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The Artist’s
Almanac
September 2007
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
All your renown is like the summer flower that
blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which
brings it forth, soon slays with parching power.
- Dante Alighieri
I awake with a start
– is that rain I hear? We had none in August, unless you count a
couple of hot ten-minute sprinkles. Between them, sere days with
highs above a hundred. We lost the great rain lottery. None of our
horses came in, and the dry fallen leaves litter our patio like so
many losing pari-mutuel tickets littering the stands after the
races are over.
The trees look like
old friends humbled by poverty and disease. We avert our gaze,
guilty that we can water only the tenderest plants within the
radius of our hose. Each morning I carry a jug of water to the
little cherry I planted this spring and assure it that better days
lie ahead. The brown grass will green again, but will the dogwoods
brighten our woods next spring?
The woods are
browning for the second time this year. A sharp freeze in April
gave us a springtime wearing the colors of autumn. Orchards bear
no fruit, and August finished the corn. Farmers are sending their
cattle early to market for lack of grass and hay. In the 1951
drought we imported hay from Canada and got the thorny bull
thistle that plagues our pastures. Perhaps the cattle will learn
to eat kudzu - nothing kills it.
Wildflowers – Bill Puryear, Artist
September reminds us
there is life after August. Mornings are cooler now and our
energy, which flagged even in our air-conditioned houses, returns,
and we make plans. Long walks become an option and sketching in
plein air. This is an excellent time for that.
Plein air sketching
restores excitement to the making of art. Rarely is a picture
finished in the field. A work of art involves a period of
gestation between conception and birth. Sketching is to art as sex
is to birth; many are called, few are chosen.
The Visitation – Bill Puryear, Artist
John Constable was
the father of impressionism. Mentor to Monet and Pissaro, he never
knew photography. He, like Monet, Cézanne and others who followed
him, would sit for hours before his favorite subject, in every
light, absorbing its essence, probing ever deeper for its spirit
of place. These series paintings of the great cathedrals at
Salisbury and Rouen, the meadows of East Anglia and the haystacks
of Normandy, and of Mont St. Victoire are icons of landscape
artists worldwide.
Conception in art
involves the proper place and season and has its own labors of
delivery. A great painting, born in time, transcends time, and, if
the canvas truly reflects the painter’s intentions, lives forever.
So do we.
Upcoming Events
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October 5th-7th – Fall Into Art Show
– Hendersonville High School, Juried Show of 40 Regional Artists
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October 13th – Benefit Show and
Auction, New Gallatin Public Library
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November 30th-December 2, Twelfth
Annual Fine Art in Brentwood Show and Sale, Brentwood Academy
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