Life is the First Art

Stop exhausting yourself with fear

2012-03-05T17:14:00.002-06:00

Fear is exhausting!

As the tornado sirens blasted incessantly last Friday, I sat covered with pillows in my studio supply closet. I don't mind telling you that, after years in hurricane and earthquake regions, it's tornados that scare the daylights out of me.

The tornados skipped my spot on earth but golf ball size hail bombarded my house and studio.

When the skies cleared for a gorgeous sunset, I felt so depleted that I simply could not get myself back to work. Why not? I wondered. I hadn't done much of anything except sit out the storm all afternoon.

Then I realized how utterly exhausting fear is.

Fear arises in response to many triggers.

Triggers for fear can be simply a matter of "I'm so busy. I have so much to do. How am I going to tackle my tasks in the amount of time I think I have?"

Or, "I don't know how to do what my next task requires."

Fear exhausts us because of mental anticipation of what might happen in the future (worst case scenario) and primal physical reaction (fight or flight.) Ironically, over busyness is often caused by fear of allowing life to unfold outside of our (perceived) control.

While there's not much to do about where a tornado lands, there is something to do about everyday fears.

I've written about breathing before and will do so again. Conscious breathing is a fabulous tool to center yourself and bring yourself into the present moment, out of your fearful thinking.

Conscious breathing gives you some time and space. Taking that time and space to make a decision is another great tool. Allowing yourself to make a decision gives you the opportunity to choose between reacting and acting. When you take decisive action, you dissipate fear because you are no longer anticipating and you have chosen to not react.

Then there's the fear of the unknown. I don't know how. I don't know what the outcome will be. We never really know the ultimate outcome of our actions. But one thing is for sure. We will be buffeted about like a seed in the wind if we do not direct our attention to decisive action.

We're learning machines. Many potential students are afraid of or loathe the computer and do not understand how an online course in drawing and watercolor could possibly work. I'm not in love with computers but they're great tools. It can be kind of a pain to learn new things but then you learn how to do new things and it's not so bad. In fact, learning how to do things that we think we can't do can be awesomely empowering.

For example, if you had told me six years ago that I would have installed two floors all by myself, I would have thought you were crazy. Now, one of the first things I brag on to visitors to my studio is the floor that I prepared and installed (with underlayment) all by myself. A couple of years later, I installed a completely different type of flooring in my bathroom. (I'm still amazed.)

Most creative activity requires cutting through fear. Drawing, watercolor, writing, all require cutting through fear. You can talk about being creative, procrastinate about creating or take a deep breath in front of the blank page and make a mark. The stroke of a key, a pencil, pen or brush signifies victory over fear. But you must allow the action to continue.

So then there's practice. You practice cutting through fear. The more you practice cutting through fear, the more engaging with the present moment becomes a habit. Then that habit starts spilling over into other areas of your life and work.

As for time, a lot of our issues with time revolve around our perception of it. This makes time sort of elastic. I start all of my basic drawing lessons with timed exercises and it is simply astounding how long one or two minutes can seem.

As you practice engaging with the present moment, you'll have more time and less fear.

Join me for my next Online Drawing and Watercolor Course starting March 15th.
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Attention to Details

2012-03-01T13:27:00.001-06:00

Hyacinths plucked on Leap Day.

One of my most favorite scenes in Western Lit is when Will Farnaby comes to after being shipwrecked on Aldous Huxley's Island. As Will regains consciousness, he hears voices calling "Attention! Attention!" "Here and now, boys, here and now." shortly discovering that the voices are trained mynah birds freed by an old rajah to remind the Island dwellers to stay present and pay attention.

I love this scene because it describes in large part of what I do as I teach drawing and watercolor. Sure, I teach about tools and techniques, history and how to's but, fundamentally, I help students to become more attentive and aware. Crucial elements in the creative process.

I listened up when I first heard the term Inattentional Blindness some years back. Are you familiar with this? It came on the popular scene with an amusing Harvard U. study played out on the basketball court. Viewers were instructed to count the number of times a basketball is passed between players in particular color jerseys. In the midst of the passing, a person in a gorilla costume wanders across the scene. A large number of viewers never see the gorilla. See here.

In the academic realm, possible causes are ascribed. Mostly, the phenomena can be boiled down to being so distracted (by your thinking) that you miss what's right in front of you, or, quite simply, not paying full attention.

This phenomena was identified before driving while talking on cell phones or, ahem, texting while driving. Although I see it every day, the latter is something I cannot allow myself to think about too much. Really? You're texting while driving and you have children in the car?

But I digress. But not too far.

When the car is in park and the ignition is turned off, pick up a pen or a pencil and draw something. It'll do you good.

Join me for my next Online Drawing and Watercolor Course starting March 15th.
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How to be alone

2012-02-22T01:00:00.000-06:00

Find solitude.

The way that we're living now? Non-stop information, superficial social back-and-forths, attachment to... make that addiction to mobile devices, the constant tether of "communication"... It's ridiculous.

If you want to think for yourself, which is true freedom, you must find some way to back off, slow down and disengage.

I'm all for meditation techniques and have learned several over the years. I practice a couple of meditations daily. But I can guarantee you a way to solitude in the midst of chaos that cuts through the nonsense more quickly than any sitting meditation. Anywhere, anytime.

Take out a pencil and start drawing something.

In William Deresiewicz's speech on Solitude and Leadership to plebes at West Point, he talks about the need to concentrate

"...on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas."

Be a lemming if it makes you happy. There are worse things.

Don't want to be a lemming? The question, then, is how do you disengage from the onslaught long enough to learn what your own take is on anything?

Gather yourself into a single point.

As I tell my beginner students over and over again, drawing is a practice. It takes time to look at something, to examine it, to allow your eyes and mind to explore the nooks and crannies of an object or a scene in order to make some sort of representation. Through the practice of that activity, you are able to establish a habit of mind.

Drawing is a way of carving out solitude. It's a way of practicing concentration. You cannot multi-task while you're drawing.

Learn a new practice in solitude. Establish a fun and challenging habit.

Watch Andrea Dorfman's video of Tanya Davis reciting her poem, How To Be Alone.

Join me for the next Online Drawing and Watercolor Course.
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A Valentine

2012-02-14T01:00:00.000-06:00

My best teachers in drawing, watercolor, design and art history were all at Santa Monica College in the late 70s-early 80s. Each was an exceptional artist. Each was an exceptional teacher. I was so very fortunate to learn from all of them.

Jim Urmston taught two survey courses in art history. I could hardly wait for each new class. He taught in such a way that I was easily able to commit to memory each painting, artist and date in the survey class. Part of it was the technique he used for review before each exam. Whatever that was, it worked for me.

Part of it was that he taught from within each work as a living artist, not as an academic dissection. He asked us to consider what would remain for future historians if our civilization were destroyed today. He helped me grasp the ephemeral nature of painting, the unpredictability of what survives to represent an era, a culture. I felt that he truly wanted us to learn, understand and remember.

One day, at the conclusion of I have no idea what, he said

"It all boils down to love and trust." —James Urmston

That sentence has stuck with me through the decades. Probably because it's true. So, I'm passing it along to you on this made up holiday. It's better than chocolate.
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On Deciding to Wake Up

2012-02-07T16:53:00.000-06:00

Before we shake off sleep, we are faced with a series of choices.

We make a series of decisions. Decision moves us into action.

Reach for the alarm.
Open your eyes.
Swing your legs over the side of the bed.
Grab a robe.
Walk to the bathroom.

Most of us have a morning routine. A process that move us into the consciousness of day.

Routine can become a type of slumber. Give yourself a new choice. Throw something into your morning routine to snap your consciousness up a notch.

Here's a suggestion:
Choose to be grateful before anything happens. Decide to give thanks for the breath of life, for the new day and all that it brings. Work that in somewhere between reaching for the alarm and opening your eyes.

See how that early gratitude flavors your actions throughout the day. If you think of that early offering later in your day, give thanks again. Make an intention to add this offering to your first thing in the morning routine for… a week? No matter what pain in the ass things are going down, we have so much to be grateful for.

"Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death." — Arthur Schopenhauer

Becoming conscious in the morning is one thing. Raising our experiential consciousness in everyday life is related but different. Even so, through both processes we encounter choices and make decisions.

Although all roads lead to Rome, I've developed a particular route to help raise your consciousness.

Decide to join us for an online course in drawing and watercolor.
See what it's like to raise your awareness through a series of exercises designed to sharpen your sight, coordinate your hands, deepen your understanding, develop your awareness and connect your immediate experience to your spiritual self.

Drawing + Watercolor Online Course starts March 15!
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John Muir's Natural Ability

2012-01-31T19:27:00.000-06:00

John Muir
Self-portrait sleeping in Bonaventure Cemetery
Savannah, GA, 1867

John Muir walked from Jeffersonville, Indiana to Cedar Key, Florida in 1867. Muir walked all over the place. Throughout his peripatetic life, he would sometimes fall to sleep hungry and without a roof over his head bed but he always had a journal and a pencil.

Drawing was simply part of Muir's everyday life. For Muir, drawing was a way of seeing nature, of recording and sharing his experience.

John Muir's letters and journals are littered with drawings. Drawings include botanical descriptions, maps, landscapes, geophysical observations, the well known self-portrait sketch (above) and recordings of personal adventures and explorations, like his hike into Yosemite's Matterhorn (below.)

Whether by rough cartoons or skillful draughtsmanship, Muir conveyed grand expanses and sweet beauty close at hand, a rabbit in the grass (below) with a pencil point.

An inventor from an early age, Muir also used drawing as a way of designing and describing his devices.

The Hickory Clock

Design sketch, c. 1863

John Muir called his home office his "Scribbler's Den" and let it be known that writing did not come easy for him. But drawing seems to have. Still, I can find no quote or passage in which Muir actually mentions his drawing. That was probably because, to him, drawing was as natural as the weather.

I doubt that Muir considered himself an artist. If he thought about it at all, he understood that drawing helped him better see ad comprehend the beauty and mystery of nature, to become one with what he loved.

The artist's signature?

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty."

Follow the links below to learn more about and see John Muir drawings and journals.

Many of Muir's drawings and journals are housed at The University of the Pacific Library Collection, others can be found. Others can be found at The Wisconsin Historical Society.

