commemorations

a painting by Nathan Oliveira



Nathan Oliveira died this week.  His paintings are good; I recommend you see them whenever you can.  They move and yet they also are paintings, still.

Jack Levine died November 8th.  His paintings are good, even great.  I know of no one who has better drawing and painting skill or storytelling range:  paintings of Jack's can be large, breathing big, pulsing--and glittering with light--even if the canvas surface is not so very large.  Look for his paintings.  You will see them in many museums, with the Goyas, the Rembrandts, the masters.  (Images of them are untransferable to a website.)  I commemorate his work with this recommendation for you to go look.

I knew Jack, a slim man, wry, and big in curiosity and knowledge of history, and culture and popular culture.  His paintings and drawings and prints have thrilled me, they thrill me still. 

another bear field

november field



Foraging bear field :  maybe this is a more apt description for this small painting since, besides having plants the colors of bears, this field painting has greens and berry-colors also.  Still, we're losing our range of colors fast now in the fields and treelines.  Nuance of color is emerging instead.  And soon nuance will take on a wide, wonderful range of its own.

bear fields

november field



The fields are devoid of living-growing colors, almost.  Pockets appear--still-green grasses and leaves, blooms not quite spent.  Mostly, all is enveloped:  all is moving in the breezes--textured-- but uniformly neutral:  browns, greys, whites.  The fields of grasses and dried plants are the colors of bears.  I find these bear fields wonderful.  You too?

My challenge as I painted this field was getting a sense of the under and the over in the pocket of the field without too much drama!  Underneath are the colors of the season-past; over and around are the colors of the season-ahead.

blue jay again

The young blue jay (from the previous post) is now up north at Alyce's small gallery.

Here is E.E. Cummings's poem about a blue jay, "crazy jay blue)":

crazy jay blue)
demon laughshriek
ing at me
your scorn of easily

hatred of timid
& loathing for(dull all
regular righteous
comfortable)unworlds

thief crook cynic
(swimfloatdrifting
fragment of heaven)
trickstervillain

raucous rogue &
vivid voltaire
you beautiful anarchist
(i salute thee

I love the (swimfloatdrifting/  fragment of heaven) .
(I salute you, E.E.!)  You too?

blue jay

young blue jay, at  you

The young blue jay looked over from the lilac bush just beyond our deck.  I get this look from blue jays when they are looking around at me, as if to say "where are the peanuts that you usually put out?"  Does this young one already know about the peanuts?

This is my third small painting of the blue jay.  Two of them didn't work.  The challenge was getting all the detail of the markings and a sense of the bird in motion, stilled for a moment.  Details can so easily take over the view.

M showed me a poem by E.E. Cummings about blue jays.  A phrase, "hatred of timid," struck me as too strong, too jarring.  But the rest of the poem was wonderful.  Now I think I will look again at the poem and see if my view has changed.  Maybe you would like to see the poem too, with all its phrases, all its details!

rushing yards and fields

 

october-to-november field

The fields and yards around us seem to be rushing to winter.  We have had a hard frost.  Colors are consolidating:  silvers, dusty golds, duns.  There is some ash color.  Details are collapsing.  Much has fallen and much is covered by fallen leaves.

This painting, with field details at its edges, almost looked flowing, water-like to me.  Except that the strokes of color are dry.  I do not mind that this painting becomes abstract.  Ideas/images often combine abstractly:  with a salient or general sense, and detail coming and going into focus.

silver in gold

late october field

After two days of high winds, much color around us has been swept away.  Also, colors are drying out.  Asters and field plants are silvered:  no more bright purples, no more bright golds.  Still, the field grasses are beautiful, shimmering.

bling

middle october autumn field

Glitter and gold in the fields.  Let it cascade around us.  Let us share it.

busy october

october field sketch

Are we all busier in October than we are in other months?  Is the grass greener in October? or does it shine bright, emerald, because of the clear, piercing light all around and because of all the colors which are not green all around?  (Friends in Taiwan told me the sharp light of Autumn is called the tiger's eye.)

I intended to work more on this little pastel painting.  But when I saw it after a day away, I thought it got to the activity level of the colors all around in the fields here in mid-October, or something.  Something in this sketch resonated a bit:  oh, yes.

I have been dashing to get work done before all the colors are spent.  Leaves have come down, "in showers," Marge said today.  Many trees are bare now.  I saw this chickadee (below) flitting and dashing, hardly placing both feet down.  I know that there is another chickadee sketch here in Ai-jane.  When I have a moment to check, I'll see how the two sketches compare.  Surely last year also, we-- the chickadees and me--were intently flitting, sketching.

autumn chickadee

clamor and hence



a bit of the October fields

There is much clamor in the fields.  Especially with the sunlight's attention upon them, some of the leaves and flowers and grasses are flashing crazy.  They nearly scream almost constantly:  me.    A mere painter, I watch with awe and a bit of atavistic fear.  And I seek out patches in the field that are still brilliant and yet can also temper the excesses around them.

This small pastel painting I did after I returned from a visit and 600 miles of driving.  All along the route, the grasses carried much color and they anchored and carried and neighbored much splendor all around them.  At first I drew mostly the individual grasses/marks and more bright colors all around.  Finished, the field suggests--more than states--its wider/wilder activity,  still colorful.

Ahead, in early November, the fields will be quieter.

color catching

october field

Autumn, jewel-like, can bedazzle at any moment:  asters flash from out of a shadow, goldenrods light up out of the browning grasses, sky-blue becomes bluer beside the gold.  A tree turns crimson between field and sky.  The jewels startle us and lead the fields in jumping.  Autumn is leaping in the fields.

I've tried to get this small painting jumping if not startling.  Maybe your eyes move around in an odd and syncopated way, darting around, their haunches and belly catching and dragging amid the fields and colors.  Do they?

spectacle

asters in late september field

Much in the fields are drying out, slowly browning.  Yet appearing like this reddish phrase appears in this text,  clumpsof asters  are like emergent jewels peeking out of pockets.  Oh my, bedazzling.  They do not need to move in the light or breeze; still, they can surprise us, startle us, start our hearts.

The small painting is pastel on paper.  I tried for the "startle" effect.  The final, top strokes of color in the field cover much of the detail and some of the asters, and these final strokes are bright.  I keyed these strokes bright, high, fuller of hue than the field's color because the asters are so rich in hue.  If the field's color here were duller, the asters would, I think, become gangsterish, comicbook-like, too toomuch.  Nature has a much wider range than painters do; still, we do what we can to be in the conversation, as fully participant as we can.