Artist En Route: Umbria, Italy (earlier version in Art Avenue magazine)

Living in the Umbrian Countryside

It's April as I write from high green hills in the Umbrian countryside, midway between Florence and Rome. We live in Morruzze, a tiny village in which nothing happens. The bells jingle on new lambs in the pasture up the rocky road from our house. Wild boar hide in nearby forests, as do truffles. The bees are out, and the silvery olive trees are growing fuller. The birdsong is absolutely operatic as I walk the 6 km to and from the nearby village, looking for wild asparagus along the way. The views are spectacular coming up through worn paths overlooking rolling green hills and patchwork agrarian plots typical of this region. Walking here each day I'm sure Leonardo developed his sfumato technique from these smoky landscapes that soften edges and blend contrasts. Except for some hard winter months, it's been idyllic. 

 What Shopping Does a Visiting Artist Do?

Art Interest: So much to see. Just stick a pin anywhere and go!

A visiting friend wants to go on the Piero tour (click here). I'm glad to oblige this pilgrimage for a local boy from a nearby Tuscan village. Piero della Francesca is high on my list of Renaissance masters. His sense of serenely sculpted light, of physically solid yet beyond-real forms in space, of emotion perfectly contained yet dramatically expressed, remains remarkable to me. 

You could pick any of your favourite Italian Renaissance masters and plan an interesting tour of Italy just by following the trail of their displayed works. Following the trail of Perugino, for example, will take you to Perugia, home also to delicious chocolates as well as savouring the equally sweet and highly decorative paintings by his associate, Pinturicchio. Like many ancient towns in Italy, there is so much to see and enjoy just by walking around and looking, and often festivals to add to the celebration. 

Nearby in the Cathedral in Orvieto  are the muscular and fascinatingly original Last Judgment frescoes by Signorelli (from whom Michelangelo learned a thing or two). In the other direction there are the lovely painted ceramics in Deruta to take home with you. Go eastward and there's the region of Le Marche, with Crivelli as its local wonder, whose paintings provide an odd mix of Renaissance perspective and Medieval decorativeness. 

The art treasures continue, with fresco-lined chapels by the vigorously emotive Giotto (Padua and Assisi) and the sensitively ethereal FraAngelico (Florence, with some of his most personal work on site, as they were painted in his home, the Convent of San Marco). 

Pick your favorite early to late Renaissance master: it seems they're all here

Where Artwork and Setting Are One 

It's especially impressive is when you see these magnificent artists' creations in the settings for which they were painted. Even Leonardo's crumbling Last Supper retains much of its gravitas in the actual chapel in Milan whose architecture it replicates! 

I especially enjoy scouting for treasures in relatively lesser-known places. But who would want to ignore the big showplaces of art-filled Italy? Rome, where the ancient Colosseum nods to Renaissance feats like the Pantheon and the dome Brunelleschi's derived from it. Then there are the dizzying treasure troves of the Vatican, shown in its museum. And unsurpassed Florence. Art is everywhere in the architecture, statues, fountains, museums and public works of such cities.

 

Two duomos (cathedrals) that I like especially are some distance apart. The one in Milan is staggering. Coming up from the metro station, it's a filigreed vision in honey-white marble that took nearly six centuries to build. It hardly seems real in its intricacy and apparent weightlessness. The best of it for me (sated by now on church interiors, no matter how magnificent) was walking outdoors on its huge, multi-tiered roof. It was stunning being surprised by gargoyles, fanciful architectural flourishes, statues standing on pillars in the air, and vistas across the city.

In contrast, Orvieto's duomo seems to me more humanly appealing in size, proportion, and narrative flourishes. Sitting outside on stone benches built into buildings lining the piazza, you watch as the sun glints on golden mosaics illuminating biblical narratives and assorted statues on its facade. Inside are the Signorelli frescoes I mentioned and, to top it off, in this piazza is the best gelato I've tasted. 

Surprises and delights abound: just keep your eyes open and venture on!

 Contemporary Art and Tradition

What I've noticed about contemporary art seen throughout my travels is that it seems  much the same everywhere. That is, trends seem global rather than regional, with influences like Twombly, Basquiat, and Richter variations everywhere, especially in abstract painting. I'm particular fond of major if not as well-celebrated modern Italian painters, like Morandi in still life and (my favourite) Burri in uniquely abstract works, have pushed new stylistic boundaries. 

No longer apprenticed to guilds or schools, emerging artists now seem to gravitate towards their preferred international icons. Historically, however, Italian art has shown recognizable regional stylistic variations and "schools". Tradition remains important here where people live with centuries of art history at their doorstep. The great humanistic emphasis of the Italian Renaissance, especially, is a tradition that endures even in contemporary paintings. For example, look how many figurative works are included in Saatchi's online Focus on Italy.  

