Doctor HP Flowers

STRANDED?

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Puzzled?
Mystified?
Perplexed?
Baffled?
Confused?
Bewildered?
Bamboozled?

Then, think outside the cinder block…

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© r0721-16  Stranded
White Sulphur Springs, Wva
Greenbrier, County
Monday 6 June 1994

Jules Olitski
One Time (1964)

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A Message from the Sower

     My father planted a vegetable garden each year, a real necessity in those days for country folk of modest means.  And, he seemed compelled to expand its borders each year making it bigger and bigger exceeding the plot shown above several times over.  (Or so it seemed to me.)  "Why does he keep doing this," questioned the voice of disbelief from my adolescent sense of rationality.  With each annual growth ring I could see my play time shrinking below reasonable levels.  In fairness to him, even though certain tasks like potato planting or pole bean staking required additional hands, he seldom insisted that I forego play for garden chores.  Which, of course, was fine with me at the time.  Over the years, however, when confronted by reminders like this gardener, I feel a nagging twinge of guilt admitting that I fell short and could have helped him a lot more with little sacrifice.  A permanent message from the sower.








© d080423-019  Gardner with Buttercups
  Overton County, Tennessee
  Wednesday 23 April 2008

Above:  Vincent Van Gogh,  Sower with Setting Sun,  1888.


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Life Leaving the Land

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     As I am occasionally wont to repine the loss of an earlier rural way of life, one-room schools, general stores, the church in the glen each swept away by storms of change, idyllic landscapes remodeled, life leaving the land, I was somewhat comforted to hear about the great agrarian debates fomented in mid 1700s England - aggressive land grabs amassing huge, but 'efficient', farms displacing the innocent and converting peasants to a migrating class in the process.
     Of all places, I discovered this deja vu while studying the works of Thomas Gainsborough (remember Blue Boy) who promoted his hustle to great wealth and fame by painting equally famous full length (more expen$ive) portraits of royalty and the nouveau rich.  When painting for fun, however, his favorite subjects were rural landscapes and the idyllic peasant life.  These never sold; nonetheless, his empathy for the displaced farmers was genuine.  Here's a potent example called Evening Landscape with Peasants Returning from Market, circa 1770, 47" x 57".  This elegy shows peasants 'returning from market' thereby lamenting the fact that they no longer live from the land.  Click here.

    

© r1117-37  The Displaced
  Clarksville, Georgia
  Habersham County, County
  Sunday 30 July 2000

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Thru the Uprights

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     To the chagrin of trusting minions - by the thousands, by the millions - the upstart New York Giants, camouflaged and living off the land, treated the unwary New England Patriots to a stunning dose of hyper reality and plastered their hard nosed street cred on headlines around the world.
     Jewish artist Yaacov Agam, pioneer of kinetic art, seems to have anticipated this apotheosis with this 4-dimensional, motile set of abstract uprights surmountable only by Ely's easy going magic.

    

Homage to Einstein
Yaacov Agam, 1980

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Kanbara - Evening Snow

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     Japanese woodblock landscape prints take my breath away.  They became popular in the early 1800s as the Japanese began to have some leisure time and enough pocket change to travel.  Landscape prints usually featured familiar sights along tourist routes or pilgrimage destinations.  They were printed in editions of several thousand and sold in shops along the way like postcards.  The really interesting thing is that woodblock prints were highly regarded in Europe and America and exerted a major influence on western art.  Yet, they were under appreciated in Japan and regarded more like, well, postcards.
     This evening scene was designed by Hiroshige in 1832 as an issue in his famous series:  Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road.  Each year in the eight month, the Shogun in Edo (Tokyo) in a grand procession escorted a white horse to the Emperor in Kyoto along the Tokaido Road.  Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations served as a travelogue and keepsake for those who made the journey.

    

Kanbara - Evening Snow
Utagawa Hiroshige, 1832

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Thank you Annebelle

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William is a friend of mine from work.
He has a pretty daughter full of energy.
Her name is Annebelle.
Annebelle is a naturally gifted artist.
She drew this birthday card for Doc,
And it and made me feel good.
Thank you Annebelle.