Visit the John Muir Center at the University of the Pacific.

Click here to access that collection of drawings.

and here for that collection of journals.

Read about John Muir via The Sierra Club.

Visit the National Park Service John Muir Historic Site Museum Collection.

Read a Sierra Club of Florida article on John Muir's Gulf of Mexico experience.

Most of the images in this post were sourced from John Muir's Wild America

Click here for books by and about John Muir.
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Ronald Searle did all that!

2012-01-03T09:55:00.001-06:00

I landed my first job because of my handwriting. The vice-president of the music publishing company that hired the 17 year old me called me in for my first interview because of my handwriting. He made a point of saying so. Later, the president of the same company said

"Your handwriting looks like Ronald Searle."

I'd been rifling through my parents' New Yorkers for years, cutting out drawings, ripping off covers. I knew who Ronald Searle was and what his drawings looked like but suddenly started paying closer attention. My handwriting looked like him!

One December day in 1996, I was freezing my ass off at the Munich Christmas Market and happened on a sign for a Ronald Searle retrospective at the Munchner Stadtmuseum. I stopped what I was doing and headed straight for the museum where I spent the rest of the day. It was the best retrospective I have ever seen.

What I remember most are Searle's childhood drawings laid out in vitrines. A large cartoon of Searle drawing Francis Bacon painting Velasquez painting Pope Innocent X. Awesome. I wish I could find a copy to post here. Pigs eating at a dining table with humans hung up curing in the smokehouse in background. His prisoner of war drawings.

In this rare interview, Ronald Searle asks, "Did I do all that?"

Thank you, Ronald Searle, for doing all that!

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Become a creator

2012-01-01T06:09:00.000-06:00

Share this video!

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Exceptional value.
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Farewell, Helen Frankenthaler

2011-12-28T09:08:00.004-06:00

In honor of Helen Frankenthaler's passing yesterday, I am repeating this 2007 post.

I love this 1984 photo of Helen Frankenthaler by Hans Namuth. She's standing in her converted garage in Stamford, Connecticut (which she later tore down to build a new studio). This photo has a permanent place on my studio bulletin board. I can't say that I paid close attention to Frankenthaler's work until relatively recently except that every single time I walked by one of her pieces in a museum I would think, WOW! I really like that. That's great! Now that I've learned more, I admire both her and her work tremendously, appreciate the noble path she's blazed and feel a sort of kinship with her.

I quoted the following in the opening to my Landscape into Art blog but because it's relevant to the stream of this little blog series, I'm quoting it again. It's a good one!

"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." —Helen Frankenthaler (Barbara Rose, Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1975, p. 85)

I add here another post from 2008 on the occasion of Frankenthaler's 80th birthday.

The last time I went poking around for an interview with Helen Frankenthaler, I could find nothing. Thanks to John Feldman at Hummingbird Films, we now have this marvelous video. And just in time for Helen's 80th birthday. It's today!

Frankenthaler's long time friend, Ann Freedman, is hosting a retrospective Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades at her New York gallery Knoedler & Company. You can read an Arts Journal review about the show.

If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I claim a variety of influences from many disciplines. But now that I am painting full time, there's no getting around my affinity for Frankenthaler's images and aesthetics, her work, and the trails she's blazed artistically and through her living and words.

Listen to Susan Stamberg's 1988 NPR Profile on Helen Frankenthaler.

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Carl Jung Art

2011-12-26T06:20:00.000-06:00

Carl Jung
from the Red Book

Darkness and Light

We spend a lot of time studying darkness and light in my drawing and watercolor courses.

In art lingo, light and shadow are referred to as value. Fundamentally, value is what determines how we see everything — objects, scenes, graphics, the computer screen you're reading this on, even color.

The beautiful Italian word, Chiaroscuro was first used in the Renaissance to describe the use of light and shadow in drawing and watercolor painting.

In my online courses, we also study the inner experience of darkness and light. Carl Jung identified the shadow aspect of the unconscious mind as our repressed (perceived) shortcomings and negativity. Jung said that the more we repress our shadows, the stronger they become. Jung turned to drawing and painting in times of emotional distress as a means of relief. Jung also hand-wrote and illustrated with his paintings his critically important Red Book. Learn more about Carl Jung's Red Book. Read a 2009 NYT article on the Red Book.

In my drawing and watercolor lessons, we have opportunities to recognize, accept and put aside our inner negativities in order to create with greater freedom. Through simple and more challenging exercises on paper, with support and encouragement, you can learn to transform your shadows into light.

This transformation is a by-product. First, you make an intention to try your hand at a new discipline. Then, you take action. The results are greater than the sum of the parts. My students never cease to amaze me with their growth and development.

I've written about Alan Watts before — his lectures have been a profound influence on my development since first listening to him in my early 20's.

Here's a tribute Watts gave after the passing of Jung.

Learn how you can transform your shadow. Join us for my 2012 Online Course in Drawing and Watercolor.

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The Snow Goose

2011-12-20T15:04:00.001-06:00

Snow Goose
Watercolor and Gouache
9 x 13 inches

Although I certainly don't feel like it, I must be getting old because I'm starting to say things like, "I sound like a dinosaur."

I am about to sound like a dinosaur. It's true. As best I can remember, we had the first real record player in the neighborhood.

When I was just a few years old, my father brought home a huge, heavy turntable from some radio station and proceeded to build a monaural component system. In one wall, he installed a woofer and tweeter with a fabric screen over the circular speaker opening. In the adjoining wall, he built a cabinet to house the turntable and amplifier. He learned the hard way not to store the vinyl LPs over the tube amplifier. I still remember his horror at finding the warped and ruined albums.

Back to Sam Goody's. On his trips to New York, my father bought albums from Sam in his original record store and took Sam's recommendations. ("I understand you should listen to this," my father said, handing me a copy of Meet The Beatles.)

Amongst our original LP collection was a copy of Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose performed by Herbert Marshall and Joan Lorring over a musical score composed and directed by Victor Young.

Click on the LP cover to listen to this fabulous recording.

I've managed to hold on to a text copy of The Snow Goose over all these years. Last year, when I read the short book aloud for an annual treat, I could hear the voices of Herbert Marshall, Joan Lorring and the supporting cast speaking aloud along with me.

As soon as I was dextrous enough, my father taught me how to operate the turntable arm and properly place the diamond stylus onto the outer grooves of the LPs. I carved deep grooves into our copy of The Snow Goose recording as the story carved deep grooves into my psyche.

Listen to it yourself. Read The Snow Goose to your children. It's a good story.
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Gould's Goldberg Variations

2011-12-12T20:48:00.000-06:00

This is too good to be true. Watch Glenn Gould perform the entire Goldberg Variations. (I only wish that the repeat of the original statement was included at the end.)

Has it really been four years since I posted on Glenn Gould?

I'll tell you how I discovered Glenn Gould.

I was around 14 years old and babysitting for the children of a doctor and his wife who lived down the street and across Shortridge Park in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.

After I'd put the children to bed, I flipped through the family's record collection and put on an LP of Mozart Piano Sonatas. After just a little while of listening, I heard someone singing along. This sort of freaked me out. I lifted the stylus off the record and listened. Nothing.

Then I put the music on again. I heard the person humming along again. Summoning all of my courage, I looked in every room of the first floor then climbed the steps to the bedrooms. No one but the sleeping children.

Finally, I put my ear to the speaker. Sure enough, the humming along to the music was coming right out of the speakers. I was relieved. Then I was intrigued.

Who was this person playing the piano? Glenn Gould.

Read my 2007 post called Fugue to see why this is such a treat for me to post for you today.
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The Gift of Drawing

2011-12-01T16:16:00.000-06:00

Drawing is a gift that keeps on giving throughout a lifetime!

Click here to learn about Drawing and Watercolor Online Courses.

Give yourself the gift of drawing

Basic Drawing Lessons

A simple, beautifully designed ebook created to start you on your drawing journey.

Explore it alone or share it with a friend.

Why stop at drawing? Learn about watercolor, too!

Enter Here to Draw and Watercolor

It's an independent, D.I.Y. program that you can work with over a weekend or pace out over two weeks. Discover the basic elements or drawing and then, using only watercolor pencils, the fundamentals of watercolor! Click here to learn more about this program.

Please get in touch with any questions! Learn more about online group courses.

Start with the independent, self-paced course Enter Here to Draw and Watercolor.

Or, start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. Basic Drawing Lessons.

Learn more about this eBook

Questions? Please get in touch!
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Enter Here...

2011-11-15T23:02:00.001-06:00

My Enter Here to Draw and Watercolor program is a great way for you to try a little drawing and watercolor on your own.

This short, independent, self-paced course gives you bite-size lessons delivered daily by email over 2 weeks and an idea of what my online courses are like. You don't have my personal encouragement and guidance and the support of your course mates, but there are no deadlines and it's just a small investment of time and money.

What you do have are some good foundation lessons, an opportunity to see what my teaching videos are like and a sense of how I teach related history in the lessons.

Enter Here... introduces you to watercolor with watercolor pencils, a natural bridge from drawing to watercolor. This gives you the opportunity to learn some fundamentals of the watercolor medium without having to invest in a bunch of watercolor supplies. (Yes, you do use a brush and you do use water.)

What you receive:

Drawing Primer
2 weeks of daily emails leading you through the primer in more depth and beyond...
to watercolor pencils, complete with a few videos (for a taste of my longer courses),
an interesting practice project (with breadth and depth),
an example of the history lessons I embed in my courses,
a little bonus inspiration with help to start a practice of your own
a complete pdf of the Enter Here... course (at the end of the 2-week mailings)
and... wait for it... a $100 coupon off my 12- or 24-week course (with me!)

To start your independent, self-paced course, click on the button below!
for $97

(you receive a $100 discount coupon for either of my longer on-line courses.)

Here's how it works:

Upon payment and registration, you'll receive daily emails over the course of 2 weeks. You can get started with a pencil and any paper.

Yes, you'll need some supplies. I've put together a bundle of materials for this course that will last you well beyond these lessons. That's a good thing! Drawing and watercolor require practice. The supply cost in under $50 (and you get a lot of good stuff!)

Click here to view and purchase the Enter Here... course supplies.

Click here to register
for $97

(you receive a $100 discount coupon for either of my longer on-line courses.)

Any questions? Just shoot me an email and I'll be happy to answer.

