Revisions

Well, I've done it. I understand the great masters sometimes did it. Very possibly my Aunt La Te Da, who generally painted blue swans with rhinestone eyes, did it. So, then, it's universal.

What?

Reworking an older painting.

The thing is, I really loved the portrait in the original painting. It was done, in fact, as a sample of a dog portrait for sales purposes. And it is of my own little dog, Brownie, aka Lady Bronwen Marbella McGee, at her favorite place, South Milton Sands beach.

As it happens, Delacroix repainted the background of his 1824 painting, Massacre de Scio, after seeing how Constable painted backgrounds. Fair enough.

Massacre de Scio, Delacroix,1824 (Wikipedia)

And, I have repainted the background of Brownie, because I have decided the painting was a perfect candidate to morph into a naif.

I have liked naifs since I first saw a great number of them in Paris eons ago. But with all the art training I've had, it seemed silly to me not to use the techniques and knowledge imparted to me by the modern masters who taught at The Art Students League of New York, where I studied, and which I also picked up by modeling for Silvermine Guild in Connecticut and The New School's art classes in NYC.

But I came to a conclusion recently: Unless one is doing angry paintings, perhaps all other paintings--except portraits--are too ephemeral in today's world to be meaningful. In a world where anyone can Photoshop any assortment of elements into something else and call it art. But naifs--primitives--are a bit different. They are more honestly the reaction of an artist to a place, person, event or even idea than most things, I think. And a reaction, to be valid, must simply BE, it need not be expressed in a particular manner.

That having been said, primitives are, indeed, very mannerist. They would have to be, as the artist is not only expressing his or her reaction, but is also expressing it in a way completely individual to that person, simply because that person has not been trained, taught to think of line in a particular way, or of colour in a particular way, or composition, or anything. 

Even trained artists will express as themselves. My nude drawings are nothing like the turgid, Renaissance-like work of my first tutor, Gustave Rehberger. (I had an abortive first attempt at studying at the Art Students League. I unwittingly signed up for Rehberger's class, and was so terrified of him that I dropped out in less than a month. Truly, his raw power distressed my soul and even years later, when I would happen to pass him while walking on 57th Street, I would quake inside myself and cross the street.)

Nor are they like the precise anatomical work of Robert Beverly Hale. Nor yet like the more commercial style of D'Alessio...or any of my other teachers.

They are like me.

BUT  they do depend on what I learned at the Art Students League and elsewhere.

The primitives I have painted require that I forget all that and simply go to the subject itself, choose colors along the lines of what pleases me or what I think might make the painting please viewers or both. And, as it happens, viewers who can't spend multiple thousands for artwork for their homes, it seems to me, are generally not interested in difficult works, or works that one needs to have read all of Germany's modern authors to understand, or that will only look well in a Philip Johnson-designed minimalist house.

They are interested in colourful work that makes them happy, reminds them of good times, nice places, swell food, cute doggies, happy children. 

I decided, first and foremost, that after 40 years working mainly as a journalist--and even now, penning rants about current political conditions in the US and the EU because although it's a dirty job, someone has to do it--I needed more HAPPY in my life.

I'm not going to disavow my education and cease doing work in other genres. But I think the way to get happy is by painting some primitives. With luck, others will like them, too.

Brownie's Excellent Beach Adventure, copyright Laura Harrison McBride 2013

Copyright Laura Harrison McBride 2013

Philistines abound; avoid their cheap advice at all costs

The Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur (1852) (Wiki Commons) This picture is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of New York: I spent hours of my youth sitting entranced before it, and knowing the story of Rosa Bonheur who refused to do needlework to become a painter instead.

NOTE:  If you are having trouble reading this, please click here. Blogger seems to have issues today.

I'm fairly certain I'm a feminist. I don't, however, think I would call myself a feminist; I think I would call myself a progressive pragmatic humanist. Which means? That I believe in humanist ideals for all people, including women, but we are not there yet. Feminism implies too much of an Us v. Them mentality for my taste. And I believe that the entire world will benefit when the entire world is equally valued, equally paid and when the innate characteristics of all sorts of people are equally valued.

This morning, viewing a slide show that accompanied the story "23 things every woman should stop doing," on Huffington Post, I noticed they had recommended the book Get To Work...And Get A Life, Before It's Too Late by Linda R. Hirshman.

Included in Hirshman's "strategic plan for women" was the following advice: "don't study art."

I am appalled. What was this woman thinking? Or not thinking. Is it really better to become an accountant for the potential of big money when your heart says to be a painter? Will one, in fact, make big money if one's heart is not in it? And if one does make a relative fortune despite a lukewarm attitude toward the work itself, what happens after 40 years of that? Does one then curl up and die immediately of regret, having beaten one's muse into an early grave? Maybe trading passion for the pocketbook explains all the sour old bats one meets. 

