Inside/Outside in France: "Country Church"

Since 2009 one of my recurring interests has been painting scenes viewed through a door or window. Examples that have featured in my blog include "The Open Door" (Feb. 14), "Hanging in the Rain" (March 13), "Designated Driver" (April 23), and, most recently, "Through a Curtain" (May 2)."Painting the Porch" and "Buying Postcards" are further examples of paintings that include an inside and an outside view.

Painting the Porch - acrylic - 14 " x 11 "

Buying Postcards - acrylic - 14  " x 11  "

The two paintings are based on a single photograph that I took inside the village church of Montaigut-le-Blanc in 2001. The photograph shows all three female figures --the woman selling postcards, the woman buying the cards, and the woman sitting outside painting. In my initial sketches I included all three in my composition, but I couldn't make it work. The figures seemed to get in each other's way and provide no clear focus for the viewer's eye. So I tried separating them, while still keeping the church interior almost identical in each panel. I found that it worked better to make the wall and rock garden look larger and nearer for the "Painting" panel, so as to frame the artist in a setting. In the "Postcards" panel, on the other hand, the scenery outside is just incidental background: all the action is inside the church.

I was in Montaigut for my first painting holiday, an eagerly anticipated event for which I'd been saving. I arrived with high energy and enthusiasm, inspired by a show of Morandi's still life paintings that I had just seen at the Tate in London. In one important respect the trip was disappointing: since the program was advertised as a "workshop" I had expected a fairly structured format, with assignments, supervised work, and critiques. This never materialized. The only instruction was a painting demonstration each day, and for the rest of the time we students were left to ourselves. Since then I have participated in several painting holidays, in England, France and Canada, and have found in each case that, without being slave drivers, the instructors have kept their charges busy and given lots of direction and feed-back, so I know now that my expectations were not unreasonable.

Determined to draw and paint anyway, since that was what we were there for, my friend and travelling companion (who is the woman painting the church porch) went off each day to find a good spot to sit and sketch. There was a wealth of subject matter only steps away, a choice of flowers, gardens, buildings, street scenes and rural landscape. Montaigut is built on a very steep hill, and all the streets are zigzags, with narrow terraces between them. At every turn there is a look-out point over the surrounding country. The park-like churchyard, with its shade trees, clumps of dahlias, warm stone walls, and Romanesque church, became a favourite sketching place.

The village is situated in the central part of France, in Auvergne. The terrain is some of the most turbulent and tormented that I have ever seen, a succession of dramatic ridges and gorges, with the occasional eroded and extinct volcano. Shortly before the end of my stay there I was able to get an aerial view of this landscape. It was my birthday--a rather special one--and I decided to treat myself to a ride in the hot air balloon that sailed by every morning and evening, its timing determined by the need for the right kind and strength of air currents. I had to leave dinner a little early, before dessert was served, which caused me a touch of regret, since the desserts were always delectable. The balloon basket held two other passengers besides myself, and the pilot. I loved the sensation of flying in near-silence, one minute soaring to dizzying heights, the next skimming the trees and hillsides. We flew until it was almost dark, our flight extended longer than expected because we were waiting for the right current to flip us across a highway. We needed a level bit of field where we could land, and where the balloon operators' van could come and pick us up. After we were safely down and the balloon was deflated and folded, the van driver produced a hamper from which the postponed dessert appeared, decorated with sparklers! The assembled company sang "Happy birthday" to me, completing a truly magical evening.

As well as sketching and painting in and around the village, I took photographs, and in 2009 dug out the one of the church. I painted the two versions on wood panels, each 14 " x 11 ". It was only after completing them that I discovered that if I placed them side by side as a diptych, they seemed to complement each other and make a single work. Now I would not want to separate them: I think they look best hung an inch or so apart.

Country Church (diptych)

 
www.myartclub.com/judith.fairwood

www.twitter.com/EaselChirps 

 

 

Dealing with Ambiguity: "Through a Curtain"

Through a Curtain --original version

Last time I ended with a riddle: spot the difference between two images of the painting "Through a Curtain" and see if you can guess why I changed it. This was a tough question to answer considering the quality of my images. Having just spent a week in the company of some real experts in photography and digital manipulation, I'm especially conscious of my shortcomings, and more determined to improve, but for now will have to make do with the images I have, with their misleading faults. Some of the minor differences between the before-and-after images of "Through a Curtain" have nothing to do with the painting and are just indications of my photographic deficiencies. For example, I didn't change the stripes at the sides--the frame of the sliding door. The way they curve and change width is simply a result of photographing a tall, narrow canvas without knowing how to correct the resulting distortion.

