the cassandra pages

Nature and Nurture

 

My cousin, on the left, holding the black rabbit, had a birthday recently and I sent her this photograph of the two of us. It’s a slide my father must have taken in the 1950s. We’re standing in front of my aunt and uncle’s house, on their dairy farm in Smyrna, New York. I loved animals, but because of my mother’s asthma I couldn’t have furry pets, so I liked visiting the farm animals. I remember various pet dogs and cats, the chicken house out back, occasional pigs, and the huge herd of Holsteins, but not these rabbits — the fluffy white one one I’m holding looks slightly demented. But my attention was caught by two other things in this photograph as well.

One is the pair of pants I’m wearing, with their design of palettes and brushes and paint. Did I choose them or did my mother or someone else in the family give them to me? Did someone find the fabric and sew them? I was born into a family of makers; my father and grandfather were excellent woodworkers, all the women knew how to sew, knit, crochet, embroider, cook, grow a garden, and some — my mother and aunt — painted pictures. On my father’s side, everyone was musical, and my school had an active music and drama program. I had an easel and art supplies from the time I was very young, and always liked to draw and paint — but would I have discovered this if I hadn’t been encouraged? Would I have asked for a musical instrument on my own, without those external factors? And would I have persisted, without watching the adults around me, observing their enjoyment and satisfaction, and how they dealt with errors, mistakes, or making a dress or a chair that was harder than anything they’d tried before? What if I hadn’t had good teachers? What if all the music and arts programs at school had been cut, as is the case now in so many places?

The other thing I notice in the picture is my calm, direct look into the camera, and a sense of the person behind her gaze. It’s uncanny, how much of myself I see in that little girl, already.

Why, I wonder, do some children seek to emulate certain adults in their families or close circles, while others are rebellious, wanting to do just the opposite? What about a sensitive creative child, like my husband, born into a family that was not artistic at all, didn’t know how to encourage it, and had a much narrower bandwidth about what constitutes a valuable use of one’s time? Nobody was dressing him in clothes with prints of cameras and film, though I can imagine those existing in the funky design world of the 1950 and 60s. He and I grew up in such different environments, and yet ended up in similar places, partly because of discovering our natural talents and desires, partly because of encouragement from older people — outside the family in his case, inside the family in mine — and partly because of innate determination, persistence, and a basic tendency toward non-conformity.

Somehow we get launched on our particular paths, through some combination of nature and nurture, but then we encounter obstacles that can hinder progress. These can range from lack of education, money, or opportunity, or running into a destructive teacher, to basic character traits like lack of the necessary drive, stubbornness about fixing problems, or inability to take criticism.

In my case, my biggest problem has always been impatience. In music, I never wanted to play scales and exercises, and my teachers didn’t insist. I didn’t learn music theory. When you have a basic natural facility, and good skills like sight-reading, and you aren’t in a highly competitive environment, you can coast along for a long time. The same is true in studying, in art, in writing, and even in relationships. I’ve become a much more patient person over the years, willing to step back and analyze a problem and figure out how to fix it — which may require a lot of work — but that kind of patience wasn’t natural to me. We’re born with certain character traits. I doubt that anyone could have trained me to be a patient child; I would have rebelled. As an adult, I’ve had to make up for those omissions later on, but sometimes my impatience still gets the better of me.

I’m working on a new oil painting now, and it’s reached the stage where the decisions are on the fine-tuning level. Lots of stepping back and looking, not too much brush-on-the-canvas. In the days leading up to yesterday, the process has gone well, and I’ve been pleased to be able to keep the brushwork loose, the forms somewhat abstract, the colors within a range I had decided upon earlier. It’s close to being finished.

But yesterday, as I looked at the painting and felt like I should work on it, I just didn’t really feel like it was going to go well. Sometimes, starting to work breaks through that kind of psychological barrier, whatever it is, and I find myself able to focus. I knew, instinctively, that it wasn’t one of those days, but nevertheless, I put on my apron, took up my brushes, and began. Sure enough, it went badly, but I kept going. I started watching myself, kind of standing outside and observing myself over my shoulder, as I made mistakes and poor decisions. It was almost amusing. Once in a while this happens when I’m sewing, knitting, or even practicing the piano. I’m just not concentrated, I know I should take more time, but I plunge ahead carelessly, impatiently, without measuring when I need to, without correcting the perspective, without mixing the colors carefully enough — there are a million ways things can go wrong and errors can be compounded. Inevitably, I make a mess that requires going back and correcting, taking out seams, ripping out rows of knitting, or having to rub out hours of brushwork with turpentine. It’s such a waste of time — and I know better!

