High-level bait and switch

There's a lot of funny stuff going on in Vancouver these days, with rampant development out of control. You can put me squarely in the camp of the NIMBYs, the evil "retirees living alone in big (or not so) empty houses," the people who don't recognize that change is necessary, change is good!

I'm trying, really trying, to look for the silver linings. I thought I'd found one about six weeks ago when I spotted this headline: "Oakridge collaborates with the National Gallery of Canada".   OMG -- was this possible? Oakridge is one of Vancouver's original shopping malls from the 1960s, and it occupies several square blocks of land in prime central Vancouver. That was then, this is now, when "Oakridge" with its imminent massive redevelopment has become shorthand for everything that's wrong with the way Vancouver is heading.

But now -- was the new Oakridge mall going to house a branch of Canada's National Gallery? This was big silver-lining stuff indeed.

But let's see how this astonishing collaboration has played out in the glossy posters along the Canada Line (subway). Read here how the Oakridge masterminds scoped out the National Gallery collection for a thrilling painting by....Gustave Dore (better known for his engravings).

View the painting! Zoom in on the obscure corner that Oakridge will celebrate!

And finally, see what happens when shopping mall meets masterworks:

Meanwhile, that very week, the venerable Vancouver Art Gallery (the city's art museum) was snagging the headlines with a long-awaited announcement. Now I happen to be fond of the VAG in its original location, where essential rain-screening (leak sealing!) of its underground storage space and plaza is almost complete:

Everyone knows that the gallery needs more space, and expansion plans have been debated for years. I'm on the side of the local entrepreneur and big-time philanthropist whose rallying cry was: Keep the gallery we have, put money into art not "iconic" buildings, and grow the collection into several smaller gallery spaces around town. His was the losing proposition -- which shows that it's not just grey-haired retirees in big/small empty houses who are out of touch with reality.

A new site was chosen, an international architecture firm was selected, and...ta tum..the design for the "iconic" building was recently revealed:

I'm hearing more nay's than yay's. The best comment I've read is that it looks like a stack of bento boxes.

Who knows when this meal will be served? Right now, there isn't enough money to build anything.

In a funny counterpoint, the week after the VAG foofarah, Vancouver's truly famous Mountain Equipment Co-Op announced it would relocate its flagship store to a planned building on the 2010 Olympics site. I'd say MEC's design outdoes the bentos by a long shot:

Anyway, the pseudo-art of Oakridge and the high-level shenanigans of the VAG cabal just make me want to walk away from it all.

We met at Budgie’s, remember?

My previous post marked the first stage of a project I've had in mind since my final working years. Going downtown to work had been something of a thrill in itself, and I'd quickly realized I could take my sketchbook and grab some quick sketches as the wheels on the bus went round and round. My favourite location was not far from SoMa (the so-called trendy South Main area), where the storefronts of Budgie's Burritos and East Vanity Parlour contributed to a fascinating grid of rectangles, and the sidewalks invited passersby to linger.

After finishing several studies based on some of those sketches, I set to work on my ultimate objective -- to paint a small panel that would capture the whole Budgie's streetscape. I've been going through a painting-things-over phase, and I decided that I had just the right panel (about 9" x 26") that I'd used not once, but twice before. It was first a wildly coloured pile of driftwood:

...that was then painted over for a quick study project called "Eyes of the Northwest." 

A once-over with a blue-grey wash of paint, and I was ready to begin:

At about the midpoint, I decided I'd let some of the underlying driftwood show through for a little movement.

Here's the grand finale, "Not Far from SoMa," copyright 2015.

Okay, so it's not at all grand. But I cannot tell you how thrilling it was for me to have finally accomplished this years-in-the-incubation-stage painting. All those bus rides, all those quick sketches, the recent painted studies, my enduring fascination with the human figure -- hey, maybe I'll be able to get back to life drawing classes some day.

