Time to pick up the beat

A new year -- and time to pick up the beat!   Searching through my pile of  "postcards" (the quick things I splash down in the interest of using up excess paint),  I found this dancing figure to be the perfect symbol for the season.  (It's based on a beautifully photographed dance festival program.)

I'll tell you something, though.  Picking up the beat North American-style can't begin to compare to the pulsating performance of the flamenco dance troupe I watched and tried to sketch in a darkened theatre in late November.   Theirs was another surprising performance at the Dance Centre where I try to catch their low-cost noontime performances and, sketchbook in hand, see what I can capture of fast-moving dancers.

I'd braced myself for something intense and rather anguished, like the flamenco guitar music I'd heard before.  It turns out, though, that there are many kinds of flamenco -- and this performance must have been based on the graceful, the joyous, and the thrilling.

There were three dancers, sometimes performing together...

 ...and sometimes dancing solo.

What was truly mesmerizing was the beat -- or, as it's called, the compás -- the profound, deeply embedded characteristic "anchor" to all flamenco.  Each set might start with a single dancer, moving with stamping feet to her own accompaniment of clapping hands.

Then, the demure, refined singer in her high-necked, long-sleeved flowing dress would seamlessly join the compás or sometimes, acapella, she might begin the set herself.

 Finally the guitarist, who later described himself as the least important of all, would join in.

 Throughout, at just the right intervals, the beautiful young singer would call out encouragement to the dancers with what sounded almost like the French "Allez!" with a soft ending -- "Alleh" you might say.  This turned out to be "olé" pronounced with soft yet insistent vowel sounds.

The finale had a truly touching moment when the troupe's founder and director stepped into the circle.  An ardent woman in perhaps her mid-60s, she was dressed in a long-sleeved black tunic with black leggings and boots.  She stepped forward, effortlessly picking up the compás, dancing to perfection the pulsing steps she'd learned so long ago, moving towards her young dancers with emphatic hand-clapping, saluting them -- as they in their turn acknowledged her expertise with hand-clapping salutes in return.

If I seem to be a mini-expert on compás, it's because these midday Dance Centre performances always conclude with an informal discussion session.   The founder-director had only about ten minutes to speak and said the absolute basic thing to understand about flamenco was its 12-beat rhythm -- and the necessity for all the participants to have/understand/know/feel this, the compás.

It's almost always set by the dancer (occasionally by the singer) and supported by the singer and the guitarist -- and just to make things very interesting, it's subject to change as the piece develops and the dancers innovate.  Both the director and the guitarist talked about how it took time and extraordinary effort to learn these rhythms which then become totally intuitive and organic -- exactly as I had just witnessed.  The flamenco rhythms are more fully explained here, oddly enough by a company that manufactures a device that purports to help teach them!

In this playful interval in the last week of the year,  I thought  I'd see what kind of "postcards" I could develop from my drawn-in-the-dark sketches.  Here's one of  three dance poses.

But really, it was a you-had-to-be-there kind of experience, one of so many good experiences I had in 2017.  On that note -- on that beat -- let's bring in some more of the troupe and say "Olé!" for the year 2018.

  

Shifts, splits and a walk off the beaten path

Okay, you've been warned.  Expect no direct routes in this Gemini's forward movement.  Instead, there might be byways, detours, aimless rambles, and an occasional lift-off by hot air balloon (a Gemini device if ever there was one).  Buckle up as we travel the winding path that brought us to my latest painting.

Several years back,  JT was immersed in a physics textbook.  "Hmmm.  This is interesting," he said.  "Um?" said I, not expecting it to be.  "Yes, the Red Shift phenomenon."  Colours!!!  Maybe this IS interesting?!  He explained that "the red shift" has to do with changes in wave frequency -- in sound waves, it's what produces the wonky variation in, say, the sound of an ambulance siren moving away from you.  "And there's a Blue Shift, too."  Fascinated?  Read more here.  But I had all I needed:  "Red Shift, Blue Shift" -- the title for a future painting in which, well, reds would shift to blues and vice versa.

Fast forward now, via hot air balloon, to early 2016 when I was drawn to a breathtaking exhibit at Vancouver's Italian Cultural Centre -- artist Lilian Broca's "Judith Mosaics."  

These astonishing mosaics of glass tile are tremendous -- over six feet high, four feet wide.  As you'll see on her website (there's lots to explore there), they're conceived as if they were huge pages from a sketchbook.  Against the vibrant colour of the central scene, neutral toned tiles have been arranged to suggest the artist's drawing that has not yet been "filled in" -- a work in progress.  Some even recreate along the edge, in tile, the spiral binding of an artist's notebook.