Having basic facility come easily is actually a problem; getting to the next level requires a lot of patience and work. Fortunately my parents were able to recognize this tendency and help me through my frustrations as I learned difficult skills. My father was extremely impatient in nature, but also a perfectionist when it came to skills; he would practice a sports skill for years, fuss over a piece of woodworking until it was perfect, or spend weeks fixing an antique clock. My mother was very patient in nature, but never spent the time to figure out why a piece of knitting or sewing didn’t fit properly, or why a recipe had failed. She liked the process, but perfection didn’t matter to her. People did. She’d patiently hold wires for my father as he tried to repair something, or sit beside the piano night after night to help keep me at my practice.

The girl in the photograph above doesn’t look impatient; she looks calm, but I remember the conflict between my desire to do things well, and my impatience with how long it took. This isn’t a question of talent; it’s a question of mental and emotional self-recognition, learning to focus and analyze, and cultivating self-discipline. As an adult, there have been many stages in my life where I reached plateaus, and had to figure out what I wanted to do, what the problems and obstacles were, and how to go beyond them. I don’t think that process ever ends, if we’re honest with ourselves, and if we want to keep growing.

It was enlightening to me to watch that innate impatience take over yesterday. There’s no parent or teacher anymore who’s going to correct me; it’s entirely up to me to listen to my mood, realize what’s likely to happen, and master myself. Realize I’m too tired or distracted, take a step back and breathe, or put down the brushes and go for a walk. Then come back and, without touching a brush or a keyboard, figure out what’s causing the difficulty, and make a plan for dealing with it.

The girl with the paint-and-palette pants didn’t know where she was headed; she just knew she had some raw materials and some things she especially liked to do. I’ve been lucky to have had people throughout my life who encouraged me, and the strength of character to move beyond the ones who didn’t. Later, when most of our mentors and guides have left us, we have to find out how to continue on our own. It helps me to have internalized what these people lived: that the process is always more important than the end result, that pushing forward into new terrain is more satisfying than repeating yourself, and that patience with yourself and others is a virtue worth cultivating.

Mexico City Sketchbook - Part III

On the street and inside spaces

 

 

In this final post of sketchbook pages, I’ll share some of the drawings that didn’t fit into the previous two posts, and then share a few thoughts about where I am at the moment with all that’s going on.

 

In a Coyoacan market.

 

Almond croissant at a favorite cafe.

 

Interior of the second apartment where we stayed.

 

Another cafe breakfast.

 

Tall grasses in the garden of the Vasconceles library in Buenavista.

 

Dappled light and fallen bougainvillea blossoms.

___

Two weeks after returning home, I’m still working on this sketchbook, but thinking about doing some oil paintings of views from Mexican rooftops and balconies. This week I cleaned my studio and freed up my easel to make that possible, so we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, in addition to daily life tasks and keeping in touch with family and friends (I spend more time on this than many people, I think), I’m reading, practicing my flute every day, and also the piano — this is sanity-preservation. I’ve also decided to make a serious effort to learn more Spanish. Language practice is one of the best ways I’ve found to keep my mind sharp, exercise my memory, and feel like I’m accomplishing something every day, even if it’s in very small increments. Duolingo isn’t perhaps the best way to learn a language, but after 1458 unbroken days of lessons, I’ve certainly made progress in Modern Greek, a difficult language to study, even though I still feel like a beginner. A month ago I switched to Spanish. It’s much easier, and knowing French and some Latin definitely helps. We’re hoping to resume the yearly trips we used to take to Mexico City, and I really want to have a better grasp of the language.

Does this mean I’m neglecting the news? Not at all. But these daily routines are helping me find a balance that works for me, and understand what helps and what doesn’t, both on a personal level and on a societal one. I’ll write more about that soon.

How are YOU doing? I’m always glad to hear from you, and I think reaching out and talking together is one of the most important things we can do for each other right now.

Reflections on an Anniversary

 

On March 20, 2003, deeply distressed about the outbreak of the Iraq War and intrigued about the new medium of blogging, I began my blog, The Cassandra Pages. Those two polarities — an abhorrence of humanity’s tendency toward destruction, and an attraction to all types of creativity — have motivated what I’ve posted here, as they’ve also motivated my life.

It seems like a good time to ask readers, some of whom have been coming here since the beginning and some of whom are quite new, what you find most valuable about this blog, what keeps you coming back, and what you’d like to see more of. The Cassandra Pages has changed over time, especially after I retired from fulltime professional work and was able to focus more on my own art, but it’s always been a personal space where I’ve tried to make sense of the world through a lens of creativity, as well as sensitivity to nature, place, spirit, and the work of both contemporary writers and artists, and those of the past.

In 2003, I had recently turned 50. I hadn’t gone through the deaths of all of our parents and their generation. We hadn’t moved to Canada. I hadn’t yet written a book, though I was working on it. I hadn’t had the experience of singing in a cathedral choir, or of riding a bicycle for most of my transportation in an urban environment. I hadn’t met all the people who’ve become dear friends of mine either in Montreal or online, all over the world. I was doing very little artwork, and hadn’t even thought about starting the publishing company that would become Phoenicia Publishing. We’d never travelled to Mexico City, or Greece, Rome, or Portugal. I hadn’t had two decades of dental problems, and didn’t yet understand, on a personal level, the complexities and challenges of aging…one could go on and on.

