If you're been reading between the lines here lately, you might have detected a little wistfulness. That's what's been behind all the wheel-spinning, I guess. Through the dark winter, I've been again reviewing and gleaning "stuff" – including decades of old drawings, paintings and sketchbooks – cheerfully dispensing with some, but unable to part with others. These Steller Jays in sunflowers are one of those, a colour study piece with torn paper from our cabin days that brings back a whole era.
In the process, old aspirations have come to the fore. I've wished I could reclaim my art mindset from the 1980s and 90s – to dream, to work, to do, to learn, and to keep moving forward, whatever the outcome. Other old aspirations have surfaced, too, like getting better at reading French! Of course, the two go together for me, all the French artists, my many beautiful art books in French, and our few but thrilling travels. Since our 1989 trip to France, I've always kept on my studio bulletin board a photo of an exuberant painting by French artist Lydie Arickx.
A little sketchbook from that trip reminded me of a plan I'd once had – to do figure paintings loosely suggesting the verbs in "The House of Etre." If you've studied French, you'll know that "the House" is a mnemonic device for remembering the few but important verbs that form their past tense with the verb "to be" (être) rather than with the verb "to have" (avoir).
Well, why not reclaim this idea?! I decided to start – quite inevitably – with the verb "naître" – to be born. With spring almost in the air these days, I conceived (!!) that as a vision of emerging. I started by painting over an old assignment piece – coincidentally, with a split sunflower motif.
My idea was to show parts of figures which would wrap and grow against a misty background.
The more I fiddled around with this, trying to make something of the fully emerged disc, the more it all began to look quite obstetrical….which was not the point! Then, as I came into the studio one morning, trying not to grit my teeth, my eye caught an old sketchbook cover that I'd salvaged. There, in the mid-1990s at a time of intense introspection, I'd painted a small version of a little sculpture I'd made – of something new emerging – I didn't yet know what. This became my model.
This went along pretty quickly, and I called it a wrap at this point: "House of Etre Series –Naître" (copyright 2023).
It's a funny thing that almost universally, the concept of birth leads to myths and tales about rebirth. And halfway through this painting, I'd realized that I was re-creating something I'd done long ago, back in those days of excited aspiration – two somethings, in fact, from a series I called "Lifeforces." Here's "Sprouting Onion and Shallot" (1991):
And here's one of my enduring favourites, "Coltsfoot" (1991), painted as I imagined its underground growth, pushing up into our spring garden – "galloping coltsfoot" as we named its rampant growth habit.
Yikes! All that was 32 years ago. Meanwhile – what became of Lydie Arickx, who I'd never heard of and never again saw mentioned? These days, she's a white-haired force to be reckoned with. When I took that 1989 photo, she'd just had a major exhibit in Paris. And in 1991, she'd moved to southwestern France, where she began to do huge sculptures.
You don't need to know French to skim this video to see her huge paintings (scroll down on the gallery's website). Or how about this one, showing her exhibit at Cinderella's castle of Chambord? (For a nice Valentine's touch, note her grey-haired beau – and her artist-son).
Oh my gosh! I haven't churned it out as Lydie has, but check that second video at 0.45 minutes – is that ME in the admiring crowd?!?
Getting acquainted with Lydie and registering today for a 2-day art workshop in March have almost "re-birthed" my youthful aspirations. There's sure to be good stuff whirling its way in my direction. What goes around, comes around.
