliant red tree; the only one there.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see it.” As I drove on up the hill towards our destination I realized I probably would have been able to see it had I stopped the car and stared at the hillside. I further realized I had color blindness, a kind of blindness that is common in boys and men. I also wondered how much this was due to always being contented just to distinguish reds, blues, and yellows, greens, oranges, and purples, whites, blacks, and browns. I did know turquoise as well, but I had none of the fancy terms for various shades and hues, not like my mom and sisters. I had never learned to distinguish them, or perhaps I couldn’t see them at all. I was easily stumped by apricot, peach, tangerine, and shrimp; plum, purple, grape, and violet; crimson, carmine, vermillion, and candy apple. Perhaps I needed language development as well as color sensitivity

Now—many collages and paintings later and eight years of working jigsaw puzzles with Ruth who works by color—I have improved immensely in my ability to distinguish colors. I still perversely mix strange greens with the knowledge that such shades mingle in nature, so why not on my canvas. I haven’t painted a green sky although I have occasionally seen skies with a greenish cast since I grew up in Kansas where tornadoes turn the sky, clouds, and landscape strange hues. I do my work and delight in unusual colors combinations. And I am joining a popular movement by going green with increasing usage. Yes, I recycle; I even make art with recycled scraps and the like. I am careful not to waste. And I paint with green pigments like they might go out of style before I master their shades, tints, and mixes. I still don’t really like to eat greens, at least not collard and mustard greens, but who knows; perhaps I will grow to like, distinguish, and appreciate them too.

Denver, 2011

Mixed media on watercolor paper. Phillip Hoyle

Painting Petroglyphs

On the Trail, mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

    “I am painting petroglyphs,” I write.

     My niggling internal editor suggests, “Isn’t that painting pictographs? One chips away to make petroglyphs.”

     “No,” I insist. “I’m painting petroglyphs.” I work wildly, spraying a water mist on paper, splashing paints of various shades of brown onto the wetness, letting the colors run.

                                                                                         

     Occasionally I look up at the petroglyph rubbings that hang on the walls of my studio. I recall standing against the escarpment as I rubbed them, my skin getting burned in the western Colorado sun. The designs seemed so beautiful to me, carved on the sandstone walls and boulders out there under the blue sky, but so ugly when I wanted to hang them on the walls of my apartment. Crayon rubbings on yellowing newsprint. Pathetic looking. I had to do something artistic with these crude rubbings so I could continue to enjoy their beauty and celebrate the feelings they stimulated within me. Collage was my answer. I bought mat boards and started cutting, arranging, gluing. I replicated depth, depicting the rough texture and cracks in the rocks. I was full of ideas and enjoyed creating design, color, and contrast. I started becoming an artist so I could remember.

     While my paper collage contrasted greatly with the hard medium of the original creators’ work, making them did connect me with those ancient artists. They chipped away at the rocks to create an environment of ideas, mnemonics, and myths. I cut and pasted together a world of imagination that carried me back into childhood visits to my grandparents’ farm and forward into a life grounded in such memories.

     The parade of deer, moose, bears, horses, foot and handprints, lines, arrows, stars, medicine wheels, and unnamable creatures elicited an ancient world in my imagination. They conjured a life of wickiups and teepees, of cooking fires and ceremonial smoke. The wind that blew down the Shavano Valley seemed to carry the sounds of chanting, hoof falls, snorting animals, and playing children.

I found in these rock carvings a way to imagine

a life of the past;

I found in them a topic for research;

I found a subject for reflection,

An experience of beauty.

     Crude. That’s what W. C. McKern called these Ute petroglyphs. From his point of view as an ethnologist doing a study for the Smithsonian Institute in the early 1920’s, they were crude chippings of an inferior culture. His evaluation reflected an assumption of trappers, who contrasted their impression of Ute life with that of the Plains Indian tribes much more influenced by white trade goods and ideas. His judgment also reflected philosophical and scientific biases that, in my opinion, missed what these petroglyphs were in themselves and what they represented to the people who made them. The great problem with these markings lies in the fact that it is impossible to know what they represented. Even Native American scholars admit they don’t know. The passing of centuries created an impassable gap, leaving us ignorant, unable to guess with any kind of certainty at the meanings of these scratches. Their permanence laughs at the changes of the societies that made them and of those that still gaze upon them.

