Dureresque

In my last entry on Dureresque, I wrote about how, when I was 17 and in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, I burst into tears upon first seeing Simone Martini's lovely Annunciation.  I thought I had read somewhere that John Ruskin, the great Victorian art critic, had written about the phenomenon of swooning before great art, but I wasn't sure.  Well, it wasn't him --  but there really is an art swoon, and it's named after the famous 19th century French author Stendhal, the pseudonym of Henri-Marie Beyle, who wrote about it in his book Naples and Florence:  A Journey from Milan to Reggio.  Wikipedia says: "Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal's syndrome, hyperkulturemia, or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place. . . Although there are many descriptions of people becoming dizzy and fainting while taking in Florentine art, especially at the Uffizi, dating from the early 19th century on, the syndrome was only named in 1979, when it was described by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini, who observed and described more than 100 similar cases among tourists and visitors in Florence."   Another source says that victims are usually young, unmarried women who are seeing the original art for the first time.  So apparently I had a textbook case! 

While reading up on Stendhal Syndrome, I stumbled across a reference to a movie called The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome de Stendhal), a European cult film written and directed by Dario Argento.  Argento said the film was inspired by his own experience of disorientation while visiting the Parthenon as a child.  It sounded pretty interesting, so I ordered it from Netflix and watched it one Sunday afternoon.  It sucked, not least because it featured my unfavorite thing in movies, prolonged scenes of torture.  The movie was about a woman who is overcome by a bad case of S. S. in Florence, while working as a police investigator on a serial murder case.  She is kidnapped by the killer, a handsome blond man named Alfredo, who rapes and tortures her in a romantically decayed medieval catacomb beneath the city.  She kills him, then becomes possessed by the killer, which causes her to start wearing a blonde wig and kill people.  In between all this, she is swooning over the art in the Uffizi, although what that has to do with the serial killer I forget. 

While watching the movie, I remembered my own very short and innocent fling with a handsome blond Italian fellow named Alfredo while I was in Florence in 1969 -- although he was an architecture student, not a serial killer as far as I know.  After I came home, he sent me a letter written in his charming Italo-English, which I tossed out of a moving car on Kingston Pike in Knoxville -- I distinctly remember hesitating, my eyes on the return address, the wind sucking it out the window, watching it flutter down the highway -- while the man who became my first husband sat beside me, never noticing what I had done.  Thus we make our choices.  

More Stendhal Syndrome madness:  A few weeks ago, in a used bookstore, I came across a book I'd noticed before:  Leap, by Terry Tempest Williams.  I knew it was about Bosch, one of my favorite painters, and I've never seen his work in person, as far as I can remember.  I'd opened the book before and scanned a few pages, hoping it would snag me, but decided her writing style was disjointed and overblown.  I like clarity in a memoir.  But something made me buy it this time.  When I got home, I sat down and started reading and was amazed --  although she never calls it by name, right there in chapter one she's having a major attack of Stendhal Syndrome in Madrid's Prado Musuem in front of Heironymous Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights triptych!  Her experience goes far beyond mine at the Uffizi  -- she seems to have had an almost psychotic break, leaves her husband (they are Mormons who have taken a marriage vow for all eternity), and spends months or even years in Madrid, becoming "the woman who stares at Bosch."  

Then while slowly slogging through Leap last night, a strange synchronicity occurred  -- The book had no illustrations, so I dug up an old article I'd saved about Bosch, from the Smithsonian magazine, which often has informative articles on famous artists with color pictures.  The article detailed the theories of Wilhelm Fraenger, who believed that Bosch had been a member of the Brethren of the Free Spirits, or Adamites.  I read the words, ". . .  a secret, heretical sect that practiced nudity and sexual promiscuity in an attempt to re-create the innocence of the Garden of Eden."  At the very moment I read the word "innocence," downstairs I heard someone on television boom "Innocence!!"  followed by something about sexual orgies and witchcraft.  Holy crap.  The coincidence was so striking I went downstairs to see what on earth was on tv.  It turned out my husband was watching old episodes of Blackadder:  Blackadder, Rowen Atkinson's comic 15th century misfit, is tried for witchcraft and is being interrogated by the Witch-Smeller Persuivant (that made me snort out loud).  I have no idea whatsoever about what such a coincidence could mean, except that the universe is laughing at me.  I'm sure I deserve it. 

Bravo's Work of Art:  The Next Great Artist

The other day while watching during the afternoon after work, I ran across a rerun of the last episode of Bravo's Work of Art:  The Next Great Artist.  I'd heard about the show before, and had meant to watch, but I never can keep up with what's on tv anymore, and it slipped my mind.  I was glad Abdi Farah won, not only because of his obvious talent, but because he seemed more positive and upbeat than the others, with a real will to draw and paint which would not be denied.  One of the judges, Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine, sniped at Abdi a bit for his traditionalist approach (a sketchbook of drawings -- so art school; figurative paintings on a wall), but thankfully the other judges must have disagreed. 

Reading an article on the internet about Peregrine Honig (I had to look on Google to find her last name; the Bravo site refers to all the contestants by their first names only, demeaning I think), she seemed to be pursuing the same conceptual themes that she has for the last several years:  drawings and prints of people vomiting, and an obsession with a pair of stuffed fawn fetuses she found in a shop years ago.  She made wax casts of apparently purchased kitsch toys and figurines, and used her project money to have the fawn fetuses professionallly photographed.  I can't believe I read that correctly. The judges went wild over the photos of the fawns, which Peregrine said symbolized creativity and birth. 

Miles Mendenhall -- an art-school golden boy, having won competitions and scholarships -- took cell-phone photos of a homeless man who, by happenstance, died soon after the pictures were made.  Then Miles enlarged the photos until they became completely unrecognizable dots and printed the dots super-large-scale to create a series of visually connected but meaningless abstract images.  He said the homeless man's death moved him emotionally, but his empty images distanced both himself and the viewer from any hint of feeling.  

Peregrine and Miles both seemed fairly ordinary art-school submissives -- nervous and washed-out.  I was intrigued to read that Peregrine's inspirations include the underground comic legend, R. Crumb. He's one of my favorites, too. I wonder when she gave up drawing, or trying to learn to draw. I'm convinced that most people go to art school for a simple reason -- because they want to draw -- but so many end up having that simple desire put down until they finally give up and go home, or learn to play the Art Game.   Peregrine looked so sad and drawn. Perhaps the dead fawns symbolized something in her that had died. I dunno. I'm probably going over the line here. 

An Attempt at a Gold-Point Drawing

Back a couple of years ago, I wrote about making prepared papers for drawing in silverpoint:  (http://julianadeflorey.livejournal.com/4647.html) Silverpoint was the technique used by the Old Masters for many of their preliminary drawings.  It's just a silver wire in a holder or mechanical pencil to make a fine gray mark on the prepared paper, which has to have some grit to catch the mark.  My first attempts with sterling silver didn't work so well.  The points seemed so hard that the mark was scarcely visible, and the sharp points dug into the finish on the paper.  So I ended up adding ink and white egg tempera highlights to my drawings until I completely obscured the silverpoint. 

I finally got around to going to the jewelry supply shop to buy some pure silver and gold wire -- after I heard about gold being used the same way as silverpoint, and lead too -- happily the wire only cost about $25 for more than enough to make a gold pencil and several silver.  I took it to work and used the dremel drillbits and the low-power microscope to sharpen both ends, one fairly sharp and one rounded.  Then I took them home, put them in the mechanical pencils, and tried them out.  The pure metals did so much better on the properly prepared paper, with real bone ash.

