|
The Artist’s
Almanac
June 2004
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
A dripping June sets all in
tune. - Anon
June, and we are well
on to summer.
The calendar is right.
Early June is spring; late turns summer. Sweet peas and new potatoes
are in, and our palette is surprised anew by the pleasure of fresh
squash and green beans on the same plate. Corn and tomatoes look
promising for July, and roses are in their glory.
The gardener eyes the
sky. As cumulus towers above, rain becomes a localized affair, and
he calls his neighbors to see who won the water lottery.
The artist collects
clouds. One once observed that heaven would be unimaginable without
them. Clouds are towers for our imaginations to climb, and they add
drama to any landscape. Constable bottled them for later use, John
Ruskin wrote, as his own father bottled wine, opening them later as
he needed them. Ruskin called clouds the only natural subject
unchanged by man.
Constable sketched
clouds daily. We have our cameras, which will catch any moving
drama. But the camera, like a willing bird dog, always ready, often
points rabbits and not quail. A dumb machine, it lacks subtlety, and
can only concentrate on one thing at a time: either the dazzling
glow of the cloudbank against a silhouette of black trees, or turgid
crimson storm skies backing a mellow row of summer trees. In the
garden the camera produces purple pictures of blue flowers in a
trick known as the ageratum effect.
The artist knows that
art informs nature. Unless he adds value to what he sees and
photographs, he may as well be fishing. The head and eye move at
enormous speed and the mind flattens the horizon the camera records
as curved.
The mind has its
tricks as well. Columbus discovered the world is round, but the mind
still resists the curved horizons the camera presents to it, and is
dizzied by 360-degree pictures. The camera’s inability to capture
the mind’s spirits, emotions, or flying saucers says something about
both.
The artist has more
tricks than the camera. He creates the illusion of depth with clever
lies utilizing perspective, color, scale and atmosphere. True
reality is found by the artist who, steering between banal reality
and castles in the clouds, finds the spirit of the matter. That is
the role of the artist in June.
Thou crownest the year with thy
goodness:
And thy clouds drop
fatness.
They shall drop upon the dwellings of the wilderness:
And the little hills
shall rejoice on every side.
The folds shall be full of sheep:
The valleys also shall
stand so thick with corn,
that they shall laugh and sing.
- Psalm 65, v.12, The Book of Common Prayer
|