Old Artists and the Avant Garde

Visiting the Sforza castle (Milan) and seeing Michelangelo's final and compelling Pietá emerge unfinished from stone, I thought about his spending his final decade on earth working, on and off, on this sculpture. I wondered why some master artists turn away from their attained mastery and refinements to produce, in their old age, something apparently more raw, unsettling, dramatically different, and far less popular with their contemporaries -- but seeding the future avant garde. True of Rembrandt, Turner too, and others, this development runs contrary to the too common clichés for old age.

Practical Matters: Art as a Way, Not a B

P   Art is a Way, Not a Brand

Wh    When I left Canada more than a half year ago I thought that, whil  I'd settle my continuing argument with my painterly self to mov  pursue one track instead of many and do what art-marketeers advi  advise: develop a brand. I haven't. Instead, away from the

         marketplace, I've decided this isn't for me.  Not for lack of self-dis    discipline or indeterminacy in directions to take, Instead, I have a genuine preference for working and lear  learning that is broad in scope. I don't think I'm alone in this conflict between way and brand, and many of     you may feel similarly. But I've come to respect this as a stylistic preference in how one chooses to expl  explore, experiment, and bring things together in order to create. Away from the usual influences at hom  home, it seems clearer to find one's own creative direction.

Travel's End and  Journey Onward

Looking back over the art I've seen, and done, and the life I've had here, I hope to have shared some enjoyable and useful facts and personal insights with you, wherever you are en-route. The artwork I've produced while travelling has been plentiful and surprising to me, as fitting into several unpredictable "series" resulting from new ventures into fluid painting and mixed techniques .A practical note to travelling artists is that duties for mailing artworks are often prohibitively high. So stay light, if you can. .    

            

It's been a remarkable journey, with a month remaining before returning home. This way of life has become 'home' now --- travelling from place, setting up one's life anew in each place for awhile, learning the necessary, exploring, making do. Never long enough to lay down roots ... or ruts. The only constant has been one's own sense of continuity and of change throughout this voyage. I haven't finished. I'm not ready to "go home." I want to find a way to take some of this way of living with me, even when returning to all the comforts of home, friends, and family.

                                

This trip has been about lots of things, both external and internal. Learning to do without the familiar, reassessing priorities, decisions, needs, and desires. A bit of a juggle between making and making-do, keeping to a plan or letting the winds decide, moving on or staying safe. Living away from home provides opportunity to re-examine decisions and expectations, to re-align oneself without the supports, stimulation and constraints of family, friends, and the familiar buzz of art shows and fellow-artists wanting to get their work noticed. It's been an opportunity to expand, to break out of molds that need breaking, and move in ways that feel authentic and rewarding, whether or not they are applauded by anyone else. 

 My artwork has taken different directions, depending upon where I've been: inside and out. I've met with local artists, seen shows, visited sites, museums, and galleries in each town. Everywhere I've been I've keenly felt how art, whatever form it takes, is a vital part of living life. How this is personally vital for me is the lesson I'd like to take home with me ...  plus a few gallons of gelato.

I hope, in reading these articles, you've shared in this sense of adventure, each of us being artists-en-route in our lives and in our work.

More Creative Life News

You can read and see more about Italy at Creative Life News here. plus other travels and creative adventures by this itinerant artist at Creative Life News here

 @ janetstrayer.com

Marcel Proust as Life Coach?

Gifts of Chance

Quite haphazardly I came upon a unique little non-fiction book entitled How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton (London: Picador, 1997).  It came with a cottage we were renting in Provence, France, along with a little trove of art books, travel guides, some good novels and an assortment biographiesm history, philosophy, and self-exploration books.  What a delight to find all this, as if it were  waiting for me. I emailed the owners telling them how grateful I was for this gift of chance.

I so enjoyed the little book on Proust that I wanted to share it with you. Like the novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by French author and philosophy professor Muriel Barbery (another unexpected find  enjoyed years ago in Europe), this book on Proust reminds me of how witty and socially relevant erudition can be. Also, how important it is to step away from one's usually crowded state of mind, to let things as they are enter in without full attention. Add a dose of humour, rational optimism plus practical pessimism, and you're set for life.

Marcel Proust as Life Coach

This charming, amusing, and sensible little book was reviewed as "dazzling" by John Updike. It concerns the eccentric and very generous Marcel Proust, who wrote what has been hailed as the, or at least one of the, greatest books of the 20th century: In Search of Lost Time (Recherches Des Temps Perdu (sometimes translated as Remembrance of Things Past)). This a  long book that  I've never read fully from cover to cover,  though I've enjoyed much of it by repeatedly reading from it

Even without having read Proust, one can enjoy de Botton's commentary. It seems Proust thought and wrote enough  to enrich, not just literature, but also a philosophy of everyday life.

