Newsmakers of the Year

 

Another whirl of the old globe for all of us, and a friendly face or two to recall some close-to-home high times in 2022 – Panda and a 3-inch diameter slice of bamboo (a holiday thrift shop find – not from my back yard), a broken brick from three blocks away, and a new denizen and panda-pal for the Yellow House – a ladybug whose presence recalls her extensive clan.

 

It's a reflective time of year for me and, like Janus, the Roman god of doorways, I take time to look both backward and forward.  Unpack the time-honoured Xmas ornaments and audiotapes (20-30-40 years old) and I'm comfortably off in reveries for a good week or more.

 

One of this week's sentimental journeys was a spin on the Google bicycle that records Streetview with a plan to check out all the places I've ever called home, the actual houses I lived in.  Surprisingly, most of these are still there – including the London, Ontario, rental house where we made our cozy home in 1972-77 before heading west.

 

It's the centre structure.  To its left is the student apartment building, where some kids first adopted and then abandoned the sweetest tabby kitten.  She was a feisty little one with her Plan B, already hanging out in the yard (at spitting distance) from our own two cats.  When the students cleared out, she barged in through our screen door and within days was part of the family.  With a nod to the spy thrillers of the time, we named her "Intrepid – the Cat Who Came in from the Cold" – aka "Treppy." 

 

Another memory of that house seemed to resonate with one of my life drawings in a stack I was sorting.  I would sit on the sofa inside the front window, looking out onto the narrow front porch beneath the overhang of the roof.  Sometimes I'd think of the women who must have lived in that house before me.  Oddly enough, I'd often think of the Irish grandmother I never knew, who came almost alone to a new country (the US) and made her life there. 

 

Young women who dreamed their dreams – and, along another thought train, young women artists who might even have made something of a name for themselves at one time but are forgotten now, like those in the book I'm coincidentally re-reading over the holidays.

 

 

Do you recognize any of these names?  Gwen John, Ida Nettleship, Gwen Salmond, and Edna Clarke Hall.  Before reading the book, I knew only Gwen John, as sister of her well-known brother Augustus.

 

And so – in this sentimental season – my memories, the life drawing, the book I'm reading, all came together in a plan for a painting – a young woman dreaming at a window.

 

It's not a self-portrait although I borrowed my once-brown hair – rather, it's a kind of reverie on…oh, let's say, one of youth's tasks.

 

 

It wasn't painted in the spirit of "What might have been…" or "If only…".  At different times in my life, trusted listeners have advised me that both these phrases are less than helpful.  And in the broad brush, it doesn't apply only to females.

 

Here's the final version – much less than I'd dreamed, but I can always paint over!  "She Was Young Once – and Dreamed" (copyright 2022)

 

Today, New Year's Eve, I grabbed a not-bad weather forecast and headed for a long ramble along Kits Beach where I found lots of dogs and walkers and, happily, no lasting damage from the week's King Tides.

 

On the way home, at my last transfer point, I spotted just the right message for the New Year – or any year.  Painted on building walls that will soon be hidden by the new subway station being built there, these young and old faces and their message seem to have been waiting – just for us.

 

 

 

Festivities and surprises

 

For me, the festive season started over a month ago.  Suddenly, it was as if the logjam broke, and it became possible again for meet-ups once or even twice a week with a friend here, a friend there, who I hadn't seen in however-long-it-was.  Almost every reunion would begin with, "I can't remember the last time we were able to do this."

 

One happy marker that kicked off the late fall get-togethers was the arrival of my friend M, home for a long-awaited weekend to see her Vancouver family – and friends like me, for whom it's been a very long time.  We found a familiar place for coffee and talked almost three hours straight.  As we parted M said, "Oh, I thought you might be interested in this – from an exhibit I saw recently."

 

 

The title didn't entirely make sense to me (more about that in a minute) but when I turned the simple 2-sided card to the reverse ------- OMG!!   I'd found a new hero(ine).  Yet I had never before heard of this B.C. artist.

 

 

"Interested" indeed!   Let's start with the artist's name, which I googled as soon as I reached home:  "How do you pronounce 'Myfanwy'?"   The answer:  "muh-VON-wee – a Welsh name that means 'dear one' or 'lovely little one.'"

 

As you'll read here and here,  Myfanwy was a well-known portrait artist and member of a group of prominent Victoria B.C. artists called "The Limners."  Our own Emily Carr –(talk about belated recognition!) -- had noted Myfanwy's talent as an 8-year-old child and had given her some lessons and encouragement.

 

Our Vancouver Public Library could offer only an exhibit pamphlet from 1978 – twenty pages of about 60 small reproductions of paintings, drawings, collages.

 

Here's a self-portrait:

 

 

And a quite dynamic view of her husband.