Over those years, I’m not sure it would be right to say I’ve “changed” as much as that I’ve become more and more myself. Some of that experience is valuable, and it’s both a pleasure and serious responsibility for me when younger people ask my specific advice, which is the only time I venture to give it. And even then, I think we, as elders, do best to talk from our own experience rather than saying “you should…” As my old New England friend Jerry Burt used to say, “be careful with your ‘shoulds’” — which also applies when talking to yourself.

Here, in March of 2025, we find ourselves in a particularly dangerous, draining, and anxiety-filled time, and it’s hard to know what to say and what not to say. From my perspective as a dual citizen who spent the first 50+ years of life in the U.S., there’s a lot I see that many Canadians may not, and it’s clear to me that many Americans have absolutely no idea what it’s like to be a Canadian right now. Protecting democracy in both countries has become a top priority for many of us, and obviously I intend to do whatever I can toward that goal.

How this blog fits into that current reality is a question I’m mulling. One thing I know for certain is that many readers have told me they come here for quiet, solace, beauty: some moments of sane respite from the craziness of the world. Even if I write about politics, I don’t want anyone to come here and leave feeling worse — I want you to feel better, more hopeful, and with some renewed energy for living your own life.

For me, balance comes from the spiritual wisdom of Contemplation and Action as two sides of the same coin. “Contemplation” is a broad term that comprises many forms, from sitting meditation to knitting to walking in nature, but it is not quietism or turning away from our own problems or those that surround us. “Action” also takes many forms, suited to each individual, but always stems from the recognition that we do not exist alone, but in an interconnected web of relationship and responsibility for one another. Achieving balance —whether in one’s own personal life or in the more public ways we interact with the world — is not easy, and especially not in times like these. To the extent that I can help others, I want to try.

Thank you so much for visiting these pages over the years, whether as a longtime or relatively new reader. I’d be very happy to hear your comments, suggestions, or requests.

 

Mexico City, February 2025

A Mexico City Sketchbook - Part II

The Quiet Lives of Objects

 

 

Sculpture by Gabriel Orozco at the Museo Jumex, Mexico City.

Because I was dissatisfied with the first page of my sketchbook (oh, that first blank page! No wonder it stares at us!) I was reluctant to do another landscape right away. On our first full day in the city, we went to the Museo Jumex, a relatively new contemporary art museum in Polanco. We had visited it seven years ago, not long after it had opened, and loved both the building itself and the three floors of related shows. This time, after a good lunch in the small ground-floor restaurant, we spent most of the afternoon looking at a retrospective exhibition of Gabriel Orozco (no relation to the muralist, though his father worked with David Siqueiros). His work is inventive, often humorous, wide-ranging in both subject and media, and original.

 

One of Orozco’s carved river rocks in the foreground, with distressed soccer balls beyond the glass wall.

In one gallery, hundreds of distressed and altered soccer balls filled a corner and were scattered along a corridor, while inside the glass walls where they rested, a giant skeleton of an invented whale-like animal hung from the ceiling, while carved river rocks — echoing the soccer balls nearby — provided grounding.

Orozco’s creations make the viewer question the notion of time and creation — what creature’s skeleton is this, hanging here like a dinosaur in a museum? Who made it? How did these pieces of rounded stone that look so familiar become carved with natural forms? What are they doing here?

 

River rock carved by Gabriel Orozco. Watercolor, 5 1/4 x 8”.

I was very taken with these altered rocks, and that evening, I did a painting of one of them. It was the first detailed, dry brush watercolor I’ve done in a long while, and it led me to make several others over the course of the two weeks. I also did one pencil drawing, of a bottle brush tree flower.

 

These pictures feel appropriate, not just because flowers and fruit are common subjects for me, or because I’m drawn to natural forms. Orozco’s soccer balls and rocks felt like still lives. They made me think about a more expansive definition of “still life”, especially in Mexico where color and form are omnipresent.

But they are also quiet. “Still.” Now, these drawings and paintings punctuate my sketchbook, providing moments of reflection for the viewer between busier scenes.

 

The hyper-realism is a way to remember that goes beyond photography…

 

…and the study that’s necessary to do one of these paintings means that I’ll never look at an citrus peel or a bougainvillea flower the same way again.

 

Or a cut pineapple, for that matter.

 

Looking back, remembering myself making these small paintings, I realize that they were important meditations for me at the time. Our days were busy, and full of intense sensory impressions. Sitting down to make one of these paintings was a way of centering myself and concentrating with focus and intention. And, for me, they were a witness to beauty that, belying their subjects’ fragility, stood as a bulwark against the daily onslaught of news from the north.

A Mexico City Sketchbook - Part I

 

Street scene with bougainvillea, Bahía de Todos Los Santos, Mexico City. Direct watercolor, 5 1/4” x 8”.

