Irresistible entanglements

 

 

Big excitement on our street this week as equipment and supplies converge to hook up water lines to the fortress, er, big new triplex under construction down the block.  I saw this wonderful tangle from my front window and had to take a photo.  The foreman was roaming around, and I thought, "If he asks me what I'm doing, I'll say….by golly!  I'll say 'I am an artist and this is downright gorgeous'."  Well…far from challenging me, he took pains to apologize for any inconvenience and said the disruption should last only a day or two.

 

So I went back to being an unrecognized artist in my studio, where I was starting a new painting, placing some customers in a kind of setting in the Zodiac Café.  I planned to work for a more three-dimensional quality than my usual style – putting together over a coffee table these three people who I'd spotted in late 2019 in the lobby of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

 

 

Rather classic, right?  I made some preliminary sketches but rather than the three close-up heads I'd intended, the pencil kept veering to the three figures in their poses.  As I put down my first layer, the blank slate called out, "More!"

 

Okay!  Throwing all caution to the winds, I decided to place some art pieces on the blank wall behind the figures.  And I knew just who to invite to the party – they'd appeared as welcome guests in my holiday season Semi-Abstract Workshop.  First, "The Puppetmaster" –

 

 …then, the all-seeing eye of "Hand/Eye Coordination."

 

Between them, an understated mixed-media hanging, and now I was under way!

 

You might find this hard to believe – I did – but the Universe chimed in with a supporting vote.  I keep a stack of old torn newspaper on my worktable for wiping my brushes.  I pulled a weathered sheet off the top of the stack and underneath it was – incredibly!! – an advertisement from 2019 for an exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology, "Shadows, Strings and Other Things." 

 

My friend Y and I had enjoyed seeing this show in person, and now the MOA has made available the wonders of puppets from all over the world in this virtual exhibit.  (Read the directions in the sidebar or you'll find it to be a dizzying whirlwind):

https://www.shadowstringthings.com/exhibit

 

Well, that affirmation gave me a title for the painting.  Forget my original plan of close-ups and more three-dimensional realism.  Here's "Pulling Strings at the Z Café." (copyright 2021) – in what my friend A would call my "signature saturated colours."

 

Let's get a breath of fresh air and go back to the street scene – which looks more and more like a glorious semi-abstract assemblage.  Leonardo can have the last word:  "Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas."

 

 

 

Coming to the close of a very dark winter

 

I've tried not to whine too much about the long rainy winter and to seize the good parts.  These include, when it's not raining, winter's gloriously vivid sunsets – best visible through the neighbourhood trees if I take my camera out to the middle of the street.

 

And why should I complain when I'm cozily wrapped up in my Zodiac Café series?  If you've lost the thread, my plan is to expand my themes beyond the Zodiacal portraits to still lifes and settings.  Just another wacky idea but it's fun to work in a series and see how one idea bounces off another.

 

I wanted to do another "Beverage of Choice" still life, inspired by the many types of coffee packets and tea containers either tucked away in my cupboards or saved in recent months for just this purpose.  I started playing with a set-up – giving myself a little laugh with the sunbather basking in the teapot.  She's simply holding a place for the lid that was missing in action at the thrift shop where I found a classic Sadler Brown Betty teapot.

 

Then I chose one of the small panels I'd made in my holiday Semi-Abstract Workshop to paint over and use as the base for a study.

 

This one had been a spin-off on the works of the artist Nicolas de Staël.  As I splashed down this checkered tablecloth, I smiled to think what he might do with a bunch of coffee and tea containers.

 

 

 

How close or how far apart should I place these objects, some of which I'd now rearranged (or eliminated)?  And what about the background?  After a few experiments, I kept the suggestion of a figure in the distance.

 

Coincidentally, as I began to develop the colour, I had another rash impulse.  An artist friend who does exquisite linocuts happened to mention Georgio Morandi and a reference she'd spotted on the concept of "the space in between."   I'd run into this early 20^th century Italian artist in my early decades of drawing and knew that he could be pretty obsessive about line-ups of domestic vessels.

 

Should I paint over and start again, with more spaces between my coffee packets? 

 

But no, I rather liked how I was handling the suggestion of BLACK in that line-up on the left.  In most quarters, it's considered poor form (translation:  Big Mistake) to use black "tube colour", and mine was a daring mixture of phthalocyanine blue, quinacridone magenta, and burnt siena.  Say that three times fast and go to the head of the class!

 

That's not to say that I was very happy with the way this was going.  I woke up one morning with de Staël on my mind and resolved to paint the whole thing over in light-coloured blocks.

  

  

But I couldn't bring myself to carry through.  I was at that point of, "If you can't do something nice, don't do anything at all."  I went back to developing the colour and considered it a wrap, "Another Dark Day at the Zodiac Café."  (copyright 2021)

 

Probably the best outcome of this experiment was an addition to my Abstract studies – the new (old!) wood palette I'm breaking in, with its suggestion of the riverscapes in Jasper National Park that so intrigued me.

 

And now that we've had a bit of snow, winter is beginning to fulfill my wishes.  First, a view of the special Galiano Inukshuk in my backyard – all bundled up like Bernie.

 

And then, to show that after all the good fun playing in the snow, an eventual spring melt will follow:  The Inukshuk emerges.

 

(Huge hugs, as always, to L&B Multi-Talented Purveyors of Fine Objects for bringing all the wonderful Galiano rocks.)