Soutine's portrait's paint

Garcon d'honneur by Chaim Soutine

At the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris, in the basement floor, there are several wonderful paintings by Chaim Soutine.  The full brushstroke of paint, blue grey, behind this man's ear:  I found this particularly amazing.

Here are more images, paintings by Soutine.

hau jyan kang

hau jyan kang

GOOD HEALTH to you                HEARTINESS

The bottom of the bottom character has brushstrokes of the four directions, heartiness out to all!

goldfinches, there and now

Goldfinch

Mom is slowly, slowly getting stronger after her surgery, there in Florida. Here, the goldfinches are so busy in the fields!

E.E. Cummings's words seem apt for all of us, folks and fowl:

tomorrow is our permanent address

and there they'll scarcely find us (if they do,

we'll move away still further:  into now

No one knows about illness and recovery, about painting and aptness to vision, or about flitting from one--which one?--bloom to another.  Words can come close, especially if you are a poet like E.E. Cummings.

This small painting is gouache, charcoal, pastel and graphite on paper.  Gouache is basically watercolor with white added to give the paint body and opacity.  Usually, zinc white is added.

field of the goldfinches

August field

The flowers in the fields will soon be brown, their seeds flown, dispersed, or eaten, but not yet.  Goldfinches have been flitting in the fields, eating the seeds on thistles, bee balm, and coneflowers.  Goldfinches are BRIGHT yellow birds, and the fields still have colors, so a lot of bright dance is on.

I went to this field this morning and did a pencil sketch.  All last week I was in the world of medical detail.  Everyone there tries to dance well; still, I was glad to be here again for a while.

poet in view

Cardinal in our yard

Philip Levine is the new Poet Laureate of the United States.  Yesterday we got the news, along with snippets of his poetry, his biography, and photos of him.  Fame for him.  Please link here, Philip Levine, to an earlier blog about his wonderful poetry.  Like our cardinals, his poetry flashes brilliance, flitting around in and out of view.

The cardinal is the state bird of many states in the American midwest.  Here I have tried to catch the male's amazing color and some sense of that amazing head, maybe nodding--in gouache, pastel, charcoal and graphite on Stonehenge paper.  Cardinals are clear, loud singers; certainly they add color and song, joy, to our yards.

not Plato's cave

dove in mulberry juice and charcoal

My mother will be in a "cave" today, in surgery.
When she comes out, she will see my bird which I send as a message of love.
Truth and metaphor, for Sally.

Paris gardens

paintings by Claude Monet

Claude Monet was 82 years old when he agreed to paint 19 panels of paintings that would be arranged in an oval or a circle in museum rooms designed solely for the paintings.  The painting, directly above, consists of four panels.  When I was standing there looking, I was about the size of the brown tree trunk:  large and vast these paintings are!  The imagery is from his gardens at Giverny.  The museum where the paintings were installed is a former greenhouse for orange trees, L'Orangerie, on the other side of a very long garden from The Louvre.

Water gardens and paint become the room; we are a part of a another world.

Monet's health was not great, and his eyesight was bothering him.  Still, he made these amazing paintings.  Mostly, he used brushes that were about an inch wide.  Still, there is amazing variety in the touch and sweep of the brushwork and there is elegance in the economy of the brushwork coming together to form images like water lilies or to animate the passages between the recognizable images.  And the color is gorgeous.  More than anything, Monet knew, loved, and passed on to us a joy of color.

lake

Lake Michigan

oil/gessoed board

A bit can re-call, can call up the large lake.

I think once again of Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree .

Today in Michigan, Betty Ford is being buried beside her husband, Gerald Ford, who was one of our Presidents.  This bit of news re-calls Betty Ford's large, lovely and brave contribution to our world.

daylilies

July daylilies

Floating orange patches all around town now.  Lifting spirits.

lake views

Lake Michigan near Holland

July 8, c 3:00 pm

The lake looks different from one quarter hour to another and from any slight change of view.  My sister Helen said it looks like the ocean.  

These color sketches I did today and yesterday in the studio, from pencil sketches.  How different these colors are from the colors of the watercolor sketch in the preceding blog entry.

lemon-yellow of primroses

oil sketch on board

You can see the quick layering of this small sketch:  wet and dry strokes of oil paint on a linen-covered cardboard.  Primroses, poppies, and peonies were blooming at the edge of the woods.

Travel and family visits have precluded my regular work weeks, happily.  Still, I can sketch.  Below is a small watercolor sketch of Lake Michigan.

Saryu's haiku

"willow tree"  calligraphy

Without a brush

The willow paints the wind.

               -Saryu

We brushed this haiku in class Tuesday.  My calligraphy here is somewhat willow-like, breeze-lifted.  While we were in class, outdoors there was great wind.  We were under a tornado warning!

Saryu's surname and his lifespan's dates are not known, evidently (unless you know them).   This haiku is from a book from The Art Institute of Chicago,  Zen Haiku, selections and translations by Jonathan Clements.