The Art of Nature and the Nature of Art
  • Musings on Life and Work in Progress
  • Find my gallery
  • Contact Me Directly

Shadowing an Artist

29/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Poor language - so often misaligned, even twisted out of recognition.  Take the word “shade”:  it must have been miffed to find its root employed to describe a criminal or, worse, a sexual deviant.    “Shade” is in fact  a delightful word, deserving only of positive connotations.    It was even ahead of its time.  Let me explain.

To begin with, no one but a masochist who is planning a short life finds a beach and self-broils.    Once you realize that solar radiation does not peel off and simply accumulates over a lifetime, it’s either dips in a vat of SPF 30 or long sleeves, sunglasses and a good hat unless you have the good sense to seek out shade.  Cool, restful shade, best cast by trees.

Having blue, light-sensitive eyes, I am naturally inclined to do just that.   The older and taller the trees, the better.  I even want to see them from every room in our house.  (Thus, wind storms make me as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.).   Most of the time, though, it is not only comfortable around these wise old plants, but comforting.  

As one who doesn’t like to be in bright sunshine, it might seen counter-intuitive to love it (while happily under a tree);   again, give the credit to shadows.  While overcast days flatten the landscape and sap colour, a sunny day fills the world, including shade, with colour.  When you stop to think about it,  while sun lights up our visual field and floods it with colour, it is shadows which give the world three dimensions.  If you have ever been instructed to draw or paint a globe, it becomes immediately necessary to darken certain areas by identifying “core shadows.”  Fail to do this and all you have is a circle.  Darks and lights help us understand the world.

It gets better.  Artists make a distinction between different types of shadows. That three-dimensional object will itself cast a shadow.  Such “cast shadows” are a joy to paint because they will contain both the colours of the object and what’s lying under the shadow.  For that matter, the core shadows will be subtle and rich as well.  Perhaps that is the inspiration for the word "shade" as it refers to colour variations.

Now think of your garden as a collection of of core and cast shadows.  Visualize a shady garden in late spring when the canopy has opened and light peeks through, creating a kingdom of greens to reign throughout.   No need for sun shelters because the trees capture most of the light and grab the solar radiation for themselves.   It’s my vision of heaven.

But wait!  Something’s in short supply.  Yup, it’s flowers.  This point was hammered home this week when I was gazing out the bedroom window and saw flowers forming on the magnolia we planted in 1997.  What?  It hasn't bloomed since 1998.  And then I remembered that that big Manitoba maple that uprooted itself during a windstorm had been removed and that there was actually some sun back there this year.  Now we have a new concept, one which Jon and I were slow to learn, let alone observe:  “shade-tolerance.”  I still feel guilty about the white pine seedling which we carefully planted just into the ravine.  It unfortunately needed full sun and we had doomed the poor thing to cling to life for a decade before succumbing to energy starvation.  And that magnolia would have also failed that “Are you shade-tolerant?” quiz, but we were too stupid to ask.

So since we moved here almost forty years ago, we have been painfully learning what plants/trees are shade-tolerant.  It breaks my heart that tomatoes are most definitely not.  But in the same way that I love forests for their green bounty and variety of dainty flowers, I have sought out and developed a repertoire of plants which are grateful for shade in my garden.  My spring favourite is viola.  At first, the genus will be represented by pots of pansies, but scores of shy wild blue violets will soon stud the forest in the back garden.   I've been meaning to paint these lovely faces for years. 

​Here goes.
Picture
grisaille 10 x 20
0 Comments

A Mel Brooks Moment

22/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture"Himself" Glaze Oil 8 x 8
If there is a bird season, it occurs in April.  The air resonates with ringing calls which are less territorial than boastful, the field already having been won.  My nomination for loudest and most distinctive would have to be given to the male cardinals who proclaim their fertility from the highest branches on the tallest trees throughout the neighbourhood.

