I’ve got the background and glass bottle and water in this painting about as far as I can take it right now. The flower needs work. The style of the petals is a bit heavy compared with the rest of the painting, but they are hard to do. There is SO much in them that even with a photograph, the levels of shape and color there are immense. So it is an exercise in simplifying, and trying to block out shape and color and ridding myself of the flower itself. The whole effort has at least six layers on it, and when dry I may take some fine sandpaper to it and rework the petals.  I know I need to get some of the background colors (both warm and cool) into the petals themselves.  I may wait for Tad’s feedback on this. He’s pretty busy at the moment. I’m going to start another one with a differently shaped flower and a larger glass container.

Class starts in a few days and that will keep me busy as well. There are currently 15 students in A&S 095. I hope it is a good group.

I tried a very transparent layer of phthalo blue in a lot of marble dust putty on the yellow flower painting. It got a bit fuzzier, but I’m on a path and the shadow looks right. I’m still fretting about the foreground!!  The jar looks a little bit off vertical in the photo, but that’s partly because of the camera angle.  It will be corrected in any final version that emerges.

Tried substituting Blockx vine black for blue, along with indian yellow and permanent rose, in addition to the linseed oil – marble dust putty, to give this quick study. It was done over a graphite pencil sketch on canvas, and the pencil is a bit heavy. It will vanish in layers to come. This is a different style and color scheme for me. It will be interesting to see where it winds up!

Saw this today. It’s worth posting.

“A Primer for the Daily Round”

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,

C telephones to D, who has a hand

On E’s knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod

For H’s grave, I do not understand

But J is bringing one clay pigeon down

While K brings down a nightstick on L’s head,

And M takes mustard, N drives into town,

O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,

R lies to S, but happens to be heard

By T, who tells U not to fire V

For having to give W the word

That X is now deceiving Y with Z,

Who happens just now to remember A

Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

by Howard Nemerov

Rebecca and I went for a hike from Colchester Point across the old railway bed towards South Hero.  See the map.  We didn’t get all the way to the cut and the bike ferry, but pretty close.  Windy,  warm and lots of wildlife (otter, wood ducks, mergansers, canada geese, tons of frogs, fish,  a snake and many other marshy creatures.)   Went home and set up a small still life of yellow flowers in a jar.  Will apply a first layer of paint on this later today.

At the beginning of Burlington’s Peace and Justice Center’s August News Letter is the following:

“As you read this edition of the Peace & Justice News, here are some assumptions that you, as the reader, can try on as a way to understand the important work that lies before the Peace & Justice Center community:
•• Not to accept the concept of an
enemy
•• To seek the values of the other
•• To seek the humanity in the other
•• Not to accept that being different
means being a threat
•• To look for common ground rather
than differences
•• To encourage aspirations to peace in
oneself and in the other.”

This was followed by a very impressive article by Michael Schaal, a local psychotherapist, elaborating on these assumptions, where he says:

“As a Jew, the son of Holocaust survivors, I believe
that the Jewish State of Israel is inextricably
linked to my welfare. I believe that the same is
true for Jews living in other parts of the world as
we witness the rise of anti-Semitism. Sometimes
that anti-Semitism takes the form of vitriolic
anti-Israel rhetoric.”

This is then followed by another article by Mark Hage, of Vermonter’s for a “Just Peace” in Israel Palestine (my quotes around “Just Peace”) which is antithetical to every one of the assumptions outlined in the beginning of the Newsletter. It is a fairly long anti Israel rant, and I quote only a few paragraphs:

“Breaking Our Silence
Palestine, Dissent and Anti-Semitism

by Mark Hague

Have you protested Israel’s military
occupation of Palestine? There
has been no lack of opportunity.

Have you written that letter to the
editor yet, or to your Congressional
delegation, expressing outrage at the
ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, illegal
Jewish settlements, torture and house
demolitions, the strangulation of Gaza?
If not, why? What keeps you from
speaking out forcefully against the theft
and colonization of Palestinian land, the
destruction of Palestinian communities,
the murder of Palestinian children?

Palestine is the last taboo, the blood
on our hands we don’t see, even in the
company of our progressive friends. It is
the line we won’t cross, because we fear,
as sure as day follows night, we will be
slandered as Jew-haters or self-hating
Jews.

The facts are clear, and the path before
us difficult. Palestine is being destroyed
to expand a racially exclusively state for
Jews that is antithetical to the principles
of true democracy, equality and justice.
We must stand with the oppressed. We
must end the occupation. And we must
resist those who exploit fears of anti-
Semitism and the memory of the Holocaust
to block a fully open and rational
debate on the future of Israel/Palestine.”

This from an organization (VTJP) which links, on their website, pictures which brand Israel and Jews as Nazis. This website does not mention Hamas led Palestinians in Gaza sending rockets into southern Israel, Hezbullah ruled Lebanon and the Iranian and Syrian regimes, all espousing in words and deeds their desire for the elimination of Israel and the Jews. No mention is made of suicide bombings and attacks by Palestinians on Israeli civilians.