GET THE BIG PICTURE:

You have 3 courses to choose from —
Enter Here, Open Up, and Transform

Choose the course that's best for you. (Click on images to learn more.)


Enter Here is short,   Open up is 12-weeks   Transform is 24-weeks
self-paced + independent          of intensive fundamentals     that will change your life

Join one of my encouraging online courses and discover your untapped creative potential.

I definitely recommend joining my mailing list for special offers and discounts and other treats. You can sign up below or, again, to your right in the sidebar.
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Ten Steps to Greater Awareness (from my own back yard)

2011-11-07T16:57:00.002-06:00

What's really going on?

In the process of composing a post on another topic, I kept looking outside. It's a gorgeous fall day here in Nashville. So, remembering lessons from John Cage and Pema Chodron, I decided to make you a video.

Creativity is a process, whether you're designing, writing, drawing, painting or doing physics. There is no there there. Ideas arise but then there's development, refinement and springboards into new ideas, new processes. Developing creativity is a process that requires the development of awareness. There are ways to prime the pump of awareness. Here's one.

Use this exercise as a meditation if you like. It's designed to help expand your awareness.

Read the steps, then start the video and follow the steps.

Here are the steps:

Forget about time. How long is this going to take? Not long. Surrender to the exercise. Don't multi-task (there's no such thing.)

As you watch this video, see if you can count the different colors of green. What other colors can you see in the greens? Can you see yellows, reds and blues in any of the greens?

Now, look at the other colors; the reds, yellows browns. Look at the lightest colors. Are they colors at all? How about the darks? Are they black? Can you see any actual lines?

If you are not alone, put in your earphones and listen. This is quiet. No one is talking to you or at you. How quiet is it?

Start to separate the machine sounds (cars, freight trains, planes, etc.) from the sounds of nature — the birds, the wind, crickets, squirrels, dogs.

Any incidental sounds? One thing knocking against another? Camera noises?

Are you experiencing impatience? Are you bored? Imagine how much is going on in this video.

So, this is a video, of course. You're watching and listening on a machine.

Next time you're outside in your own back yard (or anywhere), practice this exercise. Notice the colors, the sounds. How does it make you feel to simply observe for a while?

Notice how every moment is unique. Never to be repeated exactly the same way.

Notice how many moments slip by as we're caught up with thoughts.

Want a cure? Make an intention to start paying more attention.

Want more of a cure? Check out my Online Drawing and Watercolor Course.
We spend a lot of time learning to pay closer attention.

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Me and my shadow

2011-09-24T19:15:00.000-05:00

I stepped out of my studio at sunset and the only thing lit well enough to photograph was my shadow.

I remembered my blogging artist friend Werner Pfarr's new project drawing shadows so took a string of shadow shots to send. Maybe he can use one!

Do you know the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about The Shadow?
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A Beautiful Day for a Birthday!

2011-09-15T22:54:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to be alive.

It rained overnight. The temperature dropped about 20 degrees.

All morning was overcast and just a wee bit drizzly. Perfect for sleeping a little late and taking breakfast in my favorite coffee shop.

Just when I was ready to walk, the sun broke out, the air warmed up and I strode around Cheekwood (a glance from the walk above) and through the current mansion exhibit of landscape paintings: Drawn to Nature. This was my first long walk since (!) January.

On my way out of the mansion, I watched the last of a considerable Fabergé collection loaded onto a special FedEx truck bound for the Met.

More fun unfolded and the day was capped by a half a mile swim and a long steam bath.

What more could I want?

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Drawn by Nature

2011-09-01T20:40:00.001-05:00

The first thing I have my students draw is a leaf. I have a variety of reasons for this first exercise one of which is that a leaf is a deceptively simple subject. Another reason is that everyone can produce a recognizable representation of a leaf.

I do not know enough (if anything) about the behavior of a decaying leaf or the effects of other species that feed on tree leaves to even guess at how the lines and colors were drawn in this Eastern Redbud Tree leaf. All I can do is wonder and enjoy the beautiful result.

On my walk this morning, I didn't notice the leaf but rather the drawing and color, thinking how very like my drawing and watercolor friends and students work it looked.

Click here to learn more about my Online Drawing and Watercolor Course.

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David McCullough Watercolors

2011-08-25T13:43:00.001-05:00

I have looked high and low and, short of contacting McCullough family members, this final part of the HBO documentary on David McCullough called Painting with Words is the only public evidence of his watercolors.

A Pittsburgh, PA native, McCullough attended the Shady Side Academy and created all of the artwork for his graduation yearbook. McCullough seriously considered becoming a professional artist and his wife fell in love with him (in part) because of his ability with watercolor. He was called to another form of creative expression but continued his practice of drawing and watercolor till the end of his life.

I teach drawing and watercolor. Many, many prospective students want to leap immediately into watercolor without any drawing experience. When I used to say "Oh, all right," and allow students to start directly into watercolor, I would invariably run into the problem of having to teach them the fundamentals of drawing anyway.

That's why I'm including David McCullough's watercolors here. Because you can't make these sorts of paintings without an underpinning of drawing. Period. End of story.

If anyone has further information on where to find David McCullough watercolors, please share in the comments below.

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Keiko Fukuda Sensei

2011-08-12T15:00:00.002-05:00

The Japanese word Sensei usually refers to a mentor, master or teacher of Judo or Karate. On July 28, at the age of 98, Keiko Fukuda was awarded the rank of 10th dan, the highest level black belt in Judo. One of only 15 practitioners ever to achieve this level, Sensei Fukuda was frozen at the 5th level for 30 years because she was a woman. The above clip is from a documentary in progress about Fukuda's life, Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful.

Words to live by."Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful.In Judo you need strength of body, mind and soul. I don't mean beauty in the external sense. A compassionate soul is inner beauty. I believe this is true beauty." —Keiko FukudaSee the Taoist Center page on Fukuda.Read about Fukuda on receipt of this award in today's Daily Mail.

In Japan, Sensei refers to anyone who teaches or masters anything.Read this short page on the meaning of Sensei. I plan to read through this before every class I teach over the next few weeks. I want it to sink in. ____________________________________________Enjoy this post? Please subscribe right now! Subscribe by RSS Subscribe by Email! Add to iGoogle

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Looking at Flowers and Breathing

2011-08-01T15:51:00.000-05:00

Ah, the Peony. Now there's a flower I enjoy breathing in!

This week's lesson in my online drawing and watercolor course is all about looking at flowers (and drawing them, too!)

I looked at flowers intently for 15 months while creating my series The Age of Flowers.

For the epigraph of The Age of Flowers book based on this series, I quote Aldous Huxley from The Doors to Perception,

"I continued to look at the flowers, and in their living light I seemed to detect the qualitative equivalent of breathing — but of a breathing without returns to a starting point..."

The practice of drawing and watercolor is a way of meditation. So is looking at flowers.

In the early 1990's, I went through Shambhala Training in Boston and Vermont. Based on Tibetan Buddhism, this training is a secular approach to meditation and a way of operating in the world with basic goodness and other noble qualities. Much of the training is about being real and aware.

I bring this up because, in my current, slightly overtaxed state, I've noticed myself going back to my breath. A lot. In Shambhala Meditation, when we find ourselves thinking, we notice the thought and go back to our breath.

Conscious breathing, drawing and watercolor are simple tools to help bring us back to the present moment which is all there really is.

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Miracle Sun

2011-07-28T10:59:00.001-05:00

Don McGlashan
Miracle Sun
from Warm Hand

One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite songwriters.

For more on Don McGlashan, visit his website. Watch another great videos of another great song... I Will Not Let You Down and a live performance of This Is London both from Warm Hand.

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Walking

2011-07-21T00:25:00.001-05:00

Radnor Lake
19 July 2011

I am fortunate to live ten minutes from Radnor Lake.

Aside from my studio, this state park is the best thing about living in Nashville.

I inherited a love for, no, make that a need to walk from my father. He walked almost everywhere and had a long, purposeful stride. Aunt Nancy used to say "Oh! He walked just like Cary Grant!"

I inherited his stride, too, (although no one's ever said I walked like Cary Grant) and it's a major pain to be hobbled for so long. I need to walk because I get some of my best indirect thinking done while walking. Problems are solved, new ideas arise, and I'm always in a better mood at the end of a long walk. Oh, and of course, there's the exercise and fresh air...

It will probably be another half a year or so before I'm walking freely again, but at least I'm out on the road again!

Click here to read Henry David Thoreau's 1862 essay "Walking".

Click here for a few other views of Radnor Lake over my years in Nashville.
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Mine for Good

2011-07-05T00:01:00.002-05:00

Just north of the pier (#33)
Santa Monica, CA
2009

Just a chance to glance the sea.

Listen to Mine for Good from Ephemera

Download at

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Surprised by Joy

2011-06-30T19:46:00.003-05:00

September 2010
Suzanne McDermott

I just uploaded photos from a camera I haven't used since last September.

Wow! This spotlight performance took me by surprise. I had to share.

Click on the photo for full effect.

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When Will I

2011-06-13T20:47:00.002-05:00

To get things going anew, I am posting here things that naturally belong here but were posted to my home page over the past year or so. It's sort of for filing purposes and sort of for sharing with those of you who hang out here.

Last June, as I was driving along St. Joseph Bay in Florida, I heard this Monte Montgomery song on the radio. His guitar playing absolutely blew me away. I didn't know how I'd missed him all these years but I'm glad to know him now.

For more on Monte, visit his website and watch a bunch of other Monte Montgomery videos on youtube.

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Babalu

2011-06-02T22:18:00.011-05:00

Somebody help me!

The longer I hold him, the harder it will be to let go.

Look, it's National Adopt a Cat Month. I have no more room at the inn, as it were. This little creature was lucky enough to make it in the door at a few weeks old because some friend of a neighbor insisted that she wanted to adopt one of the feral kittens from the litter of nine that crawled out from under the porch across the street. The friend of the neighbor backed out but only after the kitten had been litter trained, was eating regular food and all loved up by human hands. Can't toss him back out!

If you're reading this, you're probably too far away to come get him so I would like yo to set an intention for Babalu's new person to show up pronto and take him into his new set of loving human hands. Babalu is a very good natured boy, is growing by leaps and bounds and deserves the best. If he wasn't super extra special, he wouldn't be here!