This is the time of year when the birds remember having watched Hitchcock.  YouTube is replete with hilarious episodes of large human beings terrified by birds one hundredth their weight.  They flail, they stumble;  when possible, they sprint.  Someone in close vicinity inevitably chooses to record rather than rescue.   And I have to say that I can understand the birds’ point of view.  Here you are, trying to hatch a family and suddenly everyone and their dog invade the nursery.  Only when a bird actually approaches the same weight class  does the viewer start to feel uncomfortable:  that poor man in Brampton who was being harassed by a turkey comes to mind, though I must say that the teenage golfer routed by a Canada Goose was pretty funny.

So I was actually feeling quite benign towards birds when I walked Theodore this week.  But, I discovered, avian memory also includes Mel Brooks.  I got bombed.  And, darn it, I was wearing a newish coat which was mulberry rather than black and white, so many awkward conversations ensued on the long walk home.

Not that Jon and I are strangers to the stuff.  Hand-raising both an orange-wing Amazon and a blue-and-gold macaw guarantees guano.   But, for whatever reason, knowing the producer helps.  And unlike the stealth bomber from above, Gussie and Bijou had the good manners to squat and lift their tails first so you had a chance to put them back on their perches in time.  Good manners are also observable in the parent bird who disposes of each packet of home-grown fertilizer by flying it out of the nest.  (Life Hack 586:  Don't stand ten feet away from an active nest unless you have an umbrella.)

The epiphany of the week is not elevated but it is impassioned:  “Dispensing private secretions from somewhere high in the sky on someone you’ve never even met is rude in the extreme.   Neither a pooper nor a poopee be.”  

​
I suppose it could have been worse.  It might have been a 747.

0 Comments

Managing Our Herd

15/4/2019

0 Comments

 
It’s Sunday and our show is on Day 3;  as usual, it has been a wonderful excuse to see old friends and do catch-up.  I’m always dead-tired about now on this annual event so you might be wondering why I might choose to write today.  Put it down to my well-earned fear about what is coming tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the annual medical check-up.  Not a problem.  But we are both getting our Shingrix vaccinations.

​
For Jon, vaccination is a non-issue.  He breezes through such things and cannot understand why I don’t.  Take for example the Lymerix vaccinations of yesteryear.  We were keen to take them so we could reduce our usual hyper-vigilance when out of doors.  Jon carried on with life as usual.  I found myself with one Popeye arm and a high fever with aches everywhere;  the next three days remain a blur.  Lymerix was withdrawn from the market a few years later.  (I really really hate being the canary in the coal mine.)

​So I should have known.  The first time I had ever taken the flu shot (it was on a Friday), that evening I distinguished myself at a small dinner party by putting my face down into Helen’s wonderful boeuf bourguignon and having a little nap.  I still have annual flu shots but not before stopping by the library and stocking up on reading material.  Some years go better than others.

BUT, while every vaccine is, for me, a tiny game of Russian Roulette, I would not consider avoiding them.  Vaccines have changed the world.  My mother’s brother died of diphtheria.  Although my father was a polio victim at 18 and paralyzed from the waist down, even so he was luckier than Uncle Stan;  because Dad had been a young athlete, he succeeded in calling on his secondary muscle groups and taught himself to walk again, albeit with a limp. He even golfed into his 70’s, until post-polio syndrome started to rear its ugly head.

Few victims of “infantile paralysis,” which polio was called at the time, got off that easily.  Even forty years later than my father's challenge, we had a polio epidemic in our city.    Mary, my own pediatrician’s wee daughter,  died.  Our minister’s son ended up in a wheelchair, and a friend’s father died, while another's was able to  continue working as a lawyer but only if he slept in an iron lung.  Polio was an invisible terror:  I still freeze at the thought of having to use a public drinking fountain.

That highly contagious diseases such as polio had been almost eradicated over the last century is a tribute to the brilliant and dedicated work of medical professionals.  Skipping vaccination to avoid individual risk and relying on “herd immunity” - the protection afforded by "universal" vaccination -    is the very thing which weakens the herd and renders it susceptible.  At the moment, we are seeing this play out with measles, a disease which was thought to have been eradicated.

Melanie, who is my dear cousin’s daughter, is now a police officer;  a century ago she might not have survived to adulthood.  Luckily, she both could and did receive inoculations and we all benefit.