Some of us go ahead and paint--forty years later--because we have a nest egg or a working spouse and don't need to scrimp and save through retirement. But some, having squandered their youth and strength rushing down paths they really dislike, are simply locked out, unable to raise either the blood pressure or financing to follow their passion, their dream. 

How sad. I can tell you first-hand that living a life for a paycheck--even a paycheck achieved by relatively satisfying work--is no substitute for expressing the life one wants, regardless of the size of the paycheck. Waiting 40 years to do what one loves is damaging, not only to one's soul, but to the world deprived of whatever in one's heart was yearning to be free.

A Baby Boomer searches for life

My first love was theatre. But my father talked me out of studying it at university, or maybe it's more as if he was so frightened that I'd get ahead by lying down, as it were, that his disapproval of the whole idea influenced me. So I decided I would be a writer instead. It never occurred to me, not even at university, that I could work in theatre without being an actress which did, in fact, bore me to tears. I loathed learning lines, and if there was ever a show I was in during my youth in which I didn't do a bit of improv because I hadn't learned my lines, I don't know about it.

So, writing then. I went to journalism grad school. I became a journalist, a pretty good one. I made a good living for 35 years or so. But I was never, ever happy about it. Firstly,

I'm an introvert, and it took a bit of self-flagellation to get me to pick up the phone. Eventually, though, I got stuck in and had quite a bit of fun asking politicians questions they didn't like, even face to face. One of my favorite moments was asking one such question of the Secretary of State of the state of Tennessee; he saw a female journalist and expected fluff. HAH! The look on his face was almost worth the price of admission.

Maybe that's what kept me at it, the fact that I was having a good time making a decent living in what is still, I hasten to add, a man's world. It is the rare female journalist who gets the kudos. But I digress.

Following yet ANOTHER wrong path

Several years into that career, my need to express demanded to be let out of its cage. I started by going to the New York School of Interior Design. I like nice houses. I thought if I did that, it would be a REAL profession, with real money...etc. And a chance to...dare I believe it?...dabble in art. Of course, the fact that I aced the colour course without actually waking up and the instructor was a horrific witch and endured the chatter of dingbats throughout the period furniture lectures...well, it was a non-starter.

Finally, I gave in. I went to the Art Students League of New York for real lessons in real drawing and painting with real instructors, so real that they had to be working artists, well represented, even to teach there. 

And I never looked back.

I loved art school. I really did. So many interesting people, aside from the chance to actually learn how it's done. But I failed again to switch horses. I made a small attempt when I lived in Florida to start a gallery for my own work and a friend's, a former architect who had become a watercolourist in his retirement. But I depended on my freelance writing income to support it...and a major client went belly up. End of experiment.

Hard to get stuck in when one has been dulled for 40 years...

So...here it is...I am retired from journalism, though you'd never know it to see my byline all over the place, but now I write only what I want, not only what is paid for as I did before.

I'm having a hard time getting stuck into a career in art; my career should be over, after all. I should be doing nothing but what I want and traveling. I've paid the piper, paid my dues in several wrong professions. I'm getting, well, old if the truth be told. (Reference the line above about raising the blood pressure and the cash to finally paint, sculpt or whatever later in life.)

Still, I have begun doing what I want. I am painting, although the usual socially/culturally influenced negativity that afflicts most women puts the brakes on my forward movement more often than I would like. (Must work on that.)

But worse, I spent an entire life denying myself what I wanted to do: art. Theatre, art, or even writing poetry (something else that seems to have taken on its own life all of a sudden.) I was a journeyman journalist making a good income writing about stuff that seemed to be useful, and that sometimes I even enjoyed, for instance, the years when I was a theatre reviewer. But it didn't feed my soul. It fed my horse, and my horse fed my soul. But then, I view riding a horse over fences as kinetic art; indeed, that's exactly what I was doing, and doing well when I managed to win a ribbon.

All this chequered past makes it all the harder to begin now, knowing I cannot in this lifetime achieve the mastery of a Rembrandt, the temporal fame of a Basquiat or Hockney, the money of a Warhol.

I would like to meet Linda R. Hirshman and possibly punch her right in the nose. How dare she tell women not to pursue their passion! How dare she assume for others that having work that pays well is all a good life is about. I think money is the least a good life is about. I'd tell her to get a life before it's too late, but I doubt she'd hear me. Apparently, the demands of a dying culture are sufficient for her: work, save, put off anything that makes your soul sing. Get a life, you know, one of those cookie-cutter things one can find on TV.