Probably few of us would choose to exchange our life for Marcel Proust's. He has often been considered a dilettante, hypochondriac, and neurotic who spent most of his later adult days in bed as an apparent invalid. Even so, Proust was one of the most alive people of his time, generous to a fault, socializing with friends, possessing an extraordinary concentration and attentiveness  -- an elusive quality then, and especially now, in our time of multiple distractions, our impatience with even relevant details and wholesale avoidance of complex perspectives.

Proust collage by Janet Strayer

Take Your Time

One chapter, for example, is entitled, "How to Take Your Time."  One of the gifts of great novels, like Recherches, is the time one can spend inside them: reacting to their characters, settings, happenings, living in the inner and outer worlds created by the author and in which we partake. If we don't take the time, we miss the trip. 

N'allez pas trop vite is a request often attributed to Proust in conversation with his contemporaries. His request that we go about things more slowly increases the chances of coming to know and enjoy those otherwise unnoticed things that become interesting in the process of taking our time with them. In contrast to anger, annoyance, impatience, and easy judgments, which we know are so quick and easily come by, it takes time to become engaged, to explore how we really feel, to experience empathy, and to understand.

As de Boton notes , why bother reading Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, or Madame Bovary if these novels can be summarized like passing social-media headlines. These are examples he gives for each (pp.42-43): 

  "Tragic end for Verona lovebirds: after mistakenly thinking his sweetheart dead, a young man took his life. Having discovered the fate of her lover, the woman killed herself"; 

"A young mother threw herself under a train and died in Russia after domestic problems";

 A young mother took aresenic and died in a French provincial town after domestic problems." 

How many of us are addicted to the quick and fast bottom-line? Our culture increasingly challenges our ability to concentrate by promoting more distraction, more information that is non-informative, and  highly-revved but empty spectacles. We tend to get bored and impatient with the slow-moving and we habituate to being distracted, quickly losing interest and looking elsewhere  rather than actively becoming engaged . Give me that video-game!

Suffer Successfully

De Botton selectively uses Proust to address common tribulations of being human, as in his chapter on "How to Suffer Successfully." Human suffering seems inevitable,  but Proust presents a differentiation in his characters between good sufferers (who gain more understanding and appreciation of reality from it) and bad sufferers. The latter blame others for their suffering, distract themselves from it with quick-fix addictions, delusions about self and others, or defences that entail arrogance callousness, anger, and spite. Armed heavily in this way, bad sufferers have little incentive to face difficult truths, change as needed, and more fully appreciate their life.

Finding One's Own Way

Finding one's own way, one's own voice, vision, and what one truly  loves is, for me, the vast theme of my readings of Proust. He hated clichés and orthodoxies: "Every writer is obliged to create his own language, as every violinist is obliged to create his own tone" (p.103) and "only that which bears the imprint of our choice, our taste, our uncertainty, our desire and our weakness can be beautiful" (p.104). Except for deliberate caricature and melodrama, why borrow tired forms of expression?  

Looking to Proust's time, as well as our own, one reasonable rebuttal would be: because otherwise we risk not fitting in or might be judged harshly. Though there have always been those who flout convention, Proust's point isn't to make a name for ourselves by pissing on monuments. The point is to take the time to consider and learn for ourself (not by convention or fan-group) what we need and need to do  for our own particular right path. Courage over time.

Visual Art

Visual art is significant in Proust's novels. One of his characters, Elstir, is an impressionist painter. His paintings, like those of actual Impressionists at the time, challenged the orthodox understanding of what things looked like and what was considered beautiful. 

It might be quite a stretch to apply Proust's magnanimous point of view about artists, especially if you know some first-hand. But what he says about the creative process is authentic. For Proust, painting, like other art forms, serves to undo "our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits" and makes us "travel back...to the depths to see what has been neglected or distorted (p. 112).

Beauty

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder: where is that eye looking? Not just in the obvious places and pre-determined images received from culture and celebrity branding. 

Proust guides us to actively looking and attentiveness to our impressions: a particular blueness, or a reflection of light that strikes us.  Such active engagement, attentive looking, listening, and sensing --in reality or imagination -- takes time and some degree of dedicated inclination or effort. That's why being an appreciator of art of any kind of art   is such a gift in itself. We needn't be the painter or composer if we can appreciate the beauty of the painting or the music. 