There's also a funny thing about the dramatis personae in my painting. I mentioned before my affection for this seated "loner" figure (not to be confused with the Incredible Hulk lurking in the background):

Just as I was finishing the painting, I was sorting through some of our still unpacked books and came across a paperback of Plato's Dialogues. On its cover was a detail of Raphael's "School of Athens" with its own seated loner figure (front and centre, pale mauve tunic) that has always intrigued me.

See the connection? I knew that Raphael's scene assembles all the great Greek philosophers (half of whom you'll never have heard of), and I wondered who the loner was. This fabulous website allows you to click on each figure and learn the philosopher's identity.

My little man in mauve is Heraclitus, the guy who said, "You can't step into the same river twice" and many other nifty things. Now cast a glance diagonally to the right of Heraclitus, past the guy on the steps (nobody I know), to the figure in white robe with his back turned. That's Epicurus, and judging by his wrought gestures, he's despairing that the burritos weren't delivered on time.

East Van meets SoMa

I've written once or twice before about my pleasure in sketching as I rode the bus downtown in my last few pre-retirement years. Depending on the time and season of the year -- and whether I'd been able to grab a window seat -- I might jot down old buildings, signs and architectural details, or people on the street -- like the spotted-jacket guy above. "Jot down" is the operative expression because the bus was whizzing along, and often what I captured was just enough to stimulate a later sketch from memory.

Memory drawings or instant sketches are not just eccentricities of mine, but a time-honoured artists' practice. About observation and quick sketches, the artist Delacroix said something like, "You should be able to capture the essentials of the figure before a man who has fallen from a building hits the pavement." Luckily this scene never presented itself to me in my trips through downtown Vancouver.

One of my enduring fascinations was the last block of Kingsway, just before it merges into Main Street, the dividing line that separates what's generally called "East Vancouver" from the rest of the city. There, still planted in East Van and several blocks north of the trendy Main Street section known as SoMa (South Main) was an intriguing stretch centred on Budgie's Burritos and East Vanity Parlour, a funky clothing shop.

Over a period of weeks, months really, I'd make note of this half-block of store fronts -- the size of the windows, the placement of the doors, the clientele and passersby.

Something about the grid of rectangles and the colourful scene on the sidewalk always attracted my notice.

I'd always had the idea of making a long panel painting based on this streetscape -- why not start now, seven years later? I began with some small studies of various sizes, no larger than 8"x10" -- a good two months' work! Here's "East Vanity Parlour lives on" (sadly, the shop has gone out of business since my bus ride days) in which I played with how the placement of colour attracts the eye.

It won't be evident but I was actually learning some good stuff from this exercise, like how to pull shapes out or push them back, how to make a harmonious whole. In this next one -- "Show and Tell" -- I made many mistakes...the too prominent slats of the Adirondack chairs, the too prominent flesh of hands, legs, feet. I liked the observer in the doorway, though, and you'll see that I've cut her loose from the rest of it, planning to save her.

"Meet Me at Budgies" gave me a nice challenge with the bicycle:--

And "Three's a Crowd" brought into the action -- well, out of the action really -- a curious little isolated figure I'd noticed on the sidelines one day.

In most of these studies, I was also getting used to working with acrylic medium rather than water to dilute the paint -- for more opaque colour and "brushier" strokes. From an early morning winter bus trip, I recorded "Still Dark at 6:30 am"

And here's another dark morning scene from the "Bus Stops" series I still work on, both on paper and in my head -- "Headed Downtown."

Here in East Van, we're not without pretensions. Three blocks from us, there stood a few years ago two rather sweet little 1940s houses. First given up to renters, they retained some lovely garden plants -- a big fuchsia shrub and a never-ending rambler rose. Then they were vacated, the deadly sign appeared advising a development permit was applied for, and squatters moved in. After a "police action" that left bullet holes in the once charming octagonal windows, protective fencing went up -- and the houses soon came down. Now, in front of a deep excavation, a sign advertises a 3-storey condo building is on its way ...with the impressive (!) designation, "Kensington Point."