Through a Curtain - acrylic - 2011 - 36" x 22"

In spite of the difficulties, one reader took on the challenge, and was on the right track when she wrote: "The back of the chair was making too solid a barrier in the 'first' version. You've lightened it up and this allows the viewer to go past the chair. Also for some reason it becomes easier to actually see the person in the chair." There was in fact a problem with the figure in the chair, who could be seen in two different ways. This ambiguity placed my painting in the company of trick images, which usually depend on how the positive and negative space are perceived, and of those unfortunate snapshots we've all seen where a tree sprouts out of someone's head. For some glaring--though possibly contrived rather than accidental--examples of this, go to http://ronilai.blogspot.com/2011/04/perfect-angles.html  You'll see that the problem (or the joke) usually arises when the photographer doesn't allow for things being in different planes, so that it isn't clear what is in front and what behind. This kind of problem occurs much less frequently in painting than in photography because painting is a slow-moving medium with lots of time to think and make adjustments, but as I've discovered, some mistakes slip through undetected.

The woman in "Through a Curtain" is the same friend who appeared, in a very similar pose, in "Foreign Hotel" (Easel Talk, Feb. 14, 2011.) The more recent painting is based on a photo I took during our 2010 trip to Sicily. My friend was sitting on the balcony of our hotel in Taormina. I liked the contrast between the straight lines of the door frame and the curves of the railing and the organic shapes of the vegetation outside. I also thought it would be an interesting challenge to paint a scene and figure veiled by a nylon curtain. The curtain, in fact, seemed to be the main player in this little drama, and determined the title.

The painting was completed, or so I thought, early this year, and was on my living-room wall when my travelling companion came to visit. To my surprise she did not at first recognize either the setting or herself. When I gave her a hint, she stared at the painting for some time and then asked in bewilderment, "But why did you paint me with a beard?"


I was as mystified as she was, but eventually realized that what she what she was seeing was something like this:

 whereas what I intended was more like this:

For me it remained hard to see the bearded lady (who also seems to have a black face but a white arm) without squinting and contorting myself, but obviously I had to take the painting back to the studio and try to eliminate the ambiguity. I modified the outline of the dark foliage that seemed to be causing the confusion. Then I had to fiddle with the folds of the curtain and touch up other parts of the scene. My friend hasn't yet seen the revised version, but I hope when she does she'll recognize her beardless self!

www.MyArtClub.com/judith.fairwood 
www.twitter.com/EaselChirps  

Please note: from now on I will be adding posts to this blog about once a month. Look out for the next instalment in early June. I'll email the people on my "Notify" list--let me know if you'd like your name added--and will also announce it at www.twitter.com/EaselChirps.  Meanwhile, if you're in the Vancouver area and would like to see the real thing, please come and see paintings at the annual art fair Art in the City this weekend (May 6 - 8) at the West End Community Centre. I'll be sharing a booth with Suzan Marczak (www.suzanmarczak.yolasite.com ) who will be showing ceramic sculpture. Hours and address at www.westendcc.ca . Admission free! 

Serious Humour: Designated Driver

Designated Driver - acrylic - 22" x 22" - 2010

When I spotted the bulldog behind the wheel of the red pick-up I burst out laughing. I was returning to my car in the parking lot of a neighbourhood supermarket. I grabbed my camera from the car and hurried back to the pick-up, hoping that the dog wouldn't move and that its owner wouldn't return before I'd snapped a couple of photos.

A dog in the front seat of a vehicle is a common enough sight, but this was unusual because of the dog's size. It looked as large as a human driver, and was taking its responsibilities so seriously that the title "Designated Driver" suggested itself to me right away. If the boss had come back to his truck the worse for wear, the dog looked perfectly capable of driving home safely.

Sometimes what I think will be the hardest part of a painting turns out to be easy, and vice versa. I assumed that painting the dog's portrait would be extremely challenging, but in fact it came together without much effort. The vehicles, on the other hand, were horribly difficult to get right, especially the vents of the pick-up's radiator grille. I often seem to struggle with perspective issues. Some artists seem to manage perfectly well with wonky lines and tipsy buildings. Others go to extremes of mathematical plotting to ensure accuracy. Personally I don't much care whether it's exactly "right", but in a painting that's otherwise realistic it seems to me that the scene should look convincing and the buildings stand solidly on their foundations. I don't even like those new-fangled real sky-scrapers that twist and lurch and project outwards: they make me feel a bit seasick. So I work away at the perspective in my paintings until things feel stable and grounded.

