A world in two words

A few years ago, my wise friend A alerted me to a favourite quote of hers by the writer Henry James:--    

"Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

How could these words not remind me of a summer romance that stays with me after all these years?  It's just a slight jump from "summer afternoon" to "Sunday afternoon" and to my first introduction as a young teenager to Real Art.  Our family had moved to a suburb of Chicago, and I had the immense good fortune to begin to learn and love at one of North America's great museums, the Art Institute of Chicago.

No wonder my heart beats faster when I see the lions at the gate (back door, actually) of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

But back to the Art Institute and my first and enduring love:-- Georges Seurat's great painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

I might almost have been in this 1963 crowd -- note the bouffant hairstyles and vintage (!) coats.  Except then, as now, I always travelled solo or with a trusted friend or two. 

This painting inevitably brings back the whole world of my high school years in that suburb.  My first boyfriend knew how I loved it and made a special trip in to Chicago to buy a reproduction as a gift for my birthday.  My mother helped me select a frame (such a grown-up thing to be doing!), and it hung in my lavender-blue bedroom from then until decades later when the parental house was sold.

It has struck chords elsewhere, too -- maybe too many elsewheres since it's been endlessly reproduced in whole or in part on everything from fridge magnets to Broadway musicals.

But I couldn't help it.  Once it resurfaced in my life via Henry James' quote, I longed to capture the major female figure in contemporary dress.  Not an original idea -- but irresistibly enticing.  So when a model at my drawing session struck a pose slightly resembling her stance, I started to strategize.

But what to do about that monkey?

Its funny little canine companion gave me a hint, and I set to work on a preliminary study, inspired by two very special little critters of my acquaintance.

My original plan was simply to have the couple and the dogs against a background that would barely suggest La Grande Jatte.  As I began to lay in my painting, though, I saw that their background needed to be beefed up a fair bit, and so I added a few more figures (but not all of them!) and the tree in the distance.

Still, I saw that against the dominant placement of my figures, I'd need to do more.  There was nothing for it but to call in the pointillist brigade and emulate....very slightly...Seurat's own approach.  Everyone has learned about this, right?  Seurat's idea was to reject colour mixing on the palette and to develop colour with adjacent dots that the viewer's eyes would mix optically.

I was glad that I wasn't working on Seurat's scale -- the final version at the Art Institute of  Chicago is ten feet wide.  For that matter, I was glad I wasn't working on the scale of a preliminary cardboard face I'd painted as a warm-up (size 8" x 11").

Those dots took a fair bit of time although they're not nearly as varied in colour as Seurat's.   But the whole exercise was fantastically instructive -- how to get the tan of the tree trunks; how to vary the darkness in the shadows on the grass.  Wow.

So here's the outcome:  "What Are You Doing This Sunday?" (copyright 2019)  It still gives me a mild guffaw (do I enjoy my own sense of humour too much?), but it was *seriously* worth doing.

And as for those two special dogs who inspired me at an early stage:--  I think I overheard them saying, "We're NOT purple -- and with our own perfect summer afternoon drawing to a close and the sun rising again tomorrow, why would we ever want to spend Sunday in the park with George?"

Unfamiliar territory

   

When my childhood friend K and her husband R invited me to their home in Edmonton, Alberta, she spiced the invitation with, "And we'll spend a few days in the Rockies."  I had no idea what would unfold when we set out on the 4-hour drive west to Jasper National Park.  My jaw began to drop even before the first peaks came into view.

I'd given no thought beforehand to artist Lawren Harris's paintings in the Rockies until I saw a reproduction of his "Spirit Island - Maligne Lake" hanging over the fireplace in a teahouse we visited.

And we had just come from Maligne Lake!!! -- still mostly under ice and waaaay too cold for us to walk to the distant point on this shoreline to catch a glimpse of Spirit Island.

Years ago, back in our hiking and camping days,  I experimented with landscape painting.   Inspired originally by the Eastern coastal paintings of American artist/teacher Edward Betts,  I tried to take on West Coast vistas in a somewhat similar vein.   When we left our old house,  I couldn't quite leave behind one of my duds, "Above Furry Creek" -- impressive in its 5' x 5' scale, as illustrated in this quick walk-through by one of our then-resident furry ones.

As we drove in and around Jasper for 2 1/2 days, following the course of the Athabasca River, I became as enchanted with the river bottom as with the almost unbelievable majesty and variety of the surrounding mountains.  

I had the feeling I could have spent days, just sitting in one spot, never running out of subjects to draw or paint.  How was it possible that these almost flat expanses, so monochrome in colour, so lacking in contrasts, could be so compelling?

By the time I came home, with so many visual memories locked in my system, I wanted to work with them in paint.  But how?  There seemed little point in trying for realism when what would best communicate their power, I felt, was near abstraction.  Certainly texture was called for so I got out a bunch of texture-making stuff, as well as some rarely used Iridescent Pearl White paint...

 ....and went to town, or rather to the river bank.

I even got caught up in trying to capture a forest pool that we would pass each morning -- still dark against the shadowed cliffs and evergreens, with the rising sun just catching the tree tops on its far bank and some rocks and weeds in the foreground.