In that spirit, I've recorded these studies in my workbook log with the grandiose title, "The SoMa Suite." Amateurish as some of these look, they gave me some good practice, during which I often recalled the counsel of one of my virtual teachers, Mary Beth McKenzie). In A PAINTERLY APPROACH she wrote, "Much can be learned from the first steps in making a painting. A student will do well to make many starts."

Most of these quaint folks I've painted are destined to hang around in my studio for a couple of months and then be painted over for future studies. I'll close with the most successful one, "SoMa Conversation".

Poppies past, present -- future?

It's the bloomin' truth: I have hellebore friends, I have rose friends, I have cucurbit friends, I have iris friends, I have garlic friends, I have geranium friends – for goodness sake, I even have an alyssum friend (but no alyssum, thank you). Some friends share two or more categories, but each is a unique species unto herself. Like my poppy friend.

She was on my mind in early summer 2014, when the Oriental poppy we successfully transplanted from our old place produced a bumper crop of 18 flowers. It's the same plant that inspired my early painting "Poppy Fields" (copyright 2003).

Those were early days for me, long before this blog, when I'd just committed (1) to make paintings and let them live – instead of painting something new on top; and (2) to come out of hiding and show my work to others. It was among the paintings I took to a one-hour personal critique at Emily Carr. The art instructor winced at the very-red-RED, but my poppy friend loved it – and her opinion has come to mean a lot (including the occasional, "I don't really like this one.")

And so...last poppy season, I decided to make a second poppy painting with some of the same objects as in the first: the wine bottle I've never been able to throw out; the batik placemat; poppy seed pods, and a single poppy flower. Poppy Friend and I have birthdays just a week apart, and I envisioned the Beaujolais bottle with "2015" around its neck – and the title "Another Vintage Year" to celebrate A Big One for both of us.

The set-up and "production schedule" for this still life were a bit tricky. While the poppy was in flower, I used dried roses to stand in (more or less) for the seed pods that were yet to develop.

Once the pods developed, they moved into their idiosyncratic poses and I was left with ...a half-filled glass of water where the flower had faded away!

The background is an artist's in-joke, the result of a happy accident. I change my bulletin board every few months, often with reproductions that resonate with what I'm working on. This time, as I looked through my big stash for things that said "RED", I came across Georgia O'Keeffe's "Two Poppies," Monet's "The Corn Poppies" (translation for the whatever-poppies that grow wild across the fields of Europe), and Matisse's "Odalisque on an Oriental Background." I'd barely tacked them up when I saw that it would be a real kick to try to place my planned set-up against this background.

Here's the outcome – "Another Vintage Year" (copyright 2014).

Of all my paintings, this one gave me the most genuine fun to do -- as you can see here.  And as it turned out, my hero Monsieur Matisse shared the laugh. It was only in my final week of working on this painting, as I toned up and toned down the background, that I noticed a small detail in my postcard reproduction. Almost hidden in the Odalisque's ornamental background is a vase with three red flowers!!

So there we have Poppy Past and Poppy Present...proof positive that every year has its own flavour.

Stories from out of the blue

It will come as no surprise to learn that my favorite colour is blue. When I first started painting, I went through tube after tube of Ultramarine Blue for paintings like "Beach Finds" (copyright 2003):--

Before long, I learned that historically, Ultramarine Blue was compiled from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. Today, fine artist-grade "UB" is commonly derived from a chemical pigment blended with various media to produce all kinds (a plethora?) of artists' materials -- oil paints, watercolour, gouache, inks, pastels, acrylics. A small decade-old jar of liquid acrylic UB (not nearly as large as it looks here!) is still going strong for me -- and the UB pigment in a watercolour tube that dried out is still usable when diluted with water or acrylic medium.

In the early 1980s, Seattle's Daniel Smith Inks was my favourite art supply store (later, as Vancouver's Opus Framing expanded its line, I switched my allegiance). Just as magna-ficent Opus started modestly as a frame shop, the fabulous Dan Smith enterprise began as a small hand-manufacturer of fine-arts printing inks. Before long, Dan (yes, we all called him "Dan" in those days; he was that kind of guy) was making his own very wonderful fine-arts paints in various media -- and selling the original dry chemical pigment, too.