I was not planning on naming the kitten but there he was, bounding around, and I couldn't help but think of Babalu!

Considering the size of young Babalu...

I'm adding this video for good measure.

I cannot quite decide if it's funny or pathetic that I suspended this blog some time back with a photo of myself holding a cat. Okay, not just any cat... Talullah.

The two kitty photos makes good editorial bookends but I want my studio back! Well... I want a good home for the kitten, too.

As the kitten is bounding around, I've just sent out the first issue of my new Weekly eZine Stroke and Flow. If you'd like to receive a new issue every week in your email box, look up to your right, fill in your name and email and woila! You're in.

Now to get on with the final preparations for my new online course in Basic Drawing and Watercolor. Interested? Click here to find out more.

PS I just came across this photo of Matisse and have decided that cats in the frame are simply an occupational hazard.

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I'm new here again

2011-05-28T21:10:00.009-05:00

So, I've tried this and that over the past sixteen months and I've missed posting to this blog. I'm resurrecting this site. I need this outlet. Facebook is too superficial and fly-by-night and commercial for my tastes.

I want to take the blog at my home site in a more specific direction. If I have time, I'll move appropriate stuff over from that site to this from postings over the past year. Maybe.

Gil Scott-Heron passed away yesterday. I saw him perform in Sarasota, Florida in the mid-to late-80s in a high school auditorium. Can't remember much except that I was glad I had the opportunity to sit up close and listen and watch.

This post is in honor of his passing and his art but the song and performance are also deeply relevant to my life and my immediate situation. It's a beautiful presentation all the way around. Beautiful, simple, meaningful and inspirational. The song and performance are relevant to this blog, too. Every day is a new day. A new place to begin again.

As my own song Great Day (after which this blog is named) says "Another chance to get it right."

As I write this, I find that I'm excited about a place to share photos and music and writing and influence and... well, we'll see!

Welcome back. I'm glad to be here again.
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A New Leaf

2010-01-15T07:11:00.011-06:00

Miss Tallulah and Suzanne
January 2010

This blog describes a bit of my studio work and life in Nashville, many influences on my thinking, creative work and outlook on life, essays on the history of landscape painting, life on earth, music and other topics, and a few of my favorite things along with the felines, feathered friends and goings on in the garden.

As I mentioned in the first post of 2010, part of my new year's challenge is to properly manage my time. With only so many hours in a day, I am reorganizing my responsibilities and clearing the decks of flotsam and jetsam.

Not that this blog is either flotsam or jetsam but I am bringing the postings here to a close with this farewell but not goodbye. If I'm going to do something at all, I want to do it well and my multi-blog format has lost steam over the past year as I've turned to building a new project.

I thought of composing a final "best of" post but rather, I suggest browsing around at random to see what strikes your fancy. Glance to your right for internal links to categories.

Don't go away!

I am redesigning my main website which will include a new blog with a place for new paintings, photos, drawings and whatnot. Maybe new music, who knows? The new site and blog will be integrated and all inclusive. When my new website is up and running, I'll make an announcement here. So please hang out by email or RSS. I will definitely make an announcement to my mailing list so — Join my mailing list in the upper right corner to receive occasional news.

Browse through Landscape into Art and buy one of my watercolor paintings as a souvenir of the project. It will help to pay for the time and effort I've put into this ad-free blog (though it has been a labor of love.)

You can also toss some money into the Wikipedia kitty to help keep that tremendous resource ad-free. I've relied on Wikipedia links extensively throughout this blog.

In the meanwhile, my daily drawing practice continues to unfold at Studies and Sketches. It's just for fun and discipline but I am posting something every day.

Don't hesitate to leave a comment or get in touch by email.

This is just a transition phase while my presentation is under construction!

XO

Ivan Illich

2010-01-10T20:06:00.002-06:00

This is a very brief post to recommend Ivan Illich and his book ABC: Alphabetization of the Popular Mind

I am always surprised that so few people are familiar with Illich because his life and work are profoundly important to our development as a society and also as a species.

Reading ABC literally changed my way of thinking and of understanding the context in which I live. Why? Because it first brought to my attention that we identify and label (pre-judge) what we perceive by the symbol it is represented by. Rather than have an unfiltered experience with the world around us, we interpret our experience (and distance ourselves from direct experience) by naming and mental constructs.

His best known book is probably Deschooling Society and his work on health and the medical industry dramatically informed his own life and death and should be read by every US congressman and senator. The book on this topic that is currently in print is Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health. Another great work is Tools for Conviviality — out of print but lurking in the used sections. Fortunately, this book has been made available online at Tools for Conviviality.

Read a beautifully presented description of Illich's life and work at infed, Visit the Ivan Illich Learning Web, a bibliography of his writings with obituary references, and Jerry Brown's personal remembrance.

Read more at Utne Reader.

Alice Munro

2010-01-08T20:08:00.003-06:00

Alice Munro's stories are vast and deep and take you places you will not expect. I stumbled into her work by chance almost twenty years ago. It's kept me company since and has never disappointed.

I may have first read Friend of My Youth. But you can start with any collection or with Selected Stories. Some of my favorite stories are from Runaway. In fact — I can hardly believe this — but you can read the entire title story, Runaway, online at The New Yorker. I read that story first in the magazine and still have it in a file somewhere.

Read Leah Hager Cohen's wonderful review of Munro's new collection Too Much Happiness in the NYT Book Review last year.

Kseniya Simonova

2010-01-06T07:32:00.003-06:00

The new year brings many challenges and, with a very large project, one of them is managing time! I am not quite sure how I will continue this personal and, increasingly, occasional blog. However...

In researching my Drawing project, I discovered Kseniya Simonova. If you have not yet seen this, I am very happy to bring it to your attention!

Kseniya takes what Tibetan Monks who create sand mandalas do into an entirely new dimension.

Turning Over

2009-12-31T19:26:00.005-06:00

May you turn over your New Year and all your New Leaves with ease and grace. Enjoy the year!

Comfort and Joy

2009-12-23T22:29:00.004-06:00

From our house to your house — Glad Tidings, Good Cheer and plenty of R&R!

The Light Returns!

2009-12-21T11:47:00.001-06:00

Happy Solstice!

May the returning light bring you good health and cheer throughout the holidays and into Spring.

Another book...

2009-12-15T13:20:00.008-06:00

...or Why I have been so remiss in posting to this blog. I'm writing a book! In fact, it's been a demanding year all around and I've wished I could devote more time to my essays here but you'll have to be happy (as I must) with intermittent posts of music, video and whatnot.

The photo at the top is where I sat down to draft sessions with my egg timer (which you may be able to spot on the window sill). Many writers procrastinate and I am among that crowd. But I find that an egg timer is a mighty tool as long as it's kept within reach.

This is also where I sat to compose the text to The Age of Flowers. An entirely different affair!

Now I am in the transcription phase which is messy, messy, messy! But the egg timer is still de rigeur. All I can say about the transcription phase is that, what I thought was clear as a bell and compete in the draft needs considerable finessing, reorganizing and rewriting. It's true what they say about writing — it's mostly rewriting.

Oh, and if you're wondering about my studio muse, you can read about her at Meet Tallulah and see more photos of her at Post Your Dog.

Just felt compelled to post a note about the dearth of text and rare posts these days. I'll come back to this - it's just a matter of time. Now, where's that egg timer?

Surf's Up!

2009-12-08T17:08:00.004-06:00

Surf's Up! at Waimea Bay and so is the rare Big Wave invitational, the Eddie. I can't take my eyes off the live webcam so my work day is shot to hell. But what a way to go!!!!

Here's the quote of the day from a surfer who's name I missed but will fill in as soon as I catch it.

"Fear is an emotion. If you let your emotions control you, you shouldn't be out there."

Like almost every aspect of, and quote about surfing, this can be nicely applied to many life situations.

Learn more about Eddie Aikau and the Eddie at the main website.

Listen to my song Surfer Boy at myspace. You can download your own copy at iTunes.

First Frost

2009-12-01T19:13:00.007-06:00

Yesterday, my garden was ripe with exploding blooms and, at dusk, I clipped orange and lemon marigolds, fire red pineapple sage flowers, violet angelonia, rose and lemon geranium stalks and lemon balm. They're sitting in bowls all around the kitchen, waiting for arrangement.

I woke this morning to a heavy frost on everything from blades of grass to rooftops. By afternoon, my garden had melted. So it should be, now that it's December!

My photographs of the flowers last day did not do them justice so you'll have to see this evening's painting to get the feel of it.

Fantastic!

2009-11-27T07:26:00.001-06:00

This fall, my posts are rare because most of my time and creativity is devoted to a Great Big Project (but more about that later). It's Friday and I seem to remember that I've had an on-again, off-again video Friday tradition on this blog.

I hope that all you US readers enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving. I did. Before getting ready for dinner, I took myself out to the first matinee of Fantastic Mr. Fox. The theater was filled with squirmy children but, once the film started, you could hear a pin drop. I smiled all the way through. I can't wait to see it again.

If you are going to see one movie between now and the end of the year, make it Fantastic Mr. Fox.

To learn more about how the film was made, watch the Making Fantastic Mr. Fox, A Cutting Edge Fox, and listen to Terri Gross's interview with Wes Anderson last week.

Tout-Rien

2009-11-06T00:15:00.001-06:00

I watched The Man Who Planted Trees the other night and an interview with Jean Giono,
the Provençal author upon whose book the animation is based. I ordered all of the english translations of his books I could find at the local library and look forward to snuggling up with them as autumn progresses.

Then I looked into Frédéric Back,
the Canadian animator who's colored pencil work won two Oscars and four nominations. I learned that, when he received his first Oscar for Crac!, he confided to his producer that he would have preferred that his previous piece, All Nothing had won instead because its message was far more important to him.

Small and out of date non-American films are hard to come by but fortunately, All Nothing (Tout-Rien) was posted in its entirety on youtube. Thanks mariobq!

Want more? If you're interested in hand-drawn animation, there's a good interview with Back by William Moritz. You can also watch Back's Illusion Part One and Illusion Part Two

Farewell to La Ronda

2009-10-04T17:46:00.034-05:00

La Ronda
1030 Mount Pleasant Rd
Bryn Mawr, PA

My mother worked for an architect in Philadelphia before she married my father. I was born in Bryn Mawr Hospital and grew up along the Main Line where we would often spend Sunday afternoons driving around looking at houses — not because my parents were interested in real estate — but because my mother loved looking at houses.