 

 

So far, I haven't discovered how she came to paint musicians such as Yehudi Menuhin and Mstislav Rostropovich.  There are several Menuhin portraits on-line; here's one from the exhibit pamphlet:

 

Among subjects of hers are Queen Elizabeth II, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau (his official portrait that hangs in the House of Commons) – and Katharine Hepburn!  But the painting that I loved best of those in the library's 1978 pamphlet is this one:

 

 

And so – I resolved to try to copy it, as a memory of this happy discovery of a "new" artist.  Here's the preliminary layout:

 

And here's an early stage – often these are more engaging than the later ones.   Look carefully and you'll see that I'd already drifted into a mistake I wouldn't catch until a few sessions later – putting five fingers (not counting the thumb) on her left  hand!

 

Here's my final version.  It was so satisfying to spend time with this small reproduction as a way to lock in this new discovery -- brought to me across the waters of the Salish Sea by my friend M.  It's a happy coincidence that Myfanwy's original is titled "Mary."

 

 

As I thought of these happy autumn reunions with so many cherished friends,  I remembered a passage from novelist Lawrence Durrell's series "The Alexandria Quartet."  In that letter-writing era, the character Balthazar writes to a friend:

"…how much better it would be if we could talk… I think it is perhaps the only real lack of which one is conscious in living alone:  the mediating of a friend's thoughts to place beside one's own, just to see if they match!"

 

Starting in neutral

 

All those who learned to drive on an original manual shift vehicle (c. 1960), please raise your hand – hey, not the one that's on the wheel!  I did -- could do it in my sleep -- but today's new-fangled stuff is beyond me.  I still can't figure out how people can lock their car doors by walking 15 feet away, then turning back, and pointing their key in the car's general direction.

 

There are other things I haven't been able to figure out lately, and I've felt pretty out of gear.  Where to go next?  How to get from here to there?  And somehow the idea of "neutral" came to mind – just calm down, let the thoughts stop whirring, and things will unfold.  That led me to memories of a favourite calm-inducing place, a park about 10 blocks away, with a small inland lake.

 

 Along the margins, concerted effort is being made to reclaim what was once marshland.  Almost every time I go there, I'll see someone else relishing the calm, often at this long-fallen log.

 

To enter the spirit, I decided to paint this young woman in these subtly toned surroundings.  At the same time, I'd experiment with a lay-in method that I'd recently seen in an on-line painting demo:-- Begin with an all-over, non-descript mix of paints, and then wipe out the general outline of your subject.

 

Hmm.  That worked pretty well for this straightforward composition.  But I could see that the hardest part, if I planned to stay "neutral," would be to give substance and contrast to the background.   Here's an early stage, as I'd applied the lightest lights and intended to keep lightening the whole.

 

I knew there was an issue with the overall bland tone (my camera likes colour and has made this look more colourful than it actually was).   Well, what to do about it?  Answer:  Finish it as I'd begun and then go on to the next painting!   So here's the final version of "Edge of the Marsh" (copyright 2022).

 

 

As usual, I brought the finished piece upstairs to live with for a while and placed it on a shelf against the pale olive of my living room wall.  As soon as I walked more than three feet away, it "beige-d out" and a message from past teachings hit me.

 

This was not a teaching I received directly but through a great lineage of American artists – some who are doing realist art today and learned from predecessors who had learned from some of the great book and magazine artists of the 20^th century – when print media still meant hands-on art and craft.  That period is called "The Golden Age of Illustration" for good reason.

 

The words I remembered were from Howard Pyle, one of these greats who was a teacher of many others.  Among his favourite subjects:--

 

One of his renowned students was N.C. Wyeth – father of  Andrew.   How I wish I still had my brother's revered boyhood book, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" with N.C.'s memorable illustrations!

 

Pyle's words of wisdom that had popped into my head were the following:--  

"If a painting is worth anything, it will stop you dead from 20 feet across the room."

Well, let's see how he measured up in his own painting "Marooned" -- with a vaguely comparable subject of seated figure in an almost monotone horizontal landscape:--

 

Wow!  There's no doubt this guy knew what he was doing.

 

I liked painting "Edge of the Marsh."  It made for a restful interlude, and I kind of like the outcome, as long as I don't move more than three feet away from it.  But obviously, there are risks to staying calmly in neutral gear.  I'll have to tread carefully as I consider my next move.

 

Hitting a brick wall

 

In making my end-of-season bamboo report, I'd planned a parallel report on Things Brick.  It's not so much that I expect to expand the brick features in my garden beyond 2022's "The Brick Factory."

 

But I wanted to note where the fascination with bricks has taken us, and how something as weighty as bricks can lead to unforeseen flights of fancy.   When I say "us," I mean you – my friends and supporters who have engaged on the subject with me.  You range from the "I've always liked bricks" contingent to the bonafide convert who sends me almost a brick a week found anywhere from Ottawa to the Lower Hudson River – and, of course, my friend Y who can take another bow as the fairy godmother of Budapest Bricks and all that followed.

