Janet Strayer

Monday, October 31, 2011

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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Sunday, September 4, 2011

Thoughts of Home

Lady in the Palazzo is a title of a book set in Umbria that I purposely did not finish when I lived there. Already knowing that I would miss our life in Umbria upon returning to Vancouver, I kept the unfinished book with me. I continue to read it now …. very slowly. I may write more about this fine gift of a book after my thoughts have settled.

Living in Umbria was as close to home as I ever feel, anywhere. That is, anywhere you don’t really have a childhood history or share a native language. Still, I felt at home there: like a place in my heart settling into what it recognizes as home.

Today’s Thought

…life is a crafted thing, not a willed one.

Marlena de Blasi, author of Lady in the Palazzo.

For some of us, being at home may belong to a number of select places, not one. Places you choose or that choose you. Certainly, in my case, it’s not the place of my birth. Home for me is New York City, Vancouver, San Miguel de Allende, and now rural Umbria. Not home in the factual sense of houses or flats, but home as in feelings of abiding connection with something that lives in you even when you no longer live in it.

If home is where the heart is, perhaps then it is only the expansiveness and dedication of one's heart that defines home/s.

After my first journey (the first sea voyage to America), over which I had not the slightest control, I’ve come to relish intentional trips of discovery (and work) in foreign places: Cuba, Guatemala, Trinidad, Belize, Costa Rica, a year in South America, four months in Singapore and Malaysia, more time-limited visits to New Zealand, Bali, Burma, Israel, Greece, Crete, Turkey, Tunisia, Morrocco, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, many visits to Mexico for months at a time, and several months at a time in France, Spain, and Italy. Never yet to China, Japan, Russia, India, central and south Africa. It’s a finite contest between the pull of places you’ve been versus the temptation of entirely new places.

Not surprisingly, so many of my paintings done this past year in Europe have themes of journey and travel in them.

Today’s Painting

Ariadne's Compass, painting by Janet Strayer

It’s not my intention to trot the globe with my footsteps, though I’m not averse to that either, if I can manage it. Perhaps I have an errant (but fortunate) gene that makes me wander, looking for home in all the right places, to alter a phrase. Perhaps it’s because I’m an immigrant, first as a toddler from Germany to the US; then as a young adult to Canada. Perhaps it’s because I am home, like a turtle carrying home with me, looking for interesting places to discover and put myself into as a new ingredient: the semi-permeable ‘self’ that happens when you allow yourself to be an interested stranger in interesting places.

The turtle remined me of a painting (below) that I made several years ago in Vancouver. I don’t really know what it “means” but I can make up a story, as can you. For me, it has something to do with a sea-surrounded muse, a remnant of land (a branch) drifting in the air beside her, an obdurate sea turtle at her service, a mischievously bemusing snake that cannot resist chattering to her from its home in a glass bottle, the inevitable winged creatures that find their way into many of my paintings, and an egg for the who-knows-what future.

Fathomless, patinting by Janet Strayer

I expect that one can travel great distances in an armchair as well as via an airplane. But there is, in the actual physical encounter with new geographies, people and animals, the distinctness one usually cannot just imagine, but needs also to remember. All those remarkable aromas, climates, vistas, foods, customs, faces, gestures: tangibles and intangibles that you sense and learn (frustration and discomfort sometimes being part of this). You may come to understand a little more, appreciate a little more. Imagination and memory build upon these experiences, but can’t alone create them.

Then, you miss them. So it is that travel begets travel.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Words: What’s the Opposite of Onomatopoeic?

I’ve always liked words. Nor long-windedness or fussy talking, mind you. But words, those little strutting bits of sound and meaning. Long ago, when I first started to read words without pictures linked to them, some of them used to fly off the page at me.

We had a big Funk and Wagnalls dictionary in the house. I even liked the sound of that, like the sound of “Walter Cronkite”. It was an oddly reassuring and reliable 2-volume set, with its serious, navy blue cover -- though Volume 2 always seemed a little scary. The dictionary was like a book of wizardry. It held a million A to Z keys to doors I couldn’t see beyond.

I’d pick a page at random and find a word I could read but didn’t know, then see if I could understand its definition. That often led to looking up other words. But I kept it to just one word at a time. After all, I liked doing lots of other things too. Like watching cartoons and westerns and playing potsy (you might call it hopscotch) on the sidewalk.

Words I didn’t know seemed especially magical: an entry into a special world that would become visible once defined, Words had different qualities. Some had gravitas, others took flight, others sounded sneering or funny. Sometimes, given its sound, a word’s meaning let it down.