Stone Mountain, Georgia
Wednesday 11 July 1942

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Group of Seven

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     Guilty?  Yes, as charged.  I did add some red to the yellow leaves in front and darkened the tree trunks a bit.  An exercise in psycho-morphosis that troubles some "objectionable alchemy", and enthuses others "heavenly inspiration".
     Beyond this dustup - anyone who appreciates rich, luxurious and stunningly beautiful landscape art must get to know the Group of Seven.  A hundred years ago, for some weird reason, painters didn't take the Canadian landscape seriously.  In 1920, to remedy this lapse seven outdoorsy artists influenced by European impressionism joined to reshape how Canadians viewed their own country and develop a brand of landscape art uniquely Canadian.  They succeeded masterfully, with colors I can taste and a broad thoroughly modern style.  Check 'em out at the links:

     Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery
     McMichael Canadian Art Collection
     Artchive:  Canadian Group of Seven

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© r1410-24  Fall Leaves
Artist:  Doctor Flowers
Yancey County, North Carolina
Saturday 22 October 2005

Title:  Red Maples (no date)
Artist:  Lauren Harris
School:  Canadian Group of Seven

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'Stay at Home' Artist

     Just finished absorbing the book Constable - The Great Landscapes about his artistic career and series of famous 'six footers' that celebrate everyday life around the canals and locks in the Stour River valley. John Constable, now icon of British landscape artists, represents the 'stay at home' school.  Other artists made their reputation in the Swiss Alps or along the canals of Venice.  Constable preferred scenes from his boyhood:  the dirt road trod to school, his father's mill, or the canals and locks nearby.  As with most great artists, Constable ran afoul of Royal Academy strictures and the uncompromising academic conventions of his day. "Your work lacks finish," the judges would sneer.  So, Constable painted two canvases for each six footer, one called the 'sketch' loose and energetic and another more finished for exhibition and judging. With considerable irony, the sketches are now considered equally if not more desirable than the polished versions submitted to the Academy. 'Stay at home' artists, those who create peaceful, modest and un-emphatic scenes of country life, still inspire 'stay at home' photographers who follow the same sources of inspiration.  (Use the link to the left; check out Constable's The Hay Wain from this series. Remember, that canvas is six feet wide.)

    

Parham Mill at Gillingham
John Constable, 1826

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Honest Pretender

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     A creaky backroads art enthusiast, dilettante, and raconteur (who wishes to remain anonymous) endeavors each day to discover folk art models that the academically trained have with virtuosity exploited for riches and notoriety and, with good fortune, was recently astonished to find a Barnett Newman example (circa 1952) - adorned with flat field plywood, nifty geometric 'zips', and sliding door peep hole - audaciously prepared to contest the worldly and the celebrated: now, …would the honest pretender please step forward!  (Answer key below.)

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ANSWER KEY:

Top:
  Barnett Newman. Vir Heroicus Sublimis 1952
Middle:
  Cousin BN Flowers. Striped Wall with Peep Hole
  Webster Springs, West Virginia
  Monday 30 May 2005
Bottom:
  Barnett Newman.  Adam, 1952

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DeTox Anyone?

     There is a let down maybe even a crash of sorts.  After a month-long autumn binge from the forests of West Virginia south to Georgia I'm experiencing tint withdrawal. The color jones; it's messin' with my mojo.  Even the faithful bighearted sugar maple, outside my bedroom window, let go its reds and oranges and fell in behind the season's call.
     So here's Gustav Klimt - turn of the century symbolist, art nouveau and Vienna secessionist movement type hyper reacting against the strictures of academic conventions in his day.  He's more recognized for decorative portraits of ladies from high society.  I prefer Lebensbaum his tree of life with the dreamy afterglow of autumn to warm my color woes against the chilly winds to come.

    

Lebensbaum, 1905
Gustav Klimt, Vienna

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