When working on a painting I inevitably spend a lot of time thinking about my subject. In the case of "Designated Driver" I put myself in the place of the bulldog, and soon I didn't find its situation so funny. Dogs are animals that live to a great extent ruled by the instincts of the wolves from which they are descended. What must it feel like to be left all alone in a completely artificial and inorganic capsule in the barren wastes of a car park? Does the dog regard the vehicle as a sort of extension of the pack's den, which it is obliged to defend on behalf of its human boss? What can it be thinking about as it sits there waiting, surrounded by the incomprehensible nonsense of human strangers coming and going, entering and leaving their metal boxes, creating ghastly noises and fumes as they drive away? With questions like these running through my mind, my amusement at my subject gave way to sympathy and admiration for the dog's patience and tolerance. Living in our mechanized urban world is frustrating enough at times for us humans who invented it. How must it feel to have to live in it without having a clue why it's the way it is, or what's the point of it all?


One thing I really enjoy about showing my work is that sometimes it reminds people of stories or experiences that they share with me. I heard several dog-in-car stories at the 2010 Eastside Culture Crawl, but my favourite was one about a big, fierce-looking dog whose owner didn't bother to take the keys out of the ignition or lock the car, confident that no one would try to break into such a well guarded vehicle. No one did . . . but on more than one occasion the owner got locked out, by his dog! Presumably the dog heaved himself around in the seat and pressed down the lever that locked the car from the inside. Or did he perhaps have a mischievous sense of humour?

www.MyArtClub.com/judith.fairwood

www.twitter.com/EaselChirps

Next time (around May 1): Spot the Difference: "Through a Curtain" as it was and as it is

Through a Curtain -  refinished 

Through a Curtain - as first painted

If you can figure out why I changed it you have very sharp eyes . . . or maybe a strange way of seeing things!

Spotlight on Gastropods: "Van Huysum's Snails"

Van Huysum's Snail I - acrylic - 2007 - 16" x 20"

Van Huysum's Snail II - acrylic - 2007 - 16" x 20"

I have always been a fan of still life painting, and some of my favourite artists are practitioners of the genre--Cezanne's apples, Morandi's dusty old bottles, Jim Dine's tools, and Wayne Thiebaud's cakes come immediately to mind. But I had never been very excited by the big floral arrangements painted by some of the famous Dutch painters until I learned to look for the creepy-crawlies that lurk in the corners and chomp their way through the leaves.

Dutch realism was a Calvinist reaction against the religious iconography of pre-Reformation art and its continuation in the Catholic countries during the Counter-Reformation. The Dutch painters depicted the real people, places and objects of their world, not saints, angels and cherubs swirling around the heavens. Nevertheless, theology is still implicit in their 17th century art, even in a painting of a vase of flowers. At first glance the viewer sees something beautiful--a floral arrangement at the peak of perfection--but needs to be reminded that in this material world everything passes, fades and dies, and only the spiritual world endures. Apparent perfection is mere vanity, unreliable and transitory, subject to being destroyed or consumed. Some painters included elements such as clocks and skulls to jolt the viewer back to reality. Others were more subtle: they implied the passing of time and the vanity of this world by slipping flies and beetles into their compositions, along with bits of dead leaf and fallen petals.

Detail of Hollyhocks etc. painting by Jan van Huysum

Jan van Huysum lived from1682 to1749, so by the time he painted his floral compositions he probably included his animal elements more for decorative than moral purposes, but he still followed the convention of his predecessors. Leafing through one of my art books one day I paused to have a closer look at a painting by van Huysum called "Hollyhocks and Other Flowers in a Vase." Towards the bottom of the composition, as a sort of visual footnote, there are two snails, a small one crawling up a hollyhock leaf, and a larger, very perky one, advancing purposefully along the shelf. The idea came to me of blowing up two small sections of van Huysum's painting and placing each snail centre-stage.

When an original painting has been photographed and reproduced in print there's no way of telling how accurate the colour is. I may have seen the Hollyhocks painting in the National Gallery at some time, but if so I don't really remember it. Judging by an Internet image I found recently:  www.artunframed.com/images/artmis15/huysum88.jpg  the colours are more vibrant than the ones in my book. For my purposes it didn't matter; I just stayed as close as I could to the book illustration. (Dutch Painting by Christopher Brown, Phaidon, 1993, p. 125.)