When the definition didn’t fit the impression I had from how the word sounded to me, I thought the sense and meaning of the word had somehow gotten mixed up along the way. But more often than not, words somehow did fit their sound. Problem was, I often got the sounds wrong initally. Like thinking the US city of "Des Moines" was pronounced “Dezmoynes”.

Now, eons later, it’s still one of my little pleasures to see the ‘word of the day’ from Wordsmith.org in my daily email. Taken out of context and put bluntly on a page of messages, the chosen word stands out as unusually significant, even if you know it. So, when I saw “refulgent” listed last week, I noticed that I had a negative reaction: the word sounded off, like food gone bad. But its meaning is quite the opposite: “brilliantly shining”.

So what are words called that sound opposite to their meaning; anonomatopeic? (I like my made-up word much better than heterological, which is the appropriate one.) There's a distinct Red Queen aspect to liking words, as Alice and Lewis Carroll well knew.

You may think that I must have too much time on my hands if I’m raising such issues. Quite wrong. I have a deadline tomorrow. But words keep spinning their spells. How else to explain the popularity of the Wordsmith.org enterprise? When I do have some time, I’d like to do a series of word-paintings. Rapp-imagery?

Today's Thought

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
Ernest Hemingway

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Why Read Blogs?

Even though I write this blog, I hardly ever read blogs on a regular basis. I started this blog on the suggestion of a friend while I lived in Europe. It was a way of keeping contact with my friends, who enjoyed looking in on how and what I was doing. I'm very pleased to have learned that what I post gives some pleasure and information even to some people I don't know.

Frankly, though, once I started, the process of blogging became functionally autonomous, even rather addictive. Even if no one is reading this, there's always the 'imaginary audience' to speak to. Writing it keeps me grounded and aware that much of my creative life (ideas, paintings) is solitary but still wants to connect.

Like many of you (and even more people who are not even reading this), I don't have much time or inclination to read blogs. There are sOOO many out there. I know I'm probably missing some really beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful, and eye-opening blogs.... but who has the time to to plod through all the stuff that keeps coming at us? The public news is bad enough to wade through, as is the terrible and misnamed 'reality show' trash that keeps getting thrown at us as "entertainment." Sometimes the information highway just seems like a huge and honking traffic jam.

But, now and again, there are little islands of sanity, solace, and beauty.

Let me recommend a blog that a Finnish-Canadian artist acquaintance of mine has written for a long time. It is a beautiful, thoughtful presentation of a life being lived fully. Marja-leena Rathje is an award-winning original printmaker with an eye for extraordinary design, and she writes so coherently too.

A very different blog is written by my free-lance journalist and writer friend, Ruth Ellen Gruber, who lives in Italy. Ruth is the one who instigated my own blog-writing ... if you ever feel like blaming someone for it. She has several blogs, as you can see if you type in her name at this blogspot location. But the one I want to recommend is eccentrically interesting, focusing on one of her main interests: country and bluegrass music in Eastern Europe. It's entitled Sauerkrautcowboys Sturm, Twang and the Imaginary Wild West in Europe.

Today's Thought

It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway,' but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.
Mike Royko, American Journalist (1932-1997)

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

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"

Monday, August 29, 2011

Saturna Weekend

Last weekend I was sitting on the porch at Saturna, feet up, and reading one of the many old New Yorkers that had collected in the post office during all the months we’d been away. What bliss! (Hey, you can take the girl away from NY, but you can’t NY away from the girl!)

The sun was strong, and the breeze from the ocean was cool. The ocean itself was unruffled by the breeze, with only a large patterned swirl on its glossy surface showing any movement at all. Spots of darker color here and there where the clouds cast shadows.

Feeling good despite all the work to do here: the massively overgrown garden, the roses that had made it without me, grown taller and more spindly than they’d ever been, strangled by the high grasses and weeds. The kiwi branches reaching their amazingly long and curling tentacles onto anything for attachment, grasping indiscriminately at wooden gate and roses, not bothering to have any preference.

I’d decided to let the garden go this year. Too late and the weeds are too strong for me to pull. I’ll wait until the colder weather comes and the rains. The hardy flowers will all be gone, but many of the weeds will be too. Then I’ll do what I can to rid the garden of them. That’s my strategy. I feel like Napoleon planning his march on Moscow. I know it’ll get the better of me.

