Memoir May 19, 2021

 

The painting, “Blue Taffeta with Flowers” hangs in our upstairs bathroom above the painting I featured yesterday of “Grandma and Mrs. Biggs”.  This painting features a photo of my Grandmother, as a young woman, a couple of old jars AND a dark blue taffeta skirt with pink paper flowers.  The taffeta came first.  I was visiting my sister and she said that she had an old evening skirt of my mother’s in her kid’s dress up boxes.  “Is it dark blue and shiny?” I asked.  When she said “yes”, I immediately claimed ownership of it and brought it home with me.  

 

When I was nine, I took piano lessons from Miss Dillon, our church organist.  She was a brutal teacher and I learned so much. The hardest part for me was walking to and from my lessons in the dark.  I was scared to death of rabid foxes and had to carry a big stick, just in case.  I remember running from street light to street light. By Christmas, I was playing Christmas Carols with two hands and that spring I got a starring role as Mother Nature in Miss Dillon’s annual operetta.  I don’t remember the song I sang but I do remember my costume. My Mom  cut down the blue taffeta evening skirt that she had made for herself for New Year’s Eve before she was married. She sewed pink paper flower around the hem.   I remember the lights shining on the skirt as I swirled and sang on stage. It was beautiful.  The next year, I change music teachers.  I walked in day light to Mrs. Newell’s.  She was a sweet, loving wonderful person. I never again was pushed to excel at music.

 

And the little photo in the painting, is  one of my wonderful Grandmother, Lily,  as a teenager.  Everyone in my Mom’s family had large noses.  (Another story I was repeatedly told was that when I was born everyone marvelled and laughed over my tiny  nose, the spitting image of my Dad).  I still remember on my first painting trip to England, admiring the giant noses on most of  the English people.

 Memoir May 18, 2021

Grandma and Mrs. Biggs

This painting brings back so many memories.  It hangs in our upstairs bathroom.  My sister doesn’t think it is appropriate to sit knee to knee with my Grandma and her friend Hattie Biggs  but I just love to see this painting each and everyday.  This painting was in my 1989 exhibition at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.  I remember the curator of my exhibition didn’t want my paintings of people in the show as she felt they weren’t good enough.  I persisted perhaps because I was used to a husband not liking what I was painting.  I have always felt that artists have to be completely pigheaded.  What we paint and how we do it is the essence of art and it is really all we have to give.

This is my Grandparent’s living room at 196 Roger’s Road, Hamilton Ontario. I love to see their “modern” sofa and the little cushions that helped make it comfortable.  The only thing I left out was the large painting done by my Grandmother’s brother that hung on the wall behind as I felt it made the painting stronger and more harmonious

My Grandma didn’t whistle or tell stories or play the harmonic.  She didn’t grow giant tomatoes and she didn’t drive. She wasn’t interested in learning stuff.  She did love playing games with me and even though she was deaf, she loved to sing with us on the family car rides.  My Grandmother loved.  That is exactly what she did best.  She loved everyone. 

 She loved my Grandfather. Just before the first world war, her family moved from England to Hamilton Ontario. My grandmother was thirteen and her sister Martha was fifteen and they went to work in a knitting factory.  When she was twenty the war was over and after church one Sunday, Jack, my grandfather, who had been a Canadian foot soldier in France,  asked her father if he could walk Lily home from church. 

 “No” my Grandmother’s father said.  

“You can walk Martha (her unmarried older sister) home from church”. 

“But it is Lily that I want to walk home” replied my Grandfather.

My Grandmother told me about my Grandfather getting down on his knees to help her her boots.  They walked home from church together.  A few months later they were married  My Grandmother wore a beautiful new suit and a hat trimmed with flowers. After the church service,  they had a small family luncheon at her parents home to celebrate and then Lily and Jack went together to buy stove pipe for their new apartment.

“ I had to marry him, my Grandmother always said

”or I would never have gotten to see him.” 

 My Grandfather worked sixty hours a week at Westinghouse as draftsman and took night school courses, five nights a week!

 MAY 16, 2021

This morning, I packed my chair with art supplies. Then  Fen and I ambled down to a favourite stump next to our little cabin by the river. I have forgotten my water contain and tissue.  I use the lid off my water bottle and my sweater sleeve.  I soak in the beauty with paint and words.

Next to the salt marsh,

My old stump glows in dappled sun light.

There is the soothing endless gurgle of river.

Swaying above are the white blossoms and golden leaves of

an amelanchier; chuckley pear.

Crows screech by.

A woodpecker taps on a still standing, 

Dead or dying spruce.

A tiny black and white female warbler scampers up a tree.

Her nest is probably hidden on this forest floor.

My stump is gradually decaying 

Into the fallen leaves, needles, cones and roots.

Bits of mottled mauve bark have pealed away

Leaving crumbling orangey pulp 

That provides new homes for mosses;

Shaggy  olive green, 

Tiny dots of blue green,

Or rounded lumps of bright yellow green,

Rain and roots burrow into every crevice.

A tiny spruce seedling is also growing out of my stump,

One last gasp for life from a dead tree.

Just 19, 2020 techniques for last three paintings

Since I graduated from University in 1972 with a Fine Art Major, I have been teaching myself watercolour.  Because I didn’t have any watercolour teachers or books, I developed my own style. Instead of the usually watercolour approach of light washes working towards the darks, I started with the darks. I found that with one layer of dark over the white paper, the darks were more intense and luminous.  Also by working towards the whites, there was the maximum range of contrast because often the highlights of the painting were just the white paper.  My compositions were always well planned with small sketches proceeding the paintings. The paintings themselves were started with a pencil drawing. The paint handling was tidy and direct.

Recently I finished a watercolour of flowers that I didn’t preplan. I started in the middle and just gradually added flowers.  This was both exhilarating and worrisome because I was making composition decisions all the way through the painting.  I wasn’t sure I could pull it all together. The paint handing though was my usual dark to light with a very controlled approach. 

 When I finished this, I started a small oil painting out by our pond.  I pushed and pulled and eventually the painting came together together.

 Now I have used this oil painting approach in my current watercolour.  Instead of preplanning the composition, I just started painting.  In this case, I started with the two lilies in the foreground.  Because I started with the lights and no drawing and not being sure of what the background would eventually be, some of the petals were muted and dull.   Instead of using my scrubber to go backward, this time I am using white Pepeo gouache, some times alone and sometimes mixed with watercolour or Winsor and Newton gouache.   There is much charm and stress by doing a painting this way.  I am engaged artistically and also worried all the way through.  Here are the results.

I started this painting last week as a demonstration for a few artist friends.  It would have been better if I had had a bit more of a drawing before starting but I pulled it together with my scrubber and scratcher.

February 29, 2020

Cala lily, Orange and Pear is a bit of a departure for me.  Done on hot pressed paper it is very simplistic in design.  I am very happy with it.

February 26, 2020

Herman the Seagull

My grandfather and I had a friend, Herman the Seagull. Everywhere we went Herman would be waiting for us.  I am the old lady now, my grandfather long gone, but Herman still waits for me in almost every season and every country.

Herman and his seagulls friends flap and swoop overhead.  Their raucous voices call back and forth. When they catch an updraft, they lock their wings and glide, riding the wind, at one with the sky.

He and his friends fish in shallow waters and rest atop roofs and chimneys.  They cock their big white heads and stare with unblinking eyes.

It is when I scatter chips, crumbs and crackers just like my grandfather taught me to do, that they congregate in front of me.  They edge closer and closer to me, their hooked yellow bills almost smiling as they grab my tasty treats.