Theme Thursday: Passion

The Theme this week is technically "Passions" but I choose to post the newest work of passion by my husband, fine art photographer, Cole Scott.  The image is singular as is my title.

Trees and Clouds I

Cole Scott

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Theme Thursday: Scents

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

We have a lovely florist in Jackson, NH, Dutch Bloemen Winkel.  Her work is extraordinary.  She's as creative as the cutting edge florists whose online work I've viewed.  Her flowers come, primarily, from Holland and the Boston Flower Market where she travels each week to bring back the best.

The photo above is of a centerpiece she created and it makes me think of the beautiful scent of a rose.  I have had roses in every garden of every house in which I have lived until we moved to New Hampshire.  Their growing span here is limited and rose tending is intense.  However,  if the yellow rose survives, given to me last Spring by my friends in Bermuda, I will plant it outside.  It's fragrance was wonderful as was the delicate yellow bruised with an orange smear.  

Roses have a scent all their own and I miss them.  Keeping my fingers crossed I will again have a rose bush in my garden.

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Theme Thursday: Angels

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John
Bless the bed that I lay on
All four corners round the bed
All four angels round my head



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Theme Thursday: Bubbles

This post was originally written March 10, 2008.  

There is a photograph on my desk of my younger son at graduation. It is somewhat of a closeup, shot from a side angle. My husband had walked onto the field, under the grandstand where the seniors sat in caps and gowns. Our son was several seats away from my husband's vantage point. The beautiful thing about this portrait is the way in which my husband captures the moment so exquisitely. Everyone in the photo is staring straight ahead towards a speaker on an unseen podium. The viewer sees only their profiles. But my son is caught looking at the camera. There are bubbles in the photo floating around him like so many dreams. I love this photo so much. It shows all the promise of the future with my child taking a last look, past the camera, at the world he'll leave behind.

Theme Thursday: Gourd

Gourd, the perfect theme this time of year; useful for centerpieces, displays, outdoor decoration. 

Eating?  Not so much.  According to Wikipedia:
A gourd is a plant of the family Cucurbitaceae. Gourd is occasionally used to describe crops like cucumbers, squash, luffas, and melons.^[1] The term 'gourd' however, can more specifically, refer to the plants of the two Cucurbitaceae genera Lagenaria and Cucurbita^{[citation needed]} or also to their hollow dried out shell.^[2] The hard-rinded fruits can have carving done to create scenes raised in relief.^[3] Painting^[4] and wood burning^[5] are also used to decorate the shells.

These are gourds.  You cannot eat this type.  

Pumpkins are part of the same genus Cucurbita.    Look closely, there are "gourds" lower left.

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Theme Thursday: Country

Moving On
(Boardwalk Trumps Mediterranean Ave...so to speak)

Nothing says "America" like the corporations overtaking our country.  This shot, taken in Atlantic City, by my husband Cole Scott, exemplifies the state our country is in; what the middle and lower classes are reduced to and by what. 

For more Theme Thursday, go here.

 

 

Theme Thursday: Square

Windows and Walls
by Cole Scott

This would have made a good album cover for Dan Fogelberg's album of the same name.

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Theme Thursday: Spiral

by Cole Scott

One of my husband's early professional photos is this rose.  We were visiting close friends in northern Kentucky and they took us to the Cincinnati Flower Show.  I dragged my husband, kicking and screaming, as he thought it would be a bunch of girly displays.  Boy was he wrong!  He was transfixed by the beauty of the flowers, the landscape design, the powerful images some people created.  We had to drag him outta there.  He took some lovely shots and we've matted and framed them over the years to sell.  This is one of my favorites.  It looks  great with a clean white mat and a black frame about 2" wide.  

 

Theme Thursday Relax

Beach Chairs by Laura Trevey

 re·lax   /rɪˈlæks/

–verb (used without object)

6. to become less tense, rigid, or firm.

7. to become less strict or severe; grow milder.

8. to reduce or stop work, effort, application, etc., esp. for the sake of rest or recreation.

9. to release oneself from inhibition, worry, tension, etc.

Man!  I am the last person you want to hear from regarding "relax" because I do not know how.  I have been a hyper, worried, skitzy, thinks too much, glass-is-half-empty person my entire life.  I have spent years and dollars and time seeking ways to relax, from physical therapy to yoga to psychological counseling to drugs to exercise to drinking and now, back to yoga/exercise.  Do I have a magic answer?  Hell no!

I have been a nail biter, teeth grinder, stomach churning mess whose primary saving grace is to constantly seek ways to help myself.  Otherwise, I'd be an alcoholic with a drug problem and no teeth. 

