It’s mid March and Nova Scotia is once again enveloped with snow. Yesterday was sunny and glimpses of tiny green shoots could be seen in the bare brown garden. Now it is all buried in snow and the sky is a dull weary grey. My winter of discontent is prolonged awhile longer.
How I wish it were May with the warmth of spring well in hand and the garden full of colour and new growth. Just 2 more months from now I will feel so much better. But will I?
I can’t waste those 2 months waiting for happiness. As each year passes I hear the clock ticking too fast already. I really want time to slow down, or stop.
My step mother-in-law has been in the hospital for several weeks awaiting tests. She’s not much older than me. Only a few weeks ago she was enjoying life, and now her life is on hold, with possibly an uncertain future. How quickly circumstances can change.
A friend departed to a Caribbean island for an escape to sun and warmth. I feel a certain envy, but I am still here.
I need to take today for what it is, not for what I want. My disappointment with the weather slowly changed during my morning walk. I felt content in the muffled silence of a snowy day.
Painting Snow Scenes
Snow creates interesting painting opportunities. The trees are transformed into rhythmicly beautiful shapes. White is such a pure and special colour that can unify a composition.
White Wonder, Acrylic on Canvas
Contentment
I have my health, and I have my sanity. I can be content to be who I am today, right now. Today is a good as it is ever going to be, if I make it so. So I will.
I am in my studio working on a new painting, a portrait of my son who is now a young man. I realize that my studio is cramed with paintings. In this large room there is a storage area stacked to the brim with large 30″ x 40″ and larger canvases. There are half a dozen large landscape abstracts in shipping bags stacked by the wall. There are 30 or more 16″x 20″ figure paintings and equally as many plein aire landscape paintings balanced above the storage cupboards. I have drawers full of pastel and charcoal figure drawings, sorted and labelled. I have computer files full of images of paintings and drawing that have sold and photos of paintings that were painted over when the canvas was reused. Almost every wall in our house has a painting or drawing framed and displayed.
There was a time when a painting was treasured because of its rarity. So few of the works I started were worrthy of keeping. Most of my so-called artworks were destined for the waste basket or recycling bin. It seemed so fortuitous that I could produce something worthy of display.
Over the years slowly but surely, my technique improved and my success rate increased. I learned to evaluate the work in progress and to find ways to repair and change the ugly parts. I could recover and transform bad works into better ones. I don’t throw so many works away anymore, but my inventory is starting to overwhelm me.
Despite the wonderfull array of past works, I am compelled to get in the studio and create more. It’s addictive and compulsive. The most important art for me is the one I am working on now. The full experience of painting is so fulfilling it cannot be thwarted. There is joy, frustration, comtemplation, “ah ha”,perserverance, discouragement. Ultimately there is a often a deep satisfaction that comes from all the struggling, puzzling and energy required to fill a canvas.
My Studio
Even after the completion there is the desire to improve. I want to create that elusive image that is closer to perfection than currently possible. I want to paint another one. That is the addiction.
Here is my portrait of a young man, the newest work on my easel.
This week’s news has been dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Like everyone else in the West I feel this strong emotional reaction to the headlines and the aggression that underlies the situation. I feel helpless that there are few or no levers that I can pull to affect the situation. I feel like a witness or bystander to a terrible tragedy playing out on the world’s stage. I feel outrage that peace is secondary to idealogy and political power.
I have lived a long time. When I was born in 1945, the world was still in the midst of World War II, and atom bombs were falling on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The terrible costs to human life and the worldwide destruction shocked humankind. There was a strong belief for “no more war”.
Why has that sentiment been forgotten?
It seems the world has been battered by tremendous new unforeseen problems- like COVID, and climate change. These problems are immensely difficult to understand and to solve. We are looking for simple answers to complex questions. It becomes easier to blame someone or something for the problem. Like the 1930’s conspiracies suggest a scapegoat and we the public become increasingly polarized and opinionated as to the cause of our discomfort.
Intermal Strife
I can feel this desire to solve the COVID situation by blaming someone (the government restrictions, the politicians, the Chinese, etc.) In reality no one and everyone is creating our crises. The polarization begins inside of me. My desires for answers conflict with the desire to return to normalicy. How can the world find peace when the turmoil is also roiling inside of me? I have no answer.
Expressing Emotion
I want to pay homage to the old masters who were so able to capture the spectrum of human emotion in their paintings. We can see the turmoil and angst in their figures as they struggle with their situation.
In 2020 I wanted to convey the desperation I was feeling as the COVID pandemic was sweeping the world. The paintings of the old masters inspired me to create a collage of humankind coping with COVID.
I also created a pastel work in cooperation with another artist (Sue Reeves) for the Roepost Project. The work addressed our reaction to the call for help.