Beauty can be quite modest and subtle in its effects. Given our drama and sensation-charged media, we might often miss out on it  I recall the fuss a long time ago over the Met's then outlandishly expensive purchase of a Rembrandt. When I went to see it as a child, expecting a great blaze of beauty to strike me, I was so disappointed. It looked to me just some highlights on an old person standing in the dark. So I looked to more ostentatious paintings for the WOW I expected from the beautiful. It took a bit more time and looking for me to learn that beautiful qualities in art (or people) didn't fit conspicuous categories. WOW still works for me, but  hardly cuts it any more as a criterion for beauty or meaning.   

Often there's very little at first glance to distinguish a good painting from an indifferent one a. Bad paintings might depict clouds well, or display some impressive technique, or so loudly declare something that they get noticed. Yet, in Proust's sense, they lack an elusive specialness. Looked at repeatedly they become rather boring, with nothing further revealed in the play of small details, or in qualities of light and contrast, or a particular touch that continues to engage us as we look more.

Habit  tends to erode beauty. You stop looking attentively at what's routine -- even that beautiful painting you were fortunate enough to get. As Virginia Woolf said, beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. We can't ever presume to know it too well.

How to Open Your Eyes: All the light we cannot see

"How to open your eyes" is another chapter in this commentary upon Proust's lessons for us. 

detail of still life painted in Provence by Janet Strayer

Proust encourages us to use paintings as examples: scenes of ordinary fruit and kitchen ware, of ordinary people doing ordinary things in contrast with the heroic (on the one hand) or the picturesque (on the other). In our day, the sensationally vulgar versus kitsch might replace Proust's heroic versus picturesque contrast. Still, the message holds: simple and ordinary things can be wonderfully, aesthetically, beautiful.

Proust may have over-valued painters. He wrote "I have tried to show how the great painters initiate us into a knowledge and love of the external world, how they are the ones by whom our eyes are opened'" (p.150, quoted by de Botton).

Proust understood that we need the arts. They help us bridge the gaps, even fill the holes, between our immediate circumstances and something we need that is deeper, wider,  richer, stronger and, yes, beautiful. In so doing, our life also changes, in moments and bits of attention as we look for and are enriched by what is, for us, special.

All the light we cannot see is a lovely metaphor and the title of a fine novel by Anthony Doerr. Well worth reading for its own sake, and  also meaningful in this context. The arts can enhance our perceptions and meaningfully link to our lives even if we are blind (as is the girl in this book) and however bleak our situation. Some courage and humility help: a dedicated willingness to attend, remain open, look, listen, seek, acknowledge and appreciate,  again... and again. Other people, like these authors, can also help by promoting and supporting such efforts.  

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 

Artist En Route: Provence, France (third in a series of articles appearing in Art Avenue magazine)

Arrival: greeted by Cézanne

Arriving in Provence is like walking into a painting. It's so sensually appealing -- in all senses. Arriving in mid September, the light is remarkable. How to describe light? It's not just its clarity, given the dry air and open skies. Right now the light has a quality of softness that imparts a warm, golden glow. Everything is penetrated and sculpted by it, without hard edge. Compared to the brilliantly sharp light I've seen in southern Spain and Greece, the light here seems to caress forms, rather than starkly to chisel or outline them. It warms and insinuates shadows that seem to slide into, rather than cut, the ground. It illuminates in and around the subtly colored foreground planes and unifies them with harmonious background fields.

from Janet's studio window in rural Provence, France

For an idea of the glow here, contrast this photo taken outside my 'studio' here with one in my last column from Vancouver-- also beautiful, I think, but in a different light. My art space here is very different from my little art-house on Saturna Island, but it's workable. I've set up a room here with the art materials I'd unpacked and a make-shift easel of canvas tacked to a thin old piece of wood mounted on rusted garden stools I'd scrounged.

I'm settled for several months in a country house near Aix-en-Provence, home of Cézanne. He is my constant neighbor, whose round bald pate I love and in tribute to whom I've made the Bienvenu digital montage for you. Not only did Cézanne love and never leave Provence for long, but he saw it as few before him ever had. Now, not far from where he lived, I see the real Mt. Ste. Victoire appear the way he painted it again and again: planes of broken color that abut and define mass and that move with the light.

 Cézanne's personal welcome (JS digital montage)

Visual art has a way of teaching us to look in different ways and perhaps to see more. Cézanne's Mt. Ste. Victoire is not just a mountain. It's a changing field of colored planes, a template for a new way of looking and of seeing, an icon in art history, a symbol of a place and of a devotion. This is what it's like to live inside a painting. I start seeing the trees around me as Cézanne trees, the sparks of light as Van Gogh painted them, the colors as both organizing and breaking shapes into Monet-like impressions, the polymorphous possibilities for Picasso-esque forms.