So why does the Peace and Justice Center align themselves with, and have guest editorials from, a group which is antithetical to their assumptions at the beginning of the Newsletter?? Michael Schaal finds the Hage piece offensive. I hope many members of Peace and Justice do as well, and question their association with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. A quick look at their website makes it clear that it is primarily the kind of vitriolic anti Israel rhetoric that Michael Schaal, Ian Thal and many others might well consider anti-semitic.

Tony Magistrale

Had lunch today with my friend Tony the poet who gave me permission to reproduce one of his poems just accepted into the Harvard Review. It’s part of a new collection – not yet published – titled “The Last Soldiers of Love” and I reproduce it below. Tony won the Bordighera Poetry Price for 2007 (for contemporary Italian American Writing).

THE KICKING OF BALLS

Precisely when the bells chime four

on the clock tower above us, the St. Sephtan’s

school door opens and boys and girls

freshly pressed from today’s lessons

spill out into the bright Bavarian sunlight.

The boys are all sporadic motion and sound,

voices lifting with their feet

to the movement of colored soccer balls,

heads full of floppy hair

that never stop bouncing. The girls,

more discreet and self-contained,

exit together in twos and threes

arms often intertwined, talking neatly

among themselves. And so it goes

each gender ignores the other,

each has its own established rhythms,

rules for non-engagement. It’s a wonder

we ever get together

at all, boys hesitating long enough

to find interest in something other than

the kicking of balls, girls overcoming their

revulsion for the raucous noise of boys.

But we do find a way eventually

to break free from our tribes,

cross over to the other side

and co-exist. At least for a little while

until the clock tower chimes again

and it’s time to go home.

“There is something that’s very intense about the experience of sitting down and having to look at something in the way that you do in order to make a drawing or a painting of it. By the time you’ve done that, you feel that you’ve really understood what you were looking at…. and somehow it becomes a method of possessing the experience in a unique way.“ - Robert Bechtle -

Drawing is visual reasoning–it involves decisions about mark making, evaluating and reevaluating these marks, and ultimately, taking action to create in a particular way. The images made on paper during drawing form a partial record of thinking. Preliminary sketches – early ideas – are easily done with a pencil on paper. In this way, they are easily revised and redone. This is one of the quickest and most direct means of creating visual representations of ideas. Free hand drawing and redrawing allow multiple interpretations and reinterpretations, and thus a constant production of alternatives. The process may be exploratory, expressive, or inspirational. It can scrutinize, map, record, exemplify, explain, symbolize or objectify. It is a way of discovering and ultimately, a powerful and important way of knowing.

Monkey, Colored Pencil on Paper, 2002

Quick layer, white flower in can using phthalo blue, permanent rose and indian yellow as well as zinc white instead of titanium.

Drawing as a Way of Knowing (Arts and Sciences 095, Fall 2008) begins in two weeks.  There are 15 first year students in this class, which meets from 3:30 to 7:30 P.M. on Wednesday evenings in B203 Angell on the UVM campus.  The class is closed to further enrollment.  For those of you who are enrolled, please check the courses and workshops tab in this website, and click on the class title so you will know what to bring with you on the first day of class.

The painting of the yellow flowers in a can has hit a plateau and I’m leaving it for now.   I’ll return to it in coming weeks to spend more time on the table top and the shadow.  In the meantime, I’ll continue layers on other work in progress.  Stay tuned.

This month we met at Mary Jane Dickerson’s house in Jericho…. from left to right: Hub, Mary Jane, Glenda, Rosalind, Carl and Toby. MJ had some poems and Hub talked about final drafts of his book. Mary Jane read a draft of a poem she is working on about her mother and gave permission for me to include it below. The meal was gourmet as usual. If I’m going to keep up with this group, I’m going to have to begin to write again. That is the main focus/purpose of these meetings. Bringing paintings doesn’t really work as well as my painting critique sessions in other venues. Rebecca did not attend as she was taking a Mac course at Small Dog – the Mac store. Laura couldn’t come this time either.

My Mother’s Body by Mary Jane Dickerson, (a beginning draft)

My Mother’s Body

At ninety-five possesses a beauty

wondrous to behold

as she steps into her bath while I

hold her hand, one arm encircling her waist

to steady her as she eases herself

with care into the water

Her shoulders always held erect, breasts

sloping away and down into a waist that’s

never lost its inward curve, flesh

like white satin to the touch,

she still moves

with a deliberate grace that sends me into reverie,

imagining Bathsheba with maidens at water’s edge,

Susanna bathing in her garden – figures of females

vulnerable in that intimate moment

of immersing themselves into

the transparency of water.

This poem made me think of a series of paintings that Bonnard made of his wife in the bath (click here and here). It also brought to mind an essay -Still Life – by Mary Gordon that was published in Harper’s some time ago, (click here) in which she reflects – using the paintings of Bonnard, upon her mother at age 90.