TECHNICAL DECISIONS AND SOLVING PROBLEMS

Our trip to Mexico City was planned for 15 days, essentially, with the first and last taken up with travel. I’d hoped to do about one sketch a day - so 12 or 13 - but managed to complete 18 pages. I’m hoping to be able to do some more from photographic references or objects over the weeks to come, while my eyes still retain the light and color memory of being there.

It’s actually hard to keep a daily sketchbook with the way we travel. We were on the go so much when out of our lodging that I never brought my watercolors with me, since I knew I wouldn’t have the time it takes to do a color sketch. Although I prefer direct watercolor sketches (like the one at the top of this post) to anything else, I decided to take a couple of fountain pens and the sketchbook with me in my purse when we went out, and to do watercolor work — either direct watercolor paintings or watercolor added to ink drawings — when we were back in the apartment.

In both of the places where we stayed, I ended up setting up a little space to work, and paying attention to the sketchbook for some time each morning and evening. The second apartment, in Coyoacan, actually had a drafting table and excellent light fixture, so I was very happy about that!

 

Working on the kitchen counter in our first apartment.

I hadn’t expected to do detailed watercolors of objects, but it just kind of happened because of working at home. I gathered some blooms and pods when walking around, and also used fruits that we had purchased to eat. This became a thread that weaves throughout the sketchbook, as well as a meditation for me as I worked on them. I’ll devote a post to those pieces later on.

 

The very first sketch, done in ink on location in the Chapultepec woods, displeased me when I added the color:

 

Chapultepec woods.

I tend to prefer landscape scenes drawn in ink or pencil alone, or done in watercolor only, because they look to me more like art and less like illustrations. It depends what you’re trying to do. Nevertheless, as it turned out, I did use ink-plus-watercolor, or ink-plus-light washes, for quite a few of the pages. I made sure to take photos of the ink drawings alone before adding color, to keep a record of both.

 

In this pair of before-and-after drawings, the washes in olive green and light blue-grey, below, are really helpful in bringing out the depth and definition of the scene depicted.

 

Saturday street market and neighborhood seen from the Vasconceles library, Buenavista.

A problem arose halfway through our trip - my favorite fountain pen ran out of ink. I had brought more ink (in a repurposed eye drop bottle). The pen uses a cartridge that I refill with a dental syringe with a thick tip, but I hadn’t wanted to fly with that, thinking it might be flagged. First I went to an art supply store, but the best they could do were some pipettes. When I tried using them to refill the cartridge, the holes were too big and the ink flowed way too fast — I narrowly avoided making a huge mess. A few days later I went to a pharmacy and asked (with the help of Google Translate) for a syringe the size I needed. It was no problem to purchase, so I was able to get my pen back in order.

 

An ink drawing in the cactus garden of the Viveros arboretum in Coyoacan, using my fude-nib pen.

In the meantime, though, I had been using my Sailor fude-nib pen, which creates a variable line depending on the angle and pressure. It was filled with the same olive green-grey ink (Noodler’s “El Lawrence”) as my preferred fountain pen, and I decided to use it rather than my back-up fountain pen, a Moonman filled with blue ink, because at that point the sketchbook had a coherence, I felt, because of the same color ink being used throughout.

 

View southwest from a Coyoacan rooftop

However, one of my favorite drawings (above) was done during that interim period with that blue ink pen, which has a very fine nib. I had gone up on the rooftop one morning to hang up some laundry to dry, and was struck by the landscape I saw. The fude-nib pen was simply too thick to do justice to the drawing I imagined, so I used the blue ink pen with its fine nib. Its problem, in addition to the ink color, is that it tends to leak during flights. I didn’t realize the seal had leaked until I was nearly done with this sketch, and suddenly a large blob fell on the trees in the upper left! Nothing to do but accept it as part of the accidental nature of life and art! This sketch, which didn’t take too long to create, showed me that I’ve progressed in my ability to simplify and draw complex urban perspectives.

As you can maybe infer from what’s written and illustrated here, I’ve been trying to figure out what I want a travel sketchbook to be, and how to give it coherence as a document or record of a place or a period in time. I didn’t impose a single vision on this one, but tried various techniques and styles (and you’ll see more subsequently). I was happy that my work feels solid enough now that I can experiment and think in this way, rather than just being gratified to get something down on paper and not ruin too many pages. I wanted to allow spontaneity to show me things too. If I’d been rigid and refused to use my blue pen that day, for instance, that sketch wouldn’t have happened, and I’d be sorry. A sketchbook, after all, isn’t meant to be a book of finished, perfected drawings, but faster impressions of distinct moments in time that contain, one hopes, traces of the artist’s hand as well as their choices of what to stop and draw, and their feelings as they do so.

 

 

 

A New York City Diary: Days 4-6

 

 

At The Museum of Modern Art with one of my favorite paintings in their collection, “Ladybug” by Joan Mitchell. (And no, I didn’t intentionally dress to match it!)

