Games people play

 

 

 

What are these people doing?  They're a little gang I met up with at Summer Camp way back in 2011 (ten years ago!!!) – and they mostly play quiet solo mind games, dreaming the impossible dream…kinda like me.  I've often thought as I'm working on a painting that it's like a challenging game…Is this the right move?  Can I bring this off?  Is too much going on here – or not enough?

 

When it gets into game strategy, there's nothing to match chess – a game I was never very good at although I love the pieces, the more fantastically designed, the better.  A year or so ago, a school friend (notice I didn't say "an OLD school friend") sent me a wonderful photo of her husband and grandson deeply absorbed in a chess match – using the family's classic Staunton pieces, which were also the choice of other serious players I've known.

 

I did a quick sketch from her photo and always wanted to do more with this twosome.

 

Coming across the photo again about a month ago, I decided the time had come.  But seriously:  It would be utter madness for the likes of me to attempt both figures, the chess pieces, and the chessboard in perspective.  How about just The Husband…and the chessboard?  Let's try that with a quick splash of paint.

 

Well….this might work.  At a cross-continental distance and sight-unseen (by me) the grandpa is a pretty handsome dude, suitable for the cornerstone as it were.

 

Then I literally went back to my drawing board to prepare some templates for the six representative pieces that would fill in the meditative space on the right side of the canvas.

 

Here's the preliminary plan with cut-out pieces:

 

And here's the midway point with colours established:

 

As I cleaned up one day, I thought again that some of my best works are the Accidental Abstracts created on the palette.

 

 

Okay, here's the final version – in which I couldn't resist showing the possible directions each piece could move to place The King in checkmate.

 

Because my friend and her husband are one of those grey-haired couples who just keep on being **Too Sweet** together, I've titled the painting, "Dreaming of His Perfect Mate." (copyright 2021)

 

This time, let's invite 20^th century American artist William Faulkner to have the last word.  He was writing about writing but this applies equally to art – and maybe even to chess.

 

"Get it down.  Take chances.  It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good."

Irresistible entanglements

 

 

Big excitement on our street this week as equipment and supplies converge to hook up water lines to the fortress, er, big new triplex under construction down the block.  I saw this wonderful tangle from my front window and had to take a photo.  The foreman was roaming around, and I thought, "If he asks me what I'm doing, I'll say….by golly!  I'll say 'I am an artist and this is downright gorgeous'."  Well…far from challenging me, he took pains to apologize for any inconvenience and said the disruption should last only a day or two.

 

So I went back to being an unrecognized artist in my studio, where I was starting a new painting, placing some customers in a kind of setting in the Zodiac Café.  I planned to work for a more three-dimensional quality than my usual style – putting together over a coffee table these three people who I'd spotted in late 2019 in the lobby of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

 

 

Rather classic, right?  I made some preliminary sketches but rather than the three close-up heads I'd intended, the pencil kept veering to the three figures in their poses.  As I put down my first layer, the blank slate called out, "More!"

 

Okay!  Throwing all caution to the winds, I decided to place some art pieces on the blank wall behind the figures.  And I knew just who to invite to the party – they'd appeared as welcome guests in my holiday season Semi-Abstract Workshop.  First, "The Puppetmaster" –

 

 …then, the all-seeing eye of "Hand/Eye Coordination."

 

Between them, an understated mixed-media hanging, and now I was under way!

 

You might find this hard to believe – I did – but the Universe chimed in with a supporting vote.  I keep a stack of old torn newspaper on my worktable for wiping my brushes.  I pulled a weathered sheet off the top of the stack and underneath it was – incredibly!! – an advertisement from 2019 for an exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology, "Shadows, Strings and Other Things." 

 

My friend Y and I had enjoyed seeing this show in person, and now the MOA has made available the wonders of puppets from all over the world in this virtual exhibit.  (Read the directions in the sidebar or you'll find it to be a dizzying whirlwind):

https://www.shadowstringthings.com/exhibit

 

Well, that affirmation gave me a title for the painting.  Forget my original plan of close-ups and more three-dimensional realism.  Here's "Pulling Strings at the Z Café." (copyright 2021) – in what my friend A would call my "signature saturated colours."

 

Let's get a breath of fresh air and go back to the street scene – which looks more and more like a glorious semi-abstract assemblage.  Leonardo can have the last word:  "Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas."

 

 

 

Coming to the close of a very dark winter

 

I've tried not to whine too much about the long rainy winter and to seize the good parts.  These include, when it's not raining, winter's gloriously vivid sunsets – best visible through the neighbourhood trees if I take my camera out to the middle of the street.

 

And why should I complain when I'm cozily wrapped up in my Zodiac Café series?  If you've lost the thread, my plan is to expand my themes beyond the Zodiacal portraits to still lifes and settings.  Just another wacky idea but it's fun to work in a series and see how one idea bounces off another.

 

I wanted to do another "Beverage of Choice" still life, inspired by the many types of coffee packets and tea containers either tucked away in my cupboards or saved in recent months for just this purpose.  I started playing with a set-up – giving myself a little laugh with the sunbather basking in the teapot.  She's simply holding a place for the lid that was missing in action at the thrift shop where I found a classic Sadler Brown Betty teapot.