You should see my garden. Rather, you should have seen my garden before it went stark-raving-lunatic wild. I’d planted every bit of it,even laying by hand the little brick path that weaves through it. Not all at once, but each year bringing something new. And it became a work of art. Like Monet’s at Giverney, but of course not at all like Monet’s. Like a garden a city girl would grow who knew nothing about gardening until she planted this one right out of her head. It’s really a lovely place. Or it will be, again.

When I lifted my eyes from the New Yorker to look up, I was stunned. There on the top branches of a tree sat three bald-headed eagles, looking out to sea. I ran to get the binoculars to make sure. Yes, indeed, three of them, silent and still, the air charged around them.

I took these photos to show the views I saw without and with binoculars. Trouble is, because it’s not a video, you can’t see the eagles turning their heads, so you can’t see their white caps. The one at left is about to fly off the branch.

What a wonderful moment to be home again. What a magical place this is.

Today's Thought

It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
-- Sitting Bull

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

--Winston Churchill

Monday, August 22, 2011

Price and Value at Art Competitions

Lately I've been trying to follow the advice of some art pundits who suggest that entering juried art competitions is a good way to get two birds to sing at the same time. That's my revision to the old "hit-with-one-stone" metaphor. I like birds.

The two metaphoric birds are, in this case, (1) getting one's artwork better known (if your work succeeds in being juried in); and (2) getting an idea of what other kinds of works make the cut, giving you some basis of comparison across different approaches to painting.

The outcome for me of this competitive enterprise has been good so far. I've entered works in several competitions during the year and have gotten my work accepted in each 'with congratulations given the many fine entries ...," etc. My latest news is an email notifying me that one of my paintings will be in the Federation of Canadian Artists Still-Life exhibition this September.

Marbles and Wood Box,, oil painting by Janet Strayer

Nice news, especially since this follows right on the heels of the Painting on the Edge exhibition. So, I must be doing something right. Right?

I suppose if you're already well known, you don't need to do this stuff. Though, looking through art-history, one sees just how many now 'famous' artists were cut from the established competitions as well as from sales. Even once successfully/financially established, Monet, for example, moaned about the public exhibition of his artwork.

Still, I have to pause and ask myself what I've learned from this process of entering competitive shows. The thought of dog-shows keeps perversely slipping across my brain, despite my best intentions. Is this really the way to go? Does it fulfill the two objectives I listed above?

I cannot form solid conclusions based on my still limited experience of this aspect of the art world. But I can say I am learning a few things personally.

Either everyone else in the show is uniformly pricing their work too high, or I am pricing mine too low -- OK, there are some well-known people in these shows, so I expect they have to tag their prices to match their past gallery sales. Still, it's an eye-opener!

There is absolutely no feedback regarding what makes a work "good", what about it caught the judges' eye, So, there is little to be learned outside of your own personal opinions about each work. Given you don't have access to the null-file (the declined works), you can't form any generalizations other than the wobbly and undefined "it's a matter of taste."

I will do my best to let competition organizers know that it is in everyone's educational interest (artists and the public) that the qualities of at least some works chosen be described -- not relative to others (asking for trouble, indeed), but just in themselves.

Given the crowds attending the exhibitions I've been around for, I'd say that exposure to one's work is definitely enhanced.

Does this lead to increased sales? I can't yet say. Frankly, I don't really expect my "Little Adolf" painting to fit into most peoples' living room decor. For me, it's more about wanting people to see what I do with the material chosen, so that they may look further at my work, see what I'm capable of doing, and remember me when they might want an artwork.

The jury is still out on that one. But I'm encouraged to continue this route for awhile. Hope you'll join me.

Today's Thought

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

-- Warren Buffett, American Investment Entrepreneur

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Painting On the Edge and Living on the Edge

The opening night was crowded for the art show, Painting on the Edge. Nice, but not a great way to view the art displayed. It was a relatively small space for so many. In fact, that friends I'd hoped to see there and I never connected. They wrote saying "sorry I missed you", but I'd been there all the time they were. We must have just turned different corners at the same time, missing sight of each other. Beat that! Well, the show's on through Sept. 4th, if you're in town. Thanks so much to far-away friends who wrote with congrats about this.

That weekend we drove to Seattle to see another great show: music this time. It was the Seattle Opera's production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. It was wonderfully good! Everyone in it was a fine actor and dramatic singer and so with-it. It all fit so well together: the set tableau-design, the dance, the impeccable orchestra that is part of this opera house. Wow! The programme termed it an "American Folk Opera". Of course, like Cavalleria Rusticana is an "Italian Folk Opera".