Last Thursday, my painting students came, and Carol brought her lovely daughter Drew, and I drew her while she drew.  That was an unintentional silly pun, but unavoidable.  Anyway.  The gold point was easier to use than the silverpoint, and made a lovely, pale violet mark, although it wouldn't let me darken her hair and eyes as much as I wanted.  Not sure if the violet color of the lines is an illusion. It must be.  Plus the pale blue paper I'd made just won't scan, no matter how I try.  But here's what I came up with: 




Then this morning I decided to draw on the last piece of blue paper that I can find.  I must have lost the rest of it when I moved.  I went outside and picked a tiny little daisy and tried to draw my left hand holding it.  It was hard because I kept having to put down the daisy and scratch my nose or hold down the paper, and the foreshortened fingers were especially difficult.  I kept losing the drawing until finally the fingertips were a smudge of silver-gray, and I couldn't go any further.  So I made up a bit of white egg tempera and used ink and paint to finish it up.  It's not really silverpoint anymore but I was OK with it in the end.  






It's been years and years since I first read about how to do these drawings in Daniel Thompson's The Practice of Tempera Painting. I know now that (1) his instructions are not accurate, and in fact make me wonder if he ever did a silverpoint drawing. (2) his instructions are actually instructions for making medieval copybook drawings, which were very tight, mannered, careful drawings which the masters used for teaching and transferring compostions to the gessoed board.  Yet re-reading the chapter again today, I realized how much he has influenced me, perhaps not for the better.  I don't know.  I enjoyed going back and forth from ink to tempera on the drawing of my hand, until the criss-crossed wrinkles in my nearly 60-year-old hand became a kind of satiny, textured fabric reflecting the light.   



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stendhal_Syndrome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stendhal_Syndrome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder

http://www.bravotv.com/work-of-art

http://www.crumbproducts.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Leap-Terry-Tempest-Williams/dp/0679752579/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309153034&sr=1-1






 

I'm not sure, but I believe John Ruskin, the great Victorian art critic, wrote about the art swoon, or something like it:  It's when you see a work of art for the first time and are overcome by emotion.  I think it happened to Victorian ladies a lot, and it's happened to me several times in my life (a coincidence, I'm sure).  It really is like falling in love a little bit, and you know, I bet it makes the same areas of the brain light up. 

I remember my first art swoon quite clearly; I was about eight years old.  My mom subscribed to the Metropolitan Seminars in Art, which were hardback magazines, each with an article on art history written by John Canaday, art critic for the New York Times.  You can still find copies of the series on Amazon.com.  I can't remember which issue it was, because I took it years ago to a used book store, but each of the books had a packet of beautifully printed reproductions, and that's how I first saw Pierre Cot's The Storm:  
(That's the actual print above, which I still have, complete except for the corner my dog chewed off in 1990.  She also chewed the corner off Ingres' Jupiter and Thetis.)  

Too young to know better, I was completely entranced by The Storm.  Here's a picture of me at that age:  

A couple of years later I actually read the article, and discovered that, according to Mr. Canaday, The Storm was pretty, but that's all.  I was puzzled:  How could The Storm be mediocre, trashy and sentimental when I liked it so much?  Why did Canaday disapprove of  that wonderful transparent gown?  And why did he like the twisted, harsh Expressionist painting in the book when it was so ugly?  (I think it was a Kandinsky, but can't find it on the internet). 

Even at that age, I had strong opinions about art!   I was sure that John Canaday, whoever he was, was wrong, and that Cot's painting was wonderful.  Later on, as an adult, I decided Canaday was a prude, and that mid-twentieth century modernism's distrust of beauty in art was really moralistic disapproval, based on a secret dislike of the physical body.   Now I've come around a bit, and think I overreacted to poor Mr. Canaday:  he drew a lot of flack for his criticism of abstract expressionism, and loved many of the same painters I do.  And I can appreciate Kandinsky and the Expressionists now, but  I still say that particular painting in the book was ugly.    

The Storm is still entrancing, to me at least, although the actual subject is in doubt (see the link below for a discussion).  But who can question that the painting is simply about young love?  A subject, IMHO, that can be sentimentalized, but also not to be sneered at by those too sophisticated for their own good.  Of course, that doesn't explain why I loved it so much when I was eight.  Seriously, I think I wanted to figure out how to paint that dress, but all I had were crayons.

When I was about fifteen, I visited New York and the Metropolitan Museum, and finally saw The Storm for real, plus a whole bunch of wonderful Northern Renaissance paintings at the Cloisters too.  It was just a continuous swoon.   

My next art swoon was also connected with one of Canaday's Seminar covers which I loved as a child:  Simone Martini's 1333 Annunciation.  When I was seventeen I walked into a room in the Uffizi and burst into tears at my first sight of Martini's Gabriel and almond-eyed Siennese Virgin, the egg tempera and gilding still brilliant after almost 700 years.   

Here's a picture of me on that trip.  I'm standing in front of the Baptistry in Florence:   

While on that same European trip, I also visited the Louvre.  Sometime during a long afternoon I stumbled all alone into a series of interconnected rooms, tucked away and ignored, filled to the brim with 19th century French Salon paintings.  I was absolutely seduced, and have never turned back in my love for these paintings.  It was only many years later that I realized that what appeared to be slick, beautiful eye confections were created from years of hard work and devotion to craft. 

Last week I checked my calendar, and suddenly realized that the current show at the Frist Museum in Nashville, The Birth of Impressionism, was about to end on January 23rd.  Snow at Christmas and New Year's nixed my plans to drive down with my friend Theresa Ivey, and I knew I would never forgive myself if I missed it, because an artist friend on FB (I think it was Kevin Ward) mentioned going, and said that there were Bouguereaus and Moreaus in it!  Bouguereau is the painting God of the 19th century Salon.  The whole show was from the Musee d'Orsay in France, and I knew that the d'Orsay was the home of many paintings by Gustave Moreau, another favorite of mine who has inspired me.  Somehow I imagined that the whole show was about them!  I wish.  At any rate, my husband was on vacation so I talked him into driving with me to Nashville on the spur of the moment.  Snow was sprinkling yet again, but nothing major.

I saw William Bouguereau's gigantic Birth of Venus  and one of my favorite early Moreaus, Jason, through the glass doors of the main gallery and once again felt myself begin to choke up with emotion.  I had to look away for a moment so I wouldn't burst into tears, just like I did in front of Simone Martini.   I circled through the front room and quickly checked out the Bouguereaus, two Moreaus, and two more Salon nudes: Jules LeFebvre's La Verite  and Elie Delauney's Diana.  It was just so much I could hardly absorb it.  There might have been a couple of other pictures in the room, but they didn't draw me, and I ignored them, entranced by the ones I liked.   I'm still bad that way.

Moreau's Jason  was especially stupendous.   I moved in really close, but stood to the side, so I wouldn't get in the way of other people, held my hands tightly behind myself, so the guards wouldn't think I was trying to touch it,  and bent over to look carefully at the brushstrokes. 
While I stood there a child behind me asked his father, "Which one is the girl?"  He was right.  Jason and Medea (yes, the girl is Medea, his witch-wife who kills their children, but I think this scene is before the marriage turned sour) look like a pair of beautiful and androgynous fifteen-year-old twins with shoulder-length golden hair and skin to match.  Jason's dark green helmet appeared to be actually built up about a half-inch from the surface with carefully shaped paint, or perhaps some sort of modeling paste.   I love Moreau's fantastic settings and costumes and weird background landscapes, his mystical Symbolist leanings, his opulence, his glittering, decadent Gothness, and find the slight flatness of his early work interesting and decorative.   And I love the way he paints toes like Leonardo da Vinci. 

