Art Lover

Another opening, another show! Was that Cole Porter? It took me a moment to think, “yes.” It’s from Kiss Me Kate, that wonderful musical spoof on Shakespeare’s even more wonderful The Taming of the Shrew. 

But my main point in this communiqué is that another of my paintings has been selected by the Federation of Canadian Artists, this time for the Autumn Salon show at their Granville Island gallery in Vancouver. It's good that a different jury of curators are the judges for different shows. This offers flexibility and range.

I’m especially pleased that my painting, Art Lover has been chosen because it's one that took on a lot of significance for me as I worked on it.

The painting is both a conceptual work about art’s role in the world and a visual-aesthetic play on art as fantasy confronting art as realism confronting actual art sitting in the actual world. It’s about transformations of the natural world via art as well as the place of art in the world, no matter who the art lover happens to be.

Today's Painting

Art Lover, painting by Janet Strayer (Sold)

You may recognize the fanciful influence of an artful Klimpt tree painted in mural fashion on a wall that’s otherwise rather shabby: a painting in a painting. The wall itself bears witness to its transformation from mundane to inspired. The door that is slightly ajar to your right may be a portal to something real (a hospice, a shelter, a church?) and beyond. It's dark, and the eccentric bag lady prefers the street, especially this spot.

The focal figure is an iconic bag lady who is eating out of a can. In my story, she especially chose this spot, sitting beside this wonderful tree. I think she comes here often, sitting outside with all her worldly goods, enjoying her magnificent tree, claiming her share of sun. Or, like the mass of us who never notice, perhaps she lets it all go by. If art is in the eye of the beholder, what is it that we see? But no matter, even if she is engrossed in her can of food, the art still reaches out to envelop her.

The opulence of Klimpt’s fin-de-siecle Viennese style tree, the columned building perhaps recollecting better days, the solid presence of the bag-lady whom we (erroneously) might not expect to appreciate delicacies of taste ... these are some of the elements that combine in the narrative suggested by this painting.

Your story may be entirely different from mine. Usually, I’m reluctant to offer mine because any art lover always enters a painting and makes it his or her own, seeing and reacting to things that may be new to me... and better than what I offer.

That’s why any artwork that “works” really does live independently of the artist/s who made it. That’s why it continues to affect us outside of the particular or personal contexts in which it was created. There has to be something that reaches out, doesn’t there?

Well, I hope this painting reaches out to some of you.

I started this post out with some lyrics from another time, so I’ll end with others that are much more contemporary.

Today's Thought

Bag lady you gone hurt your back

 Dragging all them bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you

All you must hold on to Is you, is you, is you

--Erykah Badu sings "Bag Lady"

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