Black flowers and berries

Plants reward looking.  On the one hand there are the spectacular which demand attention even from the most casual gaze.  They too are worth closer examination for even more delights and astonishment (think for instance of Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings).  My own preference is for the perhaps superficially boring, but which contain gems when given time and careful observation.

Today my delight in the garden is the flowers and berries of the pittosporum shrub.  I am no photographer, so have borrowed the ones shown here from this site which also has several other beautiful examples of the flowers and berries.

November light

So many reasons to love November, not least the light.  Colour - colours, yes, but the subtle greys, the shining light, ....  That last may seem a contradiction with the daylight hours getting so much shorter - but it's because of that the light becomes more precious, and more noticeable.

Because there is less light, and it is angled more directly from lower in the sky, I find that the landscape can beautifully be sliced vertically to appreciate the diversity of the light's effects.

And the blues become subtly intriguing, entrancing.

Stitch, stitch, stitch

One reason why I'm twitchy is that my quilting of Soliloquy involves stitching straight lines at a table which supports the weight of the piece.  I am not happy stuck this way, and I am keen, desperate to complete this aspect of the quilting.  When this is done I can take the whole onto my lap for the more free-form quilting.  I'm hoping that December will see me done with straight lines.

Can't settle

I am thinking about too many things today.  So, as ever, I doodle while my mind flits!

"What was the artist trying to say?"

I overheard this again on Sunday at the Jasper Johns exhibition, and mused once more over why it is that some observers are so desperate to know what an artist is trying to communicate.  I know that when I am in the throes of making a piece, I am far from sure what I'm trying to say.  Indeed even after I've finished, if I have to write a few words for an exhibition, it often taxes me.

Julie Speed: Concertina (image from here)
Then when responding to a comment on my last post I was reading an interview on Julie Speed's website (scroll down the page past the videos to arrive at the interviews on the link) I came across an elegant way of putting it:

An Interview with Julie Speed: Part II

December 12, 2012 Ross Smeltzer  

The Search For Meaning in Julie Speed’s Works

Q.           What are you trying to communicate in your paintings? What do you want people looking at your work to think about and feel?

Julie Speed.        I’m not trying to communicate. I’m trying to solve a puzzle that is visual first and narrative second.  The elements are color, form, line, texture, bits from the news, light from the windows, what I just saw in the street or in a tree when I walked to town to get the mail, a book, a phrase, a shadow and a thousand other small observations, so many that I could never count them or quantify them but they all occur and combine in the present.  It’s a puzzle for me now while I’m working on it and it takes every bit of concentration to get the work right.  As a practical matter it wouldn’t be useful to me to try to factor in my guess about how someone else would think or feel about it at some future time.  It’s hard enough to tune out my own inner bullshit.

Q.           In the past, you have said there are no objective meanings in your works: you expect different viewers to produce different – equally legitimate – meanings. But, given your use of repeated symbols and images, do you think you are attempting to communicate certain meanings, thoughts and perspectives to those viewing your works? In other words, are all interpretations of your work equally legitimate and, if not, why not?

Julie Speed.        I do use certain images over and over but I’m not deliberately embedding symbols in some kind of code.   I repeat certain images because they’re useful compositionally or simply because I like to paint them.

However, while I don’t know exactly how or why, I do know that if I get the composition and content balanced just right then the work will sometimes strike a chord in another person – not in most people of course, just a few….but when that happens I like to hear what it is that they thought or felt.

It’s certainly just as valid and often way  more interesting to me than my own thoughts because I’ve already thought my own thoughts – they’re no longer new to me.

Julie Speed: Jawbone (image from here)

Critics and the art market do not help observers of art to enjoy the act of observation for themselves.  I am still fuming about the obscenity of the same painting being deemed worth over $400 million if it is by one artist, but only worth less than $100 if thought to be by another.

Enchanted encounters?

Three powerful visual story tellers whose work inspires me are Paula Rego, Ana Maria Pacheco, and Julie Speed.