 

I'd been thinking of you as my Brickade/brigade (certainly not as Brickands/brigands!) – but then, saluting your individuality and high spirits, I settled on "Bricksters." For the purpose of this report, I planned to feature you (or unreasonable facsimiles) with a playful painting.

 

But oh, no, there were Tricksters in the creative works, and after more time than I've ever spent on preliminary studies, I just couldn't get things right.

 

 

I'd hoped for something in the vein of the Beetlemania series, but this had ceased to be fun.  Then I thought, "I need to get back to the splash of 'Chromo-Surrealism,"' the genre I invented inspired by one of my heroes, Giorgio de Chirico.   And here's where it gets eerie. 

 

When I google-searched de Chirico images, I came across late-breaking news – one of his "Ariadne" paintings had just sold at auction for a record price.  Take a look:

 

That central background tower is made of BRICKS!!  Now zoom into the foreground.

 

Does she remind you of anyone you know? – or might have known better if my Summer Camp sculptures had been more successful:-- those Bricksters-that-might-have-been.

 

Even more eerie, almost the very next day, I came across reference to this "Sleeping Woman" from prehistoric Malta!!  

 

All of this scarcely qualifies as a report so I think I should zip through some quick brick highlights.  Here's one:  I went scouting one day in an oldish area of Vancouver and lingered by the walls of this heritage building on Main Street.

 

And there, as luck would have it, I was politely accosted by a long-term renter and antiques collector, who told me he had at least 300 bricks stored in the basement.  DO view his mini-story on YouTube.

 

Then there was my happy discovery of a new named brick (new to me, at least) on the very laneway behind our long-gone old house six blocks away.  Even upside down, its "BAKER" legend was easily read -- apparently an old brick from Vancouver Island!

 

Then just yesterday, I met another authentic brick nerd around the corner, installing a handsome section of pathway from bricks he'd rescued from the old chimney of their 1925 house.  He was happy to point me to the on-line site for Medalta, in the Historic Clay District of Medicine Hat, Alberta.  (Almost reason to move to Medicine Hat, if Alberta weren't so much like Texas)

 

By now, I'd given up on the Brickster painting – after a diversion along The Yellow Brick Road, which I viewed for inspiration.  Oh, how weird – I'm always so out of it that I didn't realize there would be a current association with Elton John!!!!  Give me Dorothy any day.

 

My painted Brickster tribute came to naught except for this:--  "Study:  Up Against a Brick Wall," (copyright 2022).

 

And here is THE eeriest thing about my end-of-season brick experiences.  A few weeks ago, I went to my first live concert in over two years.  As I walked to the downtown theatre, I was surprised to come upon a nearby vacant lot.  (Demolition sites are grist for the mill of brick nerds everywhere!)  By golly, propping up the fence were a couple of old Clayburn bricks:

 

Continuing along the fence, I spotted………OMG!!!  Not only more inaccessible bricks, but BAMBOO ROOTS!   I would know them anywhere.  Bricks and bamboo together?!!!  Bring it on:  Either Dorothy's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" or "The Twilight Zone"  theme song.  You choose.

 

 

 

You asked for this -- or someone did!

 

 

It's Halloween so let's frolic back to an earlier post on having fun with legal terminology.  After those colourful shenanigans, someone (and she knows who she is) asked, "Waiting to see what you do with that other legal term, incorporeal hereditaments." 

 

At first, I declined.  Then, about three weeks ago I spotted a young woman on the bus who looked like a suitable subject – narrow light-coloured eyes, pale skin, head partly shaved and partly brushed with wispy hanks of hair – all set off with a dainty silver filagree necklace.

 

She looked suitably incorporeal – and no wonder, when I realized the necklace was a choker of…….skeletal finger bones!!

 

 

No matter.  I resolved to give her a try.

 

  

Maybe because I was painting over an old canvas and using a new paint brand, but I couldn't make her light enough; she was just too corporeal.  Trying again,  I had no further luck.

 

Hmmm.  Maybe I should do a real close-up – just part of her head and neck, with the necklace.  But that was too creepy, those encircling fingers.  So I gave it one last try, showing off the necklace but not encircling her throat – and here she is, "Incorporeal or Not" (copyright 2022).

 

The day I finished the painting, my daily walk took me to some familiar streets now thick with fallen leaves and crunchy husks and nuts underfoot – later confirmed to be beechnuts.  Very coincidentally, one of these husks revealed a familiar muse from early 2022.

 

A strange coincidence!  It was last Halloween that the wodewose guys helped me kick off the series of Beetle Being paintings.  This year, I discovered a whole previously unknown (to me) phenomenon – the Witches' Dance troupes.   How had I missed that?!?!?  These gals look like a lot of fun, but I think I've done enough "weird" for a while.

 

In any case, as Atmospheric Rivers flow across BC again, it's perhaps best to be as incorporeal as possible.  Here's the view looking out my front window, through the downpour of Niagara Falls.