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The Artist’s
Almanac
June 2005
download and print this installment as
a PDF
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Summer – the handmaid of the
poor.
- Anonymous
Summer, the season of
light.
The solstice on the
21st is the oldest holiday of mankind, written in rocks by the old
ones from Stonehenge to Mesa Verde. This is the day the sun rises
earliest and easternmost and travels longest and latest to the west.
It aims a momentary shaft of light on its carved icon, is gone, and
the world turns back towards night.
Mother earth,
impregnated with the sun’s heat growing these past months now brings
forth her many fruits, and the celebrations begin. The ancients
prayed for rains and had harvest festivals; we have swimming
parties, barbecues, and campouts. What can be better than a summer’s
evening soiree on a moonlit lawn?
As the days grow
shorter the earth, a giant solar battery, gives back its stored heat
as produce and flowers. City dwellers savor the farmers’ market with
the sights and smells of ripening melons, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
Yellow squash pairs up with green beans and fresh limas with fresh
corn makes ancients of us all, savoring succotash.
Magnolias perfume our
gardens and daylilies spread their galaxies of variegated gold
around our patios. We bring choice roses to grace our dinner table
and share the rest with those who go out no more. A happy memory is
that of Miss Susie Green trundling up East Main Street to the
hospital with her arms full of roses.
All around us all is
green. Green is both the glory of summer and the landscape artist’s
biggest problem. It is said no man willingly eats a cake with green
icing. Paris green was an ancient poison and is not a healthy color
for flesh. The mass of green we see surrounding us in summer does
not make an appealing painting if served up raw.
Both ancient and
modern artists have used various workarounds, bluing and purpling
near distances to indicate atmosphere, using ten different greens to
give variety, or even avoiding green altogether. Claude Lorraine and
Rembrandt favored the use of bistre, sepia, and siennas to simulate
greens, knowing the mind analogizes and sees colors as it will. But
the viewing of many of these grows tiresome after a while and we
long for color. Constable sparkled his greens with flecks of pure
white to simulate light, and that works well.
All of us know that
green is a hybrid or secondary color lying between blue and yellow
on the color wheel. A simple expedient is to mix all greens from the
two, say from ultramarine blue and cadmium yellow. That has the
added advantage of allowing an infinite number of gradations of
color and value and it seems to work for me.
The color green is an
artificial construct of our minds. Try this experiment for yourself.
Go outside on a sunny day in June and look at a green landscape.
Squint. Squint hard. Look at what you see. Be open-minded. Green
devolves into yellows, blues, blue greens, reds, browns, blacks, and
purples. There are many factors influencing the color green - the
color of the light on a given day, the color of the sky, the
position of the particular section of a tree or bush, where the
shade falls, reflections of light from surrounding objects, whether
it is early or late in the growing season, whether it is raining,
the type of plant, the time of day…. the list goes on and on. It is
the artist’s job to synthesize all this, and it is both his joy and
his challenge to do so.
Try one more
experiment. You will have to wait, however, until the winter
solstice to do this. Dig out an old local newspaper and find in it
one or two clippings featuring photos of children in their yard,
holding their dog, playing with the hose, whatever. It must be a
black and white photo and must be against a backdrop of shrubs or
trees. Look at it intensely and see if, even in a faded
monochromatic photo, it does not, at winter solstice, look a little
like a green paradise.
Could it be that we,
like children, or like our parents, Adam and Eve, live in a green
paradise here and do not recognize it until it is winter?
Summer Gardens at Cragfont
Coming Events
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Join Joel Knapp and
myself for a workshop July 9th when we shall try to capture the
light in the heat of summer in the gorgeous gardens of Cragfont.
This will be fun, regardless of your experience level. There is
nothing quite like painting out of doors. Joel will demonstrate a
quick onsite oil sketch, while I will demonstrate how painting in
watercolor differs from oil. Each of you will have the opportunity
to do your own paintings, with lots of attention and encouragement
from both of us. Picnic tables and rest rooms are onsite, as this
is a park, with lots of flowers, history, buildings, views, a
gazebo and even a small lake. The one-day fee is $75. Contact me
by email (pury@comcast.net)
or by telephone 615-452-1540, and bring your own paints and
equipment, stools, hats, sunshade, etc. We’ll furnish an ice chest
of cold drinks. There are lots of shade trees to paint under. Come
out and enjoy the company of other artists July 9th.
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Southern Light
Artists of America in Fairvue Parade of Homes in Gallatin June
12-27. And check out the new B&B Cottages at the Club, furnished
with our paintings.
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Bledsoe Family
Reunion, Bledsoe Fort Historical Park, 10AM – 2PM Saturday June
11th. I will display two paintings of Bledsoe’s Fort, based on the
archeological diggings and contemporary journals, as well as other
historical materials. A limited number (five) 12x24 Giclee prints
on canvas will be made available at that time for those family
members or others who might have an interest.
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November Opening
Reception for Southern Light Artists Four-Man Show, Auld Alliance
Gallery, Highway 100, Belle Meade.
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