Thought So 2013-W26

Being that we're only human, on occasion we can be very thoughtless.  Which is unintentional, otherwise it's just being mean.  When we later realize we have been thoughtless, best to move swiftly to apologize and right the wrong.  As was the case with this class photograph.  In the original (lower), this cheerful boy had to lean in to the picture after he and his mobility chair were thoughtlessly placed way outside the main grouping.

In this internet age, the ensuing outrage quickly prompted a re-shoot (above) where the boy and his caretaker are fully integrated and he is just as cheerful.  His parents wisely did not show him the first photograph.  Good on them.

Another thing that struck me is how stiff everyone looks in the lower photo.  I guess the second picture was organized in a hurry and taken without warning.  And what a much better picture it makes... everyone looks so comfortable and real.  Maybe there is more than one lesson about school photographs to learn here?

While you think about that, please also enjoy the birthday card I made for my mother, 2013 edition.
It comes complete with a poem.

Tulips for Mum

Tulips 
By A. E. Stallings
 

The tulips make me want to paint,

Something about the way they drop

Their petals on the tabletop

And do not wilt so much as faint,

Something about their burnt-out hearts,

Something about their pallid stems

Wearing decay like diadems,

Parading finishes like starts,

Something about the way they twist

As if to catch the last applause,

And drink the moment through long straws,

And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.

The way they’re somehow getting clearer,

The tulips make me want to see—

The tulips make the other me

(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,

The one who can’t tell left from right),

Glance now over the wrong shoulder

To watch them get a little older

And give themselves up to the light.

Source: Poetry (June 2009)

Oh Dear 2013-W25

Today's WCA-series subject, bless her, is no doubt a cautionary tale.  I'm just not sure exactly what all those caution(s) might be.  Plenty to choose from.  At the tender age of 26, this Miss already appears to have reached "a certain age".  It's difficult to believe that in the decade's time since Mean Girls, she looks 30 years older and in her spiral has gone from having the world at her feet to having... possibly stolen borrowed shoes on her feet.  In another decade from now, she will reach the age at which her alleged idol, M. Monroe died.  In that time, L.L. could write a new story for herself or play out the one that's unfolded lately.   Let's hope she defies the odds and manages the former.

Some say youth is wasted on the young.  I don't know if that's true, but here in support of the hypothesis we have Exhibit A.  And if you think the painting is harsh, you should see the reference photo.  I have been kind.

WCA:  Early Arriver

Finally (epidsode 1) 2013-W24

I don't remember when I first beheld the inspiration for today's work, but I do know that I made a quick study in January 2011 during the early days of Salon deWinchester.  My overarching scheme was for a mixed media piece of watercolor & pastels.  I went on to make the awesome underpainting at right on March 12, 2011.  Pointless observation: not quite the Ides of March, but close enough.

In the fifty-one (‼) intervening months this much ignored underpainting has sat mostly in a drawer, occasionally on a table to "inspire" me toward finishing up, and probably in a crazy place or two — if only briefly.  No doubt I was paralyzed by my fear that I had bitten off much more than I could chew with baby teeth.

Until early last Saturday morning after I finished Seaview..., when I took a deep breath and got down to it.  This work is my most ambitious undertaking yet in pastels and I'm still a neophyte so even selecting the pastels was agonizing.  Whereas laying down the first strokes was terrifying.  And yet, before long I felt comfortable that my approach was going to work out.  Once begun, you're half done, right?  I tell myself that a lot.

From that point, it was like an open bag of potato chips...  every time I walked past the work table I'd pick up a chalk and work a little more.  And a little more.  Well, you know how it goes with potato chips.  Though I didn't eat the whole bag, figuratively speaking, that night as I shut down the house for bedtime I glanced at the work and realized I was near the midpoint.  Would there be anything left for Tuesday Art Night?  Well, there was.

Though if not, I have a handful of other projects that have all stumbled and stalled at varying points in their progress.  I aim to slay them one dragon at a time, many if not most if not all.  My friends at Truman College and the fellows of Salon deWinchester, they who have seen the body of preliminary sketches and studies, will doubtless look on these finished pieces and exclaim... Finally!

Peaceable Interlude in the Serpentine Grapery

p.s.  Long time blog readers: this is the very landscape to which I refer in the 2012-W40 blog.  You know, where I predicted I'd finish this mixed media piece on October 27, 2012.  Ha ha ha

"A Certain Age" 2013-W23

Having studied a foreign language (or five), I'm always fascinated by idioms and wonder by what path did some come to acquire their non-literal meaning.  Why does the Mexican Spanish equivalent of "better half" translate as "half of the orange"?  And in a similar way I appreciate euphemisms, of which today's posting title is a fine example.  "A certain age".  What a nice way to say "not young"... not officially "elderly".

More or less it's written the same in French except the "a" gets a funny hat:  un certain âge.  I don't know why as I haven't studied French, and if I want to learn it then I'm running out of time for I am a man of certain age.  Most of my friends are also of that certain age, and like myself may have come to accept that on the matter of your age, you can deny it or you can defy it. 

Last week I painted the first in an intermittent series of fashionable women d'un certain âge who likely believe they are defying — though others might render a verdict of: denying.  Still, one can appreciate their immaculate dress and skillfully applied makeup.  Lots of slap as they would say in Britain.  Ultimately,  I perceive this embalmed-chic look as legitimate, albeit unintentional performance art.  In painting the Women of a Certain Age (WCA) series, I probably mean to mock the deniers, but I will slip in one or two defiers whom I celebrate.  I leave it to you to decide which those might be.

That explains last week's painting, whereas this week I did a landscape for my nephew that he requested a couple years back.  It's a view of a lesser lighthouse in Maine.  My first ever piece on panorama sized paper, so good for me...  I can check that off my list while I'm still d'un certain âge.  Enjoy!

Seaview toward Ram Island Ledge Light

The Wedding 2013-W22

If you read last week's blog early, then you should scroll down and see the finished painting.  I posted it on Wednesday.  Now, with that out of the way, on to today's painterly thoughts...

Last evening I attended the wedding of an old friend from college.  As often happens, we had drifted apart in the intervening years until the miracle of the internet put us back in touch sometime during the late days of the Dubya.Bush era.  It really boggles the mind that in the modern era, we have the potential on any day to see any living person on the planet.  I can't imagine what it must have been like a century or so ago when parents saw their children head off to make a life in the "new" world, knowing that probably never again would they see one another.

I guess the downsides are that so many voices now compete for our increasingly fragmented attention, and it takes a real effort to hide!  Computer, cell phones, social media sites and all them apps — wonderful inventions and fantastic tools.  But as I often remind myself and my friends: they work for you, not the other way around.

And now that I've set aside two chunks of time each week for painting, you can expect me not to return texts promptly on Tuesday evening as well as Saturday mornings!  I finished the dog series on Tuesday and wasn't quite ready to begin some of my summer plans this morning.  So today I'll offer this, the first in an intermittent series for those occasions in the coming months where I have nothing better to do.  I'll reveal more about the series in next week's blog.

WCA:  Miss Porter's (Very) Ancient