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Posts Tagged ‘JMW Turner’

Next, Please

Posted in Favorite Things, Poetry, tagged , , , on May 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Turner-Peace_-_Burial_at_Sea framed

Peace: Burial at Sea- JMW Turner 1842

I have been super busy lately but when I get a free minute I have been listening to short bits of poetry read online. Most are only a minute or two long which provides a short break in the thought process which I find refreshing. I particularly enjoy works read by narrator Tom O’Bedlam.

Who this Tom O’Bedlam actually is has been a question for some time since he emerged around 2008 as a reader of poetry and garnered a folowing. He is an anonymous reader whose name is based on an equally anonymous 16th century poem, Tom O’Bedlam’s Song, which is considered one of the great anonymous poems in the English language perhaps the greatest of the mad songs, those verses dedicated to the ramblings of the seemingly insane. There is quite a long tradition of mad songs in poetry which makes one wonder about the link between poets and madness.

But the identity of the present day Tom O’Bedlam is still up in the air though his name does link to the website of contemporary poet David J. Bauman. Even so, it is never quite clear that he is the voice of O’Bedlam and his own readings sound much different. It is surmised that he uses an audio program to achieve the timber and tone of O’Bedlam’s distinctly pleasing voice.

I don’t really know and to tell the truth, it doesn’t matter much. I just enjoy the results and the choices of the poems selected for him to read. I particularly enjoy the work of British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) who often has a slightly acerbic, misanthropic skew to his very engaging work. I used one of his poems, High Windows, years ago for the inspiration for a painting.

Here’s a short example of Larkin’s work as read by the aforementioned Tom O’Bedlam. They linked the verse with the stunning painting at the top, Peace; Burial at Sea,  from a favorite of mine, the exquisite JMW Turner. Maybe that’s why I chose this one today.

Can’t really say but this is Next, Please. Take a break if you can and give a listen. Maybe it will refresh you, as well. If not, at least it make make you think a bit.

And that’s never a bad thing.

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Quote of the Week: Candle

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on September 10, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- CandleThere are two ways of spreading light… To be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.

–Edith Wharton

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This is a new piece,  8″ by 10″ on paper, that I am calling Candle.  Working on this painting, I determined that I wanted to keep the composition very simple and stark.  There was so much energy in the radiating forms that adding anything beyond the blue panel at the bottom would change the whole feel of the piece as I was seeing it.  The blue provides contrast and forms a horizon line that gives the whole image a measure of inward depth without detracting from the simplicity of the image, which I see as being essential to the strength of this painting.

Simplicity, as is often the case, translates as grace.  And grace of some form was what began to show in this piece as it unfolded.  I was reminded as I worked on this of the great (in my mind, the greatest British artist) JMW Turner‘s reputed dying words: The sun is God.  There is a spiritual element in how the sun is depicted in his work and I often feel that I am representing something more than a source of physical light and energy when I paint these sun orbs in my work.

Perhaps that something more is a presence beyond the physical.

I don’t know.  But for a moment, my uncertainty is relieved and I feel connected with the warmth and light from the presence that is the sun in this piece.

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Quote of the Week/ Frederich

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Quote, tagged , , , , , on May 7, 2015| 2 Comments »

Caspar David Frederich- Abbey Among Oak Trees

Caspar David Frederich- Abbey Among Oak Trees

A picture must not be devised but perceived. Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back,  from without to within.

–Caspar David Frederich

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I find myself identifying strongly with the words and work of the 19th century German painter Caspar David Frederich (1774-1840).  His work often takes a symbolic stance with expansive landscapes that overwhelm the human presence in them and much of it moves toward the metaphysical.  He , along with his British contemporary JMW Turner, were at the forefront of the movement from Classicism  to  work that reflected the inner emotional reaction of the individual to the world around them.

It was said of Frederich that he was “a man who has discovered the tragedy of Landscape.”  I see this in his often moody and contemplative work.  It is not painting of only a place or scene– it is more a painting of emotion, of some inner vibration triggered by what is before the painter.  His brilliance is in capturing that inner element and revealing it to the viewer.  It’s a rare thing, one that I think most painters aspire to obtain in their own work.  I know that I do.

Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fogFrederich’s work fell from favor in the latter stages of his life but the coming of modern art movement whose many painters were greatly influenced by Frederich,  brought him back to great recognition through the first few decades of the 20th century.   Unfortunately for Frederich, in the 1930’s, his work was associated with the Nazis who mistakenly saw his work as being nationalistic in its symbolism. I know that the piece shown here on the right, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,  is often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche‘s idea of the Übermensch or Superman.  Even though Frederich died years before Nietzsche was born and almost a century  before the Nazis usurped his art, it took several decades before his work regained the stature it lost due to this association.

