Unexpected origin stories

 

Summer Camp ought to celebrate surprises, pivots and discoveries.  The previous post was inspired by the ravine at the local (and nationally famous) botanical garden where I volunteer.

 

Aiming to work on a typical support like paper or board, I'd made an unexpected pivot to splashing colour onto refillable palette paper.

 

Then, like an exclamation point, the origin story of that ravine became clear when I did my volunteer shift at the garden a few days ago.  I knew this 55-acre garden had once been a golf course and, flipping randomly through some old notebooks, I happened on the title photo above – the ravine in its first stages of creation!

 

Well – back to my Summer Camp agenda to play around with the landscape paintings of known artists.  I happened upon this wonderful pastel painting, “The Zaterre – Harmony in Blue and Brown”.

 

It’s by 19^th c. American artist James McNeil Whistler.  (By the way, take a close look at that self-portrait, and if you can figure out what his right hand is doing on the left side of his body, please let me know).

 

And “The Zaterre” – what’s that?  It’s downright fascinating.  I'd love to join the throng and go there.  But to the task at hand, I just needed a local landscape story waiting to be told.   Except:  There’s no way I’d be allowed near the waterfront shipping hub to see a sweep of foreshore and then the working harbour.

 

Putting that aside, I decided I’d focus on Whistler himself, based on this photo:

 

At first, I thought I’d try for a treatment a la Hashim Akib, a contemporary artist whose portraits fascinate me.

 

But then I realized I was working at too small a scale for his Hashim-mashups.

 

Okay.  Forget that.  I’d meanwhile become fascinated with the small table that Whistler leans on – and realized, too, that I needed something to fill the space on the right side of the picture.  Enter Whistler’s own “Peacock Room.”

 

Oh, my.  How did I ever miss this tale of high-stakes art scandal?  

 

In any case, I wasn’t foolhardy enough to put the full extravaganza into my background.  But how about a part of it?  Here’s the finale – “Harmony in Gold, Burgundy and Blue,” (copyright 2026).

 

Have we pivoted enough to lose track of the origin story?  There really should be no surprise that in a crunch, I’ll revert to my favourite art elements – pattern and rich colour.   So why not calm down, breathe deeply – and consider if the current sheet of refillable palette paper has the makings of a future painting.

 

 

 

Word is getting around

   

My annual Summer Camp routine is well known to regular readers, and to them I confess a devilish streak in which I test the concept on newish acquaintances.  I still cherish the response of good friends’ then-7-year-old grandson when his grandmother said that “her friend runs her own summer camp.”  Quick as a flash, this bright youngster asked, “And what does she learn there?”

 I suppose I’m learning a thing or two even if I’m not travelling far from base camp.  I’m looking at lots of art on-line, tracking lots of artists from my own long-held lists, and I’m finding lots of intriguing works that suggest different types of landscapes.

 

I’ve known of American artist Charles Burchfield but had never done a deep dive.

 

Check the “Gallery” section in that link and scroll with the embedded right arrow to see many examples of his distinctive style. From another source, I found his painting “Two Ravines” and selected this landscape type to work on.

 

Now, where to find a local ravine as a match?  Capilano Canyon, my birthday destination in May, was ravine-like in many narrow stretches – but too far down for a clear view.

 

And besides, it had its risks:

 

Why not my favourite gardens not far from home? – and I headed right over to get a current photo.

 

Head smack!  The base of the ravine is clearly evident, but no water is running through, thanks to current summertime water restrictions.  Back to my photo file to find this same ravine in other seasons:

 

 

Really, all I needed was the idea of a ravine  -- and unexpectedly, one almost painted itself.

 

Not long ago, my ever-encouraging friend A gave me a “Sta-Wet” palette.  Essentially, this is an ingenious system in which special paper is placed on a damp sponge sheet within a sealable plastic tray container.  The artist works on the surface, as with any palette, but can easily save the colour blobs from day to day – then replace the paper when it becomes too…blobbed.

 

I was about to install a new paper refill when I realized the very messy old one (destined for the trash) made a perfect base for a ravine.

 

What’s more, I’d already given up the idea of trying to emulate Charles Burchfield’s unique style.  (Such pivots are allowed at Summer Camp and, in fact, encouraged.)  Instead, I’d work with palette knives rather than paintbrushes.

 

This was tons of fun – several adroit slashes brought me to a credible ravine, which we’ll call “Burchfield Falls.”

 

On to artist Burchfield.  A small portrait with palette knife was not so credible.

 

Too bad.  He was a nice-looking guy so I gave him a summer T-shirt and a quick conventional study using paintbrushes.