Singling out the snails to star in the show is another way of honouring the humble and easily overlooked, a theme that recurs in my work. To a gardener slugs and snails are the animal equivalent of nasty weeds--things that need to be eliminated because they threaten the more desirable plants. But any true depiction of nature acknowledges that everything has its season and eventually dies, and that every living thing has to eat at the expense of something else. Flowers, especially cut ones, may be seen as a metaphor for human youth and beauty, and the snails as a symbol of time, which relentlessly gnaws away at our lifespan. Snails are also often seen as the epitome of ugliness, as expressed in the disparaging nursery rhyme:

Slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails,

That's what little boys are made of.

Yet a snail's shell is a beautiful object, no less so than the mollusc shells that children of all ages like to pick up on the beach. It seems to me that van Huysum loved his snails. His treatment of the larger one in "Hollyhocks," with its eyes and antennae tips highlighted, shows a marked degree of respect for the despised creature. So perhaps he would understand why someone painting 400 years later might want to present a close-up view of the hungry little crawlers.

www.MyArtClub.com/judith.fairwood

www.twitter.com/EaselChirps

Next time (around April 24): Serious Humour: "Designated Driver"

Designated Driver - acrylic - 2010 - 22" x 22"

 

All the Same, All Different: Pets, Pancakes, Persimmons, and other Projects

I have my children to thank for bringing to my attention a principle which underlies some of my art projects and continues to suggest new directions--the principle of "the same only different." When they reached the mid-childhood stage of clamouring for little creatures in cages, my son and daughter had a reluctant and unreceptive mother who had no desire to share her home with smelly creatures that would eat and breed prodigiously and always need cleaning. My objections, however, were overruled, and over the years we accommodated hamsters, gerbils, budgies, guinea pigs, and a deformed fish which we babysat, and which its rightful owners (very sensibly) never got around to reclaiming. I was not a total neophyte when it came to pets. I'd lived with various cats, and was well aware of each one's individuality, and accepted that dogs too had unique personalities; but the idiosyncrasies demonstrated by all the diminutive fauna (even the fish, which once jumped out of its tank and was later rescued, still alive, from the dust bunnies under the bed)) came as a complete surprise to me. The gerbils, particularly, covered a whole range of personality traits, from the bold one who teased the cat through the bars of its cage until it got its face ripped off, to the dogged perseverer who learned to run in the exercise wheel in spite of having no front feet. These mouse-sized rodents were as different from each other as you are from me.


The first time this principle cropped up in an art project was during an intensive summer course in paper-making. We made batches of pulp and were then expected to create something with it. I don't think I had any idea what I was going to do, but I started to produce, at an increasingly frenetic pace, two kinds of object. I twisted strips of nylon stockings and dipped them in the pulp, hanging them up to dry in the sun; and I slapped handfuls of the pulp on to inflated balloons, producing leaf-shaped objects. I had never worked so obsessively in my life. And what fascinated me was that I kept doing the same thing, yet the results were all different. I continued dipping and moulding until time ran short, and then I assembled my whole inventory on a frame. I remember thinking that the pieces were metaphors for human beings--all the same, all different.

Pancake 2 - white china marker - 19" x 21"

In January 2005, while casting around for a theme for my last-but-one term at Emily Carr, I happened to cook up a batch of thin pancakes (crepes.) Watching them  solidify and change colour in the pan, I was once again struck by how each one, though made in the same way, was unique. For the next two months I cooked, drew, photographed, and occasionally even ate pancakes. I began with a series of detailed drawings of the flat discs, showing their ridges, grooves and craters as accurately as possible.

Fish nor Fowl - oil sticks - 15" x 29"

Out of the Frying Pan - oil sticks - 21" x 29"

Next I concentrated on segments and edges, and as I enlarged the markings, concentrating on rendering them accurately, whimsical life forms emerged, as in the examples on the left.

After that I let some of the crepes dry out for a week or so, and documented the distorted shapes that they made as they curled up. These I did not eat. To my surprise they turned into bizarre skull- and mask-like forms.

Crepe-Mask 1 - conte crayon - 30" x 23"

Crepe-World - oil sticks on canvas on board - 36" x 42"

The last step in the Pancake Project was Crepe-World, a large drawing on canvas.