Six months ago, when I received a greeting card with one of the images from a former colleague who works at Il Centro, I fell in love again with the rich varied colours and the imaginative treatment of the preliminary lines on the "sketchbook page."

Now, I don't remember how I made the leap -- but the prospect of a painting called  "Red Shift, Blue Shift" came back to me.  All I needed was a set-up --

 -- and a quick 5" x 8" study

 ...and I was off:

EXCEPT:-- I'd planned to begin with a painted underlayer for the "grout" and immediately (belatedly!) realized this would alter any colour laid on top of it.  Forget that.

Also, I'd started out thinking like a tile maker/supplier.  Tiles would come in small squares and certainly not be curved.  I quickly abandoned that idea and was soon supplying myself with "tiles" that were rectangular, diagonal, rhomboid....  "We can supply all your customer needs."

I was almost a third of the way along when I really began to understand how the shape of the tiles and the line of the grout could contribute to the movement and "readability" of the design.

Although I'd set out to learn from Lilian Broca about her choice and placement of colours, in the end I probably learned more about laying tiles.  Consider this:  The finished painting measures about 14" x 20," and each square inch contains on average 12 tiles.  Each tile had to be painted at least twice to achieve full colour.  That makes 640 brush strokes -- minimum!!!  (But still:  How many tiles would go into each of the Judith panels?)

Here's the grand finale, in all its splits and shifts.  (To see its progression, click here)

Shifts and splits

Were you thinking that the future would be crystal-clear to me after my personal critique with a wise and generous artist/teacher?  Maybe you assumed that with new insights, I'd march forward in a straight line?  Not likely.  Did you forget that I belong to the tribe of Geminis?  (...you never knew?)   Split Personality is our collective middle name.

On the one hand, I'm very excited that I've been encouraged to press on with things that fascinate me -- like my Flash Mob series.  Even if they're far from the mainstream, even if they're "flat" and graphic, rather than painterly, even if no one else responds favourably except me, myself, and in this case, Generous Artist/Teacher. 

I'm also excited as I discover a kindred stream of artists that were recommended to me -- Alex Katz (coincidentally a favourite of my friend A) and Milton Avery.  Along with them, I'll place a lesser known favourite of mine, Fairfield Porter.  And what the heck, for a timely touch, how about David Hockney? 

So:  Fair warning from both sides of my Gemini split.  There will be shifts and turns in the year ahead -- new things in the spirit of what I've been doing, but also things in the category of "stuff I've been wanting to try" or "stuff  I need to get out of my system" or "stuff I could learn from by doing."

For now, as a kind of kick-off, I have the benefit of a recent 5-hour workshop with Artist/Teacher, who offered some new and sometimes surprising ways to tackle figure drawing. 

How about this?  Start with a stick figure.  Seriously???  Yup, the trick is to start with the feet (to push yourself not to run out of space at the bottom) and to include the key anatomical landmarks -- knee, pelvis, elbow, base of neck.

 When everything's in place, flesh it out:

Who's responsible for that idea that artists must be able to draw a straight line?  Well, it's helpful in this exercise -- capturing the shape of the body strictly with straight lines, as another kind of preliminary step in developing a drawing.

It's tempting to consider the following idea as "full of beans" -- but it's surprisingly useful to realize that the human torso can be seen as bean-shaped, and to use this insight as another kind of preliminary layout.

So:  Give the bean a try and then begin developing the figure in terms of simple shapes.

Similarly, there are other "templates" that can be captured and put down as preliminary guides.  Here's a front view, then a back view.

Or, for study purposes, do drawings focussed solely on the torso.  Note how these figures end at the knees and elbows.  (It felt weird doing this!)

There were lots more ideas flowing in this workshop, and I'll conclude with my favourite -- something I've worked with for decades:  the contour drawing.   Look intently at the figure, select a contour, and move your pencil deliberately along that line.  Invariably in my experience, a remarkable likeness can be captured as you notice and record the unique turns and directions of the particular body. 

You can see that the model (an impressive 6'5" Scandinavian, who didn't flag through five hours of almost uninterrupted posing) is looking off into the future, wondering ...."What did she mean by 'shifts and splits'"?

When you're having a bad day

Sometimes small corners of one's life yield lessons that are widely applicable.   For what they're worth, here are some I'll share with you -- from a recent Bad Day at the drawing studio.

Lesson #1:  Don't take yourself too seriously.

 Lesson #2:  There's sure to be some good with the bad.

 Lesson #3:  Lighten up.

 Lesson #4:  Forget your serious objectives and just go out and play!

 Lesson #5:  Celebrate small successes.  Look at this lovely little hand!  (Hands are hard)

--- and look at this perfect little foot.  (Feet are hard)

Lesson #6:  Don't mope.