 

Certainly this could use more work, but it wasn’t my objective and I’m already plotting the next change of scene.  It’s curious, though, the way images of ravines and waterfalls keep coming into view.  Waiting for class to begin in a downtown university building, I sat in a chair just beyond the elevator in this photo. 

Leaning back and gazing upwards, I was surprised to see a painting on the wall on the floor above me – impossible for my camera to catch, but it captures a lively brook flowing through the big rocks of a ravine!

 

But maybe you’d rather spend your summer somewhere else?   Just think!  In this very week, we could be doing classes here: --

 

 

Summertime marshland - Sink or swim

 

One of my favourite walking destinations, Trout Lake, might be taking a hit from our extended dry weather.  I’m reluctant to do reconnaissance because coyotes with young broods are actively on the prowl there.  This scene, from months back, will have to suffice. 

 

If it looks like a candidate for “drain the swamp,” it’s actually the reverse.  For a number of years, a wetlands reclamation project has been in progress there, under City of Vancouver auspices, building on the work of an ecological organization. 

 

It’s only natural that Summer Campers exploring different landscape forms would check out marshes and different artists’ views of them.  Early in my browsing, I came across Russian-born Canadian artist Paraskeva Clark.  She is barely known but her name was familiar to me as one among several overlooked 20^th century female artists featured in a 2023 exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

 

Her painting “Reflections” was surprising and intriguing:

 

Next, I went back to Trout Lake for a comparable image to work with:

 

As I began developing the scene “in the manner of Paraskeva Clark,” I spent a lot of time considering what made her piece so distinctive.

 

Her style was certainly not coming across in mine.  Should I have chosen another Trout Lake view, with strong diagonals and tighter composition?

 

I made some preliminary strokes and then decided to stick with the original, with its reflections, and be done with it:

 

Now, what about Paraskeva, the artist?  She scarcely looks like the type to go about in muddy boots.

 

I gave just a few sessions to a kind of quick study for her portrait, which might be useful later on.  Or not.

 

The best way to celebrate marshlands might be with another book title – an absolutely fascinating recap of history, geology, and strange lore.  Its biggest revelation for me was how much of middle North America was once bogland, and inhabited bogland at that.

 

Let’s rise above it all now – and take a cool Summer Camp paddle among the clouds.

 

 

 

Summer Camp in sight!

 

The very thought of summer camp brings seasonal excitement that goes back more than 70 years now (yikes!). I loved being in the woods all day (so it seemed), swimming endlessly (the one “sport” I excelled in), feeling the mystery of campfires, learning new skills with new friends – choosing my own colours to make my own boondoggle.  Those camps of long ago are long gone now, but the memory lingers on.

 

But that strong pull of the season has made “Summer Camp” a regular part of my art year – as I’ve learned that Summer Camp is where you find it.

This year my plan is a variation on past themes.  I've looked at paintings of different types of landscapes by known artists, then looked for a similar local vista and recreated it, maybe in the style of the artist, maybe using new media, whatever unfolds.  If I get carried away, I’ll also do the artist’s portrait.

And I did get carried away when I cut the ribbon to open this year’s Summer Camp.  What better artist to lead the way than Georges Seurat, whose “Sunday Afternoon”  at Chicago’s Art Institute was the first real painting I ever saw.  Love at first sight!

With its shoreline theme, Seurat’s “Evening at Honfleur” made a useful match with Ambleside, the shoreline in the photo above.

 

So here’s Ambleside in the style of Seurat.

 

What if it were hanging on the Art Institute’s walls?  Just think:  Instant acclaim for me if only it were large enough.

 

Onward now to portraits of Seurat, both of them in pastel but applied differently.

 

It’s so hard to turn lights out at the end of the first day of Summer Camp -- so I kept going.   I’d also been attracted by this engraving with a shoreline at “The Bay of Naples,” by new-to-me artist, Elizabeth Greatorex. 

 

Her very name is intriguing.  A type of dinosaur?  No, it’s more likely related to “great rocks,” or a half-dozen other Anglo-Saxon possibilities.

 

Without years of supervised study, I can't replicate Ambleside as an engraving.  Instead I chose the simplest printmaking technique – preparing a textured, inked “plate” and stamping it on my paper.

 

An interim stage:

With additional blotting and rubbing, here’s the final “Shoreline/Great Rocks.”

 

And Elizabeth herself?  

Same method, stamping the paper with inked texture.

 

The finale:  Does she look a little like “A Rare Bird With Feathers”? 

 

In this get-up, she just might fit in with the party crowd.  Let the summer begin!