Rhythm and Hues: Songs of Home

   Rhythm and Hues is a promising art show title for the Belmont Gallery of Art. I have four songs that inspired paintings: Home on the Range, Don't Fence Me In, You Are My Sunshine and Take Me Out to the Ballgame!  I can enter only 3 paintings, but I am not sure which I will choose. You can match the titles to the paintings.

      Don't Fence Me In:  A Southwestern lamentation: the eclectic cacophony of civilization and childhood drowning out "the wide open country that I love." The painting is built on a map of the Texas Panhandle.
    Take Me Out to the Ballgame: Next door neighbor, Lloyd, now a young man,was a child surrounded by music of his mother and grandmother, cello and piano performers and teachers. Lloyd was also a Red Sox fan. The image of his dutifully practicing the cello with his mind on the baseball field struck the right note of harmony and contrast.
     Home on the Range: The Texas Panhandle of my memory: a melody simple and uncomplicated but rich in mirage.
     You Are My Sunshine: As if there is insufficient sunshine in the Western plains, the ubiquitous sunflower adds its own voice.
(Click on paintings to enlarge)

     In the meantime, I have been giving thought to why so many people are more impassioned to paint all the time than I am. I think it is because they are busy doing it, making discoveries and having surprises which are gifts that keep giving. One loses religion, family, government, writing and art if one is not doing it full time.I am determined to get busier drawing, painting and printing to feel the passion again. At least I am seeing art and reading about it. I look forward to the MFA pastel show to color passionately again.


"One ought, every day, to hear a little song, read a good poem, sip a tasty wine,

see a fine picture, and if possible, to speak a few reasonable words."
                                          -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1836)

My Art Month while the sun shines

     The sun is out and the grandchildren are off at camp after year- end concerts, graduation and birthdays. I still found time to get Joe to frame the Kitchen Still Life for the CAA Still Life: Captured Moments show in Harvard Square.Unfinished, the painting was hanging in the laundry room with other circular activity, a perfect fit. Today I saw it hanging in the big entrance hall at University Place, minus a label. The reception is July 12. I like it there!

        Settling in, my frame-making husband every day finds time to mow through books between plantings in the garden. His book club got him back to reading ravenously.I also am picking up some more books to research and read.I am excitedly awaiting the July 10 release of Van Gogh and Japan which I have heard so much about from Joyce whom I met at an Apple Procreate class. She is 85 and just flew to Amsterdam for 3 days to see the show about the major influence of the Japanese prints in Van Gogh's development in Arles.Research that show!

      In the meantime, I have started on Modernists & Mavericks by Martin Gayford and am really enjoying it. He talks about the London Painters whose work I know and what they were thinking and doing as they struggled to paint. Provocative. Just for fun, I wanted to read Old in Art School by Nell Painter just because she did later what I did at age 50, take off for art school. I am reading several others at the same time.

      I continue to add to my art book collection much of which I lost with the fire. A local library is a good source, in that Friends of the Library donate books which can be bought for special prices. This benefits scavenger me and the library.There are always surprise discoveries. I read between evening efforts  to salvage that painting of the Southwest I talked about last month. Belmont Gallery of Art  has an upcoming show of paintings inspired by music: Rhythm and Hues.I hope to enter three paintings. Ever hopeful.