Lesson #7:  Be philosophical.  There's always another day.  And for god's sake, get there early the next time so that all the good drawing boards are not taken and you're working at a disadvantage from the start.

BOO !

Halloween might be over  by the time you read this, but masks are never out of style for the fabulous "Historical Dance Ensemble" that modelled for me in early October.  Well, they didn't know that;  it was incidental to what they were actually doing in their noon-time performance at The Dance Centre's "Discover Dance" series. 

The Ensemble performs Baroque dances (such as the ones shown here) in historic costumes, accompanied by a trio of musicians, also in authentic costumes and playing period instruments.  As I learned with this dance series last year, it's a challenge to do quick sketching of fast movements -- and in the darkened theatre.  The elaborate costumes, I knew, would add to the challenge.

I'd chosen a seat fairly close to the front and was practically looking over the musicians' shoulders.

From that vantage point,  I spotted a new marvel to behold:-- a fairly large stringed instrument with, wonder of wonders, a beautiful carving of a woman's head at the top of the instrument's neck.  I was -- and still am -- enthralled.

There's always a  Q&A session at the end of these performances, and I asked the musicians to introduce their instruments.  What a surprise -- my first sighting of a viola da gamba!!  Of course, I'd heard baroque music before and therefore heard viola da gambas (also known as "viols"), which I knew to be precursors of my forever favourite instrument, the cello -- but I'd never before seen one.

As the audience dispersed, I went up for a closer look and learned from the trio's leader that the carvings are a tradition -- she showed me their second viol with a tiny bird on top and said that lions' heads are also common. 

Back home on the internet, I found this stunning performance  by a lovely earnest young woman with an exquisitely carved viol.  I can't get these heads out of my head -- and I know it's not the last time I'll sketch (or paint?) them.

Two weeks later, keeping with my plan to do live sketching in alternate weeks, I was back at Basic Inquiry Studio for the first male model I've had there.  Guy models can usually be counted on for lots of bone and muscle (among other things).  This one did remarkable, almost acrobatic, poses -- best shown in the one-minute poses.

Five-minute poses:

 Ten-minute pose:

Thirty-minute pose:

It turned out that he himself is a dancer, which explains his facility and his physique.

As for me, I continue on my genteel way.  Watch this spot as I continue to kick up my heels.

The seasons change

  

 Early this year when my "Flash Mob Series" was just gathering steam, I resolved that when I completed ten paintings in the series, I would seek out an artist/teacher to give me a personal critique.  I didn't plan a timetable but, in the pattern of synchronicities and serendipities that the Mob has generated, I finished the tenth painting in September.

Now it happens that autumn, which I'll loosely define as August to October, has been a key season for me through my whole life.  Moves to new locations, starts of new jobs, major family events -- so many important things have happened to me at this time of year.

When I began this tenth painting with the title "Reset",  I hadn't foreseen that it might just foreshadow a reset in my artistic development.  But let's finish the painting and the series before I explain.

Like some of its predecessors -- "Lean In" and "A Conversation We Need to Have"  -- "Reset" derives its title from a trendy word/phrase that strikes me as rather silly.  The City of Vancouver, for example, last year "reset" its housing strategy.  Faced with the crisis of homelessness and lack of housing affordability, they didn't "retire" the  prevailing housing strategy; they didn't "replace" it; they didn't "revise" it.  They reset it. 

Okay -- on to the painting.  I assembled my figures in a circular motion that might indicate what had gone before, leading to ....whatever would come next.

 Well, one thing that had gone before was my challenge in working on a new and more absorbent paper -- so I spent a great deal of time dealing with missteps and making corrections.  Resetting, you might say.

 One maddening example was the leg and foot of the left-most figure.  It looked right in my original small sketch, made years ago at the swimming pool.  But something was lost when I scaled up and began to paint.

It was too short.  It was too long.  The knee went the wrong way.  The foot went the wrong way.  In the final painting, I think it's at last right.

For the (always sought-after) developmental sequence, see here.

And for the complete "Flash Mob Series" of ten paintings, see here.

Meanwhile -- back at the significance of autumn.  The artist/teacher who I'd set my sights on and approached with some nervousness actually agreed to come to The Yellow House and "take a look" -- and was more than generous and insightful in his observations.   The key takeaway for me (hey, that's a word that calls for a Flash Mob) is to -- press on, in the way I seem inclined to enjoy working.

I'm still processing some of the insights he gave me, and today I came across words of Joanna Field, a psychoanalyst who was one of the early figures in the "journaling" movement.  These  seemed -- serendipitously -- to parallel my personal reset.

"I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know."

Or -- in a light-hearted vein, the spirit of the Flash Mob is dancing into a new phase...not yet fleshed out, but full of excitement.   Happy Halloween.