It's a fantasy to think of long-gone painters as companions, but I do. On one of my hikes up Mt. Ste. Victoire, groaning my way along one of the longer and steeper trails, I kept looking for PC+EZ cut into tree trunks, a sign of the boyhood friendship of Paul Cezanne and Emile Zola, who walked these same trails.

view from one of many hikes I took on Mt. Ste. Victoire (JS photo)

Inspiration

Inspiration is everywhere. It's in the abundance of nature, the pace of agricultural rhythms, in the sensory variety of the sights, sounds, smells, and textures that weave through daily life. It's in the vineyards, olive groves, and spent fields of lavender, the red and ochre earth you walk upon. The natural palette is gorgeously harmonious. The ground varies from luscious red-browns to an eye-dazzling range of rich yellows, set in perfect contrasts of deep and diminished sap-greens that slide into silvery olive tones, and blues to break your heart. All the natural pigments could make you as delirious as they might have Van Gogh. Nearby Roussillon, perched atop on of the largest ochre deposits in the world, is famous for its natural pigments, used by painters for centuries... and now I've picked up some too.

JS photos taken while walking along natural ochre trails of Roussillon; natural ochre pigment purchased there, beside vase

It's in the endurance of ways of life here that persist across centuries of turmoil and war, in the ancient ruins you come across in almost every village, the many ancient towns with modern people living in homes with stonework dating back before the Caesars. The past is alive, along with the present. History is apparent even in street names like Rue Verrerie/Anciano Carriero de la Jutarie, written in both modern French and older Provençal (or Occitan). It's in the daily life of people who value living well: the well-prepared meal, the stylistic presentation, the attentively tended market stalls, the butcher who tells us not to miss the art show at the chateau. It's in the art based on this region that now invites you into it, up close and personal. 

Ordinary life becomes extraordinary when it breaks out of the familiar or routine. Art does something similar when it shows us an apple like we've never seen it before. Travel and living in a new location intensify and differentiate experience, pulling  it out of the ordinary lull. Shopping in the local outdoor markets, learning which ones to go to for what, listening to a different language, learning how to go about taken-for-granted things back home become adventures in living daily life. Such sharpening of one's attention is bound to influence how one sees things: teaching us how we need actively to look first, and then to look again. It changes one's perspectives by offering several different ways of looking at once. Not the easiest position to be in for holding confident opinions, but a self-reflectively open position that's very valuable, I think, for life as well as art.

I'm impressed by the attention given to public art and exhibitions everywhere I go. Even my town (not an art centre) has a local vernissage every few months. The nearby village of Loumarin, with only about 1,000 dwellers, boasts more than a dozen independent, active art galleries. This focus on art, so evident in the entire Provence region, seems to go along with a taste for reading and writing. Even in tiniest villages, you find busy independent bookstores and papeteries with their assortments of writing implements (fountain pens!) and papers, the tangibles of a literate culture. Vintage books and pens are also displayed traditionally in weekly open-air market stalls.

Making it as an artist?

I've visited so many nearby places, gone to so many different galleries and art events, and spoken with so many people here, including art students, teachers, and local gallerists, that I'm convinced this region maintains a vital cultural connection to the arts. Art centres and interests abound not only in the central city of Aix-en-Provence, long known for its artistic and cultural life. The many tiny Provençal communities have their art spaces and avid enthusiasts. Yet, emerging artists still typically take a long time to emerge.

Philippe, a mid-career artist/instructor for a workshop I attended gave me his overview of some challenges facing a painter who wants to make a living and gain recognition solely by art. They turned out not be so different from the challenges facing Canadian artists. He said the smaller galleries don't do enough to promote their artists and the larger ones are business conglomerates that deal only with known artists or decide in common which few new ones to promote. Although Philippe shows his paintings in local galleries, the best promotion, he thought, is to have them in the big art fairs that cost a big chunk of money but also attract the big gallerists. In contrast, "no problem" was the answer I got when asking the same question of Max, a fairly recent multimedia graduate of L'Ecole Superieure d'Art in Aix, then showing his intricate computer graphics at a group show promoted by the school. Max said he showed in all sorts of venues (not just galleries) in Belgium, France, and London, as well as having an internet presence with his abstract music. Aside from their artwork, is it their relative life positions or reference points for "success" that account for the somewhat different views of these two full-time artists?

Is what you paint affected by where you are?

Of course, we all affected by the culture we live in and absorb or react to, some more knowingly than others. Even the contemporary "culture" of painting tells us what's hot and what's not. But how much is the content and style of what visual artists paint related to their physical setting?