I inherited that love from her and wanted to be an architect when I grew up. The etch-a-sketch was my favorite toy and I'd twist those knobs to make floor plans and elevations. I subscribed to Architectural Digest when I was 13 years old. My architectural thinking developed but career plans were altered early by guitars and songs and the stream of life.

In 1984, as I was finishing a year at Ringling School of Art & Design and preparing to transfer to New College, I made a sketch for my mother of the Mediterranean Revival house where I lived on Acacia Drive in the Sapphire Shores neighborhood of Sarasota, Florida where Mediterranean Revival style houses with barrel tile roofs and maid's quarters were de rigeur. That sketch blossomed into a much larger project on the history of Sarasota through its residential architecture that you can read about in an article called Styles of the Century.

Today, I am embroiled as Executive Director of Drawing America and, although I've been at work on the initiative since last December, in six months I have created Big Draw models for two museums, a private school and am single-handedly producing the first neighborhood Big Draw in the United States, Big Draw 12 South: This Is Where I Live! The neighborhood and school models I've designed both involve engaging community in drawing houses and buildings in local neighborhoods.

So there I was last Thursday, just finishing up my last mad sketch of a neighborhood building for the Big Draw promotional exhibit when I heard the news of La Ronda, the 1929 final commission of Addison Mizner.

I was listening to a Ray Bradbury story called "The Smile" while working on my drawings last week. It was about a not too distant future in which all cultural beauty is reviled and destroyed as community entertainment. The entertainment in the story was the Mona Lisa.

Along the Main Line, however, the community was desperate to save La Ronda. Grown men cried. Because of one man's money, ignorance and selfish willfulness, an exquisite realization of an architectural dream met the wrecking ball. Only eighty years old, the value of La Ronda, and it's loss, cannot be estimated in terms of money. Apparently, the current owner of the property hasn't yet learned that you can't take it with you.

Some buildings I drew in the Nashville 12 South neighborhood will go the way of all things in a matter of just a few years. The value of these buildings are not at all close to the value of La Ronda but they do have inherent value to their particular neighborhood and its history.

This was La Ronda:

This was La Ronda last Thursday:

Become a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and visit The National Register of Historic Places.

Postscript — Found this. Worth watching.

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Take Five

2009-10-02T12:51:00.009-05:00

As I have been on a mad drawing tear to prepare promo drawings for the first Big Draw Nashville preview exhibit (which I installed last night), I've been listening to Ray Bradbury read stories on tape and, all yesterday, to the Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Out. It really helped power me through to the very last second. The preview exhibit is up and I have taken five all morning.

Seeing as it's Friday, and once upon a time I had a regular Video Friday, I found this 1961 clip of the Quartet performing Take Five.

When I was just about 5 years old, Columbia Record Company placed a promotional slip of a vinyl sample with a taste of Take Five into an issue of Time Magazine. My father had already taught me how to place the diamond stylus into the groove of an LP. I played that little vinyl sample until it went the way of my ragged blue stuffed puppy dog. I didn't know their names, but Joe Morello and Paul Desmond gave me a thing for percussionists and alto sax players and Brubeck helped to ruin me for anything less than excellence.

To Autumn

2009-09-27T19:59:00.009-05:00

Although the summer was rainy and cool, each day felt like summer. After many rainy days, all in a row, today that feeling changed and autumn is upon us. It was a perfect day.

To Autumn

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees.
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more.
  And still more, later flowers for the bees,
  Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

        —John Keats

Kissing Summer Goodbye

2009-09-21T15:44:00.007-05:00

Just now, as we mark the last day of summer, my garden enters its most glorious phase. Busy bees of many varieties, butterflies and birds all scamper through exploding marigolds, overgrown grass and plastered walnut leaves to reap intoxicating nectar that I whiz by and miss entirely. Finches pull at sunflowers, mockingbirds nibble at pokeweed and jays grab hackberries. The squirrels always seem to find something. It's a feast!

Experiencing the Garden

2009-09-19T15:57:00.001-05:00

It's tough to photograph a garden. Gardens really must be sensually experienced. Fingernails caked with dirt, stray seeds in fabric, tender shoots arising, musty, sweet and pungent scents, color that can never quite be replicated, wafting breezes, dewy blades, soaked and softened earthy indentations, shade, sunlight, and times of day.

I spent so much obsessive time making the garden this year and now, in my busyness, I pass through it — back and forth, back and forth. And sometimes, just sitting, being thankful for my great fortune — To be alive!

Mary Oliver

2009-09-17T20:59:00.005-05:00

Mary Oliver and Percy

What a great privilege and pleasure to hear Mary Oliver read her poems for almost an hour tonight. My pleasure included tears and welling up of deep emotion and commiseration. I can honestly say that I have never been so consistently moved by one person reading their poems.

Thanks to my old friend, Carole Raye, for sending me a copy of her American Primitiveon my birthday in the early '90's. After reading through it again, I'll place that now signed volume back on the shelf, right next to my signed copy of Merwin's Rain in the Trees.

There are many, many of Oliver's poems that I might choose to include in this post but the first one I found suits me right this very moment.

Read Mary Oliver's poems. She's is a master. Find the poems she's written for her dog, Percy. They're a delight.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

My Favorite Spy

2009-09-15T21:17:00.006-05:00

Jeffrey Donovan with pup

I spent a rainy birthday morning in bed with my favorite spy, Michael Westen.

I've been working too hard for too long so decided to kick back today and let myself flow with the feel of the day. I do not have a television anymore but thanks to Project Free TV and Hulu, this does not prevent me from watching some awesome shows. Matt Nix is a brilliant writer who put together an awesome ensemble cast with just my kind of superhero — Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen. When I really get into a show, I become obsessed and have to watch from the pilot forward.

The only thing on my calendar was "SWIM", so after catching up to the present episode of Burn Notice, I drove down the street and swam a mile at the community pool. This made me so happy, I really had to wonder why I am not in the pool every day that it's open. (I've been working too hard.) I ate a pizza, did some laundry, took a nap, made a watercolor, read the last half of Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking and am writing two blog posts.

A perfect day. Thanks to all my friends for remembering my birthday and for sending me various happy notes to open throughout the day. Thanks very much to the private donor who generously provided funds for the rather large national undertaking I've embarked upon. A good birthday present, indeed.

Creativity and Play

2009-09-14T20:29:00.006-05:00

I am a zealot about helping adults lose their fear of drawing and about encouraging children to draw and to never lose their confidence in same.

I'm working on a BIG PROJECT around drawing. As I've pitched the project daily, over the past nine months, I've found myself referring to the first 3 1/2 minutes of this Ted Talk by Tim Brown of IDEO. So, I thought I'd post that talk here.

Tim Brown is referring to a particular species of designers in this talk. But I believe that most creative enterprises, at their best, employ the elements of good design. That goes for poems, songs, buildings, projects, plays, companies, communities, any sort of system and so forth, ad nauseum.

What's the drawing connection? Drawing by hand gets the physical body connected to and involved in the flow of the present moment. That is where creativity lives. It's not something we're normally used to and our critical thinking just loves to interrupt that process. Drawing creates space. The more you practice drawing, the more space and time you have away from the critical mind. Ah... What a relief!

To quote Jean Cocteau, "What is line? It is life."

Enjoy this talk and then go draw something. Just for fun.

It's Good To Be Alive!

2009-08-27T21:27:00.012-05:00

It's good to be alive.

Really good!

Get.

Give.

Dance!

(Starring Kayla and Taylor Smith.)

Aldous Huxley Interview revisited

2009-08-21T20:47:00.004-05:00

It's been brought to my attention that the Aldous Huxley interview I posted here in February 2008 was yanked from youtube because of copyright issues. That interview followed a lengthy personal post on Huxley. I found this 3-part Mike Wallace interview with Huxley aired on 5/18/1958. Although some of it may seem dated in the process of listening, if you reflect on Huxley's overall comments after listening to the entire thing, you may find that your thoughts are somewhat different than your initial reactions.

As Wallace drives the interview to fit within his 30-minute time frame, I found myself wishing that Huxley were given the opportunity to expand on his replies. Then I longed for the day when interviews with brilliant and interesting people who were given time to form replies to answers with complete sentences were common.

As I was researching the date of this interview, I found the Harry Ransom Center site at the University of Texas at Austin. There, you can find almost all of the Mike Wallace interviews from 1957-58 with some truly remarkable people.
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Feline Follies

2009-08-04T21:53:00.008-05:00

Tallulah has had terrible bladder problems all summer. The infection is gone but not the inflammation. Poor thing. After two rounds of antibiotics, an x-ray, steroids and a switch to doctor food, I came to my senses and am treating her homeopathically, feeding her a special diet of real chicken and vegetables with loads of water. She seems to be feeling much better now so, with luck, the next urine sample will be clear. We'll see the results in a few weeks.

Ginger Ale is still no help with the laundry. He and Alonso have been on the outs all summer. I have no idea what's going on between them but they won't sleep in the same room and Alonso refuses to use the toilet facilities anywhere near Ginger Ale's business.

Alonso is trying to tell me something. Unfortunately, I don't know what it is!

This summer has been non-stop. As Winston Churchill once said about history, "It's one damned thing after another!" Just so this blog doesn't fall entirely dormant, I'll post a few domestic missives. This is one.

In Bloom

2009-06-25T22:18:00.005-05:00

Since returning from California, I have been utterly consumed by my house and garden... along with a new part-time job and continued work on a long term project. All of my creativity seems to be going into the garden and my project plans. I am obsessed with the flower beds, digging up the ubiquitous pokeberry, trimming the shrubs, weeding, watering, mowing the lawn, digging, transplanting.... Yikes.

On the evening I returned, after tackling cat hair and laundry, I borrowed my neighbor's mower and conquered the lawn. This shows not only my lawn at dusk after that mow but also my general fatigue and state of mind.

I was tired of what was looking like slop to me with the bleeding ink and fumbling waterbrush. So, I switched to Pitt Pens for the Sweet Bay Magnolia blossom at top, the opening snow queen hydrangea

and the mint pots by the drainpipe.