 

Then I chose one of the small panels I'd made in my holiday Semi-Abstract Workshop to paint over and use as the base for a study.

 

This one had been a spin-off on the works of the artist Nicolas de Staël.  As I splashed down this checkered tablecloth, I smiled to think what he might do with a bunch of coffee and tea containers.

 

 

 

How close or how far apart should I place these objects, some of which I'd now rearranged (or eliminated)?  And what about the background?  After a few experiments, I kept the suggestion of a figure in the distance.

 

Coincidentally, as I began to develop the colour, I had another rash impulse.  An artist friend who does exquisite linocuts happened to mention Georgio Morandi and a reference she'd spotted on the concept of "the space in between."   I'd run into this early 20^th century Italian artist in my early decades of drawing and knew that he could be pretty obsessive about line-ups of domestic vessels.

 

Should I paint over and start again, with more spaces between my coffee packets? 

 

But no, I rather liked how I was handling the suggestion of BLACK in that line-up on the left.  In most quarters, it's considered poor form (translation:  Big Mistake) to use black "tube colour", and mine was a daring mixture of phthalocyanine blue, quinacridone magenta, and burnt siena.  Say that three times fast and go to the head of the class!

 

That's not to say that I was very happy with the way this was going.  I woke up one morning with de Staël on my mind and resolved to paint the whole thing over in light-coloured blocks.

  

  

But I couldn't bring myself to carry through.  I was at that point of, "If you can't do something nice, don't do anything at all."  I went back to developing the colour and considered it a wrap, "Another Dark Day at the Zodiac Café."  (copyright 2021)

 

Probably the best outcome of this experiment was an addition to my Abstract studies – the new (old!) wood palette I'm breaking in, with its suggestion of the riverscapes in Jasper National Park that so intrigued me.

 

And now that we've had a bit of snow, winter is beginning to fulfill my wishes.  First, a view of the special Galiano Inukshuk in my backyard – all bundled up like Bernie.

 

And then, to show that after all the good fun playing in the snow, an eventual spring melt will follow:  The Inukshuk emerges.

 

(Huge hugs, as always, to L&B Multi-Talented Purveyors of Fine Objects for bringing all the wonderful Galiano rocks.)

 

COMING not SOON enough

 

 

 

A frosty mid-January at VanDusen Garden, and there's Dr. Menzies, my favourite of the celebrated botanists, looking out on the dormant rose garden.  No doubt he's dreaming of that August afternoon when, to indulge some visiting art students, he agreed to hold his pose.

 

Right now:  Could the rain please stop?  And could the days please get longer SOONER?  Well, what choice do we have but to put up with it and maybe try to remember there are charms, if sometimes eerie, to what the French call "l'heure entre chien et loup" – "the hour between dog and wolf."  Dusk.  Twilight.  When it's hard to distinguish what's there and what's not.

 

It was about this time last year when I'd started an all-day Monday art workshop on Granville Island.  Just reaching the bus stop at the end of the day, I was astonished at this woman's pose in the window of a darkening Starbucks.  The bus was rolling up and with my little-used phone camera, I quickly grabbed this shot:

 

The scene came back to me early this year as I began to extend the Zodiac Café series with still lifes, surroundings and interiors.  Of course, the Zodiac Café is a much cozier place than Starbucks, any of time of day, and it exists in a parallel universe where people socially distance only by choice.   I did a quick study, giving it some cedar siding, and an off-the-beaten track setting among shrubbery and trees.

 

I also made some early choices about the windows, not as regimented as the faux-industrial looking ones at the entry to Granville Island.  Of course, the woman's figure was the focus, and I did a quick study of the face, thinking that it might present a challenge.

 

 

 Then I did a  more complete study, ¾ -size with markings I'd be using to scale it up.  Oh, dear – what was I thinking, with all these straight horizontals and verticals?   Well, there was nothing for it but to press onward.

  

 In the quick layout on the full-size canvas, I quite liked the couple in the background.  Sometimes these early stages and even the studies are better than the final outcome (spoiler alert!).

 

 

And now I was under way…

  

 

…and becoming more and more uncertain as I tried to recapture the impact of the original photographed scene.

 

This was not what had struck me at the bus stop – nor was I trying to duplicate the scene.  But the reflections were confusing, and the actual lighting was paradoxical.  That is, it seemed that the inside of the coffee shop was darker than the outside – and with exceptions, it wasn't clear at all what was being reflected.   So….?  What the heck.  I decided to plug in some of the light reflections of the background buildings and call it a day. Here, for better or worse, is "Winter Evening at the Zodiac Café," (copyright 2021)

 

 I signed off on my notes and records and went upstairs, still thinking about the paradoxical reflections.  This brought to mind other nighttime scenes that have enticed artists – successfully!

 

There's VanGogh's familiar "Café Terrace at Night". Check towards the bottom of this link, and you'll see a photo of his café as it still exists.

