Where do I wannabe?

Torrential rain again, raging in against the screen in my front window.  "But at least it's not snow," we Vancouverites say to each other, as we huddle under umbrellas at bus stops and storefronts.  Would I rather be somewhere else?  Noooooo.  But the thought balloons react spontaneously.

In fact, I *do* want to be right here, doing my own thing -- only constantly doing better.  That's the goal.  One plan, presented by those spontaneous thought balloons, is to return to a practice that proved useful in the on-line course I did in 2018:-- Choose my own subject and emulate the style of an artist I admire.  And so, every few paintings, I'm going to add to my "Wannabe Series".

One of the artists I discovered for myself  in the 2018 course was Ferdinand Hodler.  My Swiss-born friend "Y" tells me, "Hodler's a bit of a joke in Switzerland," but I couldn't pin her down to a reason.  She replied, "Oh, he's just so..." and then shrugged.

No matter.  I really, really like him for his people paintings with the clearly stated outlines and simple background, such as this self-portrait:

In the on-line  course, I modelled Hodler's style for a take-off on 20^th-century photographer Richard Avedon.

And with Hodler on my mind as the first in the Wannabe Series, I came across a publicity photo of the perfect subject -- Otto Tausk, the music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

The painted outcome?

I have a theory that if I keep working, doing my own thing, studying artists I admire, the skies will begin to clear.  There might be snow on the ground, it might be late in the day, but there will be mountains just visible in the distance, and I'll know I'm headed in the right direction.

Direct to you from Lincoln Centre

Yes!  I was there -- New York City's Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts.  It was a year and a half ago now, but so unforgettable.  I took a gazillion photos that I'll probably never get into albums to share because when I view them, I get lost in a wonderful reverie of memories. 

When I sought out this photo, I found plenty of "denizens" like these loungers on the 14-acre grounds of Lincoln Centre -- just waiting to be immortalized in one of my paintings?

But...it isn't this Lincoln Centre that led to today's post.  It's this one:--

Hmmmm.  What  IS this?  Let's take a peek inside.

Okay.  It's a well-travelled book, at some time discarded from the Lincoln, Maine, Public Library -- and then wending its way through several second-hand stores until it came into the hands of my niece's mother's cousin in Massachusetts.  She grabbed it with a bunch of others, intending it for the free book exchange in my niece's little town and passed it on to niece's mother -- my lovely simpatico "new" sister-in-law, discovered on that same memorable trip.  Sister-in-law promptly snagged it, read it, and decided it was meant for me.  I opened my mailbox one day to find:--

Now, it happens that I'd long ago seen a book of  paintings by Raphael Soyer, an American artist who's little known today.  They hadn't then appealed to me, but his self-portrait on this cover enthralled me, as did the writings in his diary.  It only made sense, then, to give it a shot -- to try to emulate this marvellous painting.  And so I set to work:

Such an instructive process -- looking every day at the shapes, the tones, the edges, the brushstrokes.  I don't work in oils, as Soyer did, but I still learned a ton.  The outcome, though far from an exact copy, thrills me -- because I can look at it, propped against a shelf in my living room, and be continually challenged:  How did he do it?

My version, up close:

His diary and the further reading I've done about his colleagues -- so many of them known to me -- have made me very fond of this man, who wrote: 

 "From all that I have seen, I am more than ever convinced that art must communicate, and it must represent, describe and express people, their lives and times."

I realized, too, that on my unforgettable trip, I must have seen Soyer at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Back to my photo collection.  YES!

Huge sigh!  -- I saw so much fantastic art.  Now let's come full circle with New York's Lincoln Centre.  In planning my trip, I knew that I'd be watching for the famous tile art in NYC's subway stations -- a commonplace, I suppose, to New Yorkers but a revelation to me when I first saw the paintings of  Daniel E. Greene.  He was a handsome young artist/teacher when I met him 40 years ago in the pages of the now-defunct magazine "American Artist."  You *have* to see what he did with people and tile art in his Subway Paintings.

This has been a circuitous trip.  Now, as we hop back on board, you might feel inclined to ask, "What's our next stop?"