I'm thrilled that I've managed this post. More later. Promise...

Venice, California

2009-06-14T00:01:00.000-05:00

My home away from home in Venice, California. Poor Skippy the dog (sitting on the porch chair) became a blob due to waterbrush and bleeding ink.

Last morning coffee on Abbot Kinney Street before my last beach walk.

En route from LAX (what a mess!) to Nashville. Here's a tip: never try to use a waterbrush in a pressurized airplane cabin. What a flow!!!!

Workshop Demo

2009-06-12T18:59:00.000-05:00

As my workshop class began work on the flower in vase exercise, I sketched the set up from the sidelines.

Brahms Requieum Cal Poly

2009-06-11T01:00:00.003-05:00

I sat in on a rehearsal of the Brahms Requiem at Cal Poly and arrived as the first few musicians wandered onto the stage. I began sketching as the orchestra and choir assembled and continued (for a little while) after the hall was plunged into darkness. Sketching in the dark can be fun!

Santa Barbara Fisherman

2009-06-10T00:15:00.001-05:00

As much as I love it, my waterbrush was not giving me an even flow or maybe I was not being patient enough with it. A bit splotchy but, with pen and water at the beach, something's bound to be messy!

Santa Barbara Courhouse Staircase

2009-06-08T00:01:00.001-05:00

I paused on the outside of the outdoor/indoor staircase at the ever-fabulous Santa Barbara Courthouse and thoroughly enjoyed making this drawing.

Stephen Bruton

2009-06-05T00:15:00.011-05:00

Stephen Bruton
1948-2009

I first heard Stephen Bruton play in 1971 at The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, PA. I was 16 years old. I can't remember if he was backing up Kristofferson or Geoff Muldaur that first time because I was so taken with him — the poetry of his guitar and the beauty of his physical presence. It was as if an angel had stopped in to pick up the guitar for prayer. I was thoroughly smitten and came back every show that weekend to hear him play. One snowy night, I brought him a rose. We sat together through the second act one show but I have no recollection of who that might have been, only of Stephen's hand running up and down my leg. Yep, he was a honey and I wanted to hear him play guitar every chance I had. And every time he came to town, I made sure that I was there. I used to watch most guitarists I admired like a hawk to see what they did with their fingers. Stephen, I just listened to.

Decades later, I was driving into Boston between Alewife Parkway and Memorial Drive when a song came on the radio. The singer sounded familiar but I just couldn't place him. I was so struck by the song that I pulled off near Mount Auburn Cemetery to listen till the end. Dave Palmeter announced that it was Stephen Bruton from a new CD. I found a copy of nothing but the truth (a great album) as soon as I could and learned that song. It was one of the few songs by another writer that I worked into my sets. Here it is for you to hear —

Under the Horizon

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped for lunch in Ventura, California and was sitting outside waiting for my sandwich, reading the local paper. That's when I came across Stephen's obituary.

I'm so grateful that I was able to hear him play over those weekends at the dawn of his career. He made real magic with his guitar.

Here's a bonus track from the same album, fitting for parting thoughts —

Trip Around the Sun

Stephen Bruton's on myspace

Girl and Iguana

2009-05-19T22:13:00.001-05:00

On my last beach walk, at the border of Santa Monica and Venice, I was happy I'd lugged my camera along!

(A handsome native of Brazil.)

Click here to see my watercolors.

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Headed South

2009-05-18T23:54:00.000-05:00

Leaving my northernmost point, I head south to Venice bidding farewell, for now, to California with a long drive down the coast.

More Morro Bay

2009-05-17T23:48:00.000-05:00

South of the rock, on the little road to the State Campgrounds, I chatted with a ranger who'd grown up right here. When he was a boy, sailing his little boat, he dreamed of leaving the fog and traveling far. He did and, lucky man, he found his way back. California has everything, he said. He's right.

Morro Bay

2009-05-16T23:32:00.000-05:00

As soon as I was out the door after teaching my first workshop day, I headed straight for, you guessed it, the beach. Most to my liking was Morro Bay.

I spent as much time as I could walking the beach north of Atascadero. In fact, one evening after teaching, I found an oil slicked bird there, exhausted at the water's edge. In a long adventure, I carried him until I passed him off to a State Ranger who whisked him off to the local Wildlife Rescue organization who had a staff member ready and waiting. Give money to these sorts of people! They make the world worth living in!

Morro Rock, ready for its close up.

And, of course, the waves...

SLO View

2009-05-15T22:44:00.001-05:00

View from my host's pad in San Luis Obispo.

And a drawing of same from a different vantage point made in chilly wind after sunset.

Night Heron

2009-05-14T03:05:00.000-05:00

and nest

in Santa Barbara.

Woody Parsnips

2009-05-13T02:56:00.000-05:00

in Santa Barbara.

Jesusita

2009-05-12T23:31:00.003-05:00

I arrived in Santa Barbara just as the city reopened for business after the Jesusita fire. It was difficult to believe that much of the city had been engulfed in smoke a few days earlier and that many residents had had to evacuate.

But I watched as firetrucks from as far north as Santa Rosa and Marin County cruised up State Street.

...and happened to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant where some of the fire fighters were sharing stories and verifying rumors of personal exploits.

Thank you notes were everywhere — on cars, in windows, at the grocery stores...

Learn more about the Jesusita fire.

Palm Springs Living

2009-05-10T08:47:00.005-05:00

The temperature in Palm Springs has been hovering at 102 F midday but I don't mind the heat much at Roberta's showcase pad.

To the outdoor grill and seating, tennis and basketball court, the pool and jacuzzi.

Post-workshop promise.

Our afternoon watercolor workshop model. Calm, cool, collected.

Just past the flowers, view from the entrance.

Palm Springs Weekend

2009-05-09T01:10:00.002-05:00

Late afternoon.

Palm Trees, Mountains, Blossoms and intense heat.

Morning.

I love, love, love the mid-century architecture here. Next time I visit, I'll photograph buildings.

Mid-day.

For now, the general lay of the land will do.

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Pacific Time

2009-05-08T00:54:00.001-05:00

First stop — Santa Monica Beach.

To plant my feet in the water...

and watch the waves.

On the road again

2009-05-06T00:40:00.001-05:00

In Venice, California, in Sue's Smart Car. with Mr. Toast.

El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!

2009-05-03T18:04:00.008-05:00

The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Frederic Rzewski
Performed by Bobby Mitchell

I've probably mentioned before that my favorite musical form is theme and variations. I wore down many an LP in my youth listening to the likes of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, Brahm's Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Vaughan Williams' Variations on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Henry Purcell), and so forth. It might have been my friend, Donald Elfman who gave me a copy of Ursula Oppens playing Frederic Rzewski's 'The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" I think that Rzewski wrote the piece for Oppens or, at least, she premiered it and recorded the first performance. Now the CD is out of print and the few available are very pricey.

I can't seem to find a CD of the piece for much under 40 bucks. Even if you download the Stephen Drury recording, Amazon will charge you .99 per variation which works out to be $38.

Kudos and thanks to Bobby Mitchell who's posted his mighty performance of this masterpiece. Above is the first of 8 video segments of the work he performed in Rochester, NY on January 19, 2007. Click through to the YouTube post and at the end of each segment, click on the next segment in the sidebar so that you can listen to the entire piece. You can also catch Oppens and Rzewski performing bits in related videos.

This is a monster composition and an exciting, brilliant set of variations that should be a standard in the performance repertoire. It's rare to find true and tangible political expression in musical form. Rzewski takes the popular Sergio Ortega anthem and runs it through thirty-six variations, using the form, itself, to imply that any and all united people shall never be defeated.

Ku`u Lei Awapuhi

2009-01-29T18:35:00.006-06:00

It's time for some Hawaiian therapy courtesy of HAPA.

Close the door, start the video, hula your little heart out and then do it again! I guarantee you'll feel better and better the longer you listen and hula. I've reprinted the Hawaiian lyrics and translation below so that you can learn the song and sing along.

Ku`u Lei Awapuhi - Words & music by Emily Kekahaloa Namau`u Taylor

E ku`u aloha e (e o) I call, my beloved (answer)
`Auhea la `oe (e ia no au) Where are you (Here I am)
A huli aku au ia `oe Return to me

Auhea la `oe e ke aloha Where are you, my love
‘Awapuhi pala o ka ua noe Like the ginger, covered in the misty rain
A eia no me au Here, I am with you
I ka poli o ke aloha In love’s sweet embrace

E ku`u aloha e (e o) I call, my beloved (answer)
`Auhea la `oe (e ia no au) Where are you (Here I am)
A huli aku au ia `oe Return to me

Written in 1951 for the remake of the movie Bird of Paradise, this poem was set to the melody of Ku`u Lei Pûpû, a tune the haku mele remembered from her childhood. The haku mele (composer), from Kâ`û, was a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools, class of 1915, a scholar, the Hawaiian columnist for the Honolulu Advertiser, and succeeded her husband, William Kaihe`ekai Taylor as the curator of the Royal Mausoleum, until 1961. Translated by Kanani Mana. Source: Hapa CD

I can't find an actual translation for the title, but that's probably because there's an untranslatable broader and poetic meaning of the word lei. Call a wreath of ginger (a literal translation) does not quite say it.

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Bill Gable

2009-01-16T01:48:00.002-06:00

I can count on both hands the number of videos I ever saw on VH1 or MTV but this was one of them. I loved the song, the camera work, the sand, the wind and the smoocherama.

Around the same time, I was temping at an easy jazz station in Sarasota, Florida and grabbed a few freebie cassettes and CDs on the conference table. Bill Gable's There Were Signs was one of the cassettes. I listened to it over and over again in the VW bus I drove from Florida to Mendocino early that summer.

A few years ago, I bought a CD of the album and, to this day, can still listen over and over again without getting tired of it. It's a great piece of work and I'm glad that Bill did whatever it took to make it so. His songs are mysterious and danceable with pop hooks and jazz inflections over infectious polyrhythms. His stellar backing musicians are world-class. This Perfect Day, his second album, is also marvelous.

You can find the albums through his website, download This Perfect Day at iTunes and find used copies of both on ebay and Amazon. Check them out, they're really good.

I hope that Bill's well these days, wherever he is and whatever he's doing.

See my paintings at Landscape into Art.

