Moore garden scenes

Last night we went to hear the jazz pianist Chick Corea along with drum legend Roy Haynes perform at the Botanic Gardens. The gardens were alive with sound and visual rhythm.

While walking around the gardens and listening to the mellow jazz in the evening I could not help but notice these beautiful Foxtail Lilies and thought I would share them with you.

Celebrating Artistry/Joyful Color

 Looking at this pensive lady one would hardly guess the artist who painted this was know for using purples, pinks and blues. He worked and showed his art with Matisse, Vlaminck, Braque and Picasso. He was influenced and is often considered to be a Fauvists. His name and tomorrow June 9th's birthday boy is Andre Derain. The way we use and think about color today has occurred because of the work Derain did. We stand on his back or walk in his footprints whichever metaphor you prefer. He was born in 1880 and died as the result of a car accident in 1954.

The other artist whose birthday,  I am celebrating this June 9th is not as well known. But to those who knew her , her influence was profound. She had a personality which could project many sparkling colors and an artful way of living as well as influencing and encouraging those she knew to reach into their creative wells and to be brave explorers. Her name is Josephine Barker McLeod, She was born in 1918 and died in 1989.

Josephine Barker McLeod

1918-1989

I was fortunate to know this artist intimately as she is my mother.

Soleil at the Botannic Gardens

Henry Moore in the clear high air of Colorado. Did he ever imagine he would travel to this part of the world?

This is a Henry Moore MOMENT

Mysterious Craftsmen

                        In Beauty

may I walk  
All day long
may I walk 
Through the returning seasons
may I walk
Beautifully will I possess again
Beautifully birds

Beautifully joyful birds 
On the trail marked with pollen
may I walk
With grasshoppers about my feet
may I walk
With dew about my feet
may I walk
With beauty may I walk
With beauty before me
may I walk
With beauty above me
may I walk

With beauty all around me                            

may I walk

In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively,

may I walk

In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty,

 living again,                                 

It is finished in beauty. 

It is finished in beauty.

From the Navajo

photos from May 2010 visit

Chaco Canyon, inhabited for 300 years

between 800AD to 1200AD, a planned

community with beautiful masonry, a community of ancestral Pueblan culture. In what is today known as northern New Mexico. Find out more in the beautifully written "House of Rain", by Craig  Childshttp://www.houseofrain.com/. Also check out this film narrated by Robert Redford.http://www.solsticeproject.org/


 Put this magical valley on your "Bucket List".

High Flying Color

Wow!~ Out in my front yard Spring has Sprung! I have been so busy enjoying wave after wave of color that I have not posted one colorful thought. Let me change that and go the visual route.

                                                       

                                                                a

Did you know that Iris is the Greek Goddess for the Messenger of Love her flower is the symbol of      communication and love.

                                                           Iris had the duty of taking     women's souls to the Elysian Fields.   

Greek men planted  her flowers on the graves of their beloved women .

                                                                                 

Hues of Brown/ Rootbeer.

                Here is to colorful memories / painting / planting on this Memorial Day weekend.

Atelier Voyeur

" Ballad of the Jealous Lover",1934, The Spencer Art Museum, Lawrence, KS

With May in Denver feeling like March weather NEVER left I am going to  reflect a few weeks  back when I was in much warmer Kansas City. I discovered that the Studio of the regional artist Thomas Hart Benton was a few blocks away from my daughter's apartment and open to the public.

So how do artists set up their space, I wonder with much the same interest I have in wanting to know how homeowners store their stuff? Especially since I always seem to create places that are prone to tumbling down.

Boom Town

The studio is left as it was on the last night Mr Benton painted in it in 1978. This studio can be found at 3616 Belleview Ave. Kansas City, MO. When I look at it through the eyes of a colorist I see a quarried limestone home with subdued colors yet a feeling of comfort and ecleticism. He had a window put in the northside of his garage/carriage house and there he painted from 1939 to 1978.

Prior to that time Mr. Benton traveled to Paris where he attended school. He also lived in NYC where he worked with the Art Students League. Some say he was influenced by the work of Bruegel which he saw in Europe. He was influenced by the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. His work was too regionalist for the Parisians and he was not political enough for the New York art scene. Yet he was named after the first state senator from Missouri and his father had high political ambition for him. Instead Benton became an artist who prided himself on knowing the various regions of the USA and the foibles and social difficulties of its inhabitants. He was an artist and a teacher. One of his most famous students was Jackson Pollock. Some say that Benton's circular dynamic compostions which pulled the artists eye in was employed by Pollock in his drip paintings. What do you think?

Mural at the Missouri State Capital

Jackson Pollack

Sounding Out

Thought I would be out of the studio by now and working outside/Plein aire. It is still a little nippy to sit or stand, observe, respond and paint. So I have been inside trying to work trying to challenge myself to quickly and intuitively solve visual problems instead of overworking them.
Had a wonderful respite. One of my all time favorite musicians was in town- Lyle Lovett. I love to listen to him. His music is so lush and he is so thoughtful.  He performed for a fundraiser at Colorado Academy. In a gymnasium with only 700 other people I was able to see and hear him. His musicianship and artistry are so strong. Take a peek at the video which I have attached and it might remind you as it did me of the paintings of the Belgian surrealist painter  Rene Magritte.

http://music.aol.com/video/in-my-own-mind/lyle-lovett/1450679 

"l'Homme au Chapeau Melon" by Rene Magritte in 1964.