Sunrise, Sunset – Playing in the Digital World

Margaret Mair, Sunrise/Sunset, Digital Image

The holidays are just past. They’re a time for playing, so I spent some time playing with one of my toys – a digital drawing program on my phone. Creating shapes and playing with color are a pleasure, and when even the act of creating is pure play then creating can only be pure pleasure – and the process more important than the results.

And then I played with words:

Sunrise, sunset,

rolling over

night to day to night.

beginnings, endings,

renewings -

smile hello, wave goodbye,

cry hello again…

 

It’s all endings and beginnings, and life flows on in between.

Last year ended with storms of wind and snow and icy rain. This year is starting with winds that toss the waters and sing in the window cracks, making cold into bitter cold. Old year, new year, the days come and go in much the same way, and weather doesn’t care much for our attempts to corral and predict it with dates and times and seasons. It has its own cycles.

And so do we – wake and sleep, give and receive, work and play, birth and death. Each part of the cycle has its place.

So let us not neglect play, an activity ripe with possibilities and full of joy and discovery. For life, like weather, doesn’t care much for our attempts to corral and predict. As John  Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans…”

Wonder what life will bring this New Year?

Room to Grow

Auguste Renoir, Bouquet of Chrysanthemums

Every artist, every person, needs opportunities to experiment and room to grow.

For Renoir, painting flowers was that opportunity: he could experiment, work differently, try new ideas.

“When I paint flowers, I feel free to try out tones and values and worry less about destroying the canvas,” he told the writer Georges Rivière. “I would not do this with a figure painting since there I would care about destroying the work.” (quote from the MetMuseum)

This is one of those paintings of flowers, and it is a study in contrasts. We see combinations of dark and light, warmth and coolness, texture and smoothness.

The composition looks formal, centered. The flowers are impressionistic, shapes and petals and the interplay of light and dark suggested with strokes of warm color. If you look closely you can see the different colors that, together, create the dense surfaces of the lighter shelf beneath and darker wall behind the flowers. The glossy-looking surface of the vase that holds those flowers, the precise curve of its side, contrast with the softness of the rest of the painting.

It’s a beautiful painting – but then if it had been a failure chances are we would not be looking at it now. I wonder what his failures, the paintings he would have destroyed, looked like? In the end it doesn’t matter – what matters is what he learned along the way.

What we do see is the sense the freedom that comes with worrying less “about destroying the canvas”. It is a freedom that everyone needs from time to time.

Wishing you the freedom and the room you need to try new things, learn, and grow.

Wondering and Wandering

This gallery contains 1 photos.

When I find myself wondering and wandering… Continue reading →

Rooted in Love

Marc Chagall loved Bella Rosenfeld.  In 1914 he came back from Paris to Vitebsk to woo and wed her.  In 1915 they married and she became integral to his art and life.

She is woven into his art.  His images of her are full of love, fantasy and romance.  He frequently shows them soaring over the mundane world around them.  Each time Chagall creates Bella’s likeness he shares the beauty he sees in and through her, his passion and their joy.

For the twenty-nine years that they were married she was his companion, his link to his roots, and his muse.  After she died unexpectedly in 1944 it took time for him to recover his desire to paint.  Then he returned to painting by creating new images of her.

Because no matter what the future held, her place in his life had to be affirmed.

Links to a couple of my favorite paintings:

• Bella
• The Birthday (Flying Couple)

Books become Art: Creations of Brian Dettmer, found on PLANET°

While the book lover in me admits to having difficulty with the idea, the artist in me loves the results.  Artist Brian Dettmer turns books into sculptural works of art; Planet’s Jennifer Pappas talks to him about the process and shows us some of the results.  See for yourself by clicking on:

Brian Dettmer | PLANET°.

Hope you enjoy your visit.  I did.

Music for Magritte

Paul Simon has a way with songs; even as you slide easily through the melody, his words can make you pause and think.  As they do in this song,  And it is only fitting.

After all, Magritte had a way with an image.  He too can make you pause and think.  He can surprise you, make you look twice, shock you, make you think; even make you chuckle.  All you have to do is look closely.

Used to New – Recycled Kinetic Art

There is nothing new in art.  Artists take techniques from the past,  from other places, from other occupations, and use them in their own way.  It’s not the techniques or the tools that matter; it’s the artist’s ability to use them to create work that is unique, individual and relevant.