It's bullshit, her statement. And it needs to be put in a paper bag and set afire on her front steps so she gets the full benefit of the stench of her soul-deadening plan for women. I've got a few choice words for the editors of HuffPo, as well.

 

Muse on the ropes. Again. Plus Sarin.

My Muse, pondering (Laura Harrison McBride, 2012)

A few weeks ago, I had a moribund muse, half killed by months of visitors and no opportunity to let her exercise either her verbal or visual powers, to express her needs for truth or beauty or both.

And then, freedom. An empty house. A house with cleaning needing to be done, laundry needing to be washed, food needing to be cooked, husband needing to be looked after, dog needing to be groomed and cat needing to be waited on hand and foot. (Cat lovers will know that the last part is the only essential one.)

Still, I made a start at feeding my muse with things she needs and enjoys.

And then came Syria.

Who cares? Well. Let it be known that I am not a political animal. When I wrote for newspapers and magazines, I steered clear of politics. I wrote features and reviews.

Did I mention Syria popped up?

The Rime of the Aging Painter

Segway again. Last weekend, on our way back from Wells, Simon and I stopped at Coleridge Cottage, and there the subject of the Romantic poets returned to my consciousness. It would be fair to note here that, although I double majored in English Lit. and Theatre at university, I was a casual student at best. Mostly. I didn't give a rat's ass about most subjects and saw no reason at all that the world would be better or worse off if I got a wonderful grade in the work as opposed to an acceptable one. I had already figured out that employers didn't really care as long as you had a sheepskin from someplace, and I didn't have any intention of going to grad school. The B.A. was fine; M.A.? Why? I didn't plan to teach. I planned to write. Not poetry; journalism. In aid of which I did, in fact, go to grad school. 

Anyway, for reasons only my spirit could enumerate, I was drawn to the Romantic poets, much as, I suppose, I've been drawn to the Impressionist painters. So, there it was, the Big Class in Romantic poetry. The final exam was being shown 50 snippets of poems by the major and minor Romantic poets--minor works we had not studied--and determining who wrote each and why. I lost only two points out of a hundred on that test. And for years, although I never cracked it again, I dragged around a huge academic volume of the Romantic poets. And now I can't find it. Somewhere between Maryland, USA and Cornwall, UK, it got dumped-lost-given away-something.

But I found, in talking to the docent at Coleridge Cottage, that I still recall an amazing amount of stuff about those poets, 45 years later. That the Romantic poets were all political animals, that Coleridge was an activist who was often regarded by the authorities as a danger to decent society. My memory banks were pleased, and transferred the resurrected knowledge to my conscious brain; it's OK, then, to be a poet and an activist.

Truth will out

Well before last weekend, I had begun writing poetry that was rather well-received, I thought, on Glipho. I was actually quite pleased with that, if not quite as pleased as I would be for a similar reception to my paintings. I suspect my muse has wanted to write poetry for decades, but her journalist overseer prevented it.

Unfortunately, since the day it became clear that the United States meant to bomb another sovereign state because it is annoying America's rich folk and bankers, my muse has gone to ground. And the journalist has usurped her time.

I've renounced my US citizenship. I don't live in the US or Syria, and have no plans to go to either place, ever. So neither I nor my muse should really not give a rat's ass, especially since Labour made the UK do the right thing.

But I was planning to go to Cyprus in October. It has been three years since we last were there, so, during the upheavals of the summer, I decided a good dose of sun, sand and antiquities would restore my muse, and me, to health. Booked it...and these days, booking is the same as paying. No longer can one make any changes to flights, even for a fee. If we don't go, we just lose the entire fare. BUT...and it's a significant but...I have no intention of being a schnook and canceling. I simply won't show up for the flight as the cost to me will be the same, and I might thus prevent the greedy airline (in this case, one that begins with T) selling our seats for full stroke, twice. They MIGHT get takers at the gate...but probably not. It seems to me this ought to become a movement, in fact, among airline customers. If you can't go, don't show. Snappy, yes?

Common sense dictates...maybe

I doubt that I will go. I need to gin out a few more paintings to be juried so that I might join an artists' group that I hope will have me. 

I'm tired, though. Tired enough to run my mouth about all the crap the US is perpetrating on the world now. I'm feeling good about Labour turning off Cameron's plans for supporting Uncle Sod-All, but feeling bad about watching Obama follow the example of that most horrific of US presidents, George W. Bush. Up to and including lies, in this case, pressing the air strike issue with not one shred of proof that any Sarin attack happened, never mind that it was by Assad. As one commentator said, why would Assad do it? He was winning against the insurgents (American-backed, we understand), and gassing his own citizens certainly wouldn't help him win their hearts and minds.

