"Time must have a stop"

 

 

I'm not the first to borrow Shakespeare for my own mundane purposes.  You can check out the source here but try not to get drawn into all the warfare violence.  My issue is simple  -- not enough time.  There's not even a hint when I look at my wrist – my sentimental old watch keeps slipping out of sight.  My fitness tracker goes dark – although it wakes up with two taps.  And the braided band is there for I.D. purposes.

 

No time! – even though I'm moving along with my game plan:-- Pause/paws to reconsider where and how to proceed with the East Side Storeys series, and then – back to the drawing board.

 

The next house in my series was intended to feature "step sitters," as I called them in my photo files. It took some sketching and playing around to decide which house might work best.  With the choice made, I reviewed my file of sitting poses:

 

Then I laid in the base green colour.

 

I was putting in a good couple of hours every morning, but – it takes a long time to build a house!  And a lot of weird stuff was happening around me in April.  I don't want to pick up T.S. Eliot's April vibe – my stuff was not "cruel," just weird, or unexpected.  Consider this:-- my medical referral to a cosmetic dermatology clinic (who, ME?).  Located near the Harbour's seaplane base, the clinic made an adventurous destination for me -- but I couldn't help thinking "when worlds collide." Luckily, my results were benign (the staff were medical dermatologists, as well) – but, alas, there was no free ride on a seaplane.

 

 

Then there were the sudden new demands on my schedule, as my garden shot up all at once and the first semester of my Beginner Italian classes began.  In March, it had seemed a good omen when I found this used book for a mere $5.00 – but I hadn't factored in the required hours for either gardens or Italian, as pleasant as those hours would be.

'

And now, the delightful surprises in my own garden.  For a sunny place on my porch, there's a gift just hand-delivered from friends who are garden experts.  They've nurtured its "mother plant" and shared its offspring with me, and it's already budding. 

 

It's prime time now for one of my favourite B.C. wildflowers – Youth-on-Age – vigorously doing its thing, which is to be fruitful and multiply.

 

I thought this year's super-cold weather had destroyed the Solomon's Seal originally given to me by friend G, but it's come up more widespread and vibrant than ever.

 

All of this is wonderful – too wonderful to get lost in stress and overload.  Taking a cue from the Wisdom Department (Hello. Solomon), I decided this very morning not to be frazzled about my usual month-end painting deadline – but to proceed with measured pace and take time to stop, breathe, observe, enjoy if possible.  And then get on with it.

 

 

Paws to reflect

 

 

After my labour-intensive building project with the previous painting in the "East Side Storeys" series, my frazzled mind again needed to hit "Pause" and figure out what I thought I was doing.  And along came just the paws I needed.

 

Part of my frazzlement has to do with upheaval in the neighbourhood, including the impending loss of my comfortable next-door neighbours -- and the loss, already, of their aged cat Linus.  That's been hard for me as Linus has been my antisocial garden companion (is that possible?) for 12 years – and of course, harder for them as it's followed on the loss of their adored dog, Bugsy the Pugsy.

 

One of this neighbour pair came over one day to pick up another dog of theirs I'd been dogsitting. (Not a story anyone wants to replay).  He noticed all my paintings stacked around the living room and declared them to be "beautiful." Thanks!  I'll take encouragement wherever I can get it.  The next day, he came back to ask if I'd consider doing portraits of the cat, the dog, maybe the cat's long-gone sister.

 

Uh-oh.  There's a pause and there are paws, and there's no guaranteed applause.  I couldn't just say, "No."  Instead, I suggested I'd do a trial run from one of my own photos, and we'd see if it landed in the realm of possibility.  Here's my original photo – taken in March, three years ago.

 

 

 

Here we go again, dealing with lines and angles along the back fence on the laneway – and here's the first outline of Linus.

 

 

The view made his posture tricky, and I hadn't even reached his face.  From my early 1980s life drawing classes, I remember a classmate asking my revered teacher if it was "harder or easier to do animals rather than humans."   The remembered answer:  "It is the same thing – you must consider gesture, anatomy, mood.  You must pin down what you really want to do."  And that brought me to this stage.

 

On to the forsythia – and it might be said this painting is more about spring's harbinger shrub than about Linus.  Quite coincidentally, a surprise awaited me.  I'd gone to the online Oxford English Dictionary to double-check pronunciation – another neighbour puts a "scythe" in the middle while I've always heard and said "sith."  And there I found:--

 

Oh, yep.  I know this guy – John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge Shecut, my many-times-great- grandfather.  Scroll past the letter to Thomas Jefferson and you can read Shecut's full story.  Some have even called him "eccentric," and what better ancestor to have?