My songs and CDs

Frost

2009-01-14T17:15:00.003-06:00

Yes, indeedy! It's cold out there!

For those of you in the northern hemisphere, here's wishing you warmth, nourishment, and a good person, animal or book to cuddle up with. We're coming up on 3 cat nights in my household.

Rise and Fall

2009-01-09T15:06:00.008-06:00

For those of you who have not been introduced, this is Tallulah, my studio cat. Just wanted to share a little music for the weekend and a glimpse of my studio day. Tutti is soaking up the sun on this chilly day. I'm painting and listening to a great CD that my brother sent me out of the blue — Speechless: The Instrumental Bruce Cockburn.

Here's a cut from the album:

Rise and Fall
Bruce Cockburn, Guitar and bells
George Keller, Bass
Ben Riley, Drums

D'Gary

2009-01-01T00:01:00.007-06:00

If I had to pick one favorite guitarist (impossible!), it would probably be D'Gary. I discovered his playing (and was introduced to the world of Malagasy guitar) on two Shanachie CDs, The Moon and the Banana Tree and A World Out of Time, Vol. 3, where I heard this song for the first time.

Earlier this year, I drafted a post on D'Gary as I was planning a week devoted to finger-style guitarists but was interrupted in the process and never got back to it. In the meanwhile, maxthenomad put together this video with a different version of the song for which I'm very grateful because there were just a couple of not very high quality D'Gary videos available.

I use this song as part of a compilation for my young beginner guitar students as the finest example of what can be done with two fingers on the guitar. Although D'Gary's playing is phenomenal whether or not you are a musician, if you play finger-style guitar well (which I do), there is an entirely different level of appreciation for his unique skill. Here's the version I first heard:

Mpirak' Aomby II

I can't find credits for the liner notes on A World Out of Time, Vol. 3 (though it might be Henry Kaiser who, with David Lindley is responsible for bringing this music to the world's attention) but here is the description of D'Gary with an explanation of the song from those notes.

Mpirak' Aomby II

Ernest Randrianasolo (called D'Gary) is, perhaps, the major recording debut to emerge from the Shanachie recording expeditions. A member of the Bara tribal group of the South, D'Gary is a truly original guitarist and musical visionary. He lives in a small village in the south that is several days travel from the main road. D'Gary is unique in that he has succeeded in transferring the music of many traditional Malagasy instruments (valiha, marovany, kabosy and lokanga) to finger-picked acoustic guitar in all of their glorious musical complexity. He uses 11 different guitar tunings and picks with only the thumb and index finger of his right hand. His first solo CD is entitled Malagasy Guitar (Shanachie 65009). This is an alternate and quite different take of a song from his second CD recorded together within Louisiana during an American tour. D'Gary's lyrics describe the cowherd who has spent many days and nights alone with his animals in the pasture. He has looked forward to going home and is finally happy to see his father and mother, to be safe once again with his family as night falls.

If you're interested in reading more about Malagasy guitar playing, go to Ian Anderson's wonderfully thorough treatise Guitara Gasy.

Ian's discography for the music of Madagascar.
Afropop's discography for Madagascar.

Jacques Brel

2008-12-27T21:24:00.005-06:00

I wish there were a film of Jacques Brel performing this song or that I had a good translation of the lyrics to share but still, just to hear him perform the song in this spare and lovely arrangement is enough.

The song is called Voir un ami pleurer. Essentially, Brel describes — in his inimitable way — various sad things that we have no power over and ends of each verse "but, but to see a friend crying..."

A beautiful, wistful song for the end of the year.

If you ever find yourself in Brussels, I highly recommend that you visit Éditions Jacques Brel at 11 place vieille Halle aux Blés, where you can visit the exhibit which describes Brel's performing life from the dressing room with his artifacts, through the entrance to the stage and then to an after hours café. An amazing, true depiction of the life of a musician on the road.

Charlotte Salomon

2008-12-18T17:04:00.014-06:00

Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943)
Self-Portrait
Gouache on Paper

Charlotte (Part 1)

Charlotte Salomon grew up in Berlin before the Second World War. After her mother died, when Charlotte was nine years old, her father married an opera singer who filled the household with music and cultured friends. As the Nazis rose to power, life became increasingly difficult. Charlotte was removed from school, her father was incarcerated for a time and their business and general activities were restricted to only Jewish associations. Charlotte studied art and, though discouraged by her teachers for lack of talent, continued to work on developing her paintings. An accompanist and vocal coach with a dramatically unusual philosophy on art and life entered the household to work with Charlotte's step-mother. The young Charlotte fell under his spell and was profoundly influenced by his encouragement and ideas until the end of her life.

After Kristallnacht, when living became too dangerous in Berlin, Charlotte was sent to live with her grandparents at a villa in Villefranche-sur-mer in the south of France. There, her grandmother became despondent and, though Charlotte tried to help, her grandmother committed suicide by jumping from a window. Afterwards, her grandfather explained that Charlotte's mother, Charlotte's great-grandmother, and her namesake, Aunt Charlotte had all committed suicide as well. At this point, Charlotte — feeling the undertow of despair and the option of suicide for herself — realized that she could go the way of the women in her family before her, or do something completely unique. Charlotte chose life.

Leben? oder Theater? Ein singespiel

Charlotte immediately set to work on Life? or Theater? A play with music. Nothing in the history of art, before or since, is anything remotely like this incredible piece of art. Day in, day out, with a fervor that must have come from intuitive knowledge that she had very little time to work, Charlotte created the story of her life in paintings and words (and music that has never been properly added). Beginning with her parents' first meeting, through her birth, childhood, and the increasingly complex relationships and emotions of a sensitive young artist coming of age during unthinkable drama and danger in the world at large, to her last entries that come so fast and furious it seems as though she barely has time to put brush to paper. This is the ultimate portrait of the artist as a young girl. There are 1,325 paintings and sheets of tracing paper, all of a uniform size: 32.5 x 25 cm (12.8 in x 9.8 in).

When Charlotte knew that her time was near, she brought two wrapped packages of gouache paintings to an acquaintance, a doctor in Villefranche, and said "Will you take good care of this? 'C'est toute ma vie.'"

Even more than a portrait of the artist as a young girl at a unique historic moment, this is a work of exceptional optimism. Last night, I was reading some of the last words my friend Walter Gabrielson wrote in the Epilogue to his autobiography:

"I realize that much of the life of the artist is maintaining optimism. The outer world wants security and repetition and predictability. In order to stay alive you have to not only change but also kick over the traces and do something outlandish once in a while..."

And so it is with the work of Charlotte Salomon.

The only way to really experience this work is to sit down with the book of paintings and take the time to look at them and read the text. It helps to have the background not only of the real circumstances of Charlotte's life but also of the real people behind the characters in the work including her father, her step-mother, Paula Salomon-Lindberg, and Alfred Wolfsohn, the influential voice coach. It also helps if you can watch Charlotte, the film that Frans Weisz made with the Dutch poet Judith Herzberg.

Unfortunately, the most complete book of Life? or Theater? published in 1981 by Gary Schwartz in The Netherlands, with an English translation by Leila Vennewitz published that same year by The Viking Press is long out of print. Frans's film is virtually non-existent in the US though the Boston MFA Film program has shown a print on a number of occasions including during the MFA 2000 exhibit of her work. There was a thick, small format paperback edition of Life? or Theater? published in conjunction with that exhibit that now goes for an exorbitant sum on Amazon.

Short of the books and the film, the best place to go is to the website of the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam which houses the collection of Charlotte's paintings, although I can't seem to make out what sort of order they follow in the web presentation.

There are two reasons that I took the time in my previous post on Charlotte to describe the circumstances through which I learned about Charlottte and her work.

The first reason is that I had the great fortune and privilege of discovering Charlotte through a personal relationship with Frans Weisz and his film about her. In 1975, Frans and Judith Herzberg set out to gather background information in order to make a film about her. In the process, they interviewed Charlotte's father at the very end of his life, her step-mother, an associate of Alfred Wolfsohn's who possessed papers in which he described Charlotte, the wife of the doctor to whom Charlotte entrusted her work and others who had known her. They also discovered additional paintings that had beenm treasured over the years by someone in Villefranche. They walked around the grounds of the Villa where Charlotte spent her final years. It is Judith Herzberg's insightful introduction that graces the beginning of the vastly important Gary Schwartz and Viking publication Charlotte, and, to a large degree, it is because of the dedication of Frans Weisz and Judith Herzberg that attention was brought to Charlotte Salomon and her work.

So, there I was at the age of 26, just coming into flower myself as an artist and songwriter — discovering Charlotte Salomon at the same age at which she died. Not having any deep knowledge of the Holocaust, and, to be fair, because I was an artist myself, I saw Charlotte Salomon as an artist first. No matter what her religion or circumstances, Charlotte Salomon would have been an artist anyway.

Which brings me to the second reason I set this post up as I did. It seems that, in the intervening years, Charlotte's work has been appropriated by Holocaust studies. If this is true, and not just my mistaken perspective, it is understandable but regrettable. It seems that she has been defined by her death rather than her life. The way in which the film clip is edited in my previous post on Charlotte is a perfect example.

It was most appropriate for her father to give her paintings to the Jewish Historical Museum. And although I think that she would have been an artist no matter what, there is no extricating her as a person or her work from the particular historic moment and her particular circumstance. Still, this piece of art — Leben? oder Theater? — is as important to the history of art as it is to Judaica. Charlotte's life and work is especially important to (I always hate to single us out) women in the history of art. Charlotte describes in exceptional ways, through the paintings and her words, the longing, the intensity and obsession, the raging fervor to create in the context of her sexual, social and emotional development and ultimately, her spiritual development. That may be what I perceive as the kernel of truth in this work. I think that's what bothers me so much when I perceive this work as cloistered within the context of the Holocaust.

The problem may be that the work is too complex to present in an economically feasible way. Ann Frank's Diary of a Young Girl and Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning are easily presented in simple paperback book editions. Life? or Theater? cannot be.

I visited the Joods Historische Museum in Amsterdam in '97 or '98 and was very pleased to see some of the original gouaches displayed. The museum cannot possible exhibit all 1,325 paintings and drawings at one time, so they rotate pieces in and out of the exhibit space.