JS painting, Provençal Suite 1 (Abundance), www.janetstrayer.com

For plein-air artists, certainly it must be. But what about studio-based artists, abstract painters, or those who work from a more conceptual or imaginative base? My own recent experience tells me it is, for me, at least. I'd left for France while a show of my "Spirit of Place" semi-abstract paintings was on exhibit with the North Van Arts Council. I'd was eager to continue further with abstract painting. But after arriving here, "Abundance" is the first painting I did (in progress). I felt impelled to paint it just by being in the country house we'd rented and by Cézanne's palpable imminence here. In a way, it's my homage to both. Surprisingly to me, I couldn't get to work on anything else until I'd done this painting, which subsequently led to a couple more like it. While then pushing into work with non-representational abstracts, as I'd originally intended, those paintings kept changing into more impressionistic landscapes filled with the colors, textures, and sensations surrounding me. If an "abstract" painting of Provence results, good, but I'm ready to go with the flow for now.

The extent to which we're field-dependent or field-independent varies for each of us. This psychological variable pertains to our perceptual-cognitive styles: the extent to which we're influenced by the external context/field versus internal, proprioceptive cues. There are advantages to both. What impressed me, as generally a field-independent person, was the extent to which this flipped in response to the rich and inviting external cues of this Provençal environment.

Aix-en-Provence

Entire books are devoted to Provence, a region that includes multiple micro-climates and cultural influences from Celtic and Roman to Catalonian and North African. Aix-en-Provence is one of its handsomest towns, with its majestic Cours Mirabeau main street, one of largest and most recognizable fountains in France, and its trendy people-watchers sitting in posh cafés dating back to 1792. I'm fond of this ancient and youthful town that welcomes foreigners but keeps its traditions and a historic ability, despite changes of fortune, to embrace l'art de vivre. Of the many photos I'd like to share with you from Provence, here's one taken in Aix just after the horrible terrorist events in Paris. The town is alive with people, as usual, here celebrating in traditional costume an old Provençal dance with fife and drum.

traditional Provençal costumed folk dance with fife and drum (JS photo in Aix-En-Provence)

Á bientôt, for now. Looking forward to being en route with you in the next installment... in France or perhaps we'll already be in Italy!

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!

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

When Art Began

When Did Art Begin?

It's a good guess that art began when the first humans were born with an opposing thumb to their fingers. No originating date like, say the first Tuesday in 300,000 B.C.E., marks this birthday. But art must be at least that old. 

Venus of Berekhat Ram, 230,000-500,000 BCE, internet photo 

Just as we remain uncertain of who the first humans were to poke fingers into mud  and ashes to draw or sculpt, we don't know what were the first things they made or why. Different from making tools or utensils for functional use, why did humans create apparently non-functional drawings and sculptures? 

Art made by the earliest human beings has endured from millenia ago. Examples of what we've come to call "fertility or earth-goddess" or "Venus" figurines date back to 500,000 BCE. Then again, think of all the art that has not endured, painted onto now eroded rocks or into shifting sands!

Art as the Greatest Human Invention of All

                                                                   from DaVinci drawing

Anthropologists tell us that the ability to make and use tools is one of the prime definitions of "humankind", as distinct from other "kinds" on the planet. We know that other primates use tools, as do other animals. Nevertheless, the technological reach of tool-making and its applications has remained singular among humans.

Despite this triumph of tool-making, a  National Geographic article reports (along with gorgeous photographs) that "the greatest innovation in the history of humankind was neither the stone tool nor the steel sword, but the invention of symbolic expression by the first artists." (January, 2015, p. 33). Art marks the invention of invention!

A Defining Feature of Being Human

For all the reasons mentioned, art is a defining feature of being human. We are "homo aestheticus"or art-makers and art appreciators. This takes on an entirely different emphasis than tool-makers.  Tools are, by definition, concrete and functional. Art is not. Although tools can be beautifully and elegantly crafted, their reason for being is to be useful. They serve to get us something we need or want: like a stick poked into water catches us a fish for supper. 

What does a stick poked into mud or ashes and then dabbed as a design onto a rock get us?  Art serves no such concrete, material function as does a tool. Yet, for eons of pre-written history, humans have been impelled to create in this manner, even under the most hazardous of conditions. Interestingly, many creation myths across the globe have a divine creator artfully making humans, often out of some earthy material like mud or clay, and then breathing or decreeing life into it.

Why Make Art?

Why did the first humans make art? We can only speculate about the reasons. The question continues to intrigue us and applies to contemporary art as well. Why do we make art now? What we do know is that art is a fundamental human experience, both the making and the experiencing of it. 