 

 

Meanwhile, back to the doings on my Vancouver laneway and the final version of "Linus on Guard" (copyright 2025).  My neighbour thought the face was a pretty good likeness and accepted it with thanks.  He's thinking over another photo to send my way.

 

 

And trying to regain focus, I roam the neighbourhood, savouring forsythia and all kinds of spring blooms that have burst open in the suddenly sunny weather.  There are more paws in evidence, too.

 

 

Tetrachromacy makes it all come clear

 

 

When I first saw these jumbled threads of a worn-out orange construction fence, I actually thought they were a new species of flowering pink vine.  Well, there are some with better eyesight whose gifts were ultimately helpful as I approached #3 in my series of  "East Side Storeys."  Here goes.

 

I love this beautiful house that I frequently pass on my neighbourhood walks.  The residents hang occasional flags and often display giant seasonal balloons – snowmen, jack-o-lanterns, what have you.

 

In my sketch notes, I've called it "House with cut-out porch."  It's the shape of the archways on front and side that are so delightful.

 

 

I decided that this time I'd aim for a little more spontaneity and avoid a meticulous preliminary grid.  As I began my layout with chalk, I saw it would be a trick to capture the cut-out on the side of the porch – and at the same time, the cooperative young model from a historic mail-order house that goes back almost a century before on-line ordering. 

 

 

Well:  Press on regardless.  As I began to apply colour, darks first, I saw that my invented vantage point was making for troubling perspective.

 

 

What's that handy self-critique that hits me about three hours into a painting? "What was I thinking?"  Because by this stage, all the lines, all the angles, all the overlaps and intersections had already doubled the time I usually spend to get to this point in a painting.  And after many  more hours, they were still not right!

 

 

If I'd planned more carefully at the outset,… Is it even worth completing that sentence?  I was where I was, and I decided to just keep going.  For one thing -- to review an early choice -- I'd realized there was a meaningless space between the side cut-out and the small window so I'd filled it with a hummingbird feeder.

 

That's it – Hummers to the rescue.!! After all, we know that they don't see the world like this:--

 

No, their vision has the special quality of tetrachromacy.   Some humans have this trait, too, but hummingbirds can also see colour on the UV spectrum.   So surely their super-vision will put aright any of this painting's flaws.  They could care less about perspective – and knowing that they see in their own perfect way, I've titled the painting "What the Hummingbirds Saw" (copyright 2025 – East Side Storeys Series).

 

 

During the weeks I was grinding away on this, I caught a Zoom lecture by phenomenal wildlife photographer Liron Gertsman.  It's worth flipping through his gallery, and if you're really intrigued by birds and photography, you could view one of his videos like this one  – "The Best Photo of My Career – A Bird and a  Solar Eclipse."

 

Having seen how he photographs rapid wing movement, I was tempted to place an oversized hummer right before the front steps.  But that would be a bit much, wouldn't it?

 

Spring is in the air

 

 

It's been the wettest autumn for us, the coldest January-February, but yes, spring is on its way.  In celebration, I'm featuring my newest fascination – air plants (Tillandsia) – thanks to a holiday gift from my friend L.  For verification that spring is at hand, my windowsill plants are bursting towards the sun –

 

And the largest of the succulents is positively crying, "LET ME OUT OF HERE!"

 

 

It's still raining a lot but when, occasionally, the sky clears at midday, the throngs pour into the street for dancing and acrobatics.

 

 

My wool cap is sick of being a winter cap and started playing funny games with my groceries….flinging itself around my entryway and hiding a bag of mini-potatoes for almost two days.

 

I'm breathing deeply and trying to take a fresh look at things, renewing my original plan to develop a series of "East Side Storeys."  Next up on my list was one of these two houses, about five blocks from where I live.

 

The bay window and the colour combination of the house on the right particularly enchant me.

 

So:  Away we go, with a couple of splashy little studies to play with a composition and then an underlayer in orange, the colour complement of the house's predominant blue.

 

 

Here's a very early planning stage, after I've corralled those sunshine street dancers.

 

 

 

At this point, I'd put in about a third of the many hours I would come to use – finding it a bit exhausting and confusing but well past the point of no return.