What's the difference between an opera-opera and a folk-opera? We're not talking "operetta" here with a lighter commitment to libretto and music: a divertissement. We're talking full-scale dramatic and musical range, with vocal acoustics that demand operatic training to hold and sustain the highs and lows. The cast was up to it. And also up to the jazzy element that makes this so much an American opera.

Seattle Opera: Porgy and Bess

You know how awful some very good opera singers sound when they try to leave their own element and sing jazz or blues or pop? Well, these singers could do it. Even Sportin' Life, whose voice was the least 'operatic' among them, had the jazz and jive to make up for it....and, besides he hit the operatic money-notes too. All the principals were outstandingly good. This is real opera. No acoustic-boosts in McCaw Opera Hall: it's the voices that penetrate right through the rafters!

We were sitting in front of Speight Jenkins, the long-time director of the Seattle Opera. It was fun during breaks in the performance to listen in on his sotto-voce comments about what a particular performer was like in real life, or how he happened to find just the right person for a role. Well, aside from the in-talk, I'd say Speight knows a thing or two about putting on a good show. The Seattle Opera manages the entire Ring Cycle every four years (though I can't bear to sit through it all)! Still, we've seen such great performances there, done in such a fresh way. It's such an extraordinary opera venue that we travel to Seattle regularly to catch the productions we can.

I thought it might feel a bit dated to see Porgy and Bess now. I'd seen it at least three different times throughout my adult years, so thought it might have become a bit worn by now. I'd bet many of us could have sung-along with every song in the opera (so glad we didn't!!), .... that's how well-known its tunes are. Though the rhythm and music hit such familiar chords, the only impetus was to LISTEN to this "new-again" work. I tell you, when real artistry and feeling go into a work.... and into performing a work... wow, it comes alive again, no matter how familiar you think it is.

That's how it is with art, I think. Not only does art make something special (as I've said before), but here's the added flavour: it does so in a way you can keep coming back to again and again, finding nuances you didn't find before, savouring and appreciating things you missed all those other times.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Art That Moves: Movies Beyond Belief

Art has continued from prehistory to be a powerful way of knowing, feeling, touching, expressing, and effectively communicating something important, something special. -- Janet Strayer (previous blog)

I’ve been hooked on movies ever since I can remember, and then some. Even as a kid, old black and white movies on TV especially captivated me. For some magical reason, I thought they were more “real” than those in full-color.

There isn’t even a particular movie genre I like best, that’s how indiscriminate I am. Give me westerns, chick-flics, action-movies,, sci-fi, documentaries, thrillers, romance, comedy, Hollywood, Bollywood, foreign, domestic, you name it.

Maybe this marks a strain of promiscuity that needs restraining. But I rather like having it. So I’ll name it something more positive, like a “generous or wide-band receptivity”. It’s not a bad quality. But it does leave one open to others thinking that you have little taste or discernment. I’ll risk being branded a cinema slut, though, just to keep the pleasure of my open options!

Not much of a critic in my early days, I was a glutton at a visual-narrative feast. I’m more of a gourmand now (and I see fewer films, alas). Still, I like many more movies than a cultivated person probably should. But then, I guess, for good or ill, I have a high quotient for suspension of disbelief -- that radical imaginative facility Keats and others speak of. I did and do respond to material from any direction that engages my mind and feelings and encourages imaginative participation.

Today’s Thought: Imaginative Participation

Actually, imaginative participation may be a rarer quality in art now than in years past. This isn’t the same as knee-jerk interactive participation in a video game, or the scripted and conditioned responses we may be unable to resist in “tear-jerkers”.

Imaginative participation is more elusive, taking some time to experience and enduring, usually somewhat transformed, in the viewer’s mind . I think it requires some empathic engagement, an intersubjective bridge built from the artwork into the viewers' own esthetic and empathic imaginings. (I've written a chapter draft on empathy in the arts; write if you want to read it.)

I still love going to the movies But, like eating junk food, I don’t always come away satisfied. Recently, though, I saw two movies whose imagery was enthralling, sending me on a visual- imaginative-esthetic journey that pushed my critical boundaries out and away. They left me full of images rebounding in my mind, full also of enduring feelings and sensations, many of them hard to describe, and a sense of wonder.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Werner Herzog did us all a great favor by filming inside the prehistoric, but only relatively recently discovered, Chauvet Cave in France. Seeing the film was almost better than being there because of the intimate camera work (not special effects). The hand-held cameras provided shifts of perspective and changing contextual viewpoints on the marvelous animal images drawn upon the cave walls.

