How about one of those little lights mounted on a headband - like prissy cavers might wear?
You could sit out on the motif at night with nary a thing to see except your canvas in front of you. Now that would prompt respectful comment, especially if you were filling the canvas with finely observed detail.

I’m going to have to ponder on just what the right motto on the cap would be. The one on the easel is probably something like “Mo’s Seafoods” (although the Mo’s cap is beige). I used to have a black one called “General Treescapes,” but it disappeared, perhaps eaten by an environmentalist. I do have one from the National Park Service, symbol and all, but it looks even dorkier than the black one; the fit is all wrong. Maybe I’ll have to get a hand-crafted model. I have tried hats that resemble what was worn by French painters from the 1900s, but they always blow off. The ball caps stay on.

I’m open to suggestions……

Can’t quite make out the design on your baseball cap. It’s place on your easel would suggest a significance beyond “home is where I hang my hat”. I would have to suppose that people glance at it while absorbed in your activities.

I bring this up as I have found, in my travels/travails, that the cap can influence attitudes. For awhile I had an official Central Intelligence Agency hat that elicited its share of “yes sirs” and “no sirs” - the eliciteers assuming, I can only guess, that I was some kind of off duty mucky muck. Similar dynamics prevailed with my USA cap. Those complaining of my presumed boosterism were told that the USA stood for whatever I could make up on the spot, like Umbrella Salesman of Armenia perhaps. I’m wearing my Goodyear Tire and Rubber hat as I type. I wear it to good effect when visiting Akron.

In your case, June, I can only guess what kibitzers would say to your hanging a cap emblazoned with Manitoba Bear Wrestler or I Eat Easels For Breakfast - you know, that kind of thing. Avoid “Be Gentle, I Cry Easily” as inaccurate and provocative.

Meeting your horses’ family sounds like it could influence the photos in some way.

I find that poles, wires etc. are really hard to photograph around — they clutter and mess up the view.

On the other hand, when I’m painting, I can be both selective in what I include and where I include it. I have found that the wires can enliven scenes that otherwise might be merely “quaint” and give a kind of energy and paths into and through the painting. A substitute for the winding trail, perhaps.

I can’t tell if I’m “composing” more or not. It feels to me as if I’m still choosing the scene that resonates (the rest rooms in the middle of the trail and the parked cars) but of course, composition is also a kind of resonance.

I guess I will continue to say I’m just showing “what’s there” — but always with the caveat that it’s what’s there that zings something in me. Often that something has to do with incongruity. In Basin, it had to do with difficulty of painting trailers and false front stores and awkward buildings. Here it’s more like the incongruities of cities that grow in and around themselves, putting cottages next to shopping centers and nature trails with telephone poles and big industrial buildings as well as nature.

It makes perfect sense that what I call “resonance” would change when the scene changes. I haven’t painted a dog in Portland yet (although I’m considering it, for compositional reasons.)

I told my critique group that my mantra for the nonce was “Be Here Now.” Most of them were too young to get the reference.