This is the first sentence in S. Giedion's renowned and illustrated volume that tackles this question: The Eternal Present: The Beginnings of Art. Can we infer the earliest experiences of our ancestors from their art? We can try by attending to the content of the work, what is most emphasized,  and its manner of presentation in its context (e.g., innermost part of caves). 

With us from the dawn of our consciousness, art does more than register experience. It is useful, not in the same way that  tools and utensils are useful. Yet art serves important functions. More in the way ornament or ritual are useful: art contributes to making or marking a sense of specialness in the world. And,, in the way visual language is useful, art is a means of communicating to others, even to some transcendental "other'.

Art expresses in both symbol and  visual metaphors for what we experience, need, want, fear, or yearn for, be it material in nature or immaterial, physical or metaphysical.

Art is an experienced act of exploring our minds, creating and re-creating experiences, dreams, wishes, or worlds that others, too, can experience. It is an act of exploring our powers to create, elevating or submerging us into what we do not quite know ... but somehow begin to imagine. And so, it begins to take shape and form. It makes meaning. 

More Creative Life News

You can read and see more about Italy plus other travels and creative adventures by this itinerant artist at Creative Life News here.

Regards, Janet @ https://www.janetstrayer.com

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

Art the Mexican Way: Artful Puerto Vallarta at Year's End 2014

 

I've visited Puerto Vallarta several times, following the route taken by so many North Americans escaping a long winter at home.

This little village on Banderas Bay was way off the map until it hit movie star status. It was The Night of the Iguana, with John Huston directing Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Ava Garden among its spicy cast that turned what was then a picture-perfect fishing village into a stellar spot. The cinematic luminaries, apparently charmed by this location, stayed on and Puerto Vallarta has never since been the same. 

The promenade along the surf's crest in downtown Pto. Vallarta is called the Malecon. It is stunning, not only in its lovely views of water, sand, and sunset, but also in the artful way it undulates and its pavement patterns flow. The fanciful and anthropomorphic sculptures that accompany the seaside path are triumphs to the originality and appeal of Mexican art. 

 

Incredible, larger than life-size public art works in bronze by sculptors like Sergio Bustamante, Alejandro Colunga, Guillermo Gomez, Jonas Gutierrez, and Oscar Zamarripa have become rightly famous worldwide and continue to delight the public as emblems of this town. You can touch, sit or climb on them, or just enjoy and marvel at their ingenious company. So much visual art lives here, as in much of Mexico.

Huichol yarn painting by José Benito Sanchez

Over the years I've travelled and lived for months at a time in various regions of Mexico - from the Mayan southeast coast inward to Aztec Mexico, from Oaxaca through central areas and up to San Miguel de Allende, and sampling towns along the Pacific coast - I've always been inspired by the street art gracing even the dustiest of villages. I've been especially enchanted by the works made in clay and the wealth of folk art in all media, including the mesmerizing yarn and bead paintings and sculpture of the Huichol peyote culture (examples at the Colectika gallery, among others). 

wall of contemporary nichos (from pininterest)

Art here is a feast for the eyes -- visible in weavings, beadwork, jewelry, pottery, masks, and sculpture. Even the "nichos" (small niches originally serving as personal shrines or altars) made originally as devotional offerings by persons seeking, or grateful for, divine intervention are now adapted to more humorous contexts that delight viewers and tend to make a point. I've purchased several such works based on Mexican sayings. One little nicho I have, for example, highlights a single ornate shoe in a highly decorated enameled niche that reads (loosely translated): when your shoes are too comfortable, you forget you have feet. Make of that what you will. 

My point is that everything is subject to artistic transformation, including old bottle caps made into mixed-media paintings and earrings. The spontaneous outpouring of a creatively expressive culture is visible in its art. The active exercise of this energy is what I love about regional art... and art in general.

The distinction between "high" and "low" art seems arbitrary in places that have always maintained such populist roots and modes of expressivity. Coming into an art gallery or museum, visiting an artist's studio or seeing art on the street: what registers as "art" is something that stops you and draws you in for more, something that changes the way you view the world, even for a moment, affecting your thoughts and feelings, making something in you come more alive. 

 Of course, Mexico has its historical high-end visual art stars like Frida Kahlo. Diego Rivera was among the emigré group of artists in Paris that included Picasso and Modigliani. There are contemporary stars as well. You can see wonderful art at all prices and in all places, including dedicated art galleries.