Let’s hear it for a healthy herd!
Picture
"Melanie Gives a Tea party" glaze oil 30 x 30
0 Comments

Feeling Blue

8/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
30 x 40 glaze oil
My soul is crying blue and I mean that literally.   The season of overcast grey is almost  over and  I can’t wait to get back into a canoe to hunt blue skies and indigo reflections with a camera.  It’s too early, of course but I’m already there in my mind's eye.   In the meantime I’m pinning my hopes on the tiny blue scyllas which will open everywhere in our grass in a day or two.   I have never satisfactorily captured their fabulous cobalt blues but it’s always worth a try and  you will find me prone in a patch of them for the next few weeks.    I may even have to break down and use cobalt blue, which is laced with heavy metal.  Classic argument for “Know thyself.”  I know I will dip my brush in the coffee at least once.

In the meantime, I spent today sifting through digitals on a wild search to appease this hunger for blue. Seems there is a twinkle in my eye and it’s time to get pregnant with the next painting.   Hours later, the eligibilty list has been narrowed down to twenty or thirty.  I sense this disappoints you but for me painting involves an interminable and unpredictable gestation period punctuated with sporadic labour pains. I choose carefully where I go next.   To illustrate the point, “Sweet Melody” is FINALLY finished and hanging in a show, although I just realized that there is no digital of the finished piece.  I must go over and try to photograph it without getting arrested as an inept art thief.

Yes, like music, art is a prime target for theft.  People come into shows and take pictures of pieces they want to reproduce for themselves.  It’s a heck of a compliment but you just hope the work doesn’t show up as a giglee print in HomeSense!  Actually, I was astonished, even thrilled to find six of my paintings  on Pinterest. (Good luck finding them again, because there is no real search engine)    Because I had either labelled the painting with titles and dimensions like a banner or chosen a small file size,  there was no serious issue with piracy.   All good.

And four of the six were predominantly blue. No surprise there.  Nor am I the only painter with a quiver of blue arrows.  The heavenly colour draws us and even intimidates us (think scylla).  Oscar Wilde admitted that he found it “harder and harder every day to live up to (his) blue china.”  I know the feeling.

But blue is more likely to inspire us into deeper thought:  Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue - that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.  Georgia O’Keefe

Mind you, she also said, “Since I can’t sing, I paint.”

0 Comments

Two Shocks

1/4/2019

0 Comments

 
There were two shocks yesterday morning when I opened the bedroom blind.  One was the dazzling white of the snowfall which I had not expected.  Beautiful but not welcome.  I can’t wait to get raking and gardening.  Spring is such a time of excited hope.
The other shock was a truly sad one.  The mourning dove nest was empty - of eggs and of adults.  Jon thinks that a squirrel must have come across it and driven the parents off the nest;  my money was on a crow but it amounts to the same thing.   My heart is broken for them.  They will have to find another nesting site and hope that no hungry predators locate it.

The world is full of danger.  I think this is why having a home is so vital to happiness.  I have a recurring dream in which we have inexplicably sold our house and have bought another one a long distance away;  throughout the dream I long for the old place, which has already been occupied by others and is irretrievably out of reach.  It is relief to wake.  I wonder if the doves will be nostalgic for their aerie on the stone ledge where they raised three beautiful offspring or if it will represent nothing but the memory of loss.

I have bought another book by Peter Wohlleben, the German forest-keeper who wrote the splendid book The Hidden Life of Trees.  This one’s title is a teaser:  The Inner Life of Animals.  But it is the subtitle - Love, Grief, and Compassion / Surprising Observations of a Hidden World - which sealed the deal for me.   The blurb explains that “(h)orses feel shame, deer grieve, and goats discipline their kids.  Ravens call their friends by name, rats regret bad choices and butterflies choose the very best places for their children to grow up.”  Sensing the complex minds and emotions of animals has never been a stretch for me so I am loving this book -  especially the cover illustration of three goats with their vertical pupils and their scrappy appearance.  I knew one quite well when we were regularly using a landfill site which was located next to a farm.  This fellow came over to visit whenever he saw me and I ended up spending quite a bit more time at the dump than planned.   Come to think of it, I was probably the only person who absolutely loved going to the dump.