     There they remain on isolated canyon walls, colored only by desert paint in blacks and browns. I imagine them peopled, complemented by the colors of feathers and beadwork, by the odors of cooking meat and smoking tobacco, by the sounds of milling horse herds and the melody of a flute. As I rub them, I hear a truck pass on the road below, a hawk call in the sky above, a grasshopper’s wings crackle in the dry desert atmosphere. As I cut the images for my collages, I hear the furnace in the apartment click on and the rush of wind pushing through the vent. As I paint them on paper, I hear footfalls cross the floor above and the motor circulate water in the hot tub.

     I lift the edge of the paper to make the paint run and wonder what the Ute was thinking as he pecked away at the rock. What was his artistic concern? How long did he look for the harder rock to use as a tool? Perhaps he was trying to remind himself of the spirit of the animal he killed to feed his family, his chipping a prayer of gratitude. Maybe he was simply making marks to distance himself from the activity of the camp like a student doodling during a lecture.

     What am I doing? I am thinking about what colors to select to best leave the impression of sandstone. Certainly I am distancing myself from the others with whom I live, but I think I am doing more. I am creating a reminder of the valley, of its plenitude of deer, elk, plants, beaver, gushing springs, rugged rocks, and endless blue sky. I am recalling the past of my imagination to keep alive the leisure of childhood, its unfettered freedom, its sense of unlimited possibility. I am celebrating my connection with the past, with a human spirit that reaches far beyond my family, society, and culture. I made collages and now I paint to show my children and grandchildren life is more than making a living. It is also, and necessarily, an expression of spirit, of beauty, of art.

     I paint my petroglyphs, or more precisely my petroglyph designs, in a work that seems to me as ancient as it is contemporary.

Denver 2006

Paintings by P. Hoyle On the Trail (above) and The Hunt; photo of me in my studio.

The Hunt

Table Talk: Great Performance

     Yesterday, at the spa, I massaged a man named John. I showed him to the room where we would be working and asked whether he had any special needs. “Neck and shoulders,” he replied. Since one’s work often impacts particular muscles, I asked what he did. “I’m in town for a performance tonight.” I wasn’t sure whether he was an actor, a singer, a guitarist, or in charge of lights or sound. From something he said, though, I thought he might be connected with a musical performance.

     The massage went well. I established a comfortable rhythm as I worked his body thoroughly, massaging each muscle group. With loving palpations, using long, gentle strokes, I responded to the changes in his body. I paid close attention, working deeper where the tissue was tight and lighter where it was already supple. John began to relax. We talked very little, but he seemed pleased with the massage. Afterwards, when John came out into the hall, I handed him a glass of water and asked how he was doing. He smiled, said he was fine, and told me, “That was a great performance.”

     His assessment matches one of my favorite ideas about my employment, for I consider massage therapy to be a performing art, one with similarities to music, dance, and drama. Like other arts, massage communicates a message, develops a style, and involves the therapist in various roles. I find mastering massage techniques similar to learning piano scales and arpeggios. When I work around my client on the table, I feel like I am dancing. I love the free, improvisational movement of my whole body when coaxing muscles to relax. It reminds me how I used to dance for my choirs to get them into the mood of the anthem we were learning. Now the accompanying massage music invites me into a rhythm of beats and phrases. A dancer’s half turn on the balls of my feet changes the direction of my stroke, and I glide.

     In my artistry as a massage therapist, I take chances as I create or elicit feelings in my audience of one. I want to move my clients into a relaxed state, a reduction of stress, a sense of pleasure, and an experience of letting go. I hear their sighs and moans like applause and am spurred on to create within them a sense of well being. I play a tune on the body, or I sculpt a new relationship of muscle and bone. I introduce my themes, develop them as I engage the muscles, and invite the deepest relaxation with a reprise, a recapitulation at the end that will continue to assert itself like a tune one remembers when leaving a concert. I want the client to come to a full cadence, to a feeling of rest and completion as I lift my hands from their body when the performance has concluded.

     I am always excited by the improvisational challenges related to different environments and different types of massage. I like the street performance feel of chair massage in a coffee shop, lunch room, or exhibition hall. I even enjoy constantly changing rooms at the spa and meeting its one-hour time limit. By contrast, work in my own studio gives me more control. I find myself responding to my selection of music and to the aromas of various oils. I like being free to extend the massage when it seems appropriate. Massage offers me no script but, rather, a recipe I can follow or alter. While I must meet particular requirements to designate a massage as Swedish, deep tissue, integrative, Thai, or neuromuscular therapy, the style in which I deliver them is my own. Mostly, I love “jazzing” an old massage theme, improvising in response to sights, sounds, smells, and feelings in my sessions with my clients.