Paula Rego: from the Jane Eyre series (image from here)

Ana Maria Pacheco: from Follies of a Guardian Angel (image from here)

Julie Speed: Beach (image from here)

A separate category

Jasper Johns: The Seasons (Fall) (image from here)

There are some artists who comprise a separate category for me - a more directly inspirational one.  There have always of course been artists whose work I have preferred more than others; but this new category began to form when I embarked on my own attempts at artistic self-expression.The members of the special category are not necessarily inspirational in the same way, for the same reasons, and do not all remain there for the same length of time.  But they all have a profound effect, and take over a lot of my thinking - especially just after having seen a significant display of their work.
Today I had meant to visit an exhibition nearby, but I do not want to diminish my thinking about Jasper Johns' work.  The exact opposite: I want to develop the thoughts that are forming from my looking and seeing on Sunday.  There is the possibility of so much high quality art input these days that I find it difficult to maintain a perspective about what I am doing - or trying to do - and whether I am succeeding in my own terms.  And so I'm finding it increasingly necessary to give space around significant input - and as a kind of contradiction to the whole of my previous life - to limit the range and quantity of input.  I'm paying more attention to quality over quantity.

Jasper Johns working on one of the Regrets (image from here)
There are several reviews of the Royal Academy exhibition, here, here, and here, and here, here, and here, but they do not come near to the positive reaction I have had.  There is an interesting article here. 
I am drawn not so much to the flags, the targets, the early Pop Art works; but to the re-examinations, the re-workings, the use of line and space, the careful execution, the attraction to typographic elements, the use of greys, blacks, and colour, the elegance of his thinking, ...

Jasper Johns: Ocean (working proof) (image from here)
... his fascination with optical illusions, the tricks of perception,  his borrowings from for example Buckminster Fuller (map as used in the print immediately above), Holbein, Picasso,  the John Deakin photograph of Lucian Freud which spurred the Regrets series, ... and how he very much made something so distinctly his own out of it all.

Engaging, enlightening, enriching, ... and somehow encouraging

Jasper Johns: 0 through 9 1961 (image from here)
Yesterday was a crisp, chill, sunny day with oak and beech leaves glowing gold.  We took ourselves to the Royal Academy in London to see the Jasper Johns exhibition.  Johns is one of those artists whose work I have long admired, and yet I have actually seen very few pieces for real.  A few here and there I saw in the USA, Tate has several, and I was fortunate to see an exhibition of his number pieces in Oxford many years ago.

Jasper Johns: Dancers on a Plane (image from here)
I found this exhibition at the RA to be an excellent display, thematically organised, making the most of the workings and re-workings - the explorations and the re-visitings.  I was keen to see the work he had done for Fiorades/Fizzles, the book with Samuel Beckett, and was delighted to see so much on display. 

(image from here)
Usually one has to put up with one double page spread open - more images here - but the limited edition had included a set of flat prints for exhibition.  Brilliant.

One of the Regrets (image from here)
There was so much that was worth the visit, and even so we found the exhibition to be greater than its parts.  It certainly made such an impact on me that I am still digesting, and find myself incapable of writing any more.

Doodle in progress

Snaps from a stroll after frost

Last night brought a hard enough frost to leave the ground white this morning, until the sun rose and shone brightly enough to entice me into the garden.  This year's weather has been peculiar - except that perhaps peculiar is becoming normal; the predictability of un-predictability.  October was warmer than usual, with many plants flowering still - or again.

Behind the beetroot the carnations are flowering in their pot.

The pink geranium blooms look rather too delicate for the cold amongst the stipa gigantia grass.

The rock rose has been full of flowers, but they look rather knocked by the overnight chill. 

The winter jasmine is flowering as expected, but has the companionship of the red blooms of the Dortmund rose, not yet gone to sleep.  But some plants are doing their thing for Autumn as usual,

such as the sedum,

the Scots thistle providing seeds for the little birds,

the mahonia developing the buds of yellow flowers which will fill the area with delicious scent over Winter, while changing its leaf colour to stunning red here and there.

The berberis berries are such an intense bright lipstick red amongst the few remaining red leaves.  The mass of arching branches makes a delightful screen in the strong bright sunshine.  (I can see it from the other side now when I'm in my sewing room behind those now opened blinds.)

And one indicator that it is not yet Christmas is the holly still covered in berries. 

The blackbirds and thrushes generally strip it just before Christmas Eve when I cut the greenery to decorate the house!  However, this year quite a few berries have fallen to the ground.  I hope that the birds are not going to miss out.

