Nothing old hat about these centuries-old traditions

 

 

These witchy gals keep showing up in my searches for vintage photos – sans identification.  Well, what would one expect?  And who would want to learn that one of them was your grandmother?

 

Even in their day, they were youngsters in the witchly family tree.  The first known written manual on How To Be A Witch dates to 1584, but the practice evidently goes back to the Stone Age in different cultures.

 

This group of pointy-hatted Victorians would be right at home having tea in the garden.  Oops!! That's a Starbuck's cup, and someone who is decidedly eerie has already snagged the last table.

 

 

Coincidentally with this season when costumes rule, I've been thinking about my next series – after my tronie-induced art fail recorded last time.  Looking at old lists I'd made of possible "Series and Singulars," as I call them, I came across a recurring enticement – Commedia dell'Arte.   Like the witches' grimoire, there are various recorded fragments of Commedia performances going back to the 1500s.

 

This ample compendium from the 1960s collected working scripts for no fewer than 50 plotlines.

 

Thanks to traveling Italian players, the Commedia's stock characters in stock situations will show up throughout the history of European theatre -- in Shakespeare, in Moliere, and even in the lower-brow Punch and Judy puppet shows.

 

Well!  Before my book request came through from the Vancouver Public Library, I'd remembered my early infatuation with the Commedia characters.  When we moved in 2012, I'd tried weeding out old paintings but hadn't been able to give up this brief series from 1988.  (I look at some of my early paintings and wonder if I wasn't better then than now).

 

Here's my Harlequin (Arlecchino in the Italian), whose deep purple-violet garments seem to have become even darker over time – while the surface of the glued collage elements has made it almost impossible to get a proper glare-free shot.  It's just as well that my original plan, to place our Siamese cat in his arms, didn't pan out. 

 

 

Next up:  "The White Clown," modeled on the Commedia's Pierrot.

 

I must offer a tip of someone's hat (pointy or otherwise) to Watteau, from whom I borrowed the bow on the shoe.

 

 

I was in a very experimental phase then.  The White Clown peeks from beneath that drapery because the panel I was painting on had a big corner chip that I had to cover up.  And the final piece in the series is perhaps the most successful – except for my timid treatment of the flesh and faces.

 

 

Here, Columbina (left) and Arlecchina share a dramatic element of their dresses with the single piece of old lace that unites them.

 

 

Well, one thing leads to another when your thoughts are leaping around.

 

 As a result, I've decided to revisit the Commedia characters and costumes.  After all, if the subject is good enough for Picasso, it's good enough for me.  No way!!!  I've just gone looking for a link to Picasso's harlequins and found a link to "Picasso Clown Fish."   A pricey little number, too.

 

 

So – gather your theatre attire…or popcorn?...and get ready for more behind-the-scene glimpses of a zany collection of characters.  But first, they have to audition!

 

What next?

 

 

When I first saw this face as a poster in a long-ago co-worker's office, I thought it was a cartoon joke.  But no.  It's a Rembrandt self-portrait, in popular form.  Not only did Rembrandt make over 80 surviving self-portraits through his lifetime, but he had an unsuspected sense of humour, too.

 

This one is in the tradition of Golden Age Dutch tronies.  The term applies not only to faces that are exaggerations or caricatures, but also to "types"  -- Vermeer's well-known "Girl With A Pearl Earring" is considered a tronie, as the type of an innocent young woman.  And how about this real-life example – the "type" of a Canadian political figure?

 

 

Confidential to ardent investigators:  If you want to pursue the weird aspect of tronies, just skim down this page for the heads created by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, an 18th-century German-Austrian sculptor.

 

Where is all this leading?  Returning from summer camp, with fewer than 11 hours of daylight now, I'm eager to return to my own favourite themes – people's figures and faces.  I remember how much fun it was to frolic and detour!

 

I decided it was time to start working on a series I've had in mind that would kick off with an image of the sun.

 

 

Just at this time, it happened that via my friend L and the circles she moves in, I went with her on a tour of artists' studios in Gibsons and Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast.  What an amazing trip!  Probably my favourite of the artists we met was this architect-turned-painter -- click here on "Meet the Artist" and you'll see him in action – creating the random slicks of paper that in themselves are gorgeous.

 

So – on a much smaller scale and with different materials, I headed for the sun as I emulated his intuitive approach.  Here, on my basement floor, acrylic paints are drying on paper placed on a dollar-store aluminum tray.

 

Already, this is not at all in the spirit of the wall-length paintings we saw in Tyrel's studio.  The circle from the aluminum tray has already suggested the head – and his method makes no assumptions, gives no directions, just lets things flow as they will.  Then he cuts and pastes, also without any goal in mind. AND he said nothing about the possibility of his dried paper sticking to its base….as mine did.

 

 

After cutting my random strips of paper, I glued them together in a Sun God motif.

 

Hmmm.  This is nothing like the creations I sought to emulate.  What would my admired artist have done with my strips of paper, assuming they were the large size he works with?  Something like these?

 

 

What do you think?

 

Me, too.  In fact, as I look at a sketchbook cover I collaged about 40 years ago in my Edward Betts phase, I think my work was more in touch with his then.

 

So where to go from here?  I'm not going to re-do the Sun face; I'm not going to try another Sunshine Coast emulation.  Where will I head next?

 

Only the tronie knows…