"Relax" you say?  I'll try.  Belly breathing, inversion poses, cardio vascular exercise, meditation are the preferred methods.  Of course, I like double gin martinis, an extra dose of Cymbalta, half a pack of cigarettes and a great big meal.  If I don't calm down after that, I'm just not gonna.

So there you have it.  Don't take advice from me as it will be all the wrong suggestions, liquor, pills, cigarettes, sex...did I leave that out?  Sex always relaxes you but you have to have it.  I'm uptight every night ...

"Honey!

  

Theme Thursday Brush

I am keeping it simple this week. 

Brush strokes on canvas by my good friend Carson Pritchard.  For more beautiful oils by Carson, go here.

Spain Series:  Tablecloth   

Theme Thursday Brown

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix, Germany 1891-1969,  is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.   Thanks to the Brown Shirts, also known as the SA, much of his work was destroyed after Hitler's rise to power.  At the time, he was best known for harsh depictions of the Weimar Society between the world wars...

"...which in particular attached Germanic national myths which had been sculpted on the ideals of militarism and human sacrifice for country...and stood in contrast to the Weimar Republic's response of hedonistic escapism in the face of impending social chaos and economic doom." from"Addicted to the Trauma of Realism" MadamePickwickArtBlog

Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber 1925


Dix paintings showed "art so tragic it borders on the comic. Its the surreal and fantastic looking, finding aesthetic form within an idiom of graphic depiction.A visual representation bordering on the burlesque, of straddling a new art zone between the romantic and reproductive, the product of modern warfare and its unlimited power to depersonalize and defigure the human spirit." MadamePickwickArtBlog

The Salon 1921

There are numerous half-nude female models, signaling an unrepentant, usually unflattering fixation on female breasts; Dix often seems to have equated women with dumbness, whether brute or weak. But he could be intermittently sympathetic, especially concerning the downtrodden or the creative, as evidenced by early portraits like “Working-Class Boy,” which calls to mind Alice Neel’s paintings, and “Unemployed Man,” and by later ones of the poet Iwar von Lücken and the philosopher Max Scheler. A borderline case is the rarely exhibited “Two Children” from 1921, whose subjects seem innocent and open, despite strangely deformed features, and is more Diane Arbus than Neel.    New York Times 3/11/10

Most astonishing about his work are the variety of styles in which he paints. He explore new genres over the course of his career changing his style continually.

                     
                


left:  Sunday Stroll

   
right: 
Prague Street 1921







   
   

                                                                The Match Seller 1920
                                                                          
                                                                                                
As with most German artists of his generation, Dix’s formative experience was World War I. He emerged from nearly four years in the trenches physically unscathed but psychically scarred. He attempted exorcism with “Der Krieg” (“The War”), a suite of 50 mostly masterly etchings published by Nierendorf in 1924. They convey a searing sense of the physical horror of war — most prominently wounded and rotting flesh — that remains unmatched in the history of art."    New York Times 3/11/10


Dix’s fifty prints that make up "War" are absolutely horrific and utterly terrifying. The pieces are smaller and darker than Beckmann’s, and more frightening. While Beckmann’s war takes place at home, on the streets and inside houses, Dix’s war is fought in the trenches, where soldiers become rotting skeletons, bodies hang from barbed wire, and even the survivors are battling death. Using different techniques, including etching and drypoint, Dix, who earned the Iron Cross in WWI, relates the hellish nature of war in gloomy panels that, taken together, would make one scary graphic novel — and are just as relevant today as when he made them in 1924. In "Soldiers’ Graves Between the Lines," the moon casts an eerie shadow on the dark night. Two skulls appear to be drowning in the earth in "Buried Alive." In "Shock Troops Advance Under Gas," four ghostly figures are charging forward in gas masks, evoking current fears of bioterrorism. There appears to be no relief in sight for the troops in "The Second Company Will Be Relieved Tonight." Several pieces show soldiers dancing with grotesque women, some of whom look like ghosts. In "The Madwoman of St.-Marie-à-Py," a lady erupts, a dead body at her knees. The "Dead Man" from St. Clement at first could be sleeping — until you look closer and see his brains oozing out of his head. Don’t rush through this powerful room; walk through it several times, take a seat, and breathe in the horror. It’s an exhilarating yet paralyzing experience.   This Week in New York

As German painters often still do, Dix believed that the medium’s entire history — especially the German part — was available for his use. He painted in the small-brush smooth-surface manner of Albrecht Dürer and looked to Lucas Cranach for inspiration. With contemporaries like Christian Schad, he contributed to a perverse new style of realist painting, called the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) that emerged in 1926. wikipedia

                                                                    Bertolt Brecht 1926                                                                         

                                                             Dr. Mayer -Hermann Berlin  1926
                                                                               

"Otto Dix created this painting titled The Seven Deadly Sins in 1933. It is an allegorical painting representing the political situation in Germany at the time, and was created immediately after the Nazis had Dix removed from his teaching position at the Dresden Art Academy.

