Somewhat Wild

But Not Really

These posts are exercises in free association, spurred by one image as a starting point.

I've described the wild acres beyond our back yard in previous posts. Since there is no fence, it's sometimes hard to tell where the free will of nature ends and the struggle to impose our will on nature begins.

We get a lot of free-booter wild plants spreading throughout the back in the spring. I dubbed one variety I like very much as it blooms a wild Iris. The more I saw real Irises, the more I came to think this was not one. But I kept playing with that name -- Irish Rose, Iris Rose, Wild Iris Rose.

"Wild Iris Rose" ... free association and imagery began to form a young lady, well, perhaps not a "lady", but young, Irish and a little wild. I played with that theme for quite a while, but couldn't put Iris in the picture.

In the meantime, I thought Van Gogh's portraiture -- all line and color, "modernist" and rebellious while gorgeous in color -- and of course his iris paintings.

I kept coming back to that idea, over the months, each time I saw one of the faux-irises in the yard. But I still had no model for that moody lass.

Finally, as I was thumbing through Daughter's recent post of photos, there was Iris!

I am a shameless thief of Daughter's stuff, though I do work at it to make it my own.

I combined Van Gogh's Irises, a makeover of Daughter into a redhead (and a few other changes here and there), an industrial brick wall for a background, and there you have it: "Wild Iris Rose".

These things don't come for free, though.

As I looked over Vincent Van Gogh's output of work again for this painting, I had to admit to myself that it was his story that appeals as much or more than his art.

The poor, angst-ridden man who cut off his ear (actually, a lobe). Everyone "knows" that story.

Combine the story of struggle, illness, the exhilaration of revolution (Impressionism and Post-Impressionism), stir in elements of political correctness and it becomes very hard to say "But he doesn't draw very well. His color is brilliant, but many of his compositions are just plain clumsy."

Maybe it's aging. Maybe I'm becoming the crabby old fart who says things for effect.

Or maybe, at this late age, I'm beginning to admit to myself what I really think.

Going with the Flow

Boy, Hot Enough for You?!

Took a little road trip Out West to see Daughter a while back. Got on I-10 and headed west.

If you go far enough west, you can see remnants of the old Route 66. Sometimes it's on your left, other times on the right. Just over there.

A little sign of life clings to some of those strips of pavement. I recreated the scene above, "Oasis", from memory, of a restaurant out there on a stretch of old 66.

I was moving along that I-10 flow. There wasn't time to stop, so this is pretty much a whole-cloth image, capturing the feel of the moment and not necessarily the details.

There's something about traveling at 70+ mph for hours or even days that makes it hard to stop.

That momentum builds up and takes over the trip.

Now, when I look at that painting, I think of another trip taken even earlier with Daughter's grandfather. Gramps needed to go to California and I went along.

We put all our stuff in his Chevy El Camino and headed west from Tallahassee. Then stopped in Quincy (19 miles west of our starting point). A radiator hose was unclipped and got burned by engine heat. Ka-ching.

Hose fixed, we started west again.

We stopped for different engine or radiator problems two more times (ka-ching, ka-ching) and switched over to Highway 40 in Arizona. We finally got to Needles, on the eastern edge of California, crossing the Colorado River. Last water until the Pacific Ocean.

In between the Colorado and the Pacific lay the Mojave desert and the San Bernadino Mountains.

That radiator started acting up again when we attempted the rise outside Needles. The El Camino just couldn't make it to the top without the radiator boiling over.

I could spend a lot of time on this part of the story, but I won't.

Let's just say we decided to fill up on water and move out into the desert. And overheat. And stop. The engine and radiator would cool and we'd add water. Then get on the road again.

After 20-30 miles the engine would overhear again. Re-read the paragraph above.

We crossed the Mojave that way, 30 miles at a time. We went without a.c. to stretch the mileage.

At about the halfway point, we pulled into a chain/family sort of restaurant. Some entrepreneur always stakes out these halfway points. Think of the drive the staff has to make. The parking lot was full.

We got a booth and I noticed most patrons seemed red-faced, flush. And tired. The kids were lying on the booth benches. Neither Mom nor Dad nagged them to sit up straight. Waitresses kept the water coming.

We cooled it as long as we could, then climbed back in the saddle and moved out again.

That crossing lasted all day and we climbed the mountains in the setting sun. The car was able to go longer and longer without overheating. Then we headed downhill and on to our destination, Pomona. Glorious Pomona.

What a trip! We didn't die. Memories are made of this.

Lollipop Guild

Even Munchkins Grow Up Eventually

A minor theme of this post will be technique.

I often work from photos I've taken. I use my camera as my sketch pad and get details and lighting effects I could never fully capture if I were painting on the scene.

Anyone who has ever taken note of sunlight and shadows will have an understanding of how fast the day moves along.

Artists good at painting outdoors (en pleine aire, the French called it), have developed a quick start on their compositions as well as a good memory of how the light looked 15 minutes ago.

The sun moves on its arc that fast. Shadows have lengthened or shrunk, lightened or gotten darker. Colors all around are now slightly different. Perhaps not as sharp as they were when the work was started.

So I try to capture that moment with the camera. Then the fun, and the "sketching", begins.

Using the Photoshop computer graphics program I can change the composition to fit a desired canvas. I can remove unwanted details from the image or re-proportion elements within the composition. I can even alter the colors to better suit a desired palate. Bla bla bla.

Shop talk. Edging on boring. But this technology is a great tool for the preliminary work.

Just for the fun of it, I scanned an old black & white photo of a neighbor kid and me from wayyyyyyy back in the dawn of time and turned it into "Lollipop Guild", above.

That image is not a painting. It's a direct manipulation of the scanned print.

I worked it just like a painting or pastel drawing, shaping the contours and adding color.

To tell you the truth, the photo, probably taken by my mother with an old Kodak box camera, is of a time so long ago I really have no memory of the other boy. I doubt that he has a picture of me, so I probably have been erased from his world.

I don't know when the picture was taken. My parents have both passed away, so the only clue to the moment is the notation on the back of the photo.

This other kid and me, maybe three years old. Best buddies for the moment.

Maybe it's Spring. It's in Canada. That small town.

A rare sunny day. The image is cropped closer than the photo. We were wearing wool shorts and long stockings. Fashions have changed for three-year-old boys.

You see, I can manipulate the heck out of that image, but nothing will ever bring back that moment. The world outside the frame of that image is gone forever. You can't Google it or book a flight to it.

You either have to have a good memory, or an old black & white photo.

And hope someone made notes on the back as well.