More than just a good read

Albert Bartholome: The Artist's Wife Reading (image from here)
In 1967 I was at university, and one of my courses covered French literature.  As relaxation from the heavier literature and philosophy I used to enjoy reading Simenon's Maigret stories.  I loved the plots, the settings, the descriptions, and most of all the characters - their ordinary and extraordinary lives.
That same year a baby was born whose books in the same vein I now enjoy:  I read The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet yesterday and finished it this morning.  I immediately felt torn from the characters and the atmosphere he so brilliantly creates.  The crimes are the incidents around which ripples touch lives and knock them off course - a little, or a lot.  It is the characters we are interested in.  The crimes are interesting, but perhaps most because they are the glass through which we view the players. It is not the extraordinary which is the focus; Burnet makes the quotidian compelling.
I also very much enjoy the setting - in Alsace, in France but almost on the border with Germany and Switzerland - it feels like a small town that lives independent of worldly fashion, where everyone knows everything and nothing about everyone.  I so enjoyed this book that I have been unable simply to move on to another, and chose instead to distract myself from my sinus headaches by watching the tennis in Paris and pottering through blogs - all the time turning over thoughts about aspects of the novel.
I shall have to exert patience until the hinted-at next volume is published.

That time of year again

This is the third year in a row that November has brought a head cold to me.  I thought that this time it was going to pass mildly by, but today, the third day is bad enough that all I can contemplate doing is abandoning my lists, and indulging myself by reading a whodunnit.  In looking for a suitable illustration I encountered this below from a blog also talking about light reading during a cold.

I can second her recommendation of Dorothy L. Sayers, but do not know The Ghost and Mrs Muir by R.A. Dick.  I am about to embark on the latest novel by Graeme Macrae Burnet: The Accident on the A35. I very much enjoyed his two previous novels, and this one is another told about the character from his first - the French policeman Georges Gorski in The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau.  Here is a recent review of the latest novel.

Harold Knight: Girl reading (image from here)

A wild night

The artist Lachlan Goudie in front of one of his father's paintings (image from here)
Today, tonight is Halloween, and while I have never had time for the commercialised festivity enjoyed by children and party animals, I always remember Robert Burns' epic poem Tam O'Shanter when talk of witches comes round.
I much enjoy Alexander Goudie's paintings illustrating the poem - he painted a great number of them, but truth be told, I rather like conjuring up the images in my own imagination. 

T. Dunwell: Scene from Tam O'Shanter (image from here)
So much is memorable from the poem, but the phrase which remains firmly with me is the description of Tam's wife Kate: "nursing her wrath to keep it warm".  Glorious to the ears of this curmudgeon!

Tam o’ Shanter  (you can hear it here, and here is a translation into standard English)

When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors, neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
An’ folk begin to tak the gate;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
And getting fou and unco’ happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and styles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter,
(Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonny lasses.)
O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise,
As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice!
She taul thee weel thou was a skellum,
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum;
That frae November till October,
Ae market-day thou was nae sober;

That ilka melder, wi’ the miller,
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller;
That every naig was ca’d a shoe on,
The smith and thee gat roaring fou on;
That at the L—d’s house, even on Sunday,
Thou drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday.
She prophesied that late or soon,
Thou would be found deep drown’d in Doon;
Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk,
By Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthen’d sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!

But to our tale: Ae market-night,
Tam had got planted unco right;
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,
Wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely;
And at his elbow, Souter Johnny,
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;
Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither;
The had been fou for weeks thegither.
The night drave on wi’ sangs and clatter;
And ay the ale was growing better:
The landlady and Tam grew gracious,
Wi’ favours, secret, sweet, and precious:
The Souter tauld his queerest stories;
The landlord’s laugh was ready chorus:
The storm without might rair and rustle,
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle.

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E’en drown’d himsel amang the nappy:
As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure,
The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure;
Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious!

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.—
Nae man can tether time or tide;
The hour approaches Tam maun ride;
That hour, o’ night’s black arch the key-stane,
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;
And sic a night he taks the road in,
As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in.

The wind blew as ’twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d;
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow’d:
That night, a child might understand,
The Deil had business on his hand.

Weel mounted on his gray mare, Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire;
Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet;
Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet;
Whiles glowring round wi’ prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares:
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.—

By this time he was cross the ford,
Whare, in the snaw, the chapman smoor’d;
And past the birks and meikle stane,
Whare drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane;
And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn,
Whare hunters fand the murder’d bairn;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Whare Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel.—
Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole;
Near and more near the thunders roll:
When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;
Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.—

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!
What dangers thou canst make us scorn!
Wi’ tippeny, we fear nae evil;
Wi’ usquabae, we’ll face the devil!—
The swats sae ream’d in Tammie’s noddle,
Fair play, he car’d na deils a boddle.
But Maggie stood right sair astonish’d,
Till, by the heel and hand admonish’d,
She ventured forward on the light;
And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight!
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillion brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.—
Coffins stood round, like open presses,
That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantraip slight
Each in its cauld hand held a light.—
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer’s banes in gibbet airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen’d bairns;
A thief, new-cutted frae a rape,
Wi’ his last gasp his gab did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi’ blude red-rusted;
Five scymitars, wi’ murder crusted;
A garter, which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father’s throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son o’ life bereft,
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi’ mair o’ horrible and awefu’,
Which even to name wad be unlawfu’.

