Lechay + the light out here
What a year it has been since I last posted.
I hope you + the ones you love are doing ok.
It’s crazy out there. Pretty horrifying and infuriating.
Storm today. The rain is coming down in sheets, dribbling in ripples across the window, a visual soundscape of the wind. The garden soaks it in. Peas and poppies are planted. Yesterday, warm with sunshine and a milky white crescent moon in the blue sky, fading its way to new.
There is so much around to get lost in, and I am thankful for the distraction. Right now, the spring birds are following celestial cues to find their way back to the Cape: osprey and catbirds, the ruby-throated hummingbird. They are sailors navigating the skies, reading signs from the sun and the magnetic fields around us to chart a way back to their summer homes. The light is changing. Buds have appeared on branches, and the perennials are waking up from their slumber deep in the ground.
I am reminded out here that there are so many beautiful things happening around us that we play absolutely no part in. Out here, I am small.
Most of the outer Cape - almost 45,000 acres of it - is preserved by the National Seashore. Protected since the 1958 legislation was introduced, it is an evolving landscape of woods and dunes, influenced by the elements.
Out here, I find myself enamored with the light and how it lands, the hawk floating in the sky, and the coyote trotting through my yard.
So, I am writing a book about this place. Ocean Effect is my effort to document the Cape throughout the seasons. The light and the landscape, the flora and fauna. It is a seasonal journey and study of a place that is ever-influenced by nature and the elements.
Timber Press will be releasing the book in Spring of 2027, and I am thrilled! I absolutely could not have done it without Gillian MacKenzie. Born, raised, and still on the Cape, Gillian has made me aware of how important it is to document and share this special place we both live.
And, this absolutely would not be happening without Thomas. He has been by my side for the last 25 years, more than half my life. He has literally built our lives out here with his own hands.
Out here, I am small.
But full of gratitude.
SUN PILLAR: “an atmospheric optical phenomenon in which a vertical beam of light appears to extend above and/or below a light source. The effect is created by the reflection of light from tiny ice crystals that are suspended in the atmosphere or that compose high-altitude clouds.”
Thomas and I watched it a few weeks ago while staying in Wellfleet one night.
Sunset lit the living room of the house with pink fire.
I’m writing a little piece about the artist James Lechay for the book. His granddaughter is a friend, and Thomas and I have been lucky enough to stay at her Wellfleet house often over the past fifteen years or so since we’ve known her. It is a special place to me. The view out over the pines, the light, the quiet, the time held within its walls. The house seems to absorb all this, and reflect it outward.
James Lechay would summer in the house and paint in the adjacent studio from 1960 until he passed away in 2001.
Rose and James Lechay with their portraits in the (unedited) pink light of the sun pillar.
Although his work doesn’t necessarily ascribe to a particular movement or style, Lechay considered himself an abstract impressionist. He worked in fields of color. His marks are intentional, yet appear effortless. He painted Rose often.
We started a fire in the afternoon and kept it going all night. Thomas recorded music in the painting studio and I worked on the book by the fireplace. Venus and the Moon danced in the black velvet sky. Rose watched over it all, arms folded, from her sea and sky of blue and grey.
Some of my current book-writing references:
James Lechay catalogs from exihibtions at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum
Cape Cod Modern: Midcentury Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape
Figures in a Landscape: The Life and Times of the American Painter, Ross Moffett
The Flora of Cape Cod
Historic and Archaeological Resources of Cape Cod and the Islands (I have my friend, Peter Molgaard, to thank for this gem.)
Botanical Latin
Art in Narrow Streets: The First Thirty-Three Years of the Provincetown Art Association
A Gardener’s Book of Plant Names