In 1996, I spent about two weeks making small watercolors along the Côte d'Azur and several days in Villefranche-sur-mer. It was much later that I remembered that this was where Charlotte painted. Sitting by these steps to the sea, I was not very far at all from where she created Life? or Theater?

It's a good question.

See my watercolors at Landscape into Art.
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Charlotte

2008-12-17T00:04:00.009-06:00

When I was 26 and living in Santa Monica, a friend invited me to a barbecue in Belair. Barbecue? I dressed in kelly green painters pants, a shell pink cotton crew neck and Jack Purcell sneakers. The reason I remember my outfit so vividly is because the party I actually walked into was jammed with a well-heeled international crowd dressed in Valentino, Albert Nippon, etc. Marty Ransohoff was hosting the opening night party for the first American Film Market.

I settled into one of the sofas so as to not feel quite so conspicuous and proceeded to experience one of the most memorable evenings of my life. I struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to me, an entertainment lawyer. It turned out that he had known my father slightly as an upperclassman at University of Pennsylvania where my father had studied law. Because my father had died several years earlier at the age of 73, it was the only time I ever met anyone who had known my father as a young man. He said, "Your father had a huge mind."

Later in the evening, Marty noticed me looking at one of the paintings on his walls, learned that I was a painter and set things in motion for my first two commissioned paintings of his two step-children.

At some point, a Dutch producer chatted me up. When he learned that I was an artist, musician and songwriter, he took out one of his business cards, wrote a date, time and place on the back, told me that my name would be at the door and that, no matter what, I must attend the screening of a film called "Charlotte". I did, and it opened a new world to me.

After the screening, the producer invited me to dinner with the director and a few others. I gave one of the group a lift to the restaurant in my messy VW Bug. He said, "I used to have one of these!" It turned out that he was one of the top Dutch Bankers at the time and the rest of the group had a good laugh when they saw him climbing out of the passenger seat.

The producer sat me next to the director, Frans Weisz, with whom I began a long friendship. (We last visited in 1997 at the Ghent Film Festival which gave me a chance to lay eyes on the Ghent Alterpiece.) Before the end of the '81 Film Market, Frans gave me a copy of the very heavy Viking publication on Charlotte Salomon and her paintings.

And that's how I first learned about Charlotte Salomon. Because I have so much to say about Charlotte Salomon, and how I discovered her, I'm writing two posts. This post is all about me. In my next post, I'll tell you all about her.

NB — The film clip embedded at the top a) does not do the film justice and b) completely spoils the outcome. Charlotte's fate is not the point, it's her life! However, it is the only example of the film that's available online so it must do.

Charlotte Salomon Part 2
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Happy Birthday Helen Frankenthaler!

2008-12-12T00:05:00.002-06:00

The last time I went poking around for an interview with Helen Frankenthaler, I could find nothing. Thanks to John Feldman at Hummingbird Films, we now have this marvelous video. And just in time for Helen's 80th birthday. It's today!

Frankenthaler's long time friend, Ann Freedman, is hosting a retrospective Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades at her New York gallery Knoedler & Company. You can read an Arts Journal review about the show.

Of course, I've mentioned Frankenthaler here on My Great Day and quote her in the opening of my painting blog Landscape into Art.

If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I claim many influences from many disciplines. But now that I am painting full time, there's no getting around my affinity for Frankenthaler's images and aesthetics, her work, and the trails she's blazed artistically and through her living and words.

It means a great deal to me that Helen Frankenthaler has lived and worked as she has. So Happy Birthday, Helen Frankenthaler. Many thanks with good wishes for many more years in radiant health.

Listen to Susan Stamberg's 1988 NPR Profile on Helen Frankenthaler.

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Virunga Update

2008-12-04T12:47:00.006-06:00

Without a doubt, my favorite blog of the year is by the rangers who protect the Mountain Gorillas at Virunga National Park. I started writing about them in my October 27th post.

For Video Friday (intermittent though it may be at this point in time), I am posting the above video to bring good cheer to all humans. After 14 months away from the Mikeno Gorilla Sector of the park, as a result of long discussions and negotiations with authorities by Emmanuel, the park's director, the rangers are able to return to the Gorilla Sector to resume their work.

On October 26th, the rangers had to flee their headquarters in Rumangabo, narrowly escaping with their lives. The above video shows the rangers reuniting with the local villagers of Rumangabo on November 21. Each time I watch it, I get all choked up as I witness their joy and relief. Great emotions, both.

One of the most interesting things I've learned is how the rangers keep track of the individuals in the Gorilla population. Each Gorilla has a unique nose print. For their current census, the rangers sketch a symbol representing that nose print next to the name of each gorilla with relevant notes. Play a guessing game to see if you can match the nose print to the Gorilla.

Just because they're so much fun to watch and because I'm not quite sure how long till my next post, here's today's video post by the rangers of one of the Gorilla families they're monitoring.

Want to follow the rangers' blog? Visit the blog and sign up.

Need a good place to put your extra pennies before the end of year? Send them to Virunga. It's your best best by a long shot. Contributing to Virunga not only helps the rangers and the remaining Mountain Gorillas, it also contributes to Peace on Earth in the midst of the most intense humanitarian crisis and ecological threat. That forest at Virunga is helping us all to breathe.

Here's yet another video by a ranger who explains where your money goes and why it is so valuable:

Finally, my own report. I sold my Virunga painting! As promised, as soon as I receive payment, I am forking the profits over to the Park.

Read Emmanuel's recent report on Virunga.

Visit my paintings at Landscape into Art.

Redbreast

2008-12-01T17:48:00.005-06:00

The robins gradually go their way in the fall until one day I can't remember having seen any in a while. Last Wednesday, I spotted a few in my yard and at Cheekwood. One of the magical aspects of photography is capturing an image you were not aware of while taking the photo. Here, the shadow of the tree branch mimics the pattern of feathers on the redbreast. The shadow could be a cloak clasp securing the robin's wings. A detail I could not possibly have seen from the distance where I stood.

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The Age of Flowers

2008-11-22T09:52:00.002-06:00

I've just released my new book, The Age of Flowers.

This book represents the last phase of The Age of Flowers series of watercolor paintings. Made in Charlottesville, Virginia, during 2004-2005, over the last three years, I've developed a limited edition of fine art prints of the paintings, posters on recycled paper, a variety of note cards and finally, this book.

The paperback book includes 24 beautiful plates of all twelve paintings and selected details, each illustrated with my own poetic text. There's a preface and an excerpt by Aldous Huxley from The Doors of Perception.

You may order paperback copies directly from the printer where you can preview some pages and also download copies of the book.

If you would like autographed copies, contact me directly no later than November 30. (Believe it or not, that's ten days from now!) Autographed copies cost slightly more (because of shipping) but come with a little extra surprise.

Gift packages combining the new book with a set of note cards, a poster or fine art print can be assembled through The Age of Flowers shop. If you want an autographed copy as part of a gift package, contact me directly. All holiday gift orders must be placed no later that December 1.

If you order the book directly from the printer, your holiday orders must be placed by December 12. You can download the book at any time.

Walter Gabrielson

2008-11-20T18:46:00.013-06:00

Walter Gabrielson
Getting Dressed, 1980
oil on canvas 60" x 129"

This morning I learned that my friend Walter Gabrielson passed away last week. Walter was a great artist and teacher and it was a real privilege to know him. In reading Walter's obituary in the LA Times, I realized what an influence he was on my thinking about art and about being an artist. Read the obituary. It has lengthy quotes from Walter and is very inspiring. Just the title of his autobiography is encouraging — Persistence. Walter made it possible to read his autobiography online and, if you do, be sure to read his Epilogue. You can also read a tribute by Peter Plagens, his long time friend and colleague.

I can hardly believe that I still have this napkin on which Walter made a sketch for me in 1983 or so. I don't know where we were, what we were talking about or why he made it but it's a typical example of his basic human figure and I'm glad that I've managed to keep hold of it.

I've thought of Walter often over the past month and even referred to him in my post on James Turrel's piece at Cheekwood. We weren't close friends but, over all these years, he was a steadfast sounding board for me, always lent an ear, and always came back with a thoughtful, intriguing response. He was a blessing in my life.

Visit Walter's website to learn more about his work and his life.

Visit Landscape into Art to see my paintings.
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The Singers

2008-11-07T16:49:00.014-06:00

Meet Baby, a Yellow-cheeked Gibbon (Nomascus gabriellae), who lives at the IPPL (International Primate Protection League) Gibbon Sanctuary in South Carolina. When I lived in Charleston in the late 90's, Dr. Shirley McGreal was kind enough to invite me to visit the sanctuary several times. During my first visit, I learned about the "Great Call" (though I did not hear it) and soon paid another visit with a good tape recorder.

Orangutans may be my favorite primates but I do love the Gibbons because they are the great singers of the primate family.

Click here to listen to

my recording of the Great Call of the Gibbons at the IPPL Sanctuary.

After a bit of instruction from Shirley, I prompted the gibbons to sing with my imitation of Shirley's imitation. I'll spare you the 25" version where you can hear me prompting them. This 12" + version is quite enough for a little blog post!

Aside from the barking dogs and some background voices, and a bit of a pre-echo, I think this is a pretty good recording. You can hear the squeaking of swings and maybe a little rattling of enclosures. The very high pitched voice you hear belongs to Baby, one of the two Vietnamese Gibbons at the Sanctuary. The other voices are those of White Handed Gibbons (Hylobates Lar).

I could not find a decent video of Gibbons singing. Either they were not in full voice, the person recording was talking over the singing or there was too much ambient noise, or the situation was too pathetic to excerpt. I remember Shirley telling me that there are few recordings of Gibbons in the wild. But I did find this recording by Dr. Susan Cheyne in Indonesia with some helpful information. There really is alarmingly little information on these songs across the web.

Not a very good photo, but a good sentiment. I snapped a shot of myself holding Baby's hand. What separates us speaks volumes.

Read an article on Music and Primates by Oiane Ruiz Alonso.

If you've been reading this blog, you'll know that I'm following the blog written by the director and rangers at Virunga National Park. Today, I learned from their blog that Thursday was the United Nations "International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment through War and Armed Conflict". Since my post today results from my visits to the International Primate Protection League, I highly recommend that you read Pierre's Post on Chimpanzees Caught up in War over at the Virunga site.

See my paintings at Landscape into Art.

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