Years ago at Dragoncon I got a chance to talk with the Brothers Hildebrandt about painting:  they told me if the light is cool, the shadow is warm and if the light is warm, the shadow is cool.   I kept thinking about that and went back and forth, trying to figure out what colors the painters had used and whether their light was warm or cool.  I was almost sure that all the Salon painters used a cool, reflected studio light for their figures, (that was one of the things the Impressionists didn't like about them) but how could I be sure?  I remembered what painter Rose Freymuth-Frazier told me:  look for the cool highlight.  But the Moreau confused me.  How do I tell if the light is cool if the figures' predominant color is golden?   Or maybe the varnish had yellowed. I decided to look at the highlights on the inanimate objects (and it wasn't easy because the paintings were so enormous):  Jason's spear, his dark green helmet, and Moreau's favorite compositional accessory, the decorative antique column.  The hightlights on the helmet looked cool, gray-white, but I realized that even if the highlight paint had been a pale gold it would have looked this way, unless it were painted very thickly, since a sheer layer of warmish light over dark will always cool off.  I backed away and looked closely several times.  

   The other Moreau, Galatea, isn't my favorite Moreau but it's still a Moreau.   In his later more personal work the figures become paper dolls hanging motionless in an over-decorated, very shallow space.   I noticed that the paint even had tiny bits of actual glitter suspended in it, which you can't see in reproductions.  I hadn't realized he liked to experiment with stuff like the glitter and the sculpted paint on the helmet.  It was charming, and there are those toes again.

Then I moved on to Birth of Venus.  It is simply stunning from across the room, and a lot of it depends on the beauty of the models Bouguereau so faithfully renders.  I noticed that Venus and the ocean nymphs all look like they could be the same model, and so help me, I think she might be the same girl who modeled for The Storm.  Cot worked with Bouguereau and Birth of Venus is from 1879 and The Storm is from 1880.  Up close, the backgrounds are simply rendered, almost stylized, and yet from a distance, it all looks perfectly real.  The emphasis is on the stunningly painted figures.  

I notice that Bouguereau paints a clean, liquid line of warm sienna around the shadowy limbs that are closest to me (and somehow does it without making the line hard), but does that show the shadow temperature or is it a reflected light on the edge of the forms?  Not sure. These paintings were so large that most of the details on the heads are too high for me.  I seriously would have given anything for a ladder, a bright light, and a magnifying glass. 

The other Bouguereau was a religious subject:  A black-clad Madonna of Sorrows, The Virgin of Consolation: 
A grieving mother bends over on the Virgin's lap, and her dead baby, its limbs faintly greenish instead of pink, lies at the Virgin's feet.  It's easy for the 21st century viewer to see this painting as actually silly in its religiosity and sentiment, until you realize how common infant death was in the 19th century.  The painting was completed in 1875, only two years before Bouguereau's own wife and child died (I checked on the dates because I wondered if he painted it afterward as some sort of memorial, but no.)  The figure of the Virgin in her black robes appears flat and iconic, but the infant is perfectly foreshortened.   

Bouguereau's work is always impressive, with never a false step technically, although he can be accused of being overly slick, but so what?  His technique is absolutely perfect.  Is it too perfect?  I mean, that's the worst thing I can say about him:  he's so freaking good I Just. Give. Up.  I can never, ever be that good in this lifetime.  His skill with the brush intimidates me and flattens my emotional response after a minute, sated as I am by photography, not to mention Photoshop.   Perhaps in the end I like Moreau's stranger, darker world better than Bouguereau's clean, light-filled paintings.  But still, looking at anything by Bouguereau is practically a religious experience for me.  He must have been Raphael in a past life. 

I spent more time thinking about color.  La Verite, supposedly an inspiration for our Statue of Liberty, is icy in her ivory paleness (more so in the gallery than in this reproduction),  holding aloft what is supposed to be a mirror, but looks more like a light bulb.  But there are those tricky gray shadows on the flesh.  How do I tell if gray is warm or cool, anyway?  So many flesh tones have grey in the shadows and I always want to read it as cool.  Suddenly I think I get it:  Verite's skin is lit by an icy white light, and the shadows on her flesh are a relatively warm gray.  It's all relative, perhaps even an illusion, but I can see it.  For a second.
. 

And Diana seems to be standing in a bright shadow with no direct sunlight, so I'm pretty sure the light is cool there.  It's easier when I'm painting the picture myself and I know what colors I'm using and what color the light is already, but even when I paint the picture myself, after about a year I forget what colors I used.  I should keep a notebook.  I still don't feel confident about skin tones, and wish I could achieve this subtle and cool effect.  I tend to get everything too red.  I worked in black and white for so long and color is a whole new skillset to learn.  It's almost enough to make me want to start doing abstracts like everyone else.  Buuuut no.  

I wandered through the rest of the show in a lackadaisical manner but couldn't stop thinking about Moreau and Bouguereau.  I had to go back to the front room three times in all, mostly to look at Jason and Birth of Venus.  Finally  I reluctantly dragged myself  from the front room and the Bougie Man, walked through the other rooms and did find some magnificent pictures.  There was a huge crowd and everyone except me was obediently listening to their audio tours like little art cows in front of the Impressionists, so I was free to sneak in and look at the stuff I really liked for a long time:  for instance, Gustave Dore's stupendous grisaille Enigma: http://dore.artpassions.net/.  (I tried to paste it here, but it was too dark).  

Enigma  is about the Franco-Prussian War and the burning of Paris; the Sphinx is whispering the secret of peace to the angel of Paris.  The actual painting, while dark in tone, is perfectly calibrated in value.  Up close Dore's drawing is free and easy, like he just whipped it out in about a week, and maybe he did.  The brushstrokes are loose, sure sign of a really knock-out painter, yet clean and precise.  As far as I could tell, it was painted entirely in black and white.  It was huge and beautiful and no one but me was looking at it.  

Another exceptional painting that Ken and I both noticed was Henri Regnault's equestrian portrait of Gen. Juan Prim.  Regnault lived in North Africa for a number of years and painted many beautiful pictures of everyday life there which you can check out on the web.  But he died in the Franco-Prussian War at an early age.  Pierre Cot died young too.    



Carolus-Duran's Lady With a Glove attracted us too, and I spent a lot of time looking at this painting.  But once again, it was so huge!  These paintings were meant to be seen from across the room, but the artist in me can't resist trying to stick my nose into the details.  

I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I realized that the show was really all about the Impressionists,  whom everyone loves so much, and how they triumphed over the mean, picky Salon painters who preceded them.  Really, it's not that I don't like the Impressionists --  I mean, how could I? -- but in the end they are painting reality -- pretty girls, not goddesses, baskets of fruit and flowers, people in restaurants --  in a straightforward, even flatfooted manner, and that kind of bores me in the end.  At least it did that day at the Frist.  The Impressionists lack grandeur, in fact they were sick of it, and sometimes their technique looks, well, dauby to me.  Go ahead, hate on me.  They haven't been really avante-garde for a hundred years or more, but they're still around.  When I look at modern portrait painters I see the influence of the Impressionists all over them, and many of these modern portraitists do their pastel Neo-Impressionist thing very well, but I think it's been overdone. 