Did you guess what the images I included last week represented? I've found in the past that people's suggestions have ranged from the microscopic to the cosmic--single cells to heavenly bodies!

In 2006 I had a commission to paint something for a newly renovated kitchen. The clients wanted something about 24" x 36" and they liked some of the oversized still life subjects I'd worked on. Since the wife said she was particularly fond of persimmons, I suggested that instead of one painting I should do six small ones, 10" x 10" square, each one of a different persimmon. I discovered, as with the hamsters and gerbils, that each one was unique, with its own rosette of leaves. I also learned how to enjoy eating persimmons, avoiding the astringent fibres that come with some varieties. 

Six Persimmons - acrylic on panels, each 10" x 10"

Jan. 1

Feb. 1

I have same-only-different projects in progress now, as well. As with the paper-making enterprise, I'm assembling things without knowing what I'll do with them all. For example, a new ritual for this year is taking the same photo every morning as soon as I get up. I'm not rigid about the timing, or about exactly how much of the scene I include, and there will be times when I'm away and there will be gaps in my record; but by the end of the year I should have three hundred and something versions of the view from my living-room window. I point my camera towards the spot where on a clear day I can glimpse Mt. Baker, the 10,000 ft. volcano just over the border in Washington State. I include a bit of the magnolia tree just outside, which is just, belatedly, coming into bloom. The sun, clouds, weather and tree are all variables which ensure that I never get exactly the same picture twice. All the same, all different.

Feb.27

April 10

 

www.MyArtClub.com/judith.fairwood

Next time (around April 17): Spotlight on Gastropods: "Van Huysum's Snails 1 and 2"

Thoughts about Readers' Comments

This week I am responding to some comments from readers that raise questions in my mind, and which you too may have wondered about. I am including images of some drawings that I plan to write about next time--but I'm not giving titles or telling you what they are. See if you can guess! (If you already know, please don't let on!) 
 
The enthusiastic comments about Easel Talk that I have received indicate that many people, from widely differing backgrounds, enjoy reading the stories about my paintings. ( I realize, of course, that unfavourable sentiments are less likely to reach me, if only because people who don't like my stuff will have long since stopped reading it!) Compliments are lovely, and most encouraging, but just as welcome are comments that raise thought-provoking questions, such as this one from a reader who had just read the entry on "Foreign Hotel" (Feb. 14, 2011):  "I found that I wished that I had looked at your painting more carefully before reading the blog, because once you had described the various interpretations I was no longer sure what my impressions would have been."  

The reader had opened my email notifications in the wrong order. I had in fact included a preview of "Foreign Hotel" the week before. Nevertheless, she raised some valid questions:  to what extent do I as the artist want to influence how people react to my work, and to what extent do viewers want to be influenced? Should art stand alone and speak for itself, allowing viewers to form their own impressions? Might a person feel cheated of a spontaneous reaction by having the artist spell it all out? Or does learning about the context of the work and the artist's feelings about it enhance and enrich the viewing experience? Personally, I've always found that some background knowledge made the work more interesting, and enough readers of Easel Talk, including several who describe themselves as not particularly visual, have told me that they appreciate the added dimension--and even compared me to art exponents in museums and on TV!--that I feel justified in continuing. Still, it is important to have an unmediated response first, so please take advantage of the previews. I also invite your opinions on what constitutes the right kind and amount of information.


Related to this issue is the question of titles. I've always enjoyed naming things--as a small child I named vast families of children I dreamed of having when I grew up--and I like choosing titles for paintings. I'm in the process of reviewing the titles I've come up with so far, trying to decide why I settled on each one, and whether it works. The topic arose out of an exchange of emails following my post on "On the Ferry" (March 6, 2011). Knowing that my correspondent had spent vacations in the Cancun area, I remarked that she had probably travelled on the ferry in the painting, to which she replied, "Couldn't it be any ferry?"
Well yes, it could--at least until I identified its location in my blog--and that's why I didn't call it "On the Cancun ferry." I debated whether it was more likely to sell if I left it vague--it might appeal to someone with fond memories of a ferry in Asia or the Mediterranean region--or whether the specific reference would give it a better chance with people who had spent time in Mexico. I've yet to find out! I think my titles are an attempt to pinpoint what is most important to me about the subject. Usually, I have something in mind which is implicit in the painting, but may or may not be perceived by someone else. For example, in the small painting that I called "Quintet", I was thinking of the perky little percussion instruments called high-hats.