Recycled art is the art of creating something new from previously used bits and pieces.   It is all about finding new ways to use what would otherwise be thrown away, and creating something that intrigues and touches others.

The recycled kinetic art of Andrew Smith is one great example of this,  and I found it thanks to GreenMuze.

Read the original article by clicking on Recycled Kinetic Art.

Good News: Rebuilding Haiti, One Sale at a Time « Repeating Islands

Every now and then a company does something that I didn’t expect.  In this post on Repeating Islands I found something encouraging and heartening.  Macey’s, working with the non-profit group Fair Winds Trading, has found a way to help artists and craftspeople in Haiti.  They placed an order for goods to be sold at Christmas, to be supplied by artists and craftspeople in Haiti.  Then they took delivery of the articles produced, and paid those who produced them right away.

Simply by buying their goods and paying them up-front before the goods are sold Macey’s have done something very important for the Haitians whose work they have bought.  They have acknowledged the quality of those people’s work and the dignity of their lives as well as giving them a way to earn money now to meet their own needs.  This is a kind of help that benefits everyone involved.

You can read more about it on Repeating Islands:

Heart of Haiti: Rebuilding the Country, One Sale at a Time « Repeating Islands.

Thank you, Macey’s and Fair Winds Trading.

Matisse and the Idea of Reinvention

M. Mair, Before the Rebirth, Acrylic painting on canvas, Original art.

MoMA Features Pivotal Moments in Henri Matisse’s Radical Invention | Art Knowledge News.

This article in Art Knowledge News on Matisse and the way he ‘re-invented’ himself got me thinking about the idea of reinvention.  Particularly as I was in the process of reinventing this blog at the time.

I think there is more than one kind of reinvention.  Sometimes, it seems to me, an outward change reflects a real and deep change in who we understand ourselves to be.  But at other times what looks like reinvention to others may be something different to us: a movement closer to being who we really are rather than a change in ourselves. Not so much re-invention as re-presentation.

Children, less certain of who they are, enjoy a different kind of re-invention.  Children love to spend time pretending to be other people or other creatures.  It gives them a way to explore what it might feel like to be someone or something else.

As adults re-invention becomes something more thoughtful and less playful.  We have to have good reasons to re-invent ourselves, publicly or privately.

There are times when a strong sense of self is the reason for changing, rather than a reason for staying the same.  These are the times when knowing who we are gives us a strong basis from which to act, on which to build, from which to continue to learn.

Reinvention becomes something we do as we grow; a way of presenting not so much a new person as a new persona to the world.  We reinvent the self we show to others, rather than the self we know we are.

You could sum it up this way:

• As we learn we grow;
• as we grow we change in subtle ways;
• as we change, we change what we show the world;
• and then the world sees us as a new person, a reinvention of the person they think we are.

More Art in Passing

The other day, driving through Halifax to work on the boat, we noticed that boards were being erected over the windows of a real estate office on North Street – an odd thing, we thought.  Then we learned why – faced with consistent problems with tagging and broken windows, the real estate broker had decided to do something different.  He was covering his windows and had hired two street artists to fill the surfaces he was putting up with their work.

Over the next few weekends we saw the artists at work – first one, then the other.  Here’s their completed artwork – it certainly brightens up the area.  Now we’ll see how much the taggers respect their work.

The first piece of art that was completed.

Here is another view.

The second piece was more difficult to take pictures of, since there were no good, uncluttered sight lines.  Here it is from an angle:

As you see it approaching from downtown...

Other pieces of art in passing:

The Mi’kmaq canoe by Lake Banook, the Dartmouth lake on which there is a world class paddling course.  I love the canoe for its simplicity, its elegance and the intentions behind its creation.  The words written on its rims say it all:  A gift from the earth to the Mi’kmaq – and from the Mi’kmaq to the world.

The Lake Banook canoe, looking from the pavement.

The bow of the canoe.

The totem pole on the island on Sullivan’s Pond, just down the way from Lake Banook.  It was carved by the Kwakiutl of the West Coast  and presented to Dartmouth by the government of British Columbia during the Canada Summer Games held in August 1969.

The totem pole given as a gift from west coast to east.

Hope you enjoy seeing them too!