Some art makes me cry; some inspires me to go home and paint; some I like but it's not what I want to do; some I don't like so much but I respect the work; very little I hate, but some is indifferent to me.   It's still unfashionable to love the academic painters as much as I do, but I can't help it, I'll always love their refined drawing, delicate brushwork, the grandeur and imagination.  The Salon painters remind me of my favorite science fiction and fantasy illustrators:  They paint a reality that doesn't really exist so skillfully that the viewer can believe in it without a thought .   The only way to do that is years and years of practice.   The Salon painters make me cry, I respect the work, I want to go home and paint:  The whole Art Swoon package. 
  

Article about John Canaday:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Canaday

The Storm:   http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/87.15.134

Simone Martini's Annunciation: http://www.artbible.info/art/large/347.html

Musee d'Orsay: http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/overview.html 

Art Renewal Center with information about Bouguereau:    http://www.artrenewal.org/
Works by Bouguereau:   http://www.bouguereau.org/

Wassily Kandinsky:  http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/ 

Henri Regnault: http://www.fineartregistry.com/articles/2010-11/henri-regnault-passionate-painter-and-horse-lover.php 

The Brothers Hildebrandt:  http://www.brothershildebrandt.com/

 

Weekend before last, Ken and I drove down to the Cobb Galleria outside Atlanta for Wizard World slash Atlanta Comic Con: http://www.wizardworld.com/atlanta2010.html  I admit, the trip was mostly for my husband, who is a lifelong comics fan and wanted to go and spend hours and hours rifling through dingy boxes of old comics.  I wanted to get out of the house, and figured I would wander through the convention for a little while and then go shopping. 

I say I'm not really a comics fan, but that's not really true.  I've always been a fan of comic art.   I actually used to read a lot of comics, but my mother wouldn't let me bring them home, so I read them at the drugstore after school.  I loved The Fantastic Four and Archie, and my mom actually let me get a subscription to Creepy and Mad.   

And I once spent two months in 1992 drawing a 32-page indy comic which never saw the light of day, and to give full credit to my comic-hating mom, she took care of my son Alex while I drew all day long every day.  The comic is still sitting unpublished in an old portfolio.  Maybe I'll put a picture of it up here.  I showed it to an underground comic artist at DragonCon years ago and he said it was really good and original, but the local guy who wrote the script didn't like the way I drew it.  I think he thought he was writing a superhero comic but I drew it as a parody and I couldn't have drawn a superhero comic anyway. 

And my very first paying publication was in Dave Sim's Cerebus comic's Single Page, where he used to highlight up and coming talent and actually paid a pretty decent fee for the time:  I got an actual cashable check for $125.00, which I appreciated even more later on when I was often promised big money but ended up paid zilch. 

Years later, I actually went out of my way to meet Dave Sim at a convention and say hi and thanks for the cash.   What I actually ended up saying was, "But I'm not really a comic artist," and he looked at me with a puzzled expression on his big, doughy baby face, like I was crazy or stupid, but really, I'd never done any more comics and considered it over.  Considering how he finally went off the deep end and started writing misogynistic drivel ( http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/sim.html)  he no doubt thought I was stupid, which has a tiny, tiny grain of truth since I often open up my mouth and say mindless things to famous or semi-famous or even moderately well-known people.  You know, after I read some of the stuff he wrote about women I began to wonder if getting published by him was a curse on my entire career, and I wished I could go back to that con and hand him his $125.00 in cash and flounce away.  But it's too late, that money's long gone, so it would just be all for show. 

When Ken and I walked upstairs to the convention room, I decided to go in and circle around randomly.  The first thing I noticed was the Suicide Girls booth:(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2207578895).   I looked through their nice coffee-table book (very few implants) and said hi to the pretty, perky (in every good way) brunette (with tattoos) behind the table.   "If I were 25 again I would so wanna be a Suicide Girl," I said, and she laughed (in a nice way) and said it was fun.  It looked like fun, but I forgot to say that if I were 25 again I wouldn't be getting my nipples pierced under any conditions.  But I still want a tattoo. 

Usually at comics cons, I hit the artist's tables and find someone to talk to, but they were pretty crowded at that point, so I left and wandered down the Galleria.  Almost all the shops were closed, so I kept walking until I found an entrance into a large hotel with a well-lit lobby, big comfy chairs, and a Starbucks.  Heaven!  Then I plunked down and read Explorers of the Infinite by Maria Coffey. (http://www.amazon.com/Explorers-Infinite-Athletes--Experiences-Communication/dp/1585426512/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292532038&sr=1-1)  It's about explorers and practitioners of various extreme sports who have had mystic experiences.  I bought a vente latte and sat and read for about three hours, until my legs were all creaked up when I stood.  I'm old, what can I say.  Then I wandered back to the con to find Ken.   

I headed around to the artist's tables again, and saw a bunch of prints by Alex Ross:  http://www.alexrossart.com/.  It turned out that Alex Ross wasn't there, but the man at the table knew him.  "See that guy down there?" he asked, and I turned to see another artist, a well-built young man in a t-shirt a couple of tables down.  "He posed as the Flash," and then he showed me the finished painting.  I could see how Ross had taken what he needed from the guy's face and physique and added costume and background.  Neat.  I've often taken pics of my husband and son and daughter to use for illustrations; it's the best way to get the right lighting, although I used to feel guilty about it, thinking that "real" artists didn't need a model.  Silly me.  I don't know what made me think that.  My kids used to complain endlessly about the poses I put them in.  "Mom, this is impossible, no one can do this," they would say while I tried to twist them into position to be a zombie. 

"I love how Ross manages warm and cool light," I commented to the man at Alex's table, and we talked lighting for a few minutes.  He told me that Ross always used photo reference for his paintings, in order to get the lighting right, but I had already figured that out.  His comic art is a series of exquisitely rendered watercolor portraits.  I'm not a watercolorist but I admire his technique a lot.   He's one of those painters who make me want to sit and ponder and figure out how did he do that?

Next down the line, I picked up somebody's indy comic, with an intro by Dave Sim.  Pass. 

Then I talked to a guy named Cory Smith (http://www.corysmithart.com/)  who does excellent superhero portraits.  Maybe he was the guy who posed for Alex Ross.  I can't remember now.  Anyway, he and I talked about pencils, since I draw a lot with pencils and find pencils to be very interesting.  Seriously.

He did maquettes, too, which are little sculptures of comic characters, to help the artist look at them from all angles.  I did maquettes for my ill-fated indy comic.  Years later, I glued the maquettes to the posts of a wooden chair and painted the chair and sold it for about $100.  But now I wish I had the maquettes back, or at least the chair. 

Later, I checked out one of Cory's sites and he had some beautiful pencil drawings of nudes, with very lovingly drawn labia, which I find very sweet.  My husband has some old comics by some South American dude who draws the most beautiful little naked women, each of them with the most elegant and yet economically drawn labia, a very pretty detail.  My only beef with Cory's nudes would be his use of the Hitler's mustache style of pubes that's currently fashionable.   

After that I met an interesting guy named Dirk Strangely: http://dirkstrangely.com/book-graveyard%20girl.htm .  He was friendly and talkative and a lot of fun, a contrast with his art, which was very dark and macabre.   His paintings don't make me want to figure out how he does it, like Alex Ross's stuff.   Still it was interesting stylistically, in particular his paintings of women.  I picked up one painting of a nude woman with part of her face scratched out and "mother" written on her belly, and said, "This is really scary."  The image was weirdly compelling, and if I'd had a few more dollars on me, part of me wanted to have it, while the other part found it repellent.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my own mother died a few months ago. 