Frankly:  None of this was at all what I had in mind.  In fact, I realized that what was left on my palette at the end of one session was probably more successful than my three sketches.

My grandiose plans for a magnificent landscape series entitled "Terrain" were obviously coming to nought.  But:  I gave myself two more tries.

Just not my thing.  Unless maybe I settled down for several days along the river and drew and drew and painted and painted and -- chewed my cud, like these two elk we were astonished to see chilling out on the sand banks.

A model performance

Once again, I'm trying to get back on a regular schedule of life drawing.   Last week's session was a real treat, with an uncrowded room and an experienced model who moved gracefully and inventively through the usual 3-hour set of 1-, 2-, 5-, 15- and 30 minute poses.

Part of being a good model -- the essential quality really -- is being at ease and professional in the role.

Some of my friends have wondered, as I did before my first life drawing class 30 years ago (ouch!), what it must be like to model in the nude.  For a professional model's perspective, you might check out "Figuratively Speaking," a video made to answer this very question and filmed at the gallery I attend (scroll down halfway in the link).

Anyway, last week's model had it all -- the no-nonsense aplomb of someone who knows what she's doing and actually enjoys doing it…

 …and an ability to devise useful poses that include challenging twists and turns of spine, limbs, neck, face.   (Sometimes, after the initial 1-minute warm-ups, I focus on just one part of the body) 

Another essential quality is being able to hold the pose.  Try this for 30 minutes!

Surprisingly this session, there was more to the model than met the eye!  Sitting on the edge of the platform before the first of the 30-minute poses, she said,  "I'd like to say something before we begin.  I'm also a classical singer, and…"  -- now with a huge, role-breaking smile -- "I've just released my first single.  And you can find me on YouTube!"   The session manager, evidently in the know, said, "The Volvo commercial??"   "No! Not that!" she almost giggled -- and then the final poses began.

Well, I was more than a little intrigued with this lovely young woman.

When I got home, I went straight to YouTube -- and was blown away.  Have a listen and see what you think.

Curious about the Volvo commercial?   I was.  I suppose it helped pay the rent.

And if you really get carried away and track down her Facebook page, you can listen to her dog singing in duet (sort of).

I'd been thinking I should follow up each drawing session with a quick painting based on one of my sketches.  Remember that white cardboard I snared from my neighbours?  Away we go with a first layer:

-- leading to a rather careful study.

 And then a let-loose-and-see-what-happens aria.  Er, finale. (Meanwhile, with apologies to Mozart, I can't get the Volvo commercial out of my head.)

Strange happenings in the park

 

Where did it all begin?  I guess it all started last October when my newly discovered sister-in-law (newly discovered as a real sister-friend) took me on a golden day's trek around her part of almost-rural Massachusetts -- Concord Bridge, Walden Pond, and a favourite place of hers, the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.  Of course, this over-sized head drew me like a magnet.

And then there was my 100 Hands project.

 

-- and my own unfinished "Bird in the Hand" cedar sculpture, about 25 years old and weathering gracefully in the back yard.  (Unfinished because I'd decided early in the game that clay would be an easier medium).

And how about those art student friends of Pontormo's -- and then a giant-sized hand sculpture that I read about in an art newsletter -- maybe one of these.

Picking up the vibes, I decided to let some art students loose in a sculpture garden.

I'd previously enjoyed the process of "carving" a painting out of a dark background so I thought I'd try it again.

I should have remembered that strange things can happen in a park after dark.  So far, there's a wise bird's head shaping up in Massachusetts marble:

  

....a pair of eerie hands...

 ...a funky student haircut...

...and other miscellanies that aren't yet ready to see the light of day.

I plan to keep nurturing this painting:

 -- and maybe next post, I'll be able to announce thumbs up.

Time for a new wardrobe

Seriously:  It's time to put winter away.  My winter doldrums paintings lingered on past the equinox but, just in time for some warm weather, I wrapped them up at the end of April.

Both of these were started in January,  inspired by strong contrasts in colours against the (psychological?) surroundings of winter darkness.  And in the tiny quick studies I made, they looked promising.

The idea for the first one hit me one day as I stepped into the commuter train.  Everyone was wearing black and almost-black garments -- a wall of blackness, with the exception of the female in the foreground with knock-out blue coat and red scarf, along with her magenta hair, and the guy with the black-white plaid scarf.  When I came to plan the painting, I added some more colour with the female on the right, another commuter I'd sketched on another day.  My crowd scene is called inevitably "Rush Hour."

The second originated with another strong contrast.  Looking into a coffee shop window near a bus stop, I was struck by  the warm golden wood table contrasting with the young woman's all-black garments and hair.  It also amused me that with all the hype about offices (and coffee shop offices!) becoming "paperless" she was still dealing with a lot of paper.  And so emerged "The Not Quite Paperless Office."

I'm not crazy about either of these, but they presented some learning opportunities -- that overworked phrase!  (Could we somehow blend Learning Opportunities with LOL !?)  And despite the winter of my discontent that I'm leaving behind, they at least confirm my continued interest in working with faces and figures.

Now let's head for the garden!