Taking the James Gurney Grave Challenge: Down Among the Dead Men

For most of my life, I have lived within three miles of a cemetery.  Once, I kid you not, our home was located so that when I gave directions I told people to turn between the cemetery and the Bates Motel. People would ask if I was joking, but I wasn’t. That is one theme. A second recurring theme in my life is art. My mother is a professional artist, as was my aunt, and I have taught art for a dozen years now. I grew up attending art shows and have met many famous artists. Art and cemeteries—both have been constant presences in my life. So when the artist James Gurney posted his October challenge for artists to visit a graveyard and paint plein air, it seemed like a call I could hardly miss. Hasn’t my whole life been preparing for this intersection?

Artist James Gurney Issues A Grave Challenge

Well, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but it did seem like an interesting opportunity. I issued some online invitations to artists I know to join me in this venture, along with my mother and my daughter, then started pondering locations. Out here in the west most of our cemeteries are not located next to churches (I can think of only one from my childhood hometown) so that bit of quaintness was not be part of our experience. In fact, the most obvious places in the town where I live now are characterized by rolling green lawn with flat headstones–lovely for a peaceful visit to a deceased loved one’s memorial, but not intriguing from an artistic point of view.

I settled on a small, out of the way, but still used, graveyard on a winding north Idaho back road, where some of my husband’s family are buried. Seneacquoteen Cemetery was for many years wild and overgrown, and even though it has been trimmed and tamed more recently is still picturesque. Even better for our purposes is its location between the towns where we all live (in some places out west driving to meet someone can be a long journey!). We chose a day predicted to be sunny and a perfect temperature and four of us assembled to paint a snippet of cemetery.

Most of us have gathered at a graveyard at some point to say goodbye to a loved one, but our perspective was different as we searched for the right view to capture. Beauty, balance, contrast, interest–these are not what we usually seek when we visit the land of the dead in mourning, but they were what we sought on our painting venture. The golden leaves sparkling in the sun behind an upright marker from almost a hundred years ago, the wrought iron fence running in and out of shade holding someone in or someone out, the faded flowers reminding that each of the sleepers here have known love–these were the choices facing us as artists. We wandered, wondering how to choose.

Exploring a cemetery evokes our history as a collective people. Seeing a great number of deaths in 1918, of both young and old, reminds us that disease plays no favorites. Looking at the many gravestones from war years brings to mind the words spoken by King Theoden in Peter Jackson’s movie version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, “Simbelmyne. Ever has it grown on the tombs of my forebears. Now it shall cover the grave of my son. Alas, that these evil days should be mine. The young perish and the old linger. That I should live to see the last days of my house…No parent should have to bury their child.”1  I always cry at those words, just as I cry at the graves of those who died in World War I, a war more devastating than anyone anticipated, leaving a whole generation missing in many countries and setting the stage for an even worse conflagration just twenty-one years later. Whether in war or peace, the universal sorrow of losing a child displays itself in poignant inscriptions: Beloved child; our darling; budded on earth to bloom in heaven.

My mother chose one such headstone for her first piece: “Our Darling, Harold, Infant Son of Mr. and Mrs. H.P. Christenson.” No date, but obviously ages ago judging from the wear on the headstone, but there are still recent flowers showing that someone remembers darling Harold. Now he is immortalized in paint also, and not without a certain amount of tender care.

The rest of us chose wider views with larger monuments in them. My daughter and I are plein air novices; I at least painted with more zeal than skill and eventually covered a portion of my piece with black paint in a fit of pique, er, I mean, abstract expressionism reflecting the angst of our location… I decided to attempt the wrought iron fence and moved my easel, only to have it tip over a short while later. I saved the painting, but my shoe is now more colorful than before. Ah well, such troubles seem like trifles in such grave surroundings.

The warmth of the sun lasts only so long on an October afternoon, so it seemed a short time before we packed up our pieces and prepared to head home. The peaceful ambience, though, inspired us all to agree to explore more of our local cemeteries, although so far our schedules have not permitted our little band to go out again. But I have since spent some time scouting new places, looking for remnants of lives, memories of love that call out from days gone by, carved in stone for all to see through the ages.

Learn more about  James Gurney’s October challenge

See the James Gurney challenge submittals

See more of Janene Grende’s art

Visit Seneacquoteen Cemetery Website