Quintet - acrylic - 2010 - 12" x 12"

Titles are especially perplexing when it comes to non-representational painting. Personally I feel let down when I read "Composition" or "Abstraction"on the label, even though that is exactly what the painting is. I like titles, and for me a good one is a kind of mini-poem that enhances the visual aspect. It's not always easy to choose something that feels right, though. Below is an abstract painting that was produced quickly and intuitively, without any preconceived ideas about subject matter. The result seemed to me to have architectural elements, a mystery, and a ghostly presence. I've tried several titles, but none of them really satisfies me. I started with "Haunted House", switched to "Who's in There?" and most recently, "Anyone Home?" Maybe I should just call it "Mystery"?

To be renamed? - acrylic on paper - 2002 - 23" x 30"

I think I did better with "Winter," another intuitive abstract. When painting it I was thinking only of the mark-making, and of economical use of means and colour. It turned out being so suggestive of winter in a cold climate that one woman who saw it remarked, "I'm from Saskatchewan, and it looks just like that!"

Winter - acrylic on paper - 2002 - 23" x 30"

Enough for this week. I have more issues to discuss that have been raised by readers' comments, but will come back to them at a future date.

 www.MyArtClub.com/judith.fairwood

www.twitter.com/EaselChirps 

Next time (around April 9): All the Same, All Different: The Mystery Drawings!

 

Exalting the Humble: "A Magnificent Weed"

A Magnificent Weed - acrylic - 2010 - 40" x 30"

This is another example of a painting of nothing much. In fact its subject was so humble that until I started to paint it and explain to my studio mates what I was doing, I don't believe anyone had noticed it at all. And yet my magnificent weed was not small: it was between four and five feet tall, and almost as wide! It had branches as thick as my fingers, leaves turning rich shades of red and yellow, a sprinkling of bright yellow flowers, and an abundant crop of ripening seeds in long thin pods. I practically tripped on the thing as I was unloading my car one day outside the building that houses our studio. I gazed in wonder at this powerhouse of nature growing out of the crack between the tarmac of our parking area and the base of the wall. I was lost in admiration for its prolific growth out of nothing at all. In the dry, hot August weather, how could it be finding any water, let alone nutrients? I knew right away that I wanted to paint its portrait.

Through the Crack - acrylic - 14" x 11"

It was not the first time I'd turned my attention to weeds, and asked myself the question "What is a weed, anyway?" In 2008 I'd had the idea of painting the uninvited guests in my little garden, and had started with the bluebells that threaten to take over each spring. I admired their persistence and sheer determination, especially one that pushed up between paving stones. 

Vancouver Bluebells - acrylic - 12" x 12"

Bluebells are an introduced species and were probably once prized for their fragrance and  colour; but they did too well in Vancouver and became pests. That's one kind of weed. Another kind are the wild plants, such as buttercups, that have moved to where the living is easy--nice tilled soil with water and manure laid on. They're weeds because they're in the wrong place. It's in the eye of the beholder, but it's a matter of context, not of beauty. Surely even the fussiest gardener couldn't deny the beauty of a dandelion flower or seed head. But these weeds are far from invisible: to a gardener they are conspicuous intruders that require instant annihilation. Quite different was the situation of my weed, which wasn't bothering anybody but was just an opportunistic squatter, managing to keep under the radar in the urban desert.


A bit of research identified my weed as a Tall Hedge Mustard. I got to know it better as I examined it each day upon arriving at the studio. I also took close-up photos. The painting began to take shape. Then I decided that since no one had even noticed the weed, no one would care if I cut it down and brought it into the studio to model for me. But I kept forgetting to bring a suitable knife. Perhaps I didn't really want to kill it. Then one night a gale blew and dashed it to the ground. The next day I found it crushed under a parked car. An ignominious end . . . but probably by then enough of its seeds had lodged in cracks in the masonry to ensure another generation's survival.


And of course, there's my painting to celebrate its life. I painted it close to actual size and let its spreading branches straggle right off the picture plane to emphasize its luxuriance. Its little flowers shine out like lights on a Christmas tree. My tribute to its magnificence extends to all organisms, whether animal, vegetable or human, that manage to thrive and prosper in the most adverse conditions, and with the most unpromising of beginnings.


www.MyArtClub.com/judith.fairwood


www.twitter.com/EaselChirps


Next time (around April 3): After this TENTH post to Easel Talk I'll pause to respond to some of the questions and comments I've received. I love getting feedback, so please keep it coming! Just click on "Comments" below. You can do it anonymously!