|
The Artist’s
Almanac
June 2006
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
Spring being a
tough act to follow, God created June. - Al Bernstein
This is the month for
weddings, and no wonder. Sol comes nearest now, and earth bursts
with flower and fruit. This is a season we might wish to last
forever.
My first job earned
one week’s vacation after a year. Living in an apartment, with no
money, my wife and I spent that week cruising the Harpeth River
Valley, in awe of wild roses. Cascades of white and pink smothered
the thorny hedgerows that kept the cattle at bay.
The meanest of us
craves beauty, and may find it in our gardens. This is the month of
the gardener. Lilies are blooming, as well as the magnificent
magnolias. Larkspur, Shastas, sweet peas, dianthus, and snapdragons
throng the front garden, with Japanese iris and waterlilies
flourishing in the fishpond. Peonies, hydrangeas, hemerocallis,
gardenias and chrysanthemums - each have their special beauty, but
the beauty of them all is the rose.
The rose is with us
all summer long, in every hue but blue. As houseguests they are
fragrant, well behaved and long lasting, serving in glorious
arrangements or bouquets. Outside, our front wall drips roses and
they make a fragrant cover for an arbor leading to a rose-covered
wedding bower.
Like all beauties,
they demand attention – tender care and feeding. Their aggressive
thorns, which protect them from children and dogs, are no armor
against black spot and beetles. They must be dusted, sprayed,
pruned, watered, and covered, yet the rewards are enormous, enhanced
by our devotion, and it is them we most miss in winter. The
potpourri my mother made from her garden is my most fragrant memory.
They are a special
challenge to the artist, who is humbled by his inability to capture
them, to say nothing of being unable adding to their value. Their
delicate textures and flesh tones are more difficult to capture with
a brush than is flesh itself, and an artist caught up in counting
their leaves radiating from their centers is liable to find himself
lost in a swirling vortex of beauty. They are too alive for a still
life, yet too demanding of individual attention to mingle with the
commoner sorts in a cloud-backed landscape. Perhaps they are best
depicted as the stars in the firmament of an arrangement - in the
same starring roles they enjoy in the garden.
To be in the presence
of a blooming rose is to reflect upon our own short duration.
Perhaps music, that most temporal art, captures best this longing,
as in the hauntingly beautiful tune by Stephen Foster…
Ah! May the red rose live
always,
To smile upon earth and sky,
Why should the beautiful ever weep,
Why should the beautiful die.
Which brings us back
to the subject of June weddings, as reflected upon by the bard who
lived with his bride Anne Hathaway in a rose-covered cottage on the
Avon.
From fairest creatures we desire
increase
That thereby beauty’s rose may never die.
- William Shakespeare
|
