Nothing rhymes with…

City Hall. Used with permission, Donald Kinney photo c. 2023

Last night, City Hall was lit up with orange lights to support the SF Giants, but street photographer, Donald Kinny noted that it looked more red than orange. Well, technically, if this were the early Renaissance, then he would be right—it is red, scarlet or cadmium red. Not orange.

Before 1510, the term yellow-red was used (geoluread in Old English—say it aloud with a swallowed g = y) or red-yellow to describe orange. Or the color orange was referred to as tawny (probably a Celtic loan-word). Saffron and green were the most favored colors for Medieval Irish clothing. I imagine that gold was also used to describe orange. It got me asking, why did the English language suddenly have the need to distinguish the colors red from yellow with a new word?

Weirdly the English word orange is a relative linguistic newcomer. It’s a “new” color name, meaning it wasn’t recognized as a separate color name in English until the 1500s….so, yes, some reds border on orange. Especially the light cadmium reds.  

I didn’t understand that when I was taking painting classes at College of Marin why cadmium orange and red were so close in color. I dislike orange. I was pretty relieved when I discovered that color newcomer, alizarin crimson as I favor the blue reds versus the yellow reds. Also alizarin crimson was way less toxic than the cadmiums. Poor mad Vincent. Was it the cadmium yellows and reds he used responsible for his affliction?

Letting my fingers do the walking through the Google pages, I found this: “The first recorded use of "orange" as a colour name in English was in 1502, in a description of clothing purchased for Margaret Tudor.” Curious as to where the term came from, I discovered that it probably came from the Old French, pomme d'orenge. 

Curiouser yet, the color term took 600 years after oranges arrived in Europe, for the color to be named in English by way of those Normans. Perhaps politics and the Reformation played into it? As in the House of Orange? The word orange, or flan bhui is flag-yellow, as there is no word for orange in Irish (oráiste is the fruit) is a politically charged color in Ireland, signifying oppression and the division of Ireland. 

And of course, as you know, in English, nothing rhymes with orange. Unless it’s a Giants home game. Then all bets are on. Then City Hall and Coit Tower are bathed in a victorious orange afterglow. But here is the clincher, early oranges that came all the way from China, or India, weren’t necessarily orange-colored. They were green! They were bitter as well. I read that Florida farmers dye those green oranges orange.

Valencia oranges marked Christmas season for my grandmother who was raised in Bantry, Ireland. Each year her Christmas gift was one Valencia orange wrapped in foil.

San Geronimo Valley Spring Arts virtual art show, painting, drawing, photo

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The 31st Annual ‘It’s Virtually Spring’ Virtual Art Show. You can view this year's incredible work to SGVCC Instragram and Facebook accounts. You can also visit the online gallery here:

I can’t believe that I was dropped from the SGVCC Spring Art Show, an oversight. Larry was very apologetic, but it’s the second time this has happened. As an elder arts promoter, I managed to get both Barbara Scott and Sam Fisk to enter pieces. I made three triptyches of Barbara’s art, so she had 9 pieces total. She works in threes, so they looked great. Sam and I went to the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit and a created a paint night afterwards, so both our paintings were from that experience. I did a riff on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers 22x24”. The stabilo pencil drawing is of Elephant Mountain, Nicasio 9x6”. And the photo is of Chileno Valley.

Emily Carr, Canadian painter & writer, Group of Seven

Autumn, 1922-23, oil, Arts & Crafts style (1913-27) Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

One of my favorite artists of the Pacific Northwest, Emily Carr,  (Dec. 13, 1871 – Mar. 2, 1945) was also a writer who chronicled the stories of the First Peoples of British Columbia. Carr’s memoir, Klee Wyck, inspired me to travel making a pilgrimage of sorts to the then remote Nootka villages of Tofino and Ucluelet on western Vancouver Island, and later, to the village of K’san on the Skeena River, in the late 1970s, where I promptly got sick and spent a few days camping in the bushes outside of town—to the consternation of my boyfriend, the villagers, and jeweler-woodcarver Vernon Stephens, who had once driven us from the middle of nowhere to another middle of nowhere. Another story...

Though relatively unknown and unrecognized in her lifetime, Carr was one of the first North American Modernist painters to use the Post-Impressionist painting style. She bucked the prim Victorian society and studied art for three years at the California School of Design/San Francisco Art Institute, and later, Carr spent a year in France, 1910-11, where she met the Cubists and Fauvists. Their use of bold color and broad shapes greatly influenced her work.

But upon Carr’s return to Vancouver, no one was interested in her work. She toiled in domestic obscurity for 15 years, managing an apartment complex in Victoria, until 1927, when a piece was accepted to a National Gallery of Canada exhibition where she first met the Group of Seven. She was the only woman painter to be included in the Group of Seven, modernist painters who changed the face of Canadian art

After being told that Canadian totem poles and trees were unsuitable, and simply unpaintable, Carr defiantly went out and painted them anyway—for the rest of her life. She finally gained some recognition for her work when she was nearly 60. After a series of heart attacks in 1937, Carr gave up the rigors of plain air painting, and wrote seven books, winning the Governor General’s Award for Literature in 1942.

