What's Music Got to Do with It?

Can you see and hear the connection of this painting, Night on Bald Mountain, with Mussorgsky's evocative music?

Night on Bald Mountain: painting by Janet Strayer

 Many painters I know like to listen to music as they paint. Not me. Music often takes me away with it,  my full attention absorbed, so that I can't be fully involved in the painting process.  Yet music often lingers strongly in my mind, affecting my mood and the rhythms of the next painting I start. That's the case with my Night on Bald Mountain. 

Though it was originally composed on St. John's eve (midsummer), this music always comes to my mind in wintertime when the ground is barren, the colors are muted, and the trees and land forms are silhouetted in a dusky atmosphere. 

Listening to Rimksy-Korsakov's orchestration of this tone-poem is especially wonderful on a winter night,  temperature falling as the dark flickers with with shadowed light. Surprising to learn that this famous piece of pictorial music was ill-received by Mussorgsky's mentor. It was pulled off the public charts by its young creator in mortification. Yet the music lingered in its creator's mind. Despite several attempts to shape it for public presentation, Mussorsky's version was never publically  performed during his lifetime-- only to become famous after R-K's appreciation of this work and his own orchestration of it after Mussorgsky's death. The music subsequently become riotously famous in contemporary times after Disney (with Igor Stravinsky's help) fabulized it in Fantasia (1941, click for youtube clip) 

Grateful to R-K for realizing Mussorsky's auditory vision, I'm left pondering (once again) the syncretic and generative nature of art.  Night on Bald Mountain demonstrates again for me the richness and depth of many art forms that beckon and beget themselves anew -- in slightly or even drastically altered form. This occurs in a single artist's own works and, of course, it occurs across artists. In this context, appropriation is no sin. Nor is it  to be regarded as a glibly cast-off hand-me-down. Rather, it can be a genuine tribute and enrichment of art for its own sake. Who is the "authentic" composer of Night on Bald Mountain? Depends where you want to start ... and stop.... your search.

Happy Winter Solstice and Holidays,   

 

Ptarmigan on Saturna Island

Not what you may be thinking. Not the bird, but the Ptarmigan Society for music, theater and art focusing on Artists on the Gulf Islands (see link). 

They invited me to be the featured visual artist for a workshop given on Saturna this Saturday, April 8. The morning limbers up the limbs with contemporary dance and hoop movements, led by Lindsay Landry.  After that, the afternoon limbers up the mind with excursions into visual creativity, led by me.

Altogether, should be fun for body and mind. Join us if you can. 

More Creative Life News

You can read and see more about creative life, travels, tips and creative adventures by this itinerant artist at Creative Life News at https://www.janetstrayer.com

Regards, Janet 

Of Fables and Myths

Art Show on Saturna Island: Of Fables and Myths

I've written before on this site about the magical island I live on -- and where my art studio is located: Saturna Island in the Salish Sea (the Straits of Georgia). It's quite appropriate that this fabulous setting will be home to an art show entitled "Of Fables and Myths".

It's enough just to explore this unspoiled island. And summer usually brings many visitors here. But now, I'd like to invite you to come celebrate an art event with me on Saturna.  APRIL 25, 2015 marks the opening of an exhibit of my paintings at the Saturna Café. You can view it whenever you step into the café from April 25 to July 9. But the opening is a special celebration that involves the community. As you can see from the notice below, there will be a reception from 4 to 6 pm followed a special dinner feast by our local chef, Hubertus (by reservation).

The show was curated by Jean-François Renaud, a resident curator whom I so enjoyed meeting. He has my gratitude for organizing these special events on Saturna and making community celebrations of them. It's such a small island, yet there are so many uniquely talented people here.

As a resident of Saturna for many years (traveling back and forth from Vancouver), I look forward to this opportunity to have my paintings shown in such a welcoming setting. I hope to share a toast with you at the opening. 

More Creative Life News

You can read and see more about creative life, travels, tips and creative adventures by this itinerant artist at Creative Life News at https://www.janetstrayer.com

Regards, Janet 

 @ janetstrayer.com

My Magical Island: Saturna

I live on a magical island that’s only about 12 square miles (31 sq. km). in size and that sits quietly in the Salish (pronounced Say-lish) Sea. There are only about 300 other people living on this small island called Saturna.