     From time to time I receive compliments: “Nice massage,” or “That was the best massage I’ve ever had,” or “I’ve never had a massage like this before.” While I appreciate these comments, I liked most what John said: “That was a great performance.” My preference for his compliment doesn’t surprise me since I see life as art. For me, God is the great artist; my work is a reflection of the Creative One. And always I want to give a great performance, “for the glory of God,” as the old theologians said it, and for the benefit of my clients. So be it.

Chorus Line Bears by Phillip Hoyle.
Enjoy their enthusiasm. Great Performance!

Table Talk: Miracle

Sunflowers mixed media with collage by Phillip Hoyle

     My primary massage teacher, Mark Manton, told our class we’d be lucky if we didn’t work miracles. I felt relieved, as if some expectation was lifted from me. I went into massage because I enjoyed the work and thought it to be a good way to make a living so I could afford to do my artwork. But in massage I had encountered assumptions about healing and miracles that paralleled those of some Christians. As a minister, I never wanted to be perceived as some kind of miracle worker. I understood events that some people considered miraculous simply to be experiences beyond our common understanding. Still, some people wanted their minister to perform miracles, and now I find myself dealing with the same issue in massage. Some clients want and even expect miracles. 

     Mark reasoned that people get the best results from massage therapy if they contribute to their healing by changing habits of posture, hydration, and more. But sometimes a therapist releases a trigger point, and a person who has endured pain for years walks away from the session pain-free. When that happens, all their relatives and friends may line up at the massage therapist’s door looking for the same instant healing. Always a teacher, Mark wanted his clients to learn responsibility for their own health, not dependence on him for miracle cures.

     Obviously, miraculous-seeming releases from pain do take place. They indicate something important about the wonders of the human body to heal and of the potential for human relationships to encourage that healing. That’s enough of an explanation for me. I don’t want to be responsible to perform or believe in miracles in massage. Still, I do my massage work in the context of Christian images and stories, a context full of miracles.

     Although I am not very interested in the miraculous as such, I do find a strong correlation between the traditional actions of Christian healers and the modern-day practice of massage therapists. Reading the Bible, the lives of saints, or church history, I pay close attention when a healer takes an ill person into his arms or uses oils to anoint. Such images spark my imagination. I like to picture the scene at the temple gate of the lame man, newly-healed by Jesus’ apostles, running and leaping and praising God. I take to heart the words of the blind man who, when questioned, said of Jesus’ miracle, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” This ancient story from John’s gospel intrigues me. And I am moved by the sight of a modern minister solemnly anointing a dying person as she refers to the ultimate healing of being gathered into the arms of the divine. The apostles had spoken powerful words; the lame walked. Jesus made a mud plaster and placed it in the man’s eyes; the blind could see. The minister touched the body of the terminally ill person; the patient found healing relief.

     Most of these images and traditions find a similar kind of expression in current massage practice. Massage creates a particular relationship between therapist and client, not unlike that of religious leader and follower. One approaches a massage with trusting faith that the practitioner will be prepared and the work will be effective. Entering a massage room may feel somewhat like entering a church for a religious ritual. The skilled touch takes a variety of forms, often anointing the skin with oil, an act akin to the sacrament of unction. The therapist’s words may appeal positively to a person’s faith and may further instruct the client in self-treatment and care. For me, the correlation is strong, at least in its movement and its faith content. And besides, I now want to imagine myself as somehow continuing a healing ministry in the tradition of Jesus. The difficulty comes in the recognition that, in addition to being a teacher, Jesus was known as a miracle worker.

     While I incorporate these healing images into my work, I still have no expectation to perform miracles. Rather, I tend to think of my massage as an art, and list it alongside my writing and painting. I sometimes worry about designating massage as artifice. Is art adequate to healing? Can assuming a dramatic role be authentic? Will it heal? The ancient Greeks thought so. Surely some of their traditions have survived in Eastern Orthodox churches although many practices have been lost. Perhaps the older way of mixing drama, music, incense, and ointments in relationship with healing holds the key to my own growing understanding of my healer self.

Rio Grande mixed media with collage
by Phillip Hoyle

     I, an artist, may teach, but I hope never to work a miracle. I will lay my hands on person after person in order to touch their pain and release their muscles. I hope at least some clients will realize the beauty of their own lives, and I suppose that might be considered a miracle.




Life symbols in my mixed media paintings speak of natural processes that sustain life. I have always been amazed to find sunflowers adorning the driest landscapes and have long been amazed at the long, life-sustaining course of the Rio Grande River from southern Colorado, through the center of New Mexico, along the southwestern border of Texas and Mexico, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Our lives likewise have great resources for both sustenance and meaning, even in life's most challenging moments.