But never mind. I have a muse to resurrect. Darned if I know how, though. I'm having a hard time concentrating on cleaning brushed, never mind using them.

And then there's this: If I am ever even tempted to paint on a canvas board again, might someone please strike me hard with their open palm? Nasty stuff, that. Did it for cheapness, as I meant only to sell copies of the original. Never again. My muse is worth canvas with a bit of life, after all, or how will she know when she's moving in the right direction?

How do you spell that?

Finally.

Finallyfinallyfinallyfinallyfinally.

When one is getting over an illness, one does first that which comes most naturally. When it is a malady of the soul caused by the logistics of life (that is, having houseguests all summer, which is not conducive to artsy thinking or doing), then one works one's way back by doing that for which the muscles of body or soul or both are most easily resurrected.

In my case, it was writing, and particularly, it was writing journalism, columns on the vicissitudes of modern life. I was a journalist for 40 years, after all, and only a part-time artist and equestrienne during that time.

So I dumped a tirade about the reprehensible current mayor of my birthplace (Michael Bloomberg of NYC) into cyberspace. Ah. Felt pretty good. (It would feel better to write a paean to the late Ed Koch, the best mayor of NYC there ever was...but the subject isn't "sexy." No one suffered, as New Yorkers are suffering now.)

Today, finally, a poem escaped me. It needed to. And it meant I had at least partly processed the upsetting events of last week, horrific environmental damage on a small scale by a truly reprehensible old geezer who lives next door and destroyed our common hedgerow.

And I worked a bit on two paintings.

I am turning a portrait of my dog into a primitive.

And, I have begun a painting of two dogs who frequent a pub in Gwithian and, as it happens, sit on bar stools covered with doggie-paw-print fabric. They are real dogs; I ate lunch with them one day in early spring.

Late discovery

I have suddenly discovered primitives. I do recall having seen a gallery devoted to Naifs in Paris 35 years ago. As I recall, the palette of most artists shown was either blue or green. And there were a lot of cats.

But I couldn't recall seeing many more naive paintings until I picked up a book including works by members of The Association of British Naive Artists during a visit to Penlee House, Penzance, last summer.

And then I recalled--doh!--a piece in my own collection. A small painting, about 6 inches by 9 inches, that I bought in Paris about 35 years ago, give or take. Possibly on the same visit in which I saw the gallery, possibly not. Back then, I went to Paris whenever the spirit moved me AND I had the wherewithal at the same time. It didn't happen all that often, not half often enough.

Anyway, I carried the little painting around unframed for a while, quite a while, while I ended a marriage and made a couple of long-distance moves. Plus, I had a horse to buy; I couldn't afford framing. But eventually, the little painting got framed. And since then, it has always hung in my kitchen. Not the ideal place for a painting, I suspect, but it is done in acrylics, so probably a bit less difficult to ruin than oils.

And I love it. Not for the subject matter. Not for the colour. Not for the style. Not for the artist whose name I haven't the foggiest idea of, although I recall he was a big guy, didn't speak much, and had hung his paintings on the fence around a church on Boulevard St. Germain. And I think I paid about 15 bucks for it, at whatever American money was exchanging for with francs back then.

What I love about it is this: Charcuterie is misspelled as Charcutrie.

Despite my almost obsessional demand that English should be written correctly, whether English English, American English or even pidgin English, all according to its own rules, the fact that charcuterie was misspelled said something to me.

It said that art was art and didn't really need to represent anything in a standard manner. Probably, the artist was simply a lousy speller. Why not? He was studying art, not French....if he was French. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe that's why he didn't speak much, because we tourists wouldn't want to buy art on the street in Paris created by an English guy, or a German or Italian or even an American in Paris, no matter how cheap the art or how charming the art or the artist. Maybe he was a foreigner and that's why he misspelled that common French word.

A feast of possibilities

So, there it hangs in my kitchen among the pots and pans reminding me as I create our meals that I can create other stuff, too. Stuff that doesn't depend on years and years of study, as my journalism and horse-showing lives did. I did study art, though, because that's the way I'm made, with a penchant to find out HOW things are done and to have the best instruction I can find. But I think, now, I might forget those studies, the magic of Robert Beverly Hale's anatomical drawing instruction et al, and do a little naif painting myself. It's happy, and lord knows happy would be good both in the big world and my little one at the moment.

