Kate Wolf - Eyes of a Painter

Gray-haired and flint-eyed, his sunburned face lined

Grandpa was a man of few words

He had a way of not wanting to say

Any more than he thought would be heard.

The long years of living, day-to-day giving

Had carved out a map on his face

With little to lose, he’d learned how to choose

And his choices were easy to trace.

   He had the eyes of a painter

   Heart of a maker of songs

   His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain

   Precious and so quickly gone.

From a long line of teachers, white Baptist preachers

He was born with an Indian will

His quiet dark eyes, reading the light

As he rode in the low Osage hills.

His school was the prairie, the sage, the wild berry

The quail, the wide-open sky

The cottonwood thicket by the slow rolling river

The Redbud and the hot cattle drive.

There were days filled with thinking, nights with the drinking

For a lost love that raged like a storm

Oh, but how his eyes smiled, when he’d talk to a child

The rough hands so gentle and warm.

His strong arms were brown, where the long sleeves

Rolled down, on his faded blue cotton shirt

When times got hard, he’d go out in the yard

And he'd cuss away some of his hurt.

Now the garden’s grown dusty, hand axe lies rusty

The door’s banging hard in the wind

Grandpa’s store is closed down, like most of the town

And it won’t be open again.

And the big white car, sits out in the yard

Of the house he built solid and true

Oh, but I see his eyes, burning tonight

Like the stars in the sky he once knew.

      Kate Wolf's song "Eyes of a Painter" is about a man, specifically her grandfather, with a deep connection to nature and a quiet wisdom, who had the "eyes of a painter, heart of a maker of songs". The song was inspired by her grandfather, who was a man of few words with a hard life but a lot of love, and who taught her the importance of observation and a deep appreciation for the natural world.

      We have missed you much Kate.