So, while I would like to drop everything and finish this book, our show is less than two weeks ago and there is still more to do.  Even if the paintings are pretty much finished, there remains what I think of as the bumph stage:  signing them (which I frequently forget to do), wiring them (a job I hate and which Jon has largely relieved me of, bless him) and creating labels and so on, hauling them around, and so on.  An elderly (95 yr-old) friend thought he had solved the problem of distribution when he sneaked a bunch of large and truly excellent paintings of his out with the recycling.  His wife quite rightly ordered him to haul them back in again.  Jon and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  We kind of wished we had found them first!

And so it goes, as Vonnegut would say.  Life - ain’t it awful!  But ain’t it great, especially if there are no immediate plans to sell the house.
0 Comments

The Nest

1/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
There were two shocks yesterday morning when I opened the bedroom blind.  One was the dazzling white of the snowfall which I had not expected.  Beautiful but unwelcome.  I can’t wait to get raking and gardening.  Spring is such a time of excited hope.

The other shock was a truly sad one.  The mourning dove nest was empty - of eggs and of adults.  Jon thinks that a squirrel must have come across it and driven the parents off the nest;  my money was on a crow but it amounts to the same thing.   My heart is broken for them.  They will have to find another nesting site and hope that no hungry predators locate it.

The world is full of danger.  I think this is why having a home is so vital to happiness.  I have a recurring dream in which we have inexplicably sold our house and have bought another one a distance away;  throughout the dream I long for the old place, which has already been occupied by others and is irretrievably out of reach.  It is relief to wake.  I wonder if the doves will be nostalgic for their aerie on the stone ledge where they raised three beautiful offspring or if it will represent nothing but the memory of loss.

I am reading another book by Peter Wohlleben, the German forest-keeper who wrote the splendid book The Hidden Life of Trees.  This one’s title is a teaser:  The Inner Life of Animals.  But it is the subtitle - Love, Grief, and Compassion / Surprising Observations of a Hidden World - which sealed the deal for me.   The blurb explains that “(h)orses feel shame, deer grieve, and goats discipline their kids.  Ravens call their friends by name, rats regret bad choices and butterflies choose the very best places for their children to grow up.”  Sensing the complex minds and emotions of animals has never been a stretch for me so I am loving this book -  especially the cover illustration of three goats with their vertical pupils and their scrappy appearance.  I knew one quite well when we were regularly using a landfill site which was located next to a farm.  This fellow came over to visit whenever he saw me and I ended up spending quite a bit more time at the dump than planned.   Come to think of it, I was probably the only person who absolutely looked forward to going to the dump.

So, while I would like to drop everything and finish this book, our show is less than two weeks ago and there is still more to do.  Even if the paintings are pretty much finished, there remains what I think of as the bumph stage:  signing them (which I frequently forget to do), wiring them (a job I hate and which Jon has largely relieved me of, bless him) and creating labels and so on, hauling them around, and so on.  An elderly (95 yr-old) friend thought he had solved the problem of distribution when he sneaked a bunch of large and truly excellent paintings of his out with the recycling.  His wife quite rightly ordered him to haul them back in again.  Jon and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  We kind of wished we had found them first!

And so it goes, as Vonnegut would say.  Life - ain’t it awful!  But ain’t it great, especially if there are no immediate plans to sell the house.

0 Comments
    Picture

    Archive

    July 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    July 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    ALLA PRIMA PAINTING
    ANIMALS
    ART SHOWS
    BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
    CHRISTMAS
    COLOUR THEORY
    COMPOSITION
    GARDENING
    GLAZE OIL PAINTING
    HOW SHAPE MATTERS
    INSPIRATION
    OUTDOOR LIFE
    PALETTE
    PHOTOGRAPIC REFS
    PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN
    PORTRAITURE
    SEASONS
    STILL LIFE
    SUBJECT MATTER
    THE FUNCTION OF TITLES
    THE HUMAN COMEDY
    THE ISSUE OF SIZE
    THIS OLD HOUSE
    TREES
    UNDERPAINTING
    YouTubes

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.