Sunday, November 23, 2008
I'm mortified! I've been looking at the paintings I've been doing, of course always comparing them to what I see in exhibitions of things other artists are selling - or trying to sell. And - objective as I am of course - I must admit that I consistently find my stuff far superior to most of their stuff. So I felt pretty cocky in submitting those paintings to Dirty Frank (see the last post), even though I really do feel they weren't the best work I've ever done.
Well, the artists whose work was selected were to be notified last Friday. And I DIDN'T GET ANY NOTICE! AT ALL! How could things have gone so wrong? SURELY this indicates severe corruption or maybe nepotism or possibly simple shoddy judging. How else could this travesty be explained? Really! I guess am simply going to have to slink off into a corner, lick my wounded pride, and consider that maybe, just maybe, my head has gotten a bit bigger than my hat. Oh pain and ignominy! Life is so unfair!
Anyway, I did paint a picture of a Lancaster County Farm in Autumn for my sister Arlene, that I hope she likes. I was SURE she would like it, but now I think I will wait to see if she actually does hang it on her wall or hides it under her bed. Time will tell.
And that is a good segue to family events. The occasion for this gift was surprise party for my sister Arlene's 80th birthday. As you can tell from the photo, the surprise worked! There was a huge crowd of friends and relatives, and her kids, Jim and Charlene, engineered the whole thing including a fantastic spread of delicious food.
Making it all even sweeter, my sister Miriam and her daughter Nancy flew in from Kalamazoo and stayed with Patricia and me. It was a great reunion, too infrequent and long in coming.
Well, the artists whose work was selected were to be notified last Friday. And I DIDN'T GET ANY NOTICE! AT ALL! How could things have gone so wrong? SURELY this indicates severe corruption or maybe nepotism or possibly simple shoddy judging. How else could this travesty be explained? Really! I guess am simply going to have to slink off into a corner, lick my wounded pride, and consider that maybe, just maybe, my head has gotten a bit bigger than my hat. Oh pain and ignominy! Life is so unfair!
Anyway, I did paint a picture of a Lancaster County Farm in Autumn for my sister Arlene, that I hope she likes. I was SURE she would like it, but now I think I will wait to see if she actually does hang it on her wall or hides it under her bed. Time will tell.
And that is a good segue to family events. The occasion for this gift was surprise party for my sister Arlene's 80th birthday. As you can tell from the photo, the surprise worked! There was a huge crowd of friends and relatives, and her kids, Jim and Charlene, engineered the whole thing including a fantastic spread of delicious food.
Making it all even sweeter, my sister Miriam and her daughter Nancy flew in from Kalamazoo and stayed with Patricia and me. It was a great reunion, too infrequent and long in coming.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
So my blog has been left largely untended and unused for a long time now.It has felt like I needed some continuing interest or objective around which to build or continue my blog. My Peace Corps service was just such an obvious topic, and indeed was why I began this blog in the first place. But then, my Peace Corps experience was cut short by lymphoma (to be more accurate, Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia - or more generally, lymphoplasmactyic lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma). I really had no interest in recording a personal version of "Tuesdays with Maury" if things did not go well, nor in a recitation of joyful lab reports if things did go well - as indeed they have. Thankfully.
Beyond dealing with that rather overwhelming medical issue, my personal concerns have involved resettling in the
city I love, Philadelphia, and in discovering new sets of activities and interests that challenge and surprise and go beyond mere pleasure and entertainment. To be sure, I have found a number of these. But there is one activity/challenge that has really grabbed me, and whose development may provide a new focus for the blog: Painting, with oils.
Back in January I signed on for a course in Drawing and Oil Painting at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art (PAFA) taught by Doug Martensen, largely out of curiosity. Mostly, I produced truly awful stuff, but also a few things that weren't so very bad and I felt as though I was making progress. Even though I did feel intimidated by comparison to some paintings hanging on my wall that my Mother had done, and with Ellen producing awesome work out in Seattle. That course with Doug led to another with him, and then to the course in portrait painting that I am taking now
with Ted Xaras. Ted is a superb artist and instructor, with an encyclopedic knowledge and love of the Great Masters. In addition, Ted's course is held during the day, and that has brought me in touch with the wealth of other activities, functions, lectures, and students at PFA. It is an exciting ferment, and I love it. I actually like the portraits that I have been creating lately, and find that when I wake up in the middle of the night, I am thinking of painting, or how to correct some problem in the last painting that I did, or what was special about some master painting that I had been looking at. I find that creating a portrait on a flat surface
that contains personality as well as just likeness is pure magic.
Well. OK. Now with all that said, here's what's going on now. A watercolor that I painted in Italy this summer will be used in the 1st Unitarian Church's 2009 calendar, which is fun. And just today, I submitted photos of three paintings and a charcoal sketch for a juried exhibition of works for sale at less than $100, at Dirty Frank's bar. Unfortunately the photos were not good (slightly out of focus). At least that will give me an excuse when they refuse my submissions, without having to admit that their rejection reflects on the Quality of my Work. Heaven forbid!
Anyway, I've included copies of those photos here, which maybe gives you an idea of what I am coming up with. The black guy was done in one class (about 2.5 hrs working time), so that explains some of the resulting distortions.
At last
