Olives

It's Holy Week, and so perhaps it's appropriate to think about olives and Palestine and the garden of Gethsemani -- but also about spring, and light on silver leaves. Over the weekend I did another gouache sketch in a toned-paper sketchbook, this time of an olive orchard we drove through in Sicily, one of many we saw, in the hills near Selinunte. It was actually harvest time, and we followed a small truck, laden with many boxes of large, just-picked olives, up a long winding road to a town at the top. There we saw a huge olive-processing plant, and many tents, occupied by migrant workers, all of whom were black, and, I suspect, refugees from Africa. I won't forget the sight of another truck we passed on the way back down, driven by a white man, but completely loaded with young black men hanging off the sides. Or the two young men walking their bicycles back up the hill toward the town - an impossible ride, because of the steepness.

But the olive orchards are sheer beauty. I fell in love with olive trees in Sicily, from the young sinuous saplings, covered with tongue-tingling, tiny, bitter fruit in every shade from grey to green to black, to the extremely old, twisted trees: noble and venerable elders that one sees, sometime in the middle of pastures or near an ancient temple, some of which have lived for centuries.

I'm familiar with the olive varieties that we buy in the markets, but have no idea what the different types look like as trees, or how they are chosen for orchards and different micro-climates, but in their great variety, shimmering in the light, they all seemed extraordinary to me and extremely beautiful. I saw for the first time, first-hand, why the precious olive became the symbol of victory and peace, and the symbol of grey-eyed Athena, always my favorite goddess and the particular patron of Athens and the Greeks.

So I've been starting to draw and paint them a bit, wishing I could go back and sit in the grass with my sketchbook. What is the essence of the olive tree? Van Gogh knew; I'm just beginning to learn.

Comments

[Natalie]

Beth, it's interesting that you've translated the olive trees and their landscape in a soft, gentle visual language. The sun-stroked hardness or bony structure doesn't play a major role in your version as it did, for instance, to Van Gogh. Apart from technical considerations, such as the medium of watercolour or that you're working (I assume)from photos, I wonder how much the whole complex process of seeing and translating what one sees into any visual or verbal form is influenced by what one is familiar with, built into one's DNA as it were? I guess I'm just stating the obvious: that no two people see any thing in the same way. But it's a question I often ask myself concerning the process of looking/drawing/painting figuratively - i.e. 'from life'.

[Marly Youmans]

I am reminded of Van Gogh's letter to Emile Bernard:

So right now I'm working in the olive grove in search of all sorts of effects of grey sky against yellow soil, with a grey-green hue in the foliage, and then again with the soil and the leaves all purple against a yellow sky, or a red-ochre soil and green-pink sky. Yes, I do find that more interesting than the above-named abstractions.

and

I am telling you about these canvases, and about the first one in particular, to remind you that one can express anguish without making direct reference to the actual Gethsemane, and that there is no need to portray figures from the Sermon on the Mount in order to express a comforting and gentle motif.

[Beth]

Natalie, yes, I'm sure we all have a built-in "filter" that affects how we see and what we see, though I try to clear that as much as I can! This partcular landscape WAS soft, and in the late afternoon light, all we could see were rows of silvery light green leaves; the branches and trunks were very secondary. In this place I also had a vantage point that looked down on the orchard, making the tops of the trees dominant, while Van Gogh often sat (I think) on the ground, looking up into the branches or down the rows, which would have emphasized the wood and twisted trunks. And of course, he was tormented in ways I am not and found echoes of his struggle in nature. Like you say, no two people see "Life" the same way, either in art or in daily existence. Thanks for your thoughts here.

Marly, yes, exactly. Thank you very much for these quotes. I read Van Gogh's poignant and honest letters a long time ago and they've stayed with me. I feel an affinity even though, as I wrote in response to Natalie, we're very different people.

[Natalie]

The French edition of Van Gogh's letters to Theo has been with me for so long it's falling to pieces, the pages are yellowed and brittle but Vincent's strength and integrity still shines through. I don't think any other artist has left such a profound and personal legacy, not necessarily only through his art but as a human being. I don't mean to put him on a pedestal or to say that his paintings are 'greater' than x, y or z but there is something unique about the directness in which his inner life coalesced into his work, as if injected into the bloodstream-paint.