                                                               The Seven Deadly Sins 1933
The figures are Avarice (an old, bent over hag clutching at money), Envy (who rides the back of Avarice), Sloth (the figure in the skeleton of Avarice, wears a mask of Adolf Hitler. As a matter of precaution, Dix did not paint in the Hitler mustache until after the War! The figure of Sloth is prominently featured because the Artist blamed the German people's lack of alarm and concern as a primary reason for the Nazis rise to power. This Oil and Tempera painting done on Wood shows Dix to have been one of Germany's grecostume who holds the scythe, and whose legs and arms form a rough swastika), Lust (who dances in a lascivious way behind Death, Anger (the horned Demon behind Death), Pride (the enormous head behind the scythe, whose ears are plugged and who has an anus for a mouth), and Gluttony (represented by the figure in the uppermost right corner who wears a cooking pot on his head). The figure of Envy, who rides the back of Avarice wears a mask of Adolf Hitler. As a matter of precaution, Dix did not paint in the Hitler mustache until after the war.. .Art for a Change by Mark Vallen

The Hitler Nazi regime destroyed many of Otto Dix’s paintings after the 1937 exhibition, ”Reflections on Decadence”. He must have been incredibly prolific. There are hundreds of images on the internet.

WAR/HELL: MASTER PRINTS

BY OTTO DIX AND MAX BECKMANN

Neue Galerie, third floor

1048 Fifth Ave. at 86th St.

Through September 26

Admission: $10

212-628-6200

http://www.neuegalerie.org/neuemain.html

Theme Thursday Blue

Blue is not a favorite color of mine; I seldom wear it, don't care for blue rooms and find it makes me, well, blue.  On the other hand, blue is the color of the ocean , it's the color of the sky, all of which I adore.

 A perfect blue. Yves Klein (1928-1962), Blue Monochrome, 1961, The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection. Monochrome painting was defined by Yves Klein as an "open window to freedom as the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of color." He synthesized his own blue, International Klein Blue and used this pigment in order to evoke his boundlessness vision of  the  world, being blue the color of infinity.

                                                  from Pigments Through the Ages

Theme Thursday's color memes have taught me a great deal.  In school, I studied Color Theory and Art History but the research I do for the memes is teaching me Color History thanks to the historical, religious and cultural significances. 

Blue is a primary color.  There are three:  red, yellow, blue.  Blue was not, however, the first color "perceived by man".  Red was. 

Ancient Greece had no word for blue.  According to Wikipedia, 

The modern English word blue comes from the Middle English word bleu or blwe which came from an Old French word  bleu of Germanic origin. In Germany, to be blue (blau sein) is to be drunk.  Drinking produces urine which was used to dye cloth blue with wood or indigo.

According to Pigments Through the Ages,  the first blue was made from a mineral called azurite. The Egyptians manufactured Egyptian blue but the process was lost. During the Middle Ages, blue came from azurite and ultramarine, an expensive mineral found in Afghanistan. During the 15th century, smalt was created by finely grinding up blue glass. Smalt was used for painting.The first pigment made by modern chemistry was a blue, Prussian blue, followed by cobalt blue and cerulean. 

Blue is the color of fidelity which is why brides are always encouraged to wear "something blue".  The mineral lapis lazuli possesses life giving powers according to ancient Egyptian beliefs.  Blue colored hippos were made to represent the life giving properties of the river Nile. 

The color blue is significant in modern art.  Pablo Picasso's Blue Period refers to a series of paintings in which the color blue dominates and which he painted between 1901 and 1904. The blue period is a marvelous expression of poetic subtlety and personal melancholy and contributes to the transition of Picasso's style from classicism to abstract art. 
from Pablo Picasso Blue Period

Life by Picasso

 1910                                                                        

                                                                                                           

Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc published an Almanac in 1912 named "Blauer Reiter" (Blue Rider). The Publication was preceded by two expositions of the famous group of artists based Munich with the same name. Both painters loved the color blue and horses. Franz Marc’s blue horses became quite famous. In the Romantic times the Blue Flower mirrored Man himself as part of Nature.  Franz Marc
reached far beyond this concept in Blue Horses

    The Large Blue Horses by Franz Marc 1912

  

In the Blue by Wasily Kandinsky 1925

Russian painter W. Kandinsky wrote in his famous book "On the Spiritual in Art" in 1910:
"The inclination of blue to depth is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is deeper. The darker the shade of the blue color, the stronger is its call into the Infinite, the stronger is the yearning for Purity and finally for the Transcendental."