But the inner message of his landscapes persevered and his paintings still resonate with their timeless qualities today.  As they should.

Caspar David Friedrich- Monk by the Sea

Caspar David Friedrich- Monk by the Sea

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Ruskin and Scorpion-Whips

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Opinion, tagged , , , on June 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

John Ruskin- Ferns on a Rock 1875

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.

–John Ruskin

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I have been very interested lately  in the work and life of John  Ruskin,  who lived from 1819-1900.  He was one of those Victorian British sorts who displayed a wide range of talents throughout the era.  He was one of the greatest of  British watercolorists, perhaps second only to the great JMW Turner, whose work he defended in a book, Modern Painters, that sought to prove the superiority of the landscape painting of the time  over that of the early Masters.

John Ruskin- Amalfi

Although his painting is wonderful, he is probably best known for his criticism and his writing.  He had a real dogmatic sense of certainty in everything he took on, a quality that was very appealing if you agreed with his views but one that didn’t always sit well with those who did not.  I am not going to go into a biography of his life here but I wouldn’t deter anyone from looking further on their own by clicking on his name above or going to his bio page at the Victorian Web.  It is a most interesting life filled with famous names, controversy ( a famous court case with Ruskin being sued by James MacNeil Whistler for libel) , madness and tragedy.  All the elements of a great story.

The thing that first caught my eye was not his painting, though I do really like and appreciate it, but a rather a passage from a lecture he gave that I thought could have been written for our time as well as we seem to be ever more embracing of a culture that is anti-intellectual, anti-environmental and anti-science.  He wrote:

No nation can last, which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. It must discipline its passions, and direct them or they will discipline it, one day, with scorpion-whips. Above all, a nation cannot last in a money-making job; it cannot with impunity,–it cannot with existence–go on despising literature, despising science, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence.

There are days when I fear that we must prepare ourselves for those scorpion-whips that Ruskin foresaw.

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The Short Career of Thomas Girtin

Posted in Influences, tagged , , on December 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Thomas Girtin is probably a name most of us have never heard before.  Yet, for a  time he was a giant in the world of art in Britain and was vastly influential in the direction of art there for the next century after his death in 1802.  A lot to say for a young man who died at the age of 27.

He was born in the same year as JMW Turner, the British giant whose worked revolutionized watercolor and served as a leading edge for the work of the later Impressionists.  The two were good friends, having worked together as teens, and rivals and Turner later said  “Had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved”.  When I think of the spectacular work of Turner, especially some it done over 40 years after the death of Girtin,  and see where Girtin was in his work when he died, I am sad to think what the world was deprived in not seeing what he might have accomplished as he matured.  Turner’s work certainly evolved and Girtin displayed a drive for greatness  that would have certainly brought incredible things.

Thomas Girtin -Study for the Eidometropolis

For example, in 1802,  just before his death, he created and displayed a painting called the  Eidometropolis, a huge panorama of 1800 London that measured 18′ tall by 108′ long.  The prodigious effort brought great acclaim, both for its heroic scale and the beauty of the work.  Sadly, the painting no longer exists except for many sketches which were created in the making of it, such as the one shown here.  Girtin died soon after from an asthma attack.

So, in the centuries since, the name of Thomas Girtin never really grew to the stature that it might have reached had he lived.  Perhaps his friendly rivalry with Turner might have spurred on amazing things from him and even more incredible work from Turner.  We will never know, of course.  It’s just hard to not speculate when you see such obvious talent, even genius, ended at such an early point.

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Turner

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged on September 26, 2010| 1 Comment »

I was looking for a small painting I had done a number of years ago to illustrate this post but came up empty in my search.  It was an image of a barn on fire in one of my landscapes.  A bit of an oddity for me but a striking image.  So, I decided to change my subject and in its place I chose this masterwork, The Burning of the House of Lord and Commons, from the great  19th century British painter JMW Turner.  To me, his work is so unlike anything of its time.  It is at its best when it is fluid and wild and free.

I looked at a lot of Turner when I was first starting to paint.  He single-handedly transfromed watercolor into an accepted artform and the tales of the extremes he went to with his media and paper to achieve the incredible effects in his watercolors inspired me.  His oil paintings were often done in washes of color that was absent in the more restrained and formal paintings of the era and seemed so forward thinking to me.  He was a leading edge of modern painting.

I don’t have a lot to say except that Turner remains a favorite.   I am humbled and inspired to want to be better whenever I see his work.

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