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Grotto 1

21/3/2023

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I have heard it said that every girl wants a rock on her finger.  That never appealed to me because it’s thinking too small.  I have always wanted a grotto.

I know just what you’re thinking:  “Gosh I wish I had a grotto too!”  For one thing, they are easily maintained:  leaving it outside in rain and snow simply improves the look.  Now show me a diamond and gold ring which gets better like that;  its best promise is to freeze time, not enhance it.  Remember, even gold wears out:  the band on my mom’s  engagement ring gradually disappeared over a mere fifty years, and  my own silver ring engraved with Haida designs has lost all of its intricate carving in a decade.   Come to think of it, a copper ring might be more interesting.  My favourite building as a kid was the Fort Garry Hotel, largely because of its elegant copper verdigris roof.  Again, you’d have to wait decades for that patina to form and probably have to be buried with it….but I digress.

As far as geologic time goes, we are of no interest to a rock, whose sole interest is its own hard heart.  Luckily for us, most rock surfaces are come pre-decorated,  already gloriously rich with colour and line,  as well as permanent at least when viewed from the perspective of our tiny lifespans.  I am drawn to their stillness as I write or paint, my eye often going to rest on the Credit Valley limestone which lines my studio and robes the house.  All the important buildings in Winnipeg were gorgeous slab-cut  pale Tyndall stone and even as a toddler I would fall under the spell of the multitudinous fossils they revealed.  Carol Shields refers to it in perfectly titled novel, The Stone Diaries, which won the Pulitzer  in 1995 .That our Credit Valley limestone cannot compete doesn’t mean I don’t search for fossils whenever I need a visual break.

(There - just caught myself doing that)

But a grotto is a different order of wonderful.  The rocks are often softened in shape from eons of erosion by water in a marriage of form and function.  Often sacred, grottos celebrate the long relationship that human beings have had with these natural caves, which functioned as both physical and spiritual  sanctuaries.  I am sitting in mine right now, as I write this, although the only water in the studio is in the large bowls of fertilized water in which last year’s geraniums are slowly being reborn.  The large easel to my left holds the grotto from the Nahanni which occupies my visual cortex currently.  In its final glazes, but nowhere close to being finished, “Grotto”’s small size, 16 x 20, betrays its status as a study for a much larger painting.  Just like the first the chapter of a book, a study is only a date;  If, and only if, I find myself in love with this study will I then commit to the massive work and hopefulness every long marriage entails.

Though I might change the title.  Thinking of “Rock Concert.”  Our home may be our sanctuary but noise-cancelling earphones are a food group

So here is the progress of the underpainting.  Not much to love yet.  Oh well.

​

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Cinderella v. Midnight

6/3/2023

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I had a passionate affair with a library book last week.  Overwhelmed and hopelessly in love.  It was kismet that we met at all.

Timing is everything in life, isn’t it.   You see, not only  was I  dating another book,  some minor literary flirtation BUT I had  completely forgotten why I had requested Bewilderment in the first place many months ago. It was 20 days into its 21 day borrowing period when I finally gave it my attention.

Reconciled to placing another hold, I idly started to read.

Of my goodness, Richard Powers: you had me at page 1.  This novel is pure gold - erudite, beautiful, wise. It checked every box — character, plot, big ideas, style:  the kind of book which felt like it was written for you and you alone. BUT it was 11 pm  - Yikes!!!! -  I only had 25 hours before the ebook would vanish into the ether….  Like John Cleese’s parrot, it would be thoroughly dead, at least to me.  Were I to try to read it all in 24 hours, my talent for skimming would be of no use.  Every sentence was going to demand my attention.

Fell asleep reading.  Woke up and started reading.  Walked the dogs at a trot.  Ate while reading.  Skipped Tai Chi.  And 5:20 the next day, it was finished — over too soon. 

If I were a smoker, I would have had a cigarette.

Thank you, libraries of the world.  I can’t own every book I’ve read, at least not in this house.  Only books I have already fallen for get to be purchased and come home to their forever bookshelf.  You are matchmakers par excellence.

The narrator in the novel said it the best:

My son loved the library.  He loved putting books on hold online and having them waiting, bundled up with his name, when he came for them.  He loved the benevolence that the stacks held out, their map of the known world.  He loved the all-you-can-eat buffet of borrowing.  He loved the lending histories stamped into the front of each book, the record of strangers who checked them out before him.  The library was the  best dungeon crawl imaginable:  free loot for the finding combined with the joy of levelling up.

Thank you, thank you.
BTW 
​A great book has the effect of inspiring me to paint.  Go figure.


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