Blast from the past

 

 

When I harvested my two volunteer acorn squash, they nudged a distant memory.

 

The very next week, my local grocery store offered surprisingly cheap bags of stunning seasonal gourds, and the memory came flooding back.

 

Every autumn in the years when by necessity I was focused on still lifes, I used to produce a cucurbit painting.  "A what painting?"  Well….cucurbits are members of the botanical family Cucurbitaceae which includes lots of edible vine-growers like gourds, pumpkins, squash, and melons.  When I first discovered the botanical name, I also learned that a cucurbit is an essential part of old-time distilling equipment – it's otherwise known as an "alembic."  (Think medieval alchemists).

 

 

Well, these gourds were downright gorgeous, but hadn't I exhausted the possibilities by the time I posted this 2011 retrospective?  Just scroll quickly down through the images (all painted at our old house), and you'll see what I mean.  Still…it was so tempting.

 

SO tempting that I actually woke up one morning with a plan:-- I'd do a Cucurbit Immersive!!  You must have seen ads or articles about the new "Immersive" phenomenon:--   Oversized images of a famous painter's works are projected onto the walls of a huge room, and people pay a hefty price to walk around immersed in, for example, VanGogh's "Starry Night"…selfies in hand.  My neighbours' extended family had a blast doing just this, but even on a free ticket, I'd get vertigo from those bright images against the dark of ceiling and floor.

 

 

 

 NOT if I were in charge, however…and immersed only in the idea, not the actual setting.

 

And so I began:

  

 

As the perspective developed, the receding left wall intersecting in the distance began to remind me of something else.

  

 

I know!!  My 2016 painting, "The Coffee Exchange," modeled on Degas' "The Cotton Exchange."

 

 

It was tricky to know just how much to build up the colours on the figures and in the celebrated (!) background painting, but that dark ceiling was a stabilizing constant.

 

And here's the grand finale:  "Cucurbit Immersive" (copyright 2021)

 

Was this weird and wonderful?  Wild and wacky?  Hilarious?   (If I finish a session laughing out loud, I know I'm on my game.)  All in all, not a bad outcome for an untried recipe.

 

At season’s end – the verdict

 

  

Since April of this year, I've been working on my "Jury is Out" series.  As the garden fades and the leaves turn colour, it's time to wind up this project and see what it's meant.  My goal was to try to loosen and extend my own style by emulating the styles of some of the artists I admire.

 

It should have been totally fun – and it had its moments.  But sometimes the planning stage was filled with roadblocks, and my sketchbook shows evidence of false starts and scrawled exasperations.  Now…I look off into space and consider the verdict.

 

A few times, working on my 24" x 18" canvas, I've wondered if paradoxically it would be easier to work on a very large scale – as does one of my heroes Alex Katz.

 

What do you think?

 

At other times, I've noted to myself that many of my subject artists work in oil, rather than my chosen medium, acrylic – and they handle differently with different results.

 

In one of my exasperated moments, when I painted out and started over, I had to ask myself if I've improved at all over the past few years.  A case of "the hurrier I go, the behinder I get"? (Read here to learn that this wisdom did not originate with Lewis Carroll or Alice or the White Rabbit – or anyone else you might name).

 

So what am I going to do next?  Some of my "Jury" experiments I've been satisfied with, but some are kinda blah in the long run.  (Okay – go ahead and say it:  At age 70-plus, there's not necessarily such a long run ahead).

 

These musings led me to think about the aspects of art that have always delighted me. Surely I'm better off just pressing ahead in my own way, rather than trying to develop skills in areas – like realistic portraiture – that aren't my thing. 

 

So here's a  quick recap of old and enduring loves, back to high school days; things that I still find nourishing.  Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon…"  Those many and varied figures, each so satisfying, perfectly ordered; somehow the whole both compelling and peaceful.

 

Tiffany lampshades (thank you, friends A and J for guiding me to the phenomenal collection of the New York Historical Society).  The panes of gorgeous rich colours, firmly outlined – which gave me a taste for pattern, too, and a susceptibility to things like Persian tiles and Roman mosaics.

 

Rouault's "The Old King" I discovered Rouault at university and splurged on a poster for my dorm room.  Can't beat those intense and strongly defined colours -- and the expressive pose of the figure.

 

In recent years I've taken note of the weirdness and wit of the Surrealists, like Georges de Chirico....

 

… and the vividly defined colours  of Ferdinand Hodler.

 

And oh, so many more.  When I think of my paintings of the past 4-5 years, perhaps the one I still like best is "Botanical Artist" – combining as it does those long-held preferences for the figure, for pattern, for a bit of whimsy, and for carefully delineated saturated colour.   

 

 

Moving ahead, I want to embrace the things that work for me and that give me satisfaction – and fun – in the creation.

 

As I look around the garden at the hints of renewal that autumn prepares for spring, I'll let Georgia O'Keeffe deliver the verdict.

 

"Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing.  Making your unknown known is the important thing."