1/11/2025 Saturday

Finally caught up on sleep. I woke with a headache again, maybe sinus, but it lifted after a long hot shower and some breakfast in the room. Our plan was to meet B. at MoMA in the afternoon. We made sandwiches in the room for an early lunch and then walked up Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Outside Macy's, fervent Korean evangelists with bullhorns and banners proclaimed “Jesus is Lord”. Onward to Times Square, where we stopped to take photographs. It's hard to know whether to photograph the incredible digital advertising displays, which seem to have multiplied every time we're here, or the people taking selfies with Times Square behind them. And in this center of capitalism stands a large cube, covered with a glowing neon flag, and a sign saying “US Armed Forces Recruiting Center”.

 

 

We turned right on 46^th and noticed the facade of an Episcopal Church tucked between the office buildings - St Mary the Virgin. Do you want to go in, J asked and I said yes, even if it's just to warm up. A large interior, very beautiful and old, and a noontime Mass just finishing. Clouds of incense, Rite 1 from the old prayer book, four robed priests at the high altar, perhaps a dozen communicants seated beyond the altar rail, and someone playing what sounded like a very good organ.

 

Anglo-Catholic, I decided, but not conservative in mission. The current prayer book lay on a prie-dieu in one of the chapels, and the literature at the back of the church indicated welcome to all, an open door policy and a lot of social ministry for immigrants. Several homeless people slept in the pews with their belongings piled nearby. The list of upcoming organ recitals included David Hurd, whose name I recognized - we’ve sung some of his music at the cathedral – and he was listed as the organist and music director there. Wikipedia later confirmed that it's Anglo-Catholic, and considered one of the best neo-Gothic structures of the late 19^th century. Its nickname is "Smoky Mary's" because of the copious amounts of incense they use.

 

Paul Cézanne. Still Life with Apples. 1895–98. Oil on canvas.

At MoMA, we visited an exhibition of paintings from the Lillie Bliss collection, where crowds stood predictably taking selfies in front of “Starry Night,” while a gorgeous, glowing Cezanne still life next to it had no viewers at all except me. Bliss had valued that still life so much that, unusually, she stipulated that once given to the museum, it could never be sold. (note: What I especially liked about this painting was that, instead of the primary colors that often dominate Cezanne’s still lives, this one uses a lot of beige and greyed blues in the beautiful background curtain and the tablecloth, which set off the brilliant fruit even more. The effect is both peaceful and harmonious — and can’t have been simple to achieve.) I also appreciated the chance to study Picasso's early portrait of a woman in white.

 

My sketch of Picasso’s “Woman in White.”

We sat for a while near the new installation of a floor-to-ceiling tapestry, ceramic and rope hangings, floor rocks and sound recording by Otobong Nkanga, and then went to the cafe to have a coffee and wait for B., who arrived soon after a morning of struggling with cancelled trains on his way up to Harlem and back down to the Village to leave off his instruments.

 

Otobong Nkanga, Cadence. “An all-encompassing environment of tapestry, sculpture, sound, and text that explores the turbulent rhythms of nature and society.”

We wandered through the fourth floor galleries, which present works from the 1950s through the 1970s. Unlike us, B. knew many of the performance artists whose videos were displayed so we had a personal guide. When the museum closed at 5:30 we had made it to the Thomas Schutte exhibition on 6^th floor and were sorry not to have time for more than a fast walkthrough.

Back down to LaGuardia Place, pizza takeout dinner from the Italian restaurant downstairs. B. turns down the lights and the three of us hold hands in silence before we eat. At 75 he still has ten irons in the fire and is busy all the time, as well as composing and recording folk tales with other world musicians. Having the pandemic come so soon after J.'s death must have made everything so much harder, especially with their children far away on the west coast, but he’s done amazingly well. The apartment is a little like a shrine, but it's comforting too, with B.'s huge library and desk and all the figurines and carvings and instruments from Africa, Latin America, the Pacific in the heart of it. That's what happens when you never move.

1/12/2025. Sunday

A late brunch with B. at the Noortwyck on Bleeker Street, then back to his place to talk some more and wait with him until his friend C. came to practice some songs for a concert of B.’s songs, planned in the spring. The two of them had tickets to a concert of Middle Eastern music in a club that had sounded too crowded to us. But C. hadn't arrived before we left at 4:00; the trains from the Upper East Side were still all screwed up.

1/13/2025. Monday
Weather chilly but a lot warmer than home, and today was above 40 F.