                      

from Pigments through the Ages

                                                        

For more information on the meanings and uses of the color blue, visit the links provided in this post.  My favorite is "Pigments through the Ages".

Theme Thursday Candy

Boys will be girls?

My son (r) and two of his best friends Halloween 2003; still out for candy at age 15.  Imagine these festive trick or treaters at your door.  You'd give them candy just to get rid of them.

Theme Thursday Wrinkles

Wrinkles...everybody's got 'em; it depends to what degree.  How you feel about them is a different matter.

As a child of the Fifties and Sixties, I never thought I'd grow old.  Boomers have a Peter Pan complex.  It's an ongoing challenge to advertisers as they experiment with  marketing methods appealing to our vanity and sense of entitlement.  We should look young, feel young, act young.  And that's okay...up to a point.

Our parents raised us to believe we'd have a better life than they did during their Depression-era childhoods.  For the most part, we did;  as children, anyway.  I think we had, predominantly, decent upbringings in our respective suburbs, cities and rural areas.  Schools delivered better academic results in those decades;  expectations of manners, customs, rules and religious observances were more rigid.  I won't apologize for mythologizing my youth because it was so care free.  It is, perhaps, the reason we were surprised, angry and rebellious when our ideals proved to be so much fantasy, like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

Viet Nam is the key turning point for the Boomer generation.  It's the first deep wrinkle in our heretofore benign lives.  The involuntary draft; friends going to Viet Nam; some not returning.  Vets returning with shattered lives, shattered limbs, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and nobody to welcome them home.  Our country recognized the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State in April this year.  It is not a pleasant memory.  It's still raw.  It still resonates.

I ask myself why I feel entitlement with respect to my body and face?  After all, I did nothing to deserve them but I did spend many years working to maintain what I had by playing racquetball, tennis, jogging, etc.  It was fairly easy and I thought it would last.  But it didn't.   I hit my late forties and my body began to suffer as I, in a characteristically Boomer way said, "My body began to betray me".  I had one hip replacement, then the other.  One knee needed replacing and I stopped playing tennis.  I became depressed and angry.  I drank too much.  I bloated.  My face began to sag and get some wrinkles.  I became even more angry.  You see, I had taken it all for granted.

I see this in my peers.  We have this silly sense of entitlement to things we enjoyed so effortlessly as kids, teenagers, young adults.   We think it's supposed to last but nothing lasts, as Frost said so eloquently in his poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

My mother and grandmother believed in growing old gracefully.  I wasn't sure what that meant when I was younger but I have a sense of it now.  We need to like ourselves more, criticize less.  We need to feel good about getting up each day, rather like the little girl I posted on my other blog.  She has the answers and she's only four!  If you haven't see it, you should.  I have nothing against plastic surgery and, if I had a lot of money I might very well have my chin lifted.  But, that isn't going to happen so I'd better get comfortable with this face.

Will Rogers had some pithy comments on aging:

• Some  people try to turn back their odometers. Not me;  I want people to know 'why' I look this way.  I've traveled a long way, and some of the roads  weren't paved.

• You  know you are getting old when everything either  dries up or  leaks. 

• One  must wait until evening to see how splendid the  day has been.

• Being  young is beautiful, but being old is  comfortable.

Theme Thursday Pets

Rather than write about them, I'll show you my current dog pets and my recently deceased kitty, Maggie., the cat who died too young and broke my heart.  She was ten years old and passed away last December of undetermined cause.  My husband and I see her still, sleeping peacefully on our bed or slipping around a corner, just out of sight.  She was a real character and smart and fast and had a killer mentality when it came to critters.

Then, there are the dogs, Zoe and Dewey.  Zoe and Maggie came to us at the same time.  My husband the boys brought the girls home from the pound.  Zoe, at that time, was about 2 years old.  She was so cute, so sleek, so fast, we called her "Radial Zoe".  Wish I had a photo of her from that time but I do not. 

Dewey came to us via a friend.  He was about six months old, living with a biker, swam across the river to my girlfriend's property to get away.  She brought him to us and we took him in .  My younger son named him Dewey because he has big ears, like the youngest brother on "Malcolm in the Middle".  We've had Dewey about eight or nine years. 

Our dogs do everything together.  They are a pack, along with alpha dog, my husband.  They regularly hike and climb with my husband in the summer...

...and Winter.

Then, there's Aerial Dewey.  This is a real shot.  He was catching a frisbee but he looks like he's being blown backwards. 

Finally, there's fun with Photoshop. 

For more of Dewey's aerial antics, scroll to the bottom of my blog page.