Strangely said the painting was about American women's self hatred and talked about how he wanted women to see their own true beauty.  Hmmm.   I found his argument somewhat less than convincing, although he seemed like a very nice, sympathetic guy, with his wife and kids hanging around behind the table, helping out.   Nope, his work reminded me a little too much of Willem de Kooning, and even more of Walter Sickert, the Victorian English painter who some, including famous crime novelist Patricia Cornwall, think might have been Jack the Ripper:  (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/12/1037080731138.html). 

It's probably best I left the original painting there.  I ended up buying one of his indy comics, Graveyard Girl, and a narrative drawing postcard to stick up in my studio with my postcard collection.   We talked a bit about crossover into fine art galleries, and he seems to have it down.  The edginess of his work probably helps.  I've found my edgier stuff can cross over easier than stuff that's too cute. 

Ken and I went to have lunch then, and I checked out the Wizard World schedule.  At 4 PM, there was a panel of famous comic artists right there in room 4.  Bingo, I had something to look forward to, even though none of the names was familiar.  Like I've said, I've been out of the loop for a long time, even though I often look through Ken's books just to see the pictures.  I find a lot of comic writing just unreadable, especially superheroes, even while I often find myself looking at the pictures with awe and wonder.   

I sat down in the back of the room for the panel, and watched the room fill up and finally the four panelists walk in and sit down.  Honestly, I didn't have a clue who any of them were and I didn't expect to be terribly interested.  After about 5 minutes, I realized that I was really into the panel so I got up and moved closer.  These people were really interesting, especially one man, a compactly built Black man in a yellow knit cap, whose enormous eyes dominated his face, even from twenty paces.  I saw the name Brian Stelfreeze on a huge poster behind him, and it rang a bell from my random comics perusals, and since it was over the man in the yellow cap, I figured it was him. (Here's a link to his cool art blog:  http://stelfreeze.blogspot.com/ ).  It turned out I was right about who he was, but it could have been a coincidence that the poster was over his head. 

I wish I could remember the other men on the panel:  one of them was an editor or columnist from Wizard Magazine, I remember that, and there was a very tall blond chap, and another blondish fellow.  A woman was listed on the program, but she must not have shown.  They got to talking about dealing with writers and how it could be difficult, and how some they didn't ever want to work with again.  I found myself holding my hand up and asking them if they meant hard to deal with personally or if the writing was the problem.  It sounded like it boiled down to the writers' egos, which  could get in the way.  The artists agreed that they prefered a writer who leaves the script "open,' instead of dictating camera angles.  One artist said he told a writer, "I'll let you dictate camera angles if you let me write dialogue."  Touche.

The man who turned out to be Stelfreeze then answered a question about computer art;  he said (and I hope I can remember exactly what)  that too many artists nowadays aren't learning basic drawing skills, with a pencil or ink on real paper.  Instead, they go straight to the computer tablet and stylus, which enables them to wipe out lines too easily, so the young artist never learns to make a real decisive mark.  Stelfreeze emphasized that making art involves making mistakes and correcting them and learning from them.  He seemed to be talking about sometimes utilizing the mistakes that happen when the artist is drawing with pencil and ink on paper, painting something out, making a new mark, and sometimes discovering something new in the process. 

It made me realize that my own drawing process isn't as awful as I've often worried.  I still draw with a pencil, pen, and brush (or sometimes paint) on paper, and only utilize the computer for labelling and a few corrections.  My "technique," if you can call it that, makes use of my many mistakes.  I am willing to stay up all night drawing tiny hands, if necessary, doing it over and over and over again which is why I can draw as well as I can.   At work, when drawing fossils, I often paint out lines I don't like and go over them; if I eff it up too badly, I start over having found out what I did wrong, able to make the decisive mark finally.  Somehow I thought other artists didn't do this, but I guess they do. 

After the panel, I followed them into the convention room to their table, because I wanted to tell Stelfreeze how much I enjoyed listening to them and especially him.  But there were numerous hopeful kids with portfolios standing in line waiting to show their art to the panelists.  I stood back and listened.  A young man brought out his comic art and showed Stelfreeze, who gave him a long and generous critique.  The crowd bubbled around me, and I could barely hear what he was saying and bent in closer to listen more carefully. 

After about five minutes, I realized I was hearing the most astonishing drawing lesson I had ever heard.  I wished I had a tape recorder, and only  hoped that my mind would retain some of what I was hearing.  Later, after we got back to the hotel, I sat down and tried to write down a little of what Stelfreeze had talked about. 

"You draw well," he told the young artist, "twenty years from now you will never draw one bit better."  The kid stood up a little straighter.  He told the young man that his job now was to develop a personal style, to convey a particular mood, and to make every single panel he drew serve that style and mood.  "Art with a purpose,"  Stelfreeze said several times, "Comics is art with a purpose."  Comics are about conveying emotion and every image should carry that emotion forward. He said that the comic artist should develop a directorial style, like a movie director, and look at the work of famous movie directors with a mind to finding their own style. 

I remembered when I was drawing my indy comic, an acquaintance who had done comics and was quite good, much more facile than me, lent me a copy of an old classic book on cinematography which he said was key in drawing comics.  At the time I didn't quite know what he was talking about, but I kept the book.  I gotta find that thing.   

Stelfreeze also said that when you find your directorial style, you can throw out skillsets you don't need.  Wow, I had never thought of that.  Stelfreeze mentioned, I think, Sterenko as someone who decided he didn't really need deep perspective.  That was a real eye-opener for me.  I had struggled for so long to do everything, and perspective is hard for me, maybe because I am very nearsighted.  Maybe I should just move on and do what I do well.  Hmmm.   I could see that Dirk Strangely, for instance, had a  good, clear vision of his own Tim Burtonesque style that hung together quite well, without worrying one bit about perspective.  

Stelfreeze talked about action too, in a way that made me understand the whole concept better than I had before.  I'd always thought that "action" meant big ACTION, big beefy supermen hitting each other, which doesn't really interest me much, but he talked about small actions, a man hitting a fly, someone sitting down slowly, panel by panel, a look, a twist of the body.  I wish I could remember everything he said but I can't. 

When he finished talking to the kid, I stepped up and told him how much I had enjoyed listening to him.  In fact I said, "That was amazing!" which it was.   

He was really nice and open, and when I told him that I and my artist friend Pyra (she has done some comics already based on her own Noantri world: http://www.pyracantha.com/noantri/blog ) had been talking about how much we wanted to do our own indy comic, but we were afraid no one wanted to see comics by middle-aged ladies, he responded enthusiastically.  "You have real experience to write about!"  he said.  "Too many kids write indy comics before they have lived;  you have lived and have so much to say."  I stepped back, a bit awkwardly (I hope I didn't offend him), because a young woman had been standing there for quite a while with her portfolio, waiting for a review.  I could have talked to him for hours.  I took a picture of him talking to her which I can't get out of my phone yet, but as soon as I can I'll post it.  (OK, finally got it out!  You can tell how much he enjoys doing what he's doing, can't you!).  I know how he feels.  Talking to other working artists is such an energizer.  Now I feel jazzed up and creative again.   

I thought a lot about what he said later.  I've noticed for a long time that many young wanna-be comic artists have gotten a lot of training in basic drawing, but they seem to have had all the originality and style wrung out of them.  Some of them seem to think that they are supposed  not to have any discernable style and that has always aggravated me.  I knew something was wrong with the way they drew:  competent, but flat, with no personality. 

