"I become lost ..."

The Cezanne and Beyond exhibit was really wonderful. People told me I'd be more interested in the "and Beyond" part of the exhibit than I thought I would--I wanted to see Cezannes--and they were right.

There were several stellar Charles Demuth paintings there, including one of my favorites, of pears and an overturned bowl, and one I wasn't familiar with, of an orange tree branch, with fruit and flowers, that was heartbreakingingly beautiful. When I browsed the catalogue for the show, I went right to that Demuth, and, disappointingly, the color was off. (I bought a copy anyway.)

The Ellsworth Kelly and Mondrian pieces stood out for me too. In one Mondrian he took the blue-green ginger jar from Still Life with Apples and painted it alone amid a soft grid of his characteristic feathery lines. I like this approach: isolating one defining element.

Instrumental to seeing these paintings as a continuum was the way the show was hung, which was brilliant: each wall made the connections sing. One wall had a Cezanne still life with that chest of drawers he often used and a Jasper Johns canvas: two drawers with actual knobs, all painted with the short brushstrokes one associates with Cezanne, and in the gray-blue Cezanne used in his background.

There was a grouping of large, freestanding flat metal sculptures called "Bathers" by Picasso in the center of the floor. My friend Sue noted that at one point the guard was situated just so, and looked as though he might be a part of the group. It would've made a great photo!

The only dissapointment was that the Sansom Street Oyster House, to which we always decamp after an art exhibit, was closed for--wholly unnecessary and no doubt disastrous--renovations!

(11x15 sheet)

Some tries at this month's Virtual Sketch Date, in progress.
I was inspired by Jeanette at Illustrated Life to crop the reference photo, focusing tightly in on the rhododendron bud.

In the bottom left one I'm trying a technique I learned in my first watercolor class, at Cooper Union (my dad's alma mater): apply successive washes, allowing each to dry thoroughly, yellow through blue, floating the color everywhere that color appears, disregarding edges and objects. For example here the first wash covered everything but the violet buds; the second was, of quinacridone pink, covered everything but the leaves (although it occurs to me I should go in there and overglaze a couple of the leaves with the q pink).
what happens, ideally!, is you get some nice glowing glazes, but also some interesting edges where the glazes overlap, or don't!

Results due tomorrow.


I gather chrysanthemums at the eastern hedgerow
And silently gaze at the southern mountains.
The mountain air is beautiful in the sunset,
And the birds flocking together return home.
Among all these things is a real meaning,
Yet when I try to express it, I become lost in "no words."
--T'ao Ch'ien (fourth century)