 

 

 

I usually build my tones and variations on 3-4 tube colours – this is called a "limited palette."  But I must have used a good 12, plus Payne's Grey, an almost-black….and an almost no-no.  Crazy – and so the logical title was, "Spring Fever" (East Side Storeys series, copyright 2025).

 

Do you know an architect or contractor who would love to know about this series?  Don't tell them…….!  There are just too many errors and irregularities.  (Well, there were no fewer than three recorded earthquakes during the weeks this painting was under way).  But it IS spring – officially next week.  Why not suggest that they forget their building projects and take a walk under the cherry blossoms?

 

 

 

A pause for -- applause?

 

 

Let's consider an upside-down calendar as a symbol for a necessary pause.  And if that sensible action doesn't provoke applause….how about a small plaudit? Does that sound like some kind of tiny creature burrowing out of the snow?  Well, it's something else, but maybe not yet deserved.

 

My decision to pause was at least sensible, if not actually praiseworthy.   My previous painting showed an attempt to combine my "East Side Storeys" series with development work on portraiture. But where would this take me?  A series of portraits, close up against windows, door frames, porch chairs?  I decided to pause for a couple of weeks and reconnect with portraiture without porches.  And for that, I looked to an enduring hero, Hashim Akib. 

 

 

A photo received in my in-box gave me just the subject matter:--  My high school friend B with a young neighbour of hers, whose affection and regard B has earned by coaching the younger woman in a specialty field in which B is a prize-winning expert. 

 

With Hashim's examples in mind, I made a start on a previously used textured paper.

 

 

The Akib method is certainly a challenge in carefully choosing colour tones, then putting them down brush stroke by brush stroke.   When I reached the point of no return, my friend B looked more like an elderly great-uncle than a kindly aunt.

 

 

 So what am I doing here??  And what will I do next?  Recently, my favourite local gallery had a marvellous show featuring this artist's sensitive portraits.  Luckily (or I'd quit now) this type of portraiture is not my goal.  Rather, I aim for the plausible, if inexact, like this previous self-portrait done in my first infatuation with Hashim Akib a few years ago.

 

 

And for a portrait that I just can't put away, here's the copy I attempted of Adirondack artist Harold Weston back at Summer Camp 2023. 

 

 

So here's the Post-Pause Plan:  I'll produce a few more paintings for the East Side Storeys series, I'll incorporate some figures for scale and interest, and I'll try to avoid faces that are either postage stamp size or up-close-and-personal.

 

Meanwhile, I'll continue to salute the artists I've referenced here – and this local artist who has an enthusiastic "patron" in our long-time East Side real estate agent who provides these tasty calendars every year.

 

 

 

When it fits on a postage stamp

 

 

When I introduced my new series titled "East Side Storeys," I barely mentioned my two personal goals:-- first, to celebrate some of the charming old houses that still prevail on this side of town, and second, to get back in the groove again with figures and faces.  I have a long way to go on these.

 

I'd realized pretty quickly that, in the style I envision, I wasn't going to fit a whole house on an 18x24" canvas.

 

 

And when I returned to spruce up the piece post-publication, I had to admit that there just wasn't enough face-space on my subject to develop a believable "portrait."  Moral:  If it fits on a postage stamp, it's not big enough for portrait practice.

 

Okay.  I kept that in mind as I decided to hone in on the features that first caught my eye on East Side houses – the stained-glass details, like this small vertical window:

 

Should I aim for just a slice of the house?

 

Or go in close and have someone standing on the stairs beneath?

 

 

 

I tried some possibilities in my sketchbook and decided on a very close view of the window, with the daughter of a friend right in front.

 

 

Turquoise was my choice for the underpainting, and then I began with the lightest lights on the face.  I had drawn just a few lines to frame the window and realized immediately that, of course, straight lines and square corners would be very important –0r something bad could happen:

 

You remember The Crooked Man, don't you?  Read here for the back-story.

 

At my mid-point, things hadn't toppled over:--

 

 

And here's the final:  "Continuum – 1910 to 2025" (East Side Storeys – copyright 2025)

(Final for now, but I think this might need some touch-ups tomorrow).

 

 

Now, just a little late for Valentine's Day, is a truly grand finale.  This amaryllis wouldn't fit on a postage stamp either, but it's been glorious on my windowsill – with its final 8 of 12 flowers just about to fade.