I think they get it from old books on how to draw pencils for Marvel.  That's what all teenage boys want to do:  pencils for Marvel.  They especially seem to have taken to heart directions on how to sketch in a face, drawing every face the same, the mouth a straight line, no feeling for the underlying muscles.   I've seen some of my husband's old pencilled comic drawings.  They weren't bad at all, and he had a better handle on perspective than I did for a long time, but they drove me nuts, because he had taken all his own style out, but I didn't know how to put it into words before.   If you're a professional artist, however, learn from my example and don't critique your husband's amateur drawings.  He didn't like it when I told him that he drew his hands and feet too small, but he did.

Went the other night to the hospital with Ken to visit his dad, who had surgery to put in a stent in his carotid artery.  Spent an hour standing in the ICU, because they don't put any chairs in there.  My middle toe finally went numb.  While there I got into an interesting conversation with another family member who might be taken as a pretty good example of the average Chattanoogan: born-again Christian, a Union man, not a big reader or college grad but with a good mind, father and grandad who raised two kids, and then got married again and adopted a little girl. 

He asked me how the art biz is going, or some such usual polite question, and somehow we got on the subject of my having served on a committee for public art in Chattanooga a year or two ago, and how surprisingly hard it had been.   I got picked for the committee because I had been president of Olde Towne Brainerd Neighborhood Association, plus I purport to be an artist.  Being a sort of local Neighborhood Organizer turned out to be rather a downer in the end, because it became inevitably inmeshed in local politics, and that turns out to be nasty business, but this was fun.   It involved attending several meetings with numerous other committee members and a nice lady who worked for Allied Arts of Chattanooga (http://alliedartschattanooga.org/site/pages/home.php)  which organization I think partly funded the proposed sculptures.   And I think part of the money, which was at least as much I have ever made in any one year as an artist on my own, also came from the state and the city.  

Anyway, the committee was shown portfolios of about a dozen sculptors and sculpture groups from across the country.  Hardly any of them followed all the rules for submission; we got rid of several of them because they didn't submit any work that was even remotely suitable at all.  If I remember correctly the sculptures were supposed to convey something about diversity, living together, and something else which I have forgotten, but you get the idea.  Oh, yes, it was Community and Diversity.  All very politically correct and uplifting in a corporate sort of way, but there's nothing wrong with that.  I really tried to get into the spirit and all. 

Some work submitted was very beautiful, and I would have liked to get it for my own sculpture garden if I had one: for instance, a series of white marble twisted tentacles which brought to mind a bunch of albino Cthulus being tortured.  I thought they were actually really neat in a Goth sort of way, but didn't think they would look so good in front of the Brainerd tunnels.  Neither would the 50-foot-high steel outline of a nude woman whose enormous perky breasts instantly brought to mind Brainerd's beloved Diamonds and Lace strip club.  And we silently passed on the stone phallic structure whose creator had thoughtfully supplied Photoshopped images of how his work would appear in front of the enormous tunnels; the 5-foot statue looked, well, a bit inadequate, that's all I have to say, even on top of its pedestal. 

I admit I came to the committee meetings with an agenda:  to veto any sculptures which resembled a pile of steel girders.  These hideous civic sculptures are everywhere, in every city, apparently chosen by art committees like the one I served with, but why?  I have a theory:  because they are abstract, they can't really offend anyone.  They are Big, and that is Good.  They are perfectly meaningless, at least they are perceived to be, although to my eye, they represent a sort of unconscious symbolic representation of the destruction of Western culture.   I know, I'm being a touch paranoid.  But look at them!  I know you've seen them!  They're everywhere, and to me they resemble nothing so much as the remains of a skyscraper, twisted and thrown to the ground by some enormous Destructor. 

I succeeded in stopping the inevitable desire of some committee members to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a pile of bent steel girders.  What we got may not have been a whole lot better, being flat,abstract, and made of painted steel, but they at least addressed the themes, and were colorful and uplifting and maybe fun:  Rolling Dancing Moons, by Reven Marie Swanson, and Winds of Change, by Cecilia Lueza. (http://www.publicartchattanooga.com/projects/artinneighborhood.htm).  Plus the artists were women.  Woo hoo! 

Back at the hospital, after listening to my whiney complaints about the state of public art in Chattanooga, the relative asked me what kind of sculptures I did like.  I immediately mentioned Daud Akhriev's bronze statues The Four Seasons at the Market Street Bridge in downtown Chattanooga.  (You can see them at Daud's website:  http://www.daudakhriev.com/subjectlist.php  Click on "Four Seasons." There's a different view at the City of Chattanooga link above,too.)  When I said that the atmosphere in the room immediately went down to a few degrees above freezing.  The family member was very disapproving of the statues, not quite shocked, but definitely he felt that nudity in art, no matter how high-flown, is a no-no in public places. 

"But they're very tasteful, very beautiful, very well done," I disagreed mildly. 

"How do you explain it to children?" he asked.  He had been very embarrassed recently when he and his wife took their very young daughter to the Hunter and there was a nude male statue with a penis for crying out loud, right in front of the museum for all to see.   I've been in front of the Hunter several times in the last year and I can't even remember a nude statue of a man with a penis, but then maybe I'm just completely calloused.  There have been a number of letters to the editor in the local paper which disapproved of the nude statues, one of them written by a little girl who found herself offended by their sleaziness.

Of course, the standard answer among Chattanooga's intelligentsia (yes, they're here, I know them! It's possible someof them have even been to my house!) is that Chattanooga is too conservative and full of Fundamentalists and that's why the town has its head thrust up its bum .  But, see, I'm not sure if there is a connection between prudery and the prude's politics or even religion.  Now, the family member in question is very conservative socially, but I don't have a clue how he votes, and I wouldn't dream of asking him, but if I had to guess, I would say maybe he's a Democrat, since he's a union guy.  But I could be wrong.  Certainly naked statues would have shocked a lot of folks I grew up with in Pikeville, but my parents had lots of art books with nudity from the time I was very small, and no one thought anything of it, and I can't remember noticing it very much.  My parents were conservative politically at that time, although they became much more liberal later, but they stayed pretty puritanical about sex; yet nudity in art didn't bother them.  And we went to the Church of Christ every Sunday.  I've become somewhat more conservative politically in the last 10 years, but naked statues don't bother me and never have.  My husband Ken is more conservative politically than I am, and he isn't bothered by nude statues either.    

I remember fondly being in Europe right after I graduated from college and there were nude statues everywhere, including bronze statues of naked little Putti urinating water into public fountains, right there in downtown Rome, which I admit did shock me a little and made me giggle, but I was only seventeen.  Naked lady statues hardly seemed worth raising an eyebrow over, though;  even at the Hunter in the 60's there were marble statues of pretty Sylphs with a stray boob slipping out of their nighties, which everyone seemed to be wearing in Classical art.  And in Rome, Michelangelo's naked women looked like men with bad implants, and I've read since that his models were men, so they could sit right there and not bother anyone.   

Is it just a level of sophistication, cultural urbanization?  I find myself thinking that Chattanooga is headed for a rude cultural awakening, maybe having to do with its love for representational, traditional art.  You just can't have realistic art without eventually having nekkid statues to contend with.  Otherwise, you just have Thomas Kinkaide.  Chattanooga has had quite a few Thomas Kinkaide galleries, and I bet he's still very popular in spite of his recent downfall.  (  http://www.avclub.com/articles/painter-of-light-thomas-kinkade-arrested-for-dui-e,42171/).  The galleries used to hire local artists, most of them women, to dab paint on Kinkaide prints to turn them into one-if-a-kind "originals," and I went to the mall once to check out a job and found it was for that.  I needed the money but I wouldn't do it.  I have some standards, even if I have painted winged kitties and my son as a zombie. 