 

Ambroglio Lorenzetti, The Annunciation, 1344, tempera on panel.

letter to a friend: “Today we saw the Siena exhibition at the Met, with T. who had come down to go to it with us. They've assembled treasures from all over the world, including the eight panels of Duccio's back predella of the Maesta. The panels are in various states of restoration, depending on the wealth and inclinations of the lending institutions, but Duccio's narrative power is clear in all of them. And the colors! I was especially struck by the panel where Jesus calls Peter and Andrew who are in a boat with a net full of fish by its side, in the water – ‘I will teach you to be fishers of men’ and ‘The Raising of Lazarus,’ which I've loved for years but never seen in person (it's in Houston). There were also some astonishing ivory carvings. (How were they made? Where and how did they procure such large pieces of ivory?) and many works by the Lorenzetti brothers and Simone Martini. The installation is extremely thoughtful and well-done down to the last detail — black walls, black columns mimicking a cathedral, and widely-spaced objects lit like jewels — and of course they are jewel-like, with all the gilding. A triumph of curation, to assemble these works, and I feel so fortunate to have seen them.”

 

Duccio. The two right-most panels of the back predella of the Maesta, about 1308-11.

In retrospect, I keep thinking about those eight panels by Duccio, separated for centuries, and together now, briefly, for this exhibition here and in London. Paintings aren’t living beings, but I can’t help but think of them that way, as if they are siblings reunited for this brief time, with some awareness of that fact. You stand before them and sense Duccio’s hand and his mind as well, making so many decisions that broke with the iconographic past. He told the story in such a human way, with a cohesive vision from panel to panel, carried out not only through color and composition, but with emotional content. When the panels are separated, most of this original intent cannot be seen or felt. As I look at the reproductions in the catalog, beautifully printed in Italy, even there you cannot see or feel half of what it is like to stand in front of the real works themselves. So perhaps that was what moved me so much: this brief moment of coherence when Duccio’s idea, and his brilliant execution of it, could again be appreciated by those of us who were privileged to be there in person.

 

A sketch of “The Raising of Lazarus”, done from my photograph after coming back, in order to study Duccio’s composition.

We also saw an exhibition of works by Jesse Krimes, who was incarcerated for six years and conceived several very large installations during that time, using materials that were issued to him or available at low cost in the prison commissary. It’s hard to describe these powerful works; you can see more about them in the video linked above. One installation was a whole wall of tiny pebbles, wrapped with different colors of string, and suspended from sewing needles stuck in cloth-covered panels. There are 10,000 pebbles in the artwork, collected by inmates and sent to Krimes at his request for “the ideal pebble from your prison yard.” I was stunned when I realized what I was looking at, and what this piece says about the vastness and anonymity of incarceration in the U.S.

 

Detail of installation by Jesse Krimes

—to be continued

The Blank Page - and some November fields

 

The only way to get over the fear of the blank page is to encounter lots of them. The first page of a new sketchbook is always the hardest, but the subsequent ones get easier. I’ve started on a project of painting twenty 11 1/2” x 15” watercolor sheets. That’s five large sheets of Arches cold press, cut into quarters. I’m hoping that by the time I’ve worked through all of them, I’ll have learned some new things, and possibly had a breakthrough.

Above is a sheet that’s been soaked with water and then taped to my desk with masking tape. I run a sponge around the edges first to dry them a bit, and then apply the tape, pressing it down again and again over the succeeding minutes until it adheres well. This is to minimize the buckling of the wet paper as it dries, and the stretching also allows for the addition of wet washes or re-dampening the sheet during the painting process.

 

The swatches at left are the palette I’ve chosen for this piece. Just six pigments: ultramarine blue, quinacridone burnt orange, yellow ochre, hansa yellow, sap green, buff titanium. The blue and orange mix together to form many colors, from dark blue to a range of browns and greys, perfect for the November fields and woods that are the subject of this picture.

While the paper is still wet, the first washes need to go down - but if it’s too wet, they’ll run into each other. Sometimes you want that, sometimes not. I painted the ochre fields and a background for the woods first.

 

The sky had an initial blue wash, leaving the clouds white, and then as the paper dried I further defined the sky/cloud edges and added some grey shadows in the lower parts of the clouds.

 

The middle of the paper is still damp here, allowing me to create softness in the hedgerow and the shadows on the field. The woods were drier when I put the dark trees in, and I went back with a sea sponge to blot out the bits of field showing through them and soften the tops of the trees.

The foreground trees couldn’t be painted until the field area was drier. I’m still learning how to judge what will happen when I put my brush onto the paper, and the exact moment when I should do that. The result depends not only on how damp the paper is, but also how wet or thick the pigment is that I’ve loaded onto the brush, and whether that particular pigment is opaque or transparent.

 

The calibration between all these variables is very tricky, and only experience with specific materials, as well as years of practice, add up to judgement. On the other hand, it’s often speed and unexpected events that give watercolor its spontaneity and vibrancy, so being too careful is a detriment. That’s the Zen quality I want to aim for in this most difficult medium — having such a mastery of the technical aspects that I don’t have to think about them, and can let go. I’m not there yet, but hopeful that this project will result in progress.