But I don't think I'll have a green or blue palette; so far, both paintings seem to be a little red- and orange-heavy...but who knows? I still do love oils far more than acrylics. So, after a little waiting, and I can paint over it, change the palette if I feel like it, and maybe even misspell a common Englesh wurd.

A sprinking of fairy dust

 George Bernard Shaw's writing desk in his writing hut in the garden at his home, Shaw's Corner.

 

This morning, I read an article in The Author, the publication of The Society of Authors, titled "Payments in the digital age."

My first reaction was, "What payments?" As an author, I did pretty well from 1975 until 1997 out of writing non-fiction books for major publishers such as Simon & Schuster. I didn't write blockbusters; I wrote travel and business books under a couple of pen names. The books reached a modest audience, and I'm still getting small royalties from some of them. (There were 14 books in all.)

And then, the internet began to erode the income of virtually all professional writers except big-book novelists. I think my last decent contract was in 2000, for The Complete Idiot's Guide to Natural Disasters. Thank goodness writing the thing was fun, because the advance was a few grand less than the same publisher had paid me in 1999 to write The Unofficial Guide to Surviving Y2K and Beyond. That book got one stunning review; it said it was the only balanced report on the subject, and so it was. Of course, that's because I was a journalist, not a fear-monger like those nuts Gary North and Edward Yourdon. As I read it, North is a bona fide right-wing whacko, a nut who managed to turn his religious zeal into a humongous mess for the rest of us and profit for himself into the bargain, and Yourdon is a bona fide computer dude who saw the main chance by setting the rest of us on edge for a couple of years by convincing us that cyberspace was going to wreck our world.

So, anyway, I had a contract, so I began the research. As it turned out, there never really was a Y2K problem. An independent IT consultant in Columbia, MD, told me (paraphrase) during my research: "Your car has chips in it, sure. But the car doesn't really care what the date is--except maybe the one in the clock--and were not designed to melt down at midnight in 2000."

So, I told the truth. No problem. And I was right. Which ultimately sold very, very few books. The publisher, thankfully, stood behind me when I presented 400 pages of my findings, as I had a track record for accuracy. Still, none of us made much money. North and Yourdon, however, were sitting pretty. And today Yourdon, at least, doesn't even acknowledge the useless brouhaha he started. His website doesn't mention his involvement--nay, his masterminding--of the Y2K debacle, and he's still being paid lots of money as an expert witness on IT matters, apparently.

Which just goes to show the importance of fairy dust.

What is fairy dust? It is the ineffable something writers sprinkle over the very same words that might be turned out by a computer in the next generation of cyberspace. Indeed, Pearson publishers have already gone to work-for-hire contracts rather than royalty deals as often as they can, apparently, so that the writer--the sprinkler of fairy dust--will not profit nearly to the same percentage as the publisher will. (Yes, that was always true, but it's a matter of balance.) Next, according to Steve Ellsworth, in the article cited above, the publishers will attempt to cut out the writer completely, even (or maybe especially) those like Ellsworth who write ESL books (English as a second language). Yes, a computer could probably do that. I use the computer now to translate French sites for me on occasion, in fact. I get the information I need, but it is hardly deathless prose.

Ellsworth believes that if computerization of ESL books happens--and there are already novel-writing software programs out there, for crying out loud, so ESL should be easy--the fairy dust will disappear. While there isn't much fairy dust in ESL, and the fairy dust used by North and Yourdon was suspect, I think the fairy dust is what convinced people there was a Y2K problem, but also kept me employed all those years, churning out journalism--accurate journalism--but with a very human(e) face. And it doubtless adds to the success of Ellsworth's books, since he writes accessible and even perhaps deathless prose in teaching English because he is not a machine.

I love the fairy dust. I love it when I read it; I love it when I write it. I do not want HAL to attempt fairy dust. It would sicken me. It might never get things so wrong as did North and Yourdon because of its computer accuracy and lack of fairy dust. But it wouldn't mean much either. Who could laugh or cry or even be amused or aggravated by the bits and bytes that some hunk of silica turned into words?

I can tell you one thing: I'm glad my body of work when I moved to the UK four years ago was sufficient for me to gain membership in The Society of Authors. It's a great organization, pursuing income and rights for writers and offering certain perks every fairy dust producer deserves: lodging at The New Cavendish Club and the Goodenough Club in central London at special rates, membership in The Poets' Society Cafe, and discounts at Specsavers, all the better to keep that fairy dust coming during advancing years. And more.

I've been concentrating on the painting recently, but perhaps Ellsworth's article will draw me back to writing, if only to add one more writer's hand in staving off the introduction of HAL WRITER. Perhaps it will make a difference,  one more writer  toiling with pen and ink...or, in my case, Microsoft Bloody Word.