Understandably, with the growth of the tourist trade and global appreciation of local artistic wonders, Mexican art galleries have also proliferated. I've enjoyed viewing a tradition of fabulous art in some of Pto. Vallarta's art galleries. I mean "fabulous" literally, as a tradition known to Mexican art of mixing the real and surreal into a magical realism uniquely latino.

painting by Raymondo Andrade

Among the many figurative examples that come to mind I can select from contemporary artists like Raymondo Andrade (the more intellectual) and Miguel Carillo (the more personal) who paint timelessly surreal figurative works. Along with Israel Zzepeda, one of my favorite artists here, these masterful artists create imaginative worlds one is invited to enter: worlds that are surprising, lovely, strange yet familiar, with narratives that one need not pin down reductively but that open us to possibilities.   

painting by Miguel Carrillo

painting by Rogelio Manza

     

Then there are the deconstructed but technically refined mixed-media portrayals of the relative newcomer, Rogelio Manza,

painting by Israel Zzpeda

The figure still reigns in Mexico, as it has culturally since pre-Columbian civilizations walked this ground. It's remarkable how many very fine painters have been self-taught (rather than formal art school graduates). Perhaps that contributes to a greater freedom from current art trends in vogue and more reliance on what one personally needs and wants artistically to do, given  the context of what is meaningful to his or her life and history.

Even when taken to abstract extremes, the face and figure remain an expressive focus in contemporary Mexican art. This is seen in the modernist work of Vladimir Cora as well as the lively naive styles of Rogelio Diaz (very textured) or of  Romgo.

painting by Vladimir Cora

painting by Rogelio Diaz

painting by Romgo

Love of  drawing and  of line seem a welcome feature of Mexican art, from ancient times to the present. 

The delicate abstract lines in its famously beautiful pottery traditions and the realistic or whimsical figures depicted  in paintings attest to the fine linear sense in Mexican art. Among many  examples are works by Fernando Pereznieto (whom  I collected in the 1980s) and current works on view in Pto.Vallarta's art galleries. 

Even as global art traditions influence art, a local Mexican influence seems to suffuse many of the artworks here, adding to their interest. 

painting by Gabriela Epstein

A vibrant sense of color and composition is a heritage in abstract works here as well (see work by Gabriela Epstein at Galeria Contempo, for example). Although I cannot define a distinctly Mexican feel to the current abstract paintings on view, as can be done with earlier abstracts by famous Mexican painters like Rufino Tamayo (who incorporated figurative aspects) or Pedro Coronel who referenced pre-Columbian art), they are decorative and attractive. 

Personally, I think it is figurative art that reigns in Mexico, whether it is expressed in a surreal, magical, whimsical, modernist, contemporary grunge or semi-abstract mode.

The galleries, themselves, provide some very appealing venues for displaying art. In contrast to the minimalist, antiseptic environment of many contemporary galleries, some here have several rooms to wander through, with welcome interior courtyards and fountains, as well as informed and friendly staff. Among my favorites are Galeria Dante for its diverse set of painters and sculptors and its appealing setting (if sometimes crowded walls), and its well-informed, friendly staff. Galeria Corsica is another, newer favorite (two related entrances across one another), with a lovely 2-storey setting in which to view distinct groupings of artwork.

Over the past few years, art galleries here have taken a hit, as has occurred elsewhere in the world. The traditional Wednesday night "art walk" in Pto. Vallarta seems to have shrunk in size and festivity. It feels a bit sad to me to have this celebration of art in any way diminished. Why might this be?

The rich are richer, I'm told in global news.  But where are they spending their money? If it's for art, it seems just the very high-end that's getting steeper. Certainly, the auction sales at Christie's have blown through the roof, with paintings selling for hundreds of millions. Yet, it's the mid-range venues, where real "finds" in art are made, before provenance and branding dictate price.

At mid-level galleries, seeing emerging artists "make it big" has been an exciting possibility. Nowadays, I experience less artistic buzz across galleries than I used to. Less of the excitement that always accompanied a new art show, a newly discovered talent or vision. In the past I've always benefited from galleries introducing and promoting artists unknown to me. In contrast, now I see more of the same assorted names circulating across the different galleries. Given the notable, if not equally numerous, array of women artists among famous 20th century Mexican painters (e.g., Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, Leona Carrington, Leonora Fini), it's disappointing not to see more women among the headliner artists on view.

I continue to love what I love among the art I find. But I miss the greater freedom of range, the celebration of diverse talent, the surprises and inspiration that Mexican galleries, in particular, had seemed to offer,  If I'm right, I hope this is more of a momentary squeeze than an enduring socio-economic trend across the many fine art galleries in Pto. Vallarta.

I'm posting this on a sunny Christmas day in Puerto Vallarta, having just past the winter solstice the Mexican way. Happy holidays to all.