 

I had a hard time photographing the final painting — the image above is too contrast-y, and the colors are washed out, but when I adjusted those parameters during editing, I couldn’t achieve a good balance. This detail shows the subtlety a little better:

 

In the end, there are things I like here, and things I don’t — the painting does get across the colors and mood of the rural northeast in these last days of November, but it’s too detailed. No fussing or second thoughts, though: I’m just going to move on to the next blank sheet and make another painting. This is only number 3!

It’s easy to imagine a flock of wild turkeys on these fields. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

Simplicity, in life and in death

 

 

Landscape on I-88 near Nineveh, NY. Pencil drawing in sketchbook.

 

On Monday, we drove down to Binghamton, New York, to attend a family funeral the following morning. My Aunt Doris was the wife of my father’s eldest brother, the Rev. F. Porter Adams. Porter died suddenly in his early 60s, forty years ago, and yet Doris continued in good health, living independently until she was 94, and dying last week at 98. Like his father, my paternal grandfather, Porter was a Methodist minister, and so is his daughter Nancy. He and Doris were married in 1952. I remember her as a devoted mother to her children and the embodiment of the perfect minister’s wife, always at her husband’s side and involved with their church communities. After he died she was an equally caring mother and helper for her adult children and grand daughters. She was a homemaker, a good baker, cook, and seamstress, with a strong Christian faith; she was always kind to me, and I never remember her being annoyed, complaining, or saying a cross word to anyone. I realized, sitting at the service, that -- outside of these roles, which were also the subject of the sermon and the family reminiscences — I had barely known her at all.

Or then again, perhaps I had. Perhaps the way she was remembered and described at the funeral was exactly who she was, and that her choice had been just that: to live a simple, modest, selfless life, expressing her faith through devotedly caring for her family and community. It must have been terrible to lose her husband so suddenly and unexpectedly, just when he was looking forward to retirement, but somehow she managed not only to go on, but to find meaning and purpose in the many decades that remained. Not only had she been loving and faithful, she must have also been quite strong, and have had the support of good friends in addition to her children and her siblings.

The funeral was simple, straightforward, and heartfelt. Old favorite Methodist hymns played on a piano, stories shared by her family and the chaplain at the nursing home where she had lived for the past four years, a brief eulogy by the pastor of the church, a duet sung by those two women - the chaplain and pastor - followed by prayers of commendation. I was glad there was a lot of music, because it’s a tradition on my father’s side of the family. When they were young, my dad, his sister, and his two brothers had often sung as a quartet at church services led by their own father, and later on my grandmother always insisted that we all stand around the piano and sing together at family gatherings. I grew up playing those Methodist hymns at the piano while my father sang, in his clear tenor voice, and I could hear him next to me, in my mind, on Tuesday morning.

In addition to being there for my cousins, who have always supported me at such events, I’d wanted to acknowledge the passing of my aunt as the last of my parents’ generation. The eldest on both sides of my family is now...me. It’s a sobering thought, and it has come late, mainly because many of them lived very long lives.

 

Landscape on I-88 near Nineveh, NY. Pencil drawing in sketchbook.

The drive back to Montreal was long -- more than six hours, not counting stops — but the weather was good and we took turns driving. The first stretch, on I-88 from Binghamton to Oneonta and then to Albany, passes through what feels like home terrain to me, and near towns where my grandparents and father, and later, friends of my own once lived: Nimmonsburg, Afton, Bainbridge, Sydney Center, Nineveh, Otego.

Jonathan drove the first stretch, and I looked out the window, taking photos of the landscape I love and making these two fast pencil sketches, while I thought about my aunt’s life, so different from my own. I also replayed the service we’d attended, fixing it in my memory. Such simplicity! It couldn’t have been a greater contrast to the grand liturgical events at the Anglican Cathedral we attend and where, as a choir member, I was part of the presentation for so many years. I had loved this very Protestant service, though, and felt comfortable in it — partly because it reminded me of where I came from, and mainly because it was utterly sincere. Anglican liturgy gives structure, dignity, solemnity, and a progression of mood and intention throughout a service; the language is poetic, and music provides meditation, participatory moments, and enhances the mood of the readings, the time of year, the occasion. The words and service used at a royal funeral are almost the same as those for the funeral of any Anglican, anywhere in the world. But there is a lot to be said for the directness, familiarity, sincerity, and simplicity of what we had just witnessed. It suited my aunt perfectly, and perhaps some of that feeling came across in the simple drawings I did later that day.

 

Near Unadilla, NY. Watercolor, 5.5” x 8” in sketchbook.

Today, though, I’m back in my own home. That peaceful landscape of fields and gently rolling hills continues to call to me, so I did a quick watercolor in my sketchbook, hopefully bringing the muted colors of November to life for you. There will be more to come.

Making a Print

Take a three-minute break from your day, and make a print with me...

I had thought of doing a voiceover for this short video, but then decided it would be more meditative without an audio explanation - and with all that's going on in our fraught world, we need moments when we can step back.