Speaking of standards, I just went downstairs, and there was my husband, munching popcorn and reading a book, while sort of watching Family Guy's Christmas special, ( http://www.fox.com/familyguy/), which involved Stewie and Brian impersonating Santa and breaking into a stranger's home and bludgeoning the parents to death in front of their little girl.  "Holy Mother of Pearl, what is wrong with Seth MacFarlane?"  I cried out.  "I am effing offended by this."  But he couldn't hear me because he was laughing so loud.  But seriously, I am effing offended.  I have my limits. 
 

After I came back from the gallery show, I met Ken driving up at the same time as me, and since he'd already eaten dinner, I warmed up some of my 96/4 meatloaf and sat down in front of the tv to watch the rest of Babette's Feast, a movie in Danish, taken from a famous story by Isak Dinesen, one of my favorite writers.  BTW, it was fun listening to the movie and reading the subtitles because it's amazing how much Danish you can understand -- I'd say about 25%.  Sounds sort of like the Swedish chef.  I'd already watched part of the movie and hadn't paid much attention to it, because I'd already read the story and I sort of remembered what it was about.

Babette, who has lost her husband and son in civil unrest in 19th century France, comes to the home of two elderly spinster sisters who live in an isolated village dominated by a harsh, barren shoreline in Denmark (Jutland, actually, I read on Wiki).  The sisters have devoted their lives to their widowed father, a minister in a strict religious sect.  Both of them were beautiful and talented young women who could have married well and left their father; both fell in love and were loved in return but they remained with the old minister, helping with his dwindling flock. 

Babette cooks for the sisters and for the old members of the church.  They appear to eat very little except some awful breadcrumb porridge.  After 14 years, Babette receives word that she has won 10,000 francs in the lottery in France and she makes plans to spend her winnings to prepare a wondrous feast.  When the ship docks and she goes to fetch her live turtle, cage of birds, wines, and truffles the sisters fear the worst:  Babette's feast is surely from the devil.  But the feast is marvelous beyond words and somehow heals all the old enmities between the members of the dwindling sect.  The soldier, now a retired general, who loved one of the sisters, is also a guest, and the feast seems to erase all the years that have passed.  Babette, it seems, was once the greatest chef in Paris and the general, along with the other sister's lover, a famous singer, were among her patrons.

After the dinner, the sisters learn to their horror that Babette has spent every penny of her lottery winnings on the food, but Babette says, "An artist is never poor."  When I heard that I put down my fork and started listening carefully; it had been years since I had read the story and I had forgotten this completely.  Babette explains that the artist's heart cries out to give the world the very best.  They embrace and the sister, who could have left her father to become a famous opera singer with the man who loved her, says, "In paradise, Babette, you will be the artist God intended you to be." 

Somehow hearing that healed something in me, the part that feels like a failure because I never made a lot of money.  In some ways I've been very selfish in my life;  I was willing to be poor as long as I got to be an artist, or try.  Some people might not see that as selfish, but it was, because my children suffered.  But I always tried to give the world my very best.  That is true.  I hope I don't have to wait for paradise to be the artist God intended me to be.  Maybe it is not too late for me to create my Babette's Feast.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Here is my painting "The Wanderer," which I completed while I was in my old studio downtown.  I painted it in oils on a piece of Clabord.  My friend Thomas posed for it:  he has a wonderful profile.  The head is about life-sized on the board. 

The hat is one the my husband, Ken, made to wear under his armor (we play around in the SCA, which is sort of like an amateur Ren Faire).  The collar and cape are also bits of old costumes I had lying around.  I really want to make some more costumes just for my paintings but find myself wondering if it will take up too much time.  That's why I've decided not to do any more pretend medieval period art for the forseeable future:  it's just a waste of time.  Oh, the walking stick he's holding is one we've had for years, too.  It came from the back of the old house in Brainerd, and it's twisted all the way up, but you can't see it in this picture. 

I wish I could have painted a full-length painting  of this subject, and I still want too.  But it was such a struggle to even paint something this size.  I need to paint something enormous.  Positively enormous.  I've spent so much time painting tiny things, tiny things with a smooth surface, which translate well to print.  I realized at the gallery yesterday that huge works impress the in-person viewer much more. 

Last night I went into my studio and poked around until I found the length of linen I bought on sale at Jerry's a couple of years ago.  I've got to get it out and stretch it. 

Here is an icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa I painted, in 2008, in egg tempera on a wood panel I gessoed with gesso I made myself.  This was something I did in my old studio.  I had already started the icon a while back and hadn't finished it because the gold leaf kept flaking off.  I had thought I could fudge and use fake gold leaf but it wouldn't stick until I finally used real gold, and a lot of it.  If finally developed a sort of matte finish but it still looks like real gold and thus very nice. 

Black madonnas are something of a fetish of mine, I guess.  Cathedral of the Black Madonna by Jean Markele is one book I have read a couple of times.  He suggests that the black virgins in Europe are related to ancient sun goddesses, which appeals to me.   Another good book is The Cult of the Black Virgin by Ean Begg, published by Arkana Books.  Then there's Longing for Darkness, by China Galland, which is more of a travelogue memoir of her pilgrimage to Czestochowa to see the original icon.  There's a new, scholarly book out that I want to read:  Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century:  The Origins of the Cult of Our Lady of Czestochowa, by Robert Maniura.  It is pretty pricey and I've been putting it off, but just typing out the title makes me want it again.  I may have to try to get it by interlibrary loan.  

I also discovered in my internet trolling that Our Lady of Czestochowa is associated with a Voudoun loa in Haiti, Mambo Ezili Danto or Erzulie Dantor.  There she is considered very fierce, and sometimes is shown carrying a knife.  She is the protectress of single mothers and gays.   Here is a link to an interesting blog which goes into great detail on the relationship between Erzulie Dantor and Our Lady of Czestochowa: www.google.com/imgres 


I painted the drapery in a different style than the original icon; it's based on much earlier Byzantine icon called The Virgin Hodegitria, which is very angular and stylized.  The existing icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa is painted in a primtive style and has been reworked numerous times.  Here is a picture of the original icon from Poland:   I probably should have changed the draperies and made them smoother.  Now that I look at it again, I did at least try to make the blue draperies a little more flowing than the original Hodegitria source.  The gold border is actually larger on my picture but it wouldn't all fit on the scanner screen.  She's downstairs now sitting in the hallway on a chest of Native American relics my father dug up many years ago.  Like I said, the gold is real gold, and the green background on mine is real malachite.  I had to tone it down with yellow ochre because it was so green. 

I wasn't going to include the scar on my icon's face (the Madonna of Czestochowa is scarred from a Hussar's sword), but a mark appeared on the paint there, and I had to make it into a scar.  Strange.  It was as if She had an agenda and She was going to look the way She intended!  But I never did think I got her facial expression exactly right.  She looks a little mean and sour where the original icon looks sad and sweet.  It's a very subtle expression.   

Well, now I have to go get dressed to work at UTC.  Today I'm drawing a cat skull, inside and out.  Usually I don't have to get dressed up to work, which is great, but today I'm going to see a really cool show at the UTC gallery -- two figurative painters, one of whom studied with my idol, Odd Nerdrum.  They appear to be quite the bomb from the color card I got.   I'll report later!    