As Tammie glow’rd, amaz’d, and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:
The piper loud and louder blew;
The dancers quick and quicker flew;
They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in her sark!

Now, Tam, O Tam! had thae been queans,
A’ plump and strapping in their teens,
Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flannen,
Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linnen!
Thir breeks o’ mine, my only pair,
That ance were plush, o’ gude blue hair,
I wad hae gi’en them off my hurdies,
For ae blink o’ the bonie burdies!

But wither’d beldams, auld and droll,
Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,
Lowping and flinging on a crummock,
I wonder didna turn thy stomach.

But Tam kend what was what fu’ brawlie,
There was ae winsome wench and wawlie,
That night enlisted in the core,
(Lang after kend on Carrick shore;
For mony a beast to dead she shot,
And perish’d mony a bony boat,
And shook baith meikle corn and bear,
And kept the country-side in fear:)
Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho’ sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.—
Ah! little kend thy reverend grannie,
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,
Wi’ twa pund Scots, (’twas a’ her riches),
Wad ever grac’d a dance of witches!

But here my Muse her wing maun cour;
Sic flights are far beyond her pow’r;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was, and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewitch’d,
And thought his very een enrich’d;
Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain,
And hotch’d an blew wi’ might and main:
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a’ thegither,
And roars out, ‘Weel done, Cutty-sark!’
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied.
When out the hellish legion sallied.

As bees bizz out wi’ angry fyke,
When plundering herds assail their byke;
As open pussie’s mortal foes,
When, pop! she starts before their nose;
As eager runs the market-crowd,
When ‘Catch the thief!’ resounds aloud;
So Maggie runs, the witches follow,
Wi’ mony an eldritch skreech and hollow.

Ah, Tam! Ah, Tam! thou’ll get thy fairin!
In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin!
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin!
Kate soon will be a woefu’ woman!
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane of the brig;
There at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross.
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake!
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle;
But little wist she Maggie’s mettle—
Ae spring brought off her master hale,
But left behind her ain gray tail:
The carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha this tale o’ truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother’s son, take heed:
Whene’er to drink you are inclin’d,
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys o’er dear,
Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare.

Autumn colour

The clocks are about to go back, and today there is a wee bit more chill in the air.  We are now well into the season of colour: Autumn.  Strolling through the ArtUk site I was reminded of the artist W.G. Gillies.  Here are some of his Autumn trees:

Woodland Landscape (Trees and Sky) (image from here)

Woodland Path (image from here)

Woodland Landscape (Trees with River and Pathway) (image from here) 

Autumn Landscape with Trees (image from here)

The River and Beech Trees, Temple Woods (image from here)

Brown and Grey Landscape, Pentland Hills (image from here)

And of course the chills of Autumn lead to enjoying cosy days indoors:

Still Life with Scattered Fruit and Grasses (image from here)

Still Life with Wine Glasses and Apples (image from here)

Everything for a place

I am working steadily hand quilting a large piece.  It is big and slippery enough that I need the support of a table, and the autumn light has been dull enough that I prefer a north-facing window at which to work.  So, the work is proceeding in the sewing room.  So far, so good.
In the evenings, however, and if I have chores to do, I will not be in the sewing room.  Yet, I need to have something to hand for the in between times - especially when it is not possible to turn my mind to reading.  The solution is to have a steady stream of small stitch pieces on which to work.

Yesterday I finalised the digital work on Jazz flute, which was started some months ago, printed it onto cotton lawn, and in the evening started to stitch.

I also finalised the digital work on Ginkgo rider, the origins of which go back several years.  It just needs printing onto cotton now, which I shall do later today.  In this piece a lot of the colour will be added with the thread used to stitch.
I have written a post on my work blog describing the development of the designs.

A bonus exhibition

I met a friend yesterday.  We had not seen each other for years, and we talked for hours, and in between we popped into an exhibition, Radical Craft to which I must admit I paid scant attention.  Well, only enough attention to have the work of two artists catch my eye.

First were three stiffened lace houses by Marie-Rose Lortet - image above from here.

And second was a piece of stained glass by Pinkie Maclure - image from her website.