Not long after I connected with Dan, he became one of the first paint makers to offer Ultramarine Blue watercolour paint made from actual lapis lazuli. Of course, I had to have some -- even at the princely price of $18 (1980s dollars) for a 15 ml tube, compared to maybe $3 then for the chemical pigment variety.

I was always thrilled with the arrival of a Dan Smith mail-order catalog -- and better yet, my packaged order -- but this time I was rather disappointed that the blue tended toward grey (shown below, right) rather than the deep heavenly blue I love. It was then that I realized that lapis, like many other precious stones -- jade, garnet, opal, even the Certified Organic amber, -- comes in a whole range of tones and degrees of opacity.

But no matter. I now had not only my authentic though blue-grey lapis lazuli watercolour, but more lasting, my own small chunk of lapis in just the right blue shade. Having learned lapis lore with me, JT wanted to give me a ring. My birthday was coming around, and he surprised me with the gift of a loose stone -- the perfect colour, the perfect size, and the perfect cabochon cut (a domed oval), just as I'd described my wishes. At Vancouver's Circle Craft Co-op, we found a silversmith who took it from there, creating my vision of the perfect ring: The simplest setting with a medium-wide band fitted for my middle right finger.

I wore this ring virtually every day for probably 20 years -- until it would no longer fit over what had become a knobby arthritic knuckle. I've missed wearing it and as my 70th birthday approached, I thought..."Well, why not!? I could have it re-sized." We were cautioned there was a small risk the stone could crack when the silver was heated, but my magic ring -- my special 70th birthday present -- came through perfectly. I'm happily wearing it again on its customary finger, knobby knuckle or not.

Now you've read the lapis lazuli story. And you've read the birthday ring story. And this has been a rather long post. But from the blue realm of memory, there's another story of an odd adventure involving my special ring. Read on, if you're interested in Paris (the blue in my t-shirt is no surprise) and synchronicities...

The year was 1991 when JT and I made our third trip to France. We'd decided I would claim all my vacation allowance at once, and we would spend the full month living on the cheap in Paris, moving each week from one neighbourhood to another. That trip was the first time we'd seen neo-Nazi skinheads, and they were a scary bunch hanging around Metro (hey! what happened to my French accent marks?) stations with their shaved tattooed heads, scars, kick-'em-while-they're-down boots, tattered jeans and studded leather.

One day, we took the suburban train to Monet's Giverny. We'd barely settled in our seats when along came a guy in studded leather, big boots, bandolier across his chest. He sat down across from me in the double seat that faced us and began looking harmlessly out the window. The train started, and it was then that I saw that on the middle finger of his right hand, he wore......a ring identical to mine. I realize, of course, that there's nothing unique about mine -- the classic lapis colour, the classic cabochon cut, the simple classic setting. But when I say "identical", I mean just that -- the stones were perfect matches in colour and size; the style and dimensions of the silverwork were exactly the same.They could have been made on the same day by the same silversmith.

I can't account for my feelings, but I was somewhat afraid. What would this skinhead think and do if he realized "his" ring was duplicated on the hand of a middle-aged female tourist? I kept absolutely still, not even moving my hand from where it rested on my knee, hoping that he wouldn't turn from the window and notice. And as I sat silently watching him, I saw that this young man was a skinhead only in the World of Let's Pretend. He had beautiful, sensitive Arabic features, and his tough-guy get-up was just too new and shiny. He was still a boy, really, taking courage from wearing the "right" clothes.

This interlude couldn't have lasted more than five minutes when, ever sensitive to atmospheres, JT asked me, "What's wrong?" "Um, nothing," I said. But he had taken it all in -- the boy, the ring -- and said quietly, "La meme chose!" ("The same thing.") At this, the sensitive young man turned from the window, looked down and saw my ring, looked us each directly in the eye, then turned again to look out the window. The train reached its next stop, and the young man left us.

Now, so many years later.  What has become of the characters in this mini-drama?  Two different rings, two different life stories...stories from out of the blue.