 

And of course, there's the magnetic "Nighthawks" by 20^th century American artist Edward Hopper.   I gleaned through my art books to check some good reproductions, half wondering if there were any reflections to offer guidance.

 

Then I went to my computer and the morning's email brought one of my art newsletters.  There, by remarkable coincidence, was 2021's version of fame:-- Bernie Sanders among the Nighthawks!! 

 

 Should I go back and plug him into "Winter Evening"?   Oh, I couldn't resist – but this took me an hour to figure out – and meanwhile, somewhere in the depths of my new computer sits an image of Bernie in solitary splendour, with just his chair and his mittens, unencumbered by the white border.

 

Kinda-sorta-maybe

 

 

 

 

If you weren't too overwhelmed by world events, you might have dipped into my final 2020 post and viewed my first experiments in a challenging little workshop I devised for myself.  Inspired -- or let's say, invited -- by the gift of a beautiful book on the 20^th century artist Nicolas de Staël, I set aside about two weeks of the holiday season to study and play in the sometimes rowdy schoolyard of  abstract art. 

 

The second half of my workshop took me to semi-abstract art.  The current definition of "semi" exactly suited my purposes: 

"semi-. a combining form meaning "half" (semiannual), "partially," "somewhat" (semiautomatic; semidetached; semiformal)." 

There's not a precise recipe for semi-abstraction, no hard and fast "one-half tablespoon of super-bubbly yeast," so my title image above qualifies.  It's a kinda-sort-maybe view of my new front steps through the windowscreen on a day when Niagara Falls rained down.

 

My starting point in the second half of the workshop was a de Staël spin-off, emulating his characteristic repeated rectangles.

 

I modelled this on one of his pieces that, with a few more adroit horizontals, resembles an urban landscape.  At this point, I should give a nod to two eminent Canadian artists, particularly acknowledged in Vancouver as two home-town boys made good:  Gordon Smith and Jack Shadbolt.  Take a quick scroll down throught these links, and you'll see many examples of recognizable subjects with a semi-abstract twist.

 

One motivation for my workshop was to revisit the possibilities of abstraction that I'd wrestled with after a visit to Jasper National Park in 2019. 

  

 

 

Photos like this can't begin to capture the power and vastness of those mountains, the great forests, the changing convergence of the river's sands and waters.  I came home from that trip thinking that only abstraction could begin to capture it all.  I wasn't satisfied with what I did in late 2019 -- nor as it turned out in this workshop, despite my earnest efforts.

 

Nope, no good -- and so once more, with feeling, I developed a heavily textured version:

 

Still, not there.  What about this one, "Storm over the Rockies"?

 

 

You caught me, didn't you?  It's another swatch from my palette, showing accidents can sometimes outperform effort.  Well, Jasper is beyond my capabilities, but the palette splash led me to try "Autumn Roadside."

 

With that, I moved on to my preferred theme of human faces and figures.  When something I've done gives me a  hearty laugh, I know I'm on my game, for better or worse.  I *love* this one (also painted over a Jasper art-fail of 2019) -- "Hand/Eye Coordination."

 

Remember:  You need to play "Let's Pretend" along with me and imagine that all of these are wall-sized displays.   There's another fantasy element you've probably seen in cartoons -- the question of whether it matters if an abstract piece is hung upside-down.  Well....sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.  Here's "Squeeze, Spatter, Pour" from the early half of my workshop:

 

When I turned it upside-down, I began to see possibilities for a figure in the background spatters above the textured coil.   Here's the result -- called  "Puppetmaster."

 

In signing off on these reflections into abstract and semi-abstract art, I did a somewhat straight piece called, "I am the mirror - I reflect."

 

So what's this abstraction business all about, anyway?  As the text for my workshop, I dipped into a library edition of "Cubism and Abstract Art" by the eminent 20^th century art historian Alfred H. Barr, Jr. , the founding director of MOMA (NYC's Museum of Modern Art).  He's justifiably credited with having lit the posthumous fame of Van Gogh with a blockbuster 1935 exhibit  -- followed a year later by another blockbuster, the 1936 "Cubism and Abstract Art" exhibit to which this book  is a companion piece.   Wow and double wow.  Check out the links and scroll to "Installation Images" where MOMA makes available photos of the original exhibits, as well as their catalogs -- Barr's incredible publications.

 

Pointing out that awareness of abstraction is by no means new, Barr quotes from Plato's "Philebus."

"Socrates:  What I am saying is not indeed directly obvious.  I must therefore try to make it clear.  I will try to speak of the beauty of shapes, and I do not mean, as most people would think, the shapes of living figures, or their imitations in paintings, but I mean straight lines and curves and the shapes made from them, flat or solid, by the lathe, ruler and square, if you see what I mean.  These are not beautiful for any particular reason or purpose, as other things are, but are always by their very nature beautiful, and give pleasure of their own quite free from the itch of desire; and colors of this kind are beautiful, too, and give a similar pleasure."

Well, that's one way to look at.  But I kinda-sorta-maybe prefer this quote I recently found by the mid-20th century American writer Dorothy Parker:

"Creativity is a wild mind, and a disciplined eye."