Human life is present in the Cave without itself being depicted. The human is present and suggested in the selective ways the animals are seen to move, and in how they affect us as we view them. It’s interesting to me that the humans we focus on in the film aren’t the film crew or scientists (stand-ins for our present-day selves). Instead, we focus on the mysterious originating artist/s -- our human ancestor/s who walked here, envisioning and inscribing images of animal life in which they , too, must have participated.

These images are alive forever in the way only art can be. The human artists are long extinct, their own presence depicted only in handprints, and in one rather amazing blend of human female iconography with an animal head. Yet they, too, continue to live through the art and through us.

This film hardly needed narrative, yet Herzog insisted on providing it, much of it (beyond the facts provided) seeming superfluous to me. For me, it’s enough to say:

Look, see, marvel in any way you like at this life that breathes in art 35,000 years after our ancestors breathed the air in this cave. How like them are we? How like the making of art then is the making of art now? What became of them and what will become of us?

Tree of Life

This film really surprised me. I had not read anything about it when I went to see it. Good thing, given I don’t typically enjoy anything with such a strong religious bent to it. Yet the imagery in this film, its lyrical and moving soundtrack, and the complex, elegiacally restrained emotional pull of it was, despite my admitted reluctance to follow any evangelical line, profoundly beautiful and moving.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Take it in Stride: Rejection and the Half-Filled Cup

My last posting was pretty bad personally in the luck department, But, as a rational optimist, I simultaneously knew that things could get worse ...and would, at some point, get better.

They’re better. I still have the costly and tedious (many months) wait for citizenship ID, still have forms to fill and nagging chores to do, including an unexplained bathroom leak and a Saturna garden wild beyond the “au natural” excuse, plus tax material to collate and file (late because of my travelling), yadayadayada

But, on positive balance….

I’ve been to a casually lovely garden party with friends;

I’m settling back into the city;

I’ve had lots of good news about my art.

My art news is exciting. Here are the highlights:

· I’m gearing up for the Painting on the Edge international exhibit at the Federation Gallery, Granville Island, Vancouver. It shows from Aug 16 through Sept. 4, 2011. More about this below.

· I’ve just been notified as one of the “winners” of a juried international drawing competition. My work, Pardon My Eye, will be in the book, Strokes of Genius 4 : Exploring Line (publication date: October, 2012). This book is one in the acclaimed North Light Books series celebrating art.

· Three of my original printworks (an intaglio, a traditional etching, and a photo- etching) were juried into an August show of contemporary printmaking at the Federation Gallery in Vancouver. Sorry I missed the show, but I was still in Europe.

· I’ve received confirmation of a new solo show, Child Out of Time … Reborn, at the Seymour Art Gallery in North Vancouver. It will open in April, 2012. More about this show later. The Seymour is an attractive and welcoming gallery in a very nice setting. This is especially good news given the recent closure of two more very big galleries in Vancouver.

· I’m getting (fingers crossed) a great new studio space of my own at a “Vancouver Soho” location that showcases a lot of terrific art and artists. I think my paintings will thrive in it .

Regarding Painting on the Edge, I was surfing the web for the prospectus on it and came across another artist’s blog. It was interesting to me because she showed some lovely paintings but lamented that, despite repeated entries during the 9 years this international show of “cutting edge” art has existed, her work has never been accepted. Behaving like a sensible (as well as sensitive) artist, she tried to analyze why, listing reasons like “just another pretty picture”, “nowhere near adventurous enough”, and she urged herself to have more nerve.

I don’t know Charlene, the artist. I just chanced upon her work. But I really liked her attitude and her wistful recognition that yet another painting of hers would be assigned to her personal Salon des Refusés

At the same time, I read a column by Chris Tyrell, one of the art-and-enterprise pundits in Vancouver. Spinning off from recent art gallery closures here (and elsewhere), he thinks the workable contemporary model is for artists to manage their own sales directly to the buyer. This can happen one-on-one or via artist collectives that invite the public in.

I’ve always liked the direct-sales model because, by eliminating the middle broker, it keeps the costs low for buyers. But the big problem for direct-sales is publicity to get the public into your studio or collective setting to see the work. That’s what the galleries presumably did. Another route Chris suggests is for artists to participate in art auctions for charity (i.e., the business of charity).

