These guys had a beautiful day to play and gathered a sizable crowd for their street performance. The washboard was very interesting. I didn’t know you could find those things around anymore. It went nicely with the banjo.
Weekly Photo Challenge–Street Life
Yo-Yo Ma and Lance Corporal Timothy Donley perform A Wide River to Cross in this video from MusiCorps founder Arthur Bloom and the Aspen Institute. In the second video, Lance Corporal Donley explains how music, Sing for Hope and the MusiCorps group has helped him put his life back together. In the final video, Yo-Yo Ma and Lance Corporal Donley perform America, the Beautiful.
This rolling bar has patrons pedaling around the streets of Nashville while drinking themselves into oblivion. I don’t think the guy on the back is pulling his weight in the first pic. The others don’t seem to notice. Maybe they’ve had too much already! I hope the bartender is keeping them on the road in a straight line! The second group doesn’t look so far gone yet.
Weekly Photo Challenge–Street Life
The Cherry Trees are blooming all around Nashville and today the weather is beautiful. Its time to go out and play after the long cold winter we have had this year. An uninvited guest made an appearance in a couple of these shots. He must be ready to go out and play too!
This old building is crumbling and in disrepair but has so much more beauty and character than its sleek, glassy newer neighbor. The street life remaining for this beautiful building is probably very short. Someone will likely soon knock it down to put up another sleek, glassy characterless tower.
Van Gogh’s energy, so evident in all his work, is not as easy to emulate as one might think. Follow the Master Forger as he helps three artists try to capture Van Gogh’s energy in self portraits. My first attempt at painting was a go at emulating Van Gogh. While the emulation was not so successful, a love of the incredible energy of Van Gogh’s painting style sparked the passion to keep painting.
“A good painter needs only three colors, black, white and red.” Titian (from The Painter’s Keys)
Older than Ultramarine from Lapis Lazuli, probably as old as ivory Black, the warm orange-red known as Vermilion has ancient roots. From Chinese laquerware to the villas of Pompeii to illuminated manuscripts and more, Vermilion was the red anchor of artist’s palettes up to the nineteenth century where it was replaced by the less toxic cadmium red. Other less expensive reds were made from clay and similar “earth” sources but these lacked the depth, richness and opaqueness of Vermilion. Vermilion was the red favored by Titian.
The mineral cinnabar, primarily derived from mines in Spain has long been the main source of true Vermilion. The breakdown of cinnabar reveals the main component as the highly toxic mercury. Despite the toxicity, Vermilion remained the red
of choice for artists who could afford it, for centuries. Vermillion is also used in the ceremonies and symbolism of several major religions. Today’s Vermilions are entirely synthetic without a trace of mercury.
Vermilion is so named from its similarity to a red dye made from an insect, kermes vermilio. Other sources claim the name Vermilion is from the Latin word, vermiculus, for the small worm known as vermis, also used for red dye. Maybe the worm, vermis, is actually the insect kermes verilio. It could possibly be a wormy, red insect used for the dye. Whether named for the vermis worm or the buggy verilio, Vermilion, the paint, was still made from the expensive, highly toxic, mercury-laden mineral, cinnabar.
Why couldn’t all those brilliant medieval Illuminated manuscript artists conceive of a way to make paint from the wormy, red insect dye instead of the highly toxic expensive mineral? Maybe they weren’t all that illuminated, after all. Its probably best to stick with Cadmium Red and avoid wormy, red insects altogether.
“The man who follows a crowd will never be followed by a crowd.” R.S. Donnell (from The Painter’s Keys)
The world is full of quotes about different drummers and roads less traveled, not following the crowd and so on. Who are these different drummers, these solitary travelers? They are the ones who get things done, who see different horizons. They are the creative people, the artists, the inventors, the innovators, musicians, actors, dancers, writers, and photographers. How do they break from the crowd to seek the solitary path?
It takes courage to listen to the creative heart. Hanging with the crowd never gets to the road less traveled. That noisy crowd obliterates the sound of the different drummer, obscures the horizon. The creative heart longs to be heard but never raises its voice. It quietly continues to whisper, “create, create” hoping to be heard. The creative heart is polite, never speaking over the crowd. The only way to hear the creative heart is to stop moving and actively listen.
Breaking away from the crowd takes strength, as well as courage. The crowd always fights to stay intact. As soon as one starts to separate, the crowd moves in threatening to bowl right over the upstart. To gain freedom will require a bold move, a quick sharp slice through middle of the pack. Once in the clear of the cacophony, the heart can breathe, its whisper can be heard. Those with the courage to listen will find the path. To do anything less is to suffocate.
“All has not been said and never will be.” Samuel Beckett (from The Painter’s Keys)
Does originality and imagination require an artwork be cut from a whole new cloth or is it simply to look from a fresh angle? The push to constantly startle the viewer has led art further and further out on a limb to the point of barely hanging onto to anything that can actually be defined as art. Calling a pile of sticks or a stack of paper, “art” stretches the definition so far that the result has been the dilution of ability to appreciate the originality and imagination of the realist painter. This push for startling novelty has led to a confusion of what is imaginative and original in art.
If an artist takes a subject such as trees and creates paintings depicting a certain aspect of these particular trees, does it require imagination? Suppose you walk by those trees everyday but have not noticed the intricacies of the bark or the root system, or maybe the color until that artist’s painting called your attention to the detail. Suddenly, you are seeing that tree in an entirely different way. Could that painting not be called imaginative, if it has spurred a new look at an otherwise mundane subject? Did it not require an artist’s imagination to see something in that tree that may have otherwise not been seen?
The work of the non-fiction writer, likewise, requires the imagination and originality of the author as much as the writer of fiction. There are few constraints on the fiction writer, who is free to go in any direction. But the writer of non-fiction must find a new and different way of saying what has already been said. Otherwise why read it? The same is true of the realist artist. If the subject does not give a new look at an old subject, why look? The non-fiction artist, like the non-fiction writer, reveals a way of seeing a subject that has not been seen before. To paraphrase the opening quote, “All has not been seen and never will be.” It takes imagination to see that.
Note: This topic was inspired by a comment conversation with Margaret Rose Stringer, author of And Then Like my Dreams. Click on the links for a wonderful book and blog!
The Artist’s Portfolio Magazine is featuring an exhibit of “non-fiction art” by Carla Nano. Follow the link to Nano’s beautiful work.