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Since moving to our new home two years ago and closing our studio, I haven't done any printmaking. I've missed it. Needing to make some new prints for blog subscribers was the incentive I needed to get out the printing materials and figure out how to set up in this new space. Once I had things organized and had made some test prints, I thought of making a video of the process for the blog.

The first step is rolling out the ink on a glass or plexiglass sheet, using a rubber roller known as a brayer. In rolling, you're changing the consistency and tackiness of the ink. You can't print with it as it comes out of the tube - the ink would just slide around, and it wouldn't hold any fine detail. The rolling process changes that as the ink film becomes thinner and thinner on the glass. It's difficult to describe how to know when it's ready; I sense it both by what I see in the pattern of the rolled ink as it leaves the brayer, and by the sound the brayer makes when the ink reaches the proper consistency. (In the video, the ink has alteady been rolled out for several minutes; all I'm doing is coating the brayer.)

Then we're ready to ink the carved relief block. In this case, it's a linocut - this one was an illustration for Dave Bonta's Ice Mountain: An Elegy that I illustrated and published through Phoenicia Publishing back in 2016. You have to keep the brayer absolutely flat, and make sure every little bit of carved surface has a thin coat of ink, but that you haven't smudged any onto the background, which is easy to do. A few little marks will always come through when hand-printing, and that's part of the beauty of the process. However, we don't want smudges, unclear lines and corners, or inconsistent coverage in the solid areas.

Enlarged view of the relief block from a low angle -- the difference between the carved and uncarved surfaces is less than 1/16 of an inch.

Each relief block is different, and each has its own challenges - areas that don't want to print cleanly, tight details that tend to fill up, or large dark areas that don't print solidly unless careful attention is paid. We only learn each block's idiosyncracies by making test prints, seeing what happens, and adjusting.

A thin sheet of Japanese paper -- here I'm using a handmade sheet, made from a plant fiber called kozu -- is placed carefully on the block. I've marked pencil lines on the masking tape around the block to help me position the paper where I want it to be. Then I use my fingers to lightly stick the paper to the block. The transfer of ink begins with the use of a baren - mine is an inexpensive Japanese baren, made from a plastic disk covered with bamboo. Because it's flat, it glides evenly along the surface of the block, transferring ink to the paper.

Some people only use a baren, but I've never felt it did the job completely. So I use it to do an initial pass, and then finish the print using a wooden spoon. I've used this particular spoon for probably thirty years! It gives me the ability to change the angle and pressure, depending on what sort of area I'm working on. For a sharp, detailed section like the eye, or the ridges on the back of the frog, I use the front of the spoon and a smaller, more pointed stroke, while for a large flat solid area, I use the bowl of the spoon and a more circular stroke to get consistent coverage of ink onto the paper.

Once the print is finished, it will be barely stuck to the block, and you should be able to remove it easily. If the ink was too thick or not tacky enough, it can slide on the block and create a smudged image. If it's too thick or too runny, the details will be lost. If the ink dries too fast, as water-based inks tend to do, they may not soak into the paper well enough at all. But some oil-based inks don't dry fast enough, and you'll find an oily halo on the edges of each inked line. Each type of paper also affects the printing process, because it takes the ink differently. There are a lot of variables, and only experience can help us learn how to manage them. I now use Caligo Safe Wash inks, which are oil-based, but clean up with water.

Then the prints go on a closeline or a rack to dry - they're ready to handle in about 36-48 hours. Once I've taken them off the line, I inspect them carefully - out of this batch of 8 prints, I rejected two, as well as the initial two test prints. The accepted prints are then numbered and signed.

Although I work in many media, I sometimes think printmaking is the most satisfying. There's something both elemental and almost magical about rubbing the back of the paper and seeing the image emerge - human beings have been doing similar things ever since the first artist painted their own hand and pressed it against the wall of a cave. I also love the ability to make copies of a work of art that are neither photographic nor digital, and not mechanical in any way; each one is its own small, slightly unique entity, on a carefully-made piece of paper that feels natural and of the earth.

 

Announcing my new book, "Snowy Fields"

I'm happy to announce the forthcoming (mid/late Nov 2023) publication of my book of drawings and written reflections, SNOWY FIELDS, done during the past year. It's a slightly oversized 9" x 10" paperback art book, printed on coated paper. It contains the entire series of drawings, a long reflective essay that I wrote about place, identity, grief, and my artistic process, and an essay about my work by the British artist, writer, composer and educator Michael Szpakowski. The book can be pre-ordered now at a reduced price, and you can find all the details about it on the Phoenicia Publishing website.

It's always exciting when a project that began in uncertainty gradually comes together, takes shape, and is finally refined into a finished form. The moment when it is launched, to find its own way into the world, is also my chance to thank YOU, my online readers, who encouraged me and offered feedback as this series of drawings took shape. I also thank all those who corresponded with me about the artwork, and supported me through a time of change, grief, and discovery. You helped me personally, and you helped this project come into being. I'm grateful.