Today’s Thought

I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.
-- Sylvester Stallone

OK, that’s Rambo talking, not me. Still, thinking about Charlene’s comments about works rejected for the Painting on the Edge exhibition made it clear, once again, that the Salon des Refusés has always had much good work relegated to it –- a point most artists know but keep forgetting when it involves their own works.

Knowing doesn’t keep you from still keenly feeling what you feel. But knowing is essential for dealing with your feelings in a constructive way. It’s as important for me to remember Charlene’s attitude as it is to attend to the constant searching and striving that also seems to be part of my own artist’s way.

Personal Musings on the Artist’s Way ... or some things I'm learning along the way

1. Courage has to be part of it, as do respect for, and interest in, technical skills and phenomenological exploration. For me, some psychological exploration is usually part of the process too.

2. Persistence is essential if making art is what you want to do. No loopholes: work, work, work. Do it for the challenge of it, for the joy of it, for the learning, for the practice, for the discovery, for the accomplishment of materializing the immanent that started you off in the first place. Do it (don't just think it). To paraphrase Roethke: it's only by going that we know where we have to go.

3. Perfection is a myth, and can be destructive. Do it because it’s worth doing; make it because it’s worth making. Yes, good work is better than bad work (who’s doing the judging?), but some work is better than no work. At least it helps you gain your own basis for judgement. Mistakes are not bad works; they offer insights into the process of making things good and even, upon occasion, mistakes provide portals into something new and gainful … which bring us back to the importance of persistence and courage.

4. The bottom line is not about what galleries or juried exhibitions want . It’s not even entirely about what you want (to get into a show, to make a sale, to have the work admired, etc.). It’s about what the art (the work at hand) wants. This isn’t a mystical notion. It’s a gut-level reality of working on and with an artwork.

5. No one can really take over for you (even if you should want this). You have to learn what you have to learn, all along the way. That's not to say there aren't some good masters to learn from (even the dead ones), some good mentors if you're lucky, and lots of different techniques to make your own. But here's the discovery that I think all of us come to somewhere along the path.

Even as I write these insights based upon my own experience, I have to tell you that I'm not 'there' yet. These same points that I've come to understand aren't fully integrated into my functioning. I break down, I get sore and sad and disappointed and frustrated. I want things outside of myself and am as susceptible to market pressures and comparative judgements as are most people. But I really do believe in the points I'm making, have worked to come to them, and use them as guides whenever I'm off-track. So, I thought I'd share them.

Today's Discovery
Every artist is self-taught.

Is the work you’re doing really taking you somewhere? Are you getting right in there and staying with it, however confusing at the moment, figuring out whatever needs doing and having (or getting) the skills to do it? Is the work to which you’ve committed your full attention and energy (certainly for all the time you’re doing it) authentically what wants/needs to become materialized? If not, stop: go and tinker, paint as recreation or decoration (which I also like doing), be happy.

It’s a full and large palette that lives in us and that the world presents: fuller and larger than any one artist or art appreciator can handle. Art has continued from prehistory to be a powerful way of knowing, feeling, touching, expressing, and effectively communicating something important, something special.

That something special can be small or large, simple or complex. But it always hits the mark and makes the viewer stop, perhaps gape, and react. What that something IS, I cannot name in the expansive human-world relationship, be it beauty, truth, a horror faced head-on, some construction of meaningfulness, or whatever. But it matters. And it demands of the artist whatever vision, techniques and process are most authentic and evocative of it.

So, do you want to see the painting I submitted and that was juried into the show? It’s entitled Little Adolf, and here’s my “artist’s statement” that accompanies it:

A malevolent historical moment embodied in the concentrated tyrannical rage

of a tiny personage, Little Adolf is a grown temper-tantrumming toddler, the

airplanes stuck in his head and the vortex he creates referencing the fury he

unleashed in WW II. How can one depict such a dis-integrated and distorted personality?

Personally scarred by the horrors of WW II, and reminded of this

in every contemporary tyrant, I wanted to confront the interior behind the

mask of Hitler. This is the ironical image that emerged. Its format is deliberately

small in size

Today’s Painting

Sorry, I don’t mean to taunt. But the image isn’t available because the gallery has it. I thought I had a photo on this computer (not so). I will insert it once I’m all together again with the stuff around me.

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Monday, October 31, 2011

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Friday, September 2, 2011

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Monday, August 29, 2011

Monday, August 22, 2011

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Monday, August 8, 2011