    

on a bluff, looking out to sea, JS photos

sunset on Saturna, our place up above the sea

Mt. Baker in the US seen from Saturna Island Canada, JS photos

As if its location weren't special enough, Saturna has some exceptional petroglyphs as well, some on high and others only visible at low tides by climbing over and through slippery rocks and small caverns in the shoreline rocks.

Petroglypths on Saturna...these photos are older, now many are even more eroded..JS

My Magical Island.

Saturna seems a good place for wishing, the imagination having free reign without the impedances of city life. I wish Shakespeare, that word-magician could visit here. He'd swoon at the sounds and sights, and even the name of the place, he who so well knew the worth of names: love and rivalry in the sun-lit, star-crossed Verona of Romeo and Juliet; mystery and magic in Prospero's watery realm. But, then again, I doubt he was much of a traveller outside his own world-filled mind.

We have no TV on Saturna and don't even think of it. Instead, we walk around, tend the land, do our work, and  read. I  think of Shakespeare visiting my magical island and being pleased at its comeliness, its seasonal shifts, its rocky shores and tidal pools, invitations to explore and to contemplate. 

JS photo

This is a waterworld, and waterworldness is a quality the island and inhabitants sink deeper into each autumn as the summer falls into the sea. Mists rise to soften the abundance of ever-green trees, and the air is moist with scents of leaves and earth. 

The heavy rains will come, and the ground will fill each footprint with a water rim, reminding us we live upon the sea. Like Prospero’s, ours is a house built close within the elements of wind, earth, and water. Human footprints here tend to leave only watery traces.

I will need to catch some new photos of this water-magic, but these are recent photos I took of some glorious non-raining Autumn days here, to give you a feel for the wonder of the season here. 

I call this the glory tree when it bursts into full colour, JS

It's s autumn now, one of my favourite seasons. It's not as brilliant here as the season can be in the eastern part of this continent, given its abundance of deciduous trees and turning leaves. But here, in evergreen land, the contrast of the turning leaves amongst the backdrop of resonantly rich greens and browns is quite special. We've planted maples and oaks and other deciduous trees on our wild land to take full advantage of this contrast.

And here's our land in the early Spring, with fields of golden daffodils and a budding tree. We've planted thousands of these harbingers of sun over the years.

path to my studio in Springtime, JS

I have been back in Canada, on this West Coast edge of the sea, for more than three months now, and I feel the changes from the sun-drenched Italian countryside where we’d been living. So many different forms of beauty to appreciate. 


Though we've stopped travelling, the mind still wanders like quicksilver, no time or space barriers. So that, here I am in the foggy mists of the Salish Sea and, in a second, I'm back thinking of Verona, our last stop in our Italian trip. 

my studio this Autumn, JS

Perhaps when the rain becomes too dense here, I'll write a post recalling our good time in sunny Verona. I'll think back to sitting inside its ancient outdoor coliseum, watching a stunning performance of Verdi's Aida after an afternoon wandering around the props for this Egyptian-set opera sitting right on the streets of an already enchanting Italian location for star-crossed lovers! That's my kind of geo-mythical travelling!


Don't expect chronology to be too clock-bound here. It's more psychological. All things existing get called forth as needed. Quite Prospero-like, don't you think? 


In the meantime, though, I'm quite content to be just where I am. 

Today’s Thought

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.
--Shakespeare, spoken by Prospero, The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

A related thought: Graham Swift’s book, Waterland, is a wonderfully literate and emotionally rich book. It’s set in the wetlands of England and relates shifting lives through time, replete with well-drawn characters in a compelling environmental history. Not to be confused with the completely different and forgettable Waterworld.  Although Graham Swift won a Booker Prize for another of his books, this one remains my favourite. 


Seasons of life. Not an original thought, but worth appreciating, nevertheless. Autumn, suggesting a more sober, less lush time than Spring, has its  bursts of glory, too. And, how's this (see photos) for "lushness" amidst the ferns and mosses (instead of among the flowers):

Today's Art

As befits the sea life around the island, and the petroglyph shown above, today's item is a 3D mixed media work on a piece of wood cut in the shape of a salmon. I donated it for an art auction on the island to raise money for local events. Along with other artists' interpretations, it quickly sold. It was great fun to make with paint and colored glass beads.

mixed media 3D art by Janet Strayer

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