Moonstruck?

A visit to my studio recently by my 8 yr old neighbour Evan, got me thinking about this posting……

I was busy working on my new, oversized abstract landscapes and was mounting one of them on canvas….so I asked him what he thought about this painting ….

 

 Evan, in his regular cheerful manner, told me he thought it was a “beautiful sunset over a field (or a pond)”. When I told him I had intended it to be a “Harvest Moon” he looked at me a bit perplexed but answered  with a big smile and said “ That’s so cool Lori, I didn’t think the moon could be that colour!” 

Coincidentally this brought me to a tidbit of info that I’d like to share with you about how Art and Science overlap.  The article spoke about how scientists were able to pinpoint the exact moment when the painting  “Moonrise” by Vincent Van Gogh was achieved.   

 

  Art historians once thought this painting by Vincent van Gogh showed the setting Sun at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. In the July 2003 Sky & Telescope, astronomers demonstrate that the work actually depicts the rising Moon.

 “Using astronomical calculations and good old deductive reasoning, celestial experts provide the answer to a puzzle art historians had been trying to solve for years: the exact moment depicted in Vincent van Gogh’s painting Moonrise. The answer: 9:08 p.m. local mean time on July 13, 1889.

 “Dating van Gogh’s Moonrise,” in the July 2003 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, Donald W. Olson, a physics and astronomy professor at Southwest Texas State University, and his San Marcos colleagues Russell L. Doescher and Marilynn S. Olson reveal how they journeyed to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, and solved the century-old mystery. Armed with topographic maps, aerial photographs, weather records, and letters written by van Gogh, the researchers were able to pinpoint the timing of the scene. Once thought to show the setting Sun at Saint-Rémy, it is now known to be a rendition of a rising Moon.

Throughout 2003, as special events commemorated the 150th anniversary of van Gogh’s birth, there was also an astronomical anniversary. Because of a cosmic synchronicity, the calendar dates of lunar phases in 2003 nearly repeat those of 1889. The 114 years since van Gogh’s summer in Saint-Rémy correspond to six 19-year-long lunar Metonic cycles. On July 13th, modern observers during evening twilight saw a nearly full Moon rise in the southeast, much as it did on July 13, 1889, when van Gogh stood among the wheat stacks in a monastery field and captured the scene in his remarkable Moonrise”……How fascinating??

So if you happen to look out your window tonight check out the full moon – which is not the Harvest Moon by the way(that happened in September), but the Hunter’s Moon…Enjoy! 

Flown the Nest

September is here again and almost gone. School has begun, and our sons or daughters have settled into another grade in an elementary or secondary school.  But for some parents in my entourage of family and friends, we are (or soon will be) facing up to the parting from our teenage children who started college or university in another part of our province or country….(Boy I’m starting to feel a little old right about now- remember when?!)

This emotional upheaval can be quite trying on parents, seeing their grown kids “fly the nest”. While some parents seem to cope fairly well with the idea of not having to “pick up” after their kids, and relish in this new–found freedom, others can’t quite seem to be able to resolve to the fact that they are no longer going to be “needed” as often as they have been in the past, and a general feeling of melancholy takes over( a.k.a the “empty nest syndrome”).

So why, should you ask, would I be writing about this in my art blog, and how does this relate to my art?

For the past few years, I have been representing nests in my artwork, mostly ones that I painted on maps of Canada, France and other parts of Europe.  I began painting these nests after I had seen Gordon Smith’s exhibition entitled “Tangles” at the Artist’s For Kids Gallery with some of the my 5 and 6 year old students from the Deep Cove area of North Vancouver.  We were studying wildlife habitats i.e. dens, burrows, lodges and nests, and my mixed media classes with these students became quite involved, with trying to mirror what Smith had done in his paintings.  The work that came from these little hands was quite raw and naive and in turn for me, came inspiration.

In my series, the underlying ”nesting” theme deals with the cyclical or ephemeral nature of creating a home, with the nest symbolizing birth, love, family, building and gathering and maybe even leaving and starting all over again…. in other words, flying the coop…………..

How many of us have done just this in the past? My parents have, I have a number of times, and so too, will my children and their children and so on…….

 

Italian Nest – Mixed media on canvas – 2009

I did this a few years ago; maybe you’ve seen this image on my greeting cards before? Painted on the map of Italy, some of you may not know that I created this piece as a sort of “homage” to my parents (who flew the nest in 1948 and 1949, clutching one solitary suitcase in hopes to make a better life than the one they were leaving behind). The good-byes to their families were probably gut wrenching at the time, knowing they may never see them again….yet they were so courageous to have done so and built their new home in Canada with the support of other landed immigrants……..

The writing on the right side of the composition is a poem I found that related well with the theme of “flying from the nest”.  It is entitled “Casa Mia…My Home”…..  it translates from Italian  to….

Casa Mia (My Home)

 I’m going away

With my furniture, my memories and images

I’m leaving my house at three

The keys are under my tree…

I don’t really know why I talk of you while I’m leaving

What remains of me in these corners?

I hide and ask myself, where?

Where is the spirit?

What will I call my home, my home?

 

“ Vancouver Nest”- Mixed media on canvas – spring of 2011

One last note…this painting was a commission by a couple from Shanghai wanting to commemorate their immigration to Vancouver in 2010.  It is interesting to me that a part of my story has now become a part of their story too.

Lori’s New Art Blog!

What I’ve been up to! (Summer News 2011) 

“Nevermore”  is one of my new mixed media pieces , now showing at the Portico Gallery in Squamish B.C. inspired by the poem with the same title by Edgar Allen Poe!

 

“But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –

Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before –

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.’

Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'”

 “Raven’s Story” ( below) is Nevermore’s twin and is also at the Portico Gallery, along with some of my abstract/mixed media landscapes.

I transferred some images of crows that I had taken this winter (alongside my high school art students) ……Everyday hundreds of these intelligent black beings adorn the trees in and around the courtyards of the school, and then fly back to their nesting grounds………Does anyone know where they go? 

 

Lastly, I’m thrilled be showing “Copper Moon” my latest mixed media work on panel, at Bird on a Wire located at 2535 Main St. near Broadway in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood in Vancouver!

Karen Unger-Strickland, the owner and an artist herself is careful to select local artists within a 100km radius of her new funky Arts and Handmade Crafts boutique. She is also showing seven other of my paintings from the “Nests on maps” series as well as selling some of my greeting cards.