Consider the possibilities

 

What a start to the new year!  -- a special delivery from friends L and B.  They brought even more vintage bricks than I'd asked for from their house renewal project, which involved dismantling an old chimney.  Pure gold!!  And no doubt as heavy.  L and I simply cheered and applauded while B modestly showed his prowess, carrying all 14 bricks in a sturdy box.  When I shot this photo yesterday, everything was frozen in place and I couldn't even reposition them for a closeup of their new-to-me trademark:  "MAINLAND."  Oh, it's going to be a verrrrry good year!

 

Of course I've been thinking about where my paintings might take me, and I continue to brood on developing more depth, more dimensionality, more facility.  In an email holiday message, along came another "blank slate," as it were – in the photograph of an old friend's beautiful grown-up daughter.  Because I haven't sought permission and, in any case, always refrain from posting identifiable people pictures, I'll share it here in authentic blank slate mode:

 

 

With this, I decided to experiment with some favoured artists' start-up procedures.  I've admired contemporary American artist Lea Colie Wight for years and last year bought her book, even though oil painting is quite different in many respects from acrylics.

 

 

Still, her start-up method was potentially useful, I thought.

 

And so I began "Daughter" with a Wight-style loose lay-in.

 

Eventually I reached the About-As-Good-As-It-Will-Get stage:

 

 

At this point, there was only one thing to do.  Well, actually three things:- Paint it over, turn it upside-down, and begin again.

 

 

This time, I chose again one of my heroes.  You've met him before – contemporary UK artist Hashim Akib.

 

His start-up method is quite different, more linear…

 

 

…and rather resembles that of my enduring hero, Mary Beth McKenzie.  So here's my second beginning for "Daughter":

 

 

This progressed to something of a not-bad finale (particularly after I'd decided to stow the glasses):

 

I can't say that this greatly resembles the real daughter but getting a close likeness hadn't been my goal – rather, I wanted to get back in touch with painting faces which still endlessly fascinate me.

 

I needed some grounding, too, in a chaotic week of being without my laptop (and all its related systems) and meanwhile worrying about extreme low temperatures and potentially frozen water pipes.  What to do?  Keep at it and aim for a couple more Daughter-ish images in the manner of one artist or another.  Paint over.  Turn sideways.  Begin again.

 

This time, I tried to emulate Alex Katz  – still going strong at age 95, with a blockbuster exhibit under way right now at New York's Guggenheim Museum.  Here's Katz's "Black and Brown Blouse":

 

I positioned Daughter in slight profile, aiming for those Katz cheekbones – but her lovely features were just too gently rounded to make it as a Katz.

 

Meanwhile, another friend sent me this link to a recent CBS special asking, "Have you ever heard of this artist Modigliani?"  Why yes, indeed.  While I was confident he'd never painted a rounded face, I looked for a prototype with shortish brown hair, and he came through on that count.  Like Alex Katz, he apparently painted his wife again and again.

 

And here's my very slimmed down "Daughter" spin-off:

 

One thing is for sure.  If these two images found themselves shoulder to shoulder at an art exhibit, they'd have no quarrel about which artist knew what he was doing.  They both do – magnificently, in so many perfect structural details that I couldn't begin to capture in small scale.

 

So where is all this going?  Places we've never been before, I hope.  In that vein, I can't resist sharing the amaryllis buds as they've emerged through all the recent cold dark days -- and my favourite saying for this season, from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:--

 

"Come let us welcome the new year,

Full of things that never have been."

 

 

 

Strange lands, strange lingo

 

Just before the holidays, I stopped at Science World to see what their gift shop offered in the way of kids' stuff.  As I strolled from Point A to Point B, avoiding children who were out to be heard loudly if not seen, I looked up at a giant screen and found that I'd been morphed into………Darth Vader!?!?  Was I a victim of an alien snatch?  Or an Artificial Intelligence scam?  Whatever planet I'd landed on, would I need to learn a new language?

 

And language was very much on my mind.  Through a friend who's a financial advisor, I've been invited over the past months to a series of on-line talks by experts in various fields related to aging and retirement.  Lately,  I'd sat in on a 3-part series to do with estate planning.  The expert was a bright, pretty, young lawyer who is dually qualified to practice law in Canada and in her native Britain. (Is it fair to have all those gifts in one package?)  Just think:  Here's a young woman who has walked in Charles Dickens' footsteps.

 

When I asked if British law students have a go at his novel "Bleak House" (click HERE to see why), she looked mystified.  That's okay because, in answer to another question, she volunteered her "favourite expression in English law – hotchpot, which gives us the hotchpot clause."  

 

Ooooh.  This was pure gold! Without at first even knowing what it meant, I couldn't wait to have as much fun with "hotchpot" as I'd had with those other legal terms, "frolick and detour" and "incorporeal hereditaments."   You can find official explanations here and here.  And if you're keen to learn about the culinary use of hotchpot – or hotchpotch, or hodge podge – try this for "pot" lore and more about the word's 14^th century origins.

  

But for simplicity's sake, here's an example of legal hotchpot that sticks in my mind:  A parent has several children and advances $10K to one of them for a down-payment on a house.  The parent wants to be sure that his children are treated equally in his will – so he adds a "hotchpot clause" that states that any sums like this are to be counted against that child's share of the parental wealth so that, on division, the others are not shortchanged.  Otherwise, the housebuyer might be said to be double-dipping.

 

Got it?  Sort of?  So how was I going to translate this into a painting?  I kicked around all kinds of ideas and all kinds of sayings that might apply.   Scrooge McDuck (Donald's uncle) in his money bin even made a brief appearance – my childhood idea of what a rich man's wealth might look like.

 

 

I wrestled with this for more than a week and finally decided…oh, heck, maybe this is a time to hunker down and do a semi-serious copy of an actual painting.  The idea of a card game came to mind – winners and losers, games of chance, etc.  Looking for a source, I happened on "The Card Game" by Lucas vanLeyden, a 14^th century Flemish painter, and I rolled up my sleeves to begin.

 

Who are these people? – perhaps three aging siblings who are playing the hands they're dealt and looking to get their piece of the pie?  (Note that no pie is evident in the original.)

 

By the way, as word associations go, "Early Flemish painting" always strikes me as boring – until I remember that one of my favourite all-time paintings is this one.  Another painting by the same Pieter Brueghel the Elder is entitled, "100 Dutch Proverbs"  and is said to illustrate just what the title promises.  Some are listed in the link.

 

 

Well, here goes with the hotchpot painting.

 

I knew that guy on the right was going to give me problems.

 

In fact, I should have paid more attention to the guy on the left, but I was bedazzled by his sleeves -- and his hat that would have befitted a Beetle Being.  So, with its many flaws (and many lessons worth learning), here's the final.  Let's call it "No Cheating" (copyright 2023) – and dedicate this post to someone who's a world-class legal mind and pie baker!

 

 

While we're upholding the right way to do things, let's go back to those British law courts for a minute.

 

 

Is it possible that at Science World, I was morphed into one of these barristers – minus the wig, of course?  Umm.  Doesn't have quite the same appeal – and now Darth Vader is walking off in a huff – or maybe Darth has gone to scout the snack bar for his piece of the P-I-E-E-I-P-Pie?  (You really must click on this link!)