This is serious

A month ago, I was doing some preliminary studies for a proposed painting. I further developed the study for the face (above) and you can see that things were serious. The face didn't look like the intended subject and, in fact,...it looked lilke someone younger. Younger? Older? Ouch! What's truly serious is that very soon now, I'll be 70. The big Seven-UhOh.

As many of my friends are doing these days, my thoughts have been turning to what's gone before me, what might lie ahead, and how the heck did this happen to ME, anyway?  Maybe white-whiskered Winston Churchill's words offer a hopeful perspective: "This is not the end; it is not the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning."

Am I at the end of something.......or the beginning? While 70 marks the end of my seventh decade, I've decided to think of it as a launching pad into the eighth...a sunrise, you might say, an occasion for fresh starts that should be marked with ...a new self-portrait! (A woman I met a few years ago bragged that she'd followed through on her resolution to celebrate her 70th by taking part for the first time in Vancouver's New Year's Day Polar Bear Swim. Shudder. Too cold for the likes of me. I never gave a thought to that option).

I went back to one of my original and enduring favorite artists -- Degas -- and to a portrait by him that has always intrigued me, "The Collector of Prints."

Long before I'd channelled Matisse, I'd thought it would be fun to channel Degas and revamp "The Collector" as a self-portrait. Out came the pencil and ruler since, obviously, the key elements had to be scaled to the correct proportions and interrelationships. Out came some scraps of canvasboard for the can-I-really-pull-this-off studies of the tough parts. And out came the sense of adventure that would morph the somber Collector into a Going-on-70 female artist wearing the typical get-up required for her wintertime studio. (As my trusty little space heater warms up the basement room, I shed layers -- and in the course of doing this painting, I'd begun to shed them for the spring season).

The Japanese prints on The Collector's wall and the botanical (?) prints filling his desk and portfolio have been replaced with a sunrise burst of some of my other paintings, including a suggestion of some earlier self-portraits. His wall cabinet now holds a treasured old pitcher of my mother's, a favorite seashell, and...well, two small whitish blobs.

Once I'd prepared the scaled layout, things moved along surprisingly quickly (as shown here). And here's the outcome, "Seventies Sunrise" (copyright 2015):--

Just as I learned so much by channelling Matisse, I learned *big* things from Degas. His layout of big shapes against a vertical/horizontal grid appears elsewhere in his works and is a marvel. His dark-to-light tones are a whole year's worth of art school teachings. I'm quietly thrilled at the general success of "my" wall cabinet and the dark tones of the chair and table legs. And thanks to Degas, those trouser legs are among the best things I've ever done!

As for the likeness in this Selfie at Seventy, it looks more like me than like ...well (heaven forbid) Hillary Clinton. I do have a long face and thin lips -- and the turned-up collar of my fleece vest does a nice job of hiding my sagging chinline. And my smile is either huge and gummy or, as in the painting, subtly close-mouthed.

The sun is rising. I'm facing seventy and able to smile about it.

Never say "Never!"

Time marches on, and what seemed like a bad idea some months or years ago now seems worth another try.

Almost two years ago, before beginning a painting of a beautiful Chinese stole, I decided to follow some advice I'd been given to "do a number of studies first, trying out different colour schemes". The result was "A Gift from Candice":--

But by the time I'd settled on the final colours, I was almost heartily sick of the whole thing and vowed never to work this way again.

Some months later came another lesson with a "Never!" outcome, with the laborious preparations for "A Question of Scale":--

It took me soooo long to prepare a layout scaled to the actual objects in this still life, that I had to rally my forces to get on with the painting itself.

But here it is, springtime 2015, and with pencil and ruler in hand, I'm preparing another scaled layout:

What's more, I'm doing a more detailed colour study than usual:

And I've done not one, but two, small studies of parts of the painting-to-be:-- a hand holding a piece of paper:--

...and for better or worse, a head study:

Is it looking promising.....or scary? Time will tell. WATCH THIS SPOT.