Old Farm Garage

This old farm garage seems to be rising from the weeds but it's really descending into them.   In the background are the Taconic mountains, which are declining more slowly.  This pastel is 8x10 on colourfix paper.

Barn with Hay, and Deep Thoughts

The following is from the book Road-Side Dog by Czeslaw Milosz.  It's a collection of prose poems.  The above pastel is 8x10 on sabretooth paper, which has an oatmeal surface.

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OEUVRE

 

We strove, but our goals disintegrated one after another and now we have nothing except works of art and our tribute paid to their creators.

 

Also sorrow and compassion.  For an artist, a poet or a painter, toils and pursues every day a perfection that escapes him.  He is satisfied with the result of his labor for a moment only, and is never certain whether he is good at what he does.

 

Many share the fate of that painter.  He was not concerned with earthly possessions, he lived and dressed haphazardly, and his sacred word was: "To work." Every morning he would stand before his easel, working all day, but no sooner had he finished than he would put his canvas in the corner and forget it, to start a new picture in the morning, always with new hope.  His attempt to pass the examination for the School of Beaux Arts was unsuccessful.  He loved masters of painting, old and contemporary, but had no hope of equaling them.  Detesting worldly life, as it would lure him away from work, he stayed apart.  He lived with his model, with whom he had a son, and after seventeen years of cohabitation he married her.  His paintings were systematically rejected by the Salons.  He needed confirmation of his worth, but though his friends praised him, he did not believe them and considered himself a failed painter.  He would kick and trample his canvases or would give them away freely.  In his old age he despaired over his failure but continued to paint every day.  In his native town, where he lived, he was slighted and hated; it's hard to tell why, for he did not harm anybody and helped the poor.  Uncouth, in stained clothes with ripped-off buttons, he looked like a scarecrow and was a laughing-stock of children.  His name was Paul Cezanne.

 

This tale may  comfort many readers, since it confirms the familiar pattern of greatness not recognized and crowned late.  However, there were numberless artists, similarly humble and hardworking, often living not far from us, whose names mean nothing today.

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Cezanne, despite the frustrations and lack of success in his life, was still able to spend most of it painting.  I have stood in front of some of his great landscapes and still-lifes.  He must have had a few moments of profound joy creating some of these works.  I certainly have felt it when in their presence.   Do the numberless artists also experience that occasional joy?  Why else work?

Iconic Farm Shed

This is a view of the farm shed early in the morning with a fog hiding the mountain in the background.   

Farm Pyramid

Besides red, there are geometrical shapes on a farm that contrast nicely with the natural setting.

Farm Wagon

I like it on the farm.  First, because you can use red.  Lotsa red on farms.  Also when I was a kid I used to visit my cousins who lived on a farm.  I've always loved farms.

Gone to Seed

I am still on the farm.   Striking how the farm and nature tend to flow into each other.

Luce Road Farm

What farm?  This one. Up the road.  I love painting loosely with pastels almost as if I was using oils.

Just a Road

It's just a road going uphill, past a farm, towards a mountain,  on a sunny day.

Three Wedges

This weekend I did three paintings in New England,  one with a road wedge and two with water wedges.

The Water Looks Back

I continue to make a small charcoal sketch before proceeding with the pastel painting.  The sketch is smaller, ca. 5 3/4 x 7, than the painting, which is 8x10.  It helps to clarify how to proceed.  The canal is still intriguing.

Canal on Sunday

I had to share the swans, but I didn't just look for the swans.  It was a beautiful day after a stormy night in which we lost power for about eight hours.  But all is restored.

Swans in the Canal

A while back my wife and a friend rode their bikes toward Lambertville and saw two swans nesting.   They said the egg was huge.  I finally made it up there, and you can see the result of the egg:  the middle "youngster" who is as big as the parents.

Field Trip

I took a side field trip, way off the canal path.   Not sure this hangs together, but it is what it is.  Milosz once said, "What matters is the inexhaustible riches of the reality before our eyes.  It's a bit the way a painter feels about the world when he is arranging colors in harmony on canvas.  I doubt he does this with a clear conscience, because the world around him is one of such inexhaustible depth and complexity.  He evokes that world.  Arranging colors harmoniously on canvas is a paltry thing compared to what calls out to be explored."

Another Canal Reflection

When you look into the canal, you see its surface, its bottom, the sky, the upside down trees from the other side, and the plants on the near side.  Sometimes you see turtles with tiny heads sticking out of the water and their carapaced bodies below the water slightly out of alignment,  or geese floating like British men o' war, with their legs churning below the surface.  Whether the sun shines or not,  there's always flickering light and shadow.  This morning I saw two people sitting in chairs fishing.  They weren't working very hard at it, maybe mesmerized by staring into the canal.

Canal, Puddle, and Path

I promise to get off the canal path soon, but I am having fun with all the possibilities.  I walked 45 minutes towards Lambertville, and then turned around heading back home.  This big puddle covered the entire path near Church Street.  I have been reading Czeslaw Milosz lately.  The following is from the poem Bobo's Metamorphosis, section V:

I liked him as he did not look for an ideal object.

When he heard: "Only the object which does not exist

Is perfect and pure," he blushed and turned away.

In every pocket he carried pencils, pads of paper

Together with crumbs of bread, the accidents of life.

Year after year he circled a thick tree

Shading his eyes with his hand and muttering in amazement.

How much he envied those who draw a tree with one line!

But metaphor seemed to him something indecent.

He would leave symbols to the proud busy with their cause.

By looking he wanted to draw the name from the very thing.

When he was old, he tugged at his tobacco-stained beard:

"I prefer to lose thus than to win as they do."

Like Peter Breughel the father he fell suddenly

While attempting to look back between his spread-apart legs.

And still the tree stood there, unattainable.

Veritable, true to the very core.

Substitute canal for tree.  I like "accidents of life" and love the line "By looking he wanted to draw the name from the very thing."