 Here's a picture of my studio at our new house on Signal Mountain. My dad painted here;  when I came upstairs and started to straighten up, I found a sticky spot of dried turpentine a foot square and an inch thick accumulated from single drips over 30 years. It was a man cave pure and simple, and I knew I couldn't work in a man cave, least of all my father's man cave.  A hard-working man deserves his man cave, but I couldn't feel creative in it, so I had to clean, and boy was it a mess!

This space is smaller than the place I had at the old Chattanooga Bank building downtown, but on the other hand it's in the attic right here at home, so it's closer.  It's a trade-off.   The advantage of a studio away from home for me was that I was stuck on the 5th floor of an old building downtown, usually without a car, and I could not find excuses to do the laundry, polish my toenails, watch tv, or fix dinner.    I hope I can learn to love this studio like I did my old one, but I miss the spectacular view from the 5th floor overlooking the Tivoli.  The owner of the bank building sold to a developer, and a grand hotel was promised, but nothing has been done as far as I can see. 

The painting at lower left of the photo is a copy of le Cot's "The Storm," one of my all time favorite paintings ever, which I'm working on as a demo for my students.  I finished the girl, with her flimsy dress which I thought would be so hard to paint, but it turned out to be quite easy.  Just paint her naked, and then paint on the sheer white gown! Voila! The figure of the young man has proven to be more difficult.  He's just a shadow right now.  I'll post the finished work when it's done.  No tracing or blocking or photocopies or anything were involved -- I just eyeballed a good print of the original and drew it with my brush.  I started with an earth red imprimature, and I don't think le Cot did that, because now that I 've gotten into the painting, I realize that my background is too warm.  In the original, the background is cool and dark and shadows are warm on the figures.  I will have to make the background on mine cooler eventually.

In the back you can see the sliding door that leads to an upstairs deck.  The window is still dirty and the light is greenish and murky, but I can open the door and let in a breeze.  The cats like to come up here and sit and look out at the dogs and squirrels.  My studio downtown had the best light ever.  The picture of me above was taken in natural light in the studio.  I loved that light. 

Here's my art books.  It took a long time to clean the shelves, get rid of the spiders, put shelf liner down, and then drag the books upstairs.  They weigh a ton, and I have moved them over and over, up stairs, from room to room.  It's my favorite form of exercise.   I love my books.  Perhaps my true calling is simply to read about other painters' lives. 

This has been my first posting in a year and a half.  I hope to make Dureresque into more of an all-round art blog, with book and art show reviews, plus blogging on my current projects.   I'm really struggling with my whole identity as an artist.  I don't even know if I am an artist, or if I feel any inspiration at all.  However, I can always gesso boards, read art books, and blog on art until inspiration returns.   

Bonnie and I have been making silverpoint papers, and I think we've finally got the process down. 

Several years ago, I wanted to learn how to make silverpoint drawings, because this is one way preliminary drawings and studies were made during the Renaissance.  Easier said than done, though.  I had a book, "The Practice of Egg Tempera Painting," by Daniel Thompson, which purported to tell in detail how silverpoint drawings were done.  The author said to take drawing paper, tape it down, and paint it with a layer or several layers of glue size, powdered pigment, and something called bone ash.  When I first read this book many years ago, finding powdered pigment and glue size was quite an undertaking.  I remember how elated I was when I finally found Kremer Pigments in NYC, and then later, Sinopia in San Francisco!  But I was stymied by this bone ash stuff. 

I thought surely it wasn't that important, and I tried making up some of the tinted papers detailed in the book without the bone ash.  Then I worked on figuring out how to make a silverpoint pen.  Again, not something you can buy at Hobby Lobby.  I finally stumbled on an article in the UTC newspaper about a new teacher in the art department -- David Young -- who actually drew in silverpoint!  Oh joy!  I trotted immediately over to his office and started asking many annoying questions which he was kind enough to answer -- how do I make a silverpoint pen?  And what is this bone ash stuff?  What does it do?  He explained that the bone ash roughens the surface of the paper enough to take a mark from the relatively hard silver pencil.  He said casually that it "wasn't hard to get" and that you could find it at places that sold supplies for ceramics.  OK, that's a start.  Except I found out later it's not true, but not to worry. 

He explained that making a silverpoint pencil involved getting some mechanical drawing pens at the store and instead of using pencil leads, you get some thick silver wire and grind it to a point on one end, and round it off on the other end.  You stick this into the pencil holder instead.   Ok, that worked.   

Later, I also asked more questions on my Natural Sciences Illustration online list -- I noticed that someone there was doing silverpoint too.  I wanted to know if you used sterling or pure silver, for instance, and how thick the silver wire should be.  Eventually I got enough information to put together some pencils.  I bought the silver wire at a jeweler's supply shop right here in town (and already, I've forgotten if I got sterling or pure silver.  I think it was sterling.)  and took the wires to work at UTC where I have access to a dental drill with several dremel tool attachments which I used to grind them down to points.  Each one took about 5 minutes or so.  So now I had about a dozen silverpoint pencils, although not fancy handmade like Leonardo would have used -- that would have been an ivory stylus with the silver wire embedded in it somehow that I cannot figure out right now and don't want to bother. 

So, on to making the paper.  I kept hemming and hawing about ordering the bone ash because it was in the Kremer catalog, but it cost $35 for a bag.  I kept thinking I could find some around Chattanooga for cheap, so I wasted a lot of time.  First, like I said, I made some tinted paper without the bone ash, just using the powdered pigments and glue size.  It looked quite pretty, but it didn't work.  The silverpoint pen wouldn't make a mark on it. 

So then another artist friend told me that the bone ash at Ace Hardware was exactly the same thing, and it only cost $5 a bag instead of $35 plus shipping!  The bone ash from Ace was a beige color and rough.  I mixed some into my next batch of glue and pigment.  Nasty.  And it didn't work either.  Instead of adding a bit of "tooth" to the surface it just added gritty lumps. 

I was going to have to order the bone ash from Kremer.  But disaster!!  Kremer sold out to Sinopia and their new catalog didn't even list bone ash!  I had dawdled too long.  The only evidence I had that they had ever stocked bone ash was my 2-year-old Kremer catalog.  In desperation, I called Kremer and asked if they still had the bone ash.  "I think we still have some around here somewhere," said the woman on the phone.  It sounded as if she were shoving around boxes in the background.  "How much do you want?"  The directions in the tempera book said "A Little."  How much is "a little" bone ash?  I ended up buying half a kilo bag. 

It arrived within 3 days, pearlescent and palest gray-white.  This was the real deal, and it looked to be enough to do me for quite a while, maybe forever.  At this point, Bonnie expressed an interest in making papers for silverpoint too, so we agreed to get together and mix a batch or two, and I could sell her some bone ash. 

Our first efforts, back in the fall, were too thickly done, I realized after visiting the Leonardo exhibit in Birmingham in November.  His papers were tinted, but only lightly.  We'd been brushing on coat after coat in an attempt to make it look smooth, which wasn't necessary. 

The new bone ash worked perfectly, though.  As soon as the pigment dried, we tested it with one of the silverpoint pens and it worked perfectly!  Success!  Since then, we've gotten together a couple of more times to make paper, experimenting with different weights of paper and colors of pigment.    Here's a picture of Bonnie stirring the pigment mixture on the stove. 

Here's Bonnie painting the pigment mixture on paper. 

This is some light blue paper we made in imitation of Leonardo's lovely light blue paper at the show. 

Well, that's all for now.  Next step -- complete glorious silverpoint drawings!  Bonnie said she was going to make up some little handmade books of silverpoint paper and give them away, which is the sort of lovely thoughtful gesture I am too selfish to make.  But hey, Bonnie, you go girl!  :-)