These images express some of my reactions to the Ukraine Invasion.
It’s that time of the week when I start to feel anxious and excited about adding a post to this blog. This creates an internal deadline for me. It’s both a good and not so good feeling. I start to ask myself “what should I write about?”
This leads to a whole sequence of questions
What do I know about this?
Do I have facts and material ready?
How can I make this interesting?
Do I have the time?
Am I ready to write, edit and produce?
When will I be ready? (i.e., motivated, relaxed, organized, inspired, etc.)
The answer to these questions seems to be. “Definitely not today! I am not ready, so wait til tomorrow at or longer”.
There’s no hurry, so I should put it off for awhile. Go and watch TV, or play some solitaire. I have a strong urge to get distracted and take my mind off this anxiety- producing problem!
Based on many years of procrastination, I know this is an ineffective decision. Using the Nike slogan (but really it’s not their idea) my best decision is
“Just Do It!”
I will never be ready enough to write a blog. I just need to start by opening WordPress and start typing. I can edit on the fly and change my ideas as I write. I need to bootstrap myself into the activity. If I need an image to substantiate my idea, something will come forth. Yes I need to start with a germ of an idea, but it doen’t need to be completely thought out, I need to rely on my intuition and trust the page will not stay blank for too long.
I realize that blogging can be much like drawing. It starts with a blank sheet and marks are added one at a time based on some initial observations. Each new mark is inspired by the previous marks and slowly but surely an image, and idea starts to form and the final result may not or will not be anything like the original. It will probably be much mucn better.
Created one mark at a time for 15 minutes (pastel on paper)
For an artist, vision is essential. In my younger years, I took my vision for granted. Now in my 70’s, I can no longer count on my eyes to provide the vision I want.
Over my life I have had difficulties with my eyesight.
Nearsightedness (Myopia)
My first encounter with eye failure was at school in grade 2 . I was unaware that I was very near-sighted. The world was a fog beyond 10 feet. When I got my first pair of glasses, I was so surprised that I could actually see the words in the blackboard that were previously just blurry shapes. Over the years my daily life depended on my glasses. I relied on them for sports, reading, driving, traveling, and became part of my identity.
The nearsightedness was occasionally useful as an artist. In a complex visual scene like a forest or city, the complexity simplified to a blur of blended colours without my glasses.
The scene on the left is an actual scene, and the right image is what I would see without glasses. Sometimes I did paint without glasses. This created a new problem- being able to see my canvas, paints and brush with enough clarity to paint. In retrospect it may have been better to paint without actually seeing where the brush marks were placed such that the painting could be more loose and spontaneous.
I have heard theories that the French Impressionists painted the way they did because they suffered from poor eyesight, and they painted what they saw. I doubt if that were true, but I can understand that imperfect vision may offer unexpected benefits or opportunities.
Later in life I developed cataracts which literally clouds one’s vision. I feel fortunate to live at a time when modern surgery makes lens implants an easy and affordable removal of cataracts. A wonderful side benefit of cataract surgery is that my vision had been corrected back to 20/20. I have found not needing glasses or contact lens to see well outdoors to be amazing and life changing.
Blind Spots (Glaucoma)
I discovered in my forties that the so called ‘blind spot’ in my eyes was abnormal. Indeed the usually small blind spot in both eyes (where the optic nerve attaches to the eye) were much much bigger than they should be. I suffer from glaucoma, whereby damage to the optic nerve creates blindspots in the retina that cannot be recovered once they are lost. As a consequence I have lost vision in the peripheral regions of my eye. These blind areas differ for each eye. The brain does a magnificent job to assemble a complete picture of the scene based on what the eyes provide.
The shaded areas are the blind spots in my left and right eyes
Unfortunately it cannot provide information to the scene where nothing is available. This is particularly noticeable when the brain is providing a 3 dimensional display of the scene before my eyes. There are both blind spots where the blank areas of each eye overlap, and missing 3 dimensionality in areas where only one eye sees. When an object is moving across my field of view it can disappear for a moment and its location in space can be lost.
The greatest frustation is playing sports like badminton or pickleball where I have to track the bird or ball. Inevitably the ball disappears into a blind spot or its position becomes confusing and my racquet swishes by in the wrong place. Difficulty seeing small objects with my peripheral vision requires doing more scanning back and forth with my eyes to compensate. My eyes tire quickly when I encounter a visually stimulationg situation.
So far I have not found a benefit from glaucoma. Knowing I have glaucoma makes me appreciate the vision I have rather than regret the vision I am missing. I also appreciate the value of peripheral vision in the act of seeing, and consequently have created paintings that emphasize the value of seeing scenes on our periphery. I am also more appreciative of calmer visual scenes.
Peripheral imagery where colours and lines take precedence over detail and form