I have seen many of her paintings in museum collections, but not this one. A reverse image search referred me to the dubious ArtPoster and Pinterest sites, several titles suggests it’s called,  Lone Cedar, or (Cypress) Tree in Autumn, or simply Autumn, ca 1920, painted variously in Brittany, or in British Columbia.

I have a lino block that I carved in high school that is similar in style. I wonder if I saw her work back then? Where? At the De Young? SF Art institute? I got to see her work later, in Victoria and Vancouver. There was an article on Emily Carr in the Sunday section of the Chronicle, California Living, circa 1972, which contained a retrospective of her work. I saved that article and read it again and again and again. She was uniquely a one of a kind artist.

It took some doing, but I found the painting, it’s called Tree of Autumn, 1922 - 1923, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 44.5 cm, done in the Arts and Crafts style (1913-1927). Collection of Glenbow Museum, of Calgary—which explains why I never saw it, though I’ve been to Calgary, I didn’t visit the museum. Purchased in 1956. Note bene: As of 1990, it’s housed at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Another extraordinary painting I’ve never seen before is First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, oil on canvas, Fauvist style, 101.5cm x 84cm. 1912. Audain Art Museum, Whistler, British Columbia. “In 1912, following a journey up the northern coast of B.C., Carr produced a number of works with First Nations motifs in her new style. However, these works were not well received with audiences in Vancouver and Victoria.”

First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, Fauvist style, 1912. Audain Museum.  Wiki

Mt. Tamalpais from Corte Madera, from an old photo, acrylic 6x8” (art)

I have four pieces I can live with, I need two more by Thursday.

Take two. Gallagher Ranch, Black Mountain, Point Reyes, acrylic painting, 8 x 10

Gallagher Ranch, Black Mountain, Point Reyes, acrylic, 11 x 14”

Gallagher Ranch, Black Mountain, Point Reyes, acrylic, 11 x 14. Two down, four more to go... art show deadline Jan 9.

Revised foreground.

Last painting of 2019, Barboni Ranch, Hick’s Valley, West Marin. 8x10” acrylic.

Last painting of the year. Barboni Ranch, Hick’s Valley, West Marin. 8x10” acrylic. The iconic tree and rock formation is just past the one-room Lincoln schoolhouse with the vernal pool nestled in the lower foothills of Hick’s Mountain. Eponymous Tennessee land baron “Uncle Billy” Hicks never lived in the valley, once part of the Rancho Corte Madera de Novato land grant, that was named after him. Arroyo Sausal fireroad is to the right. It might be on one of the Barberoni ranches, preserved by MALT. Maybe Circle B Ranch? The Barbonis were Italian-Swiss, like most of the West Marin ranchers who settled there in the 1880s. Barboni founded Marin Dell Milk. I remember seeing the sign as a kid. Biggest ranches in Marin, 2600 acres, total, now preserved. Lots of rare and endangered species on that ranch including white buttercups in the lone remaining vernal pool, and home to red-legged frogs, badgers, otter.

Hicks Valley, Mountain: An absentee landlord in Marin's early days, William Hicks, left his name with this valley in the ranching area of Marin. (The Marin French Cheese Factory is located here.) Hicks was a native of Tennessee who arrived in California in 1843 and amassed a land empire. In the words of a newspaper reporter in 1884, "His acres, horses and cattle covered a thousand hills." The land stretched over Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Sonoma Counties, plus Marin, where in 1855 he bought 4,000 plus acres of Rancho Corte de Madera del Novato for $5,000. "Uncle Billy" Hicks died in 1884 at the age of 67 at his home in Hicksville, Sacramento County, a town no longer in existence. There was a post office named Hicksville, 1860-1889. —Place Names of Marin, by Louise Teather, 1986page 29

Neighboring Thompson Ranch, aka Marin French Cheese factory. Illinois 49er, well 65er, he came late—Jefferson  Thompson built an empire on cheese, supplying buttermilk cheese to the saloons of San Francisco. He wasn’t  French, his children changed the name to  “Rouge et Noir” to make it sound classy. After three generations, the Cheese Factory was sold to Jim Boyce, of Bishop, Ca. When Boyce died in 2010, it was sold to a French family business, Rians. It’s the oldest continuously operating cheese factory in the United States—and bona fide French after 150 years.

1/1/2020

I made a pastel too, 9 x 12” but I don’t like it very much. I need six solid pieces of art by Jan 9, for two upcoming art shows. The pressure’s on.

Wilfred A. Lang, painter (1915-1994)

in progress....

from the  The Wilfred A. Lang Gallery 

My growing collection of Wilfred A. Lang notes from my previous post, suggests another post entry is needed. So little information on him on the internet. Where to even begin, when my imperfect memories gathered in youth, imperfectly recollected and transposed now that I'm older that dirt, makes this more of an act of fiction than anything else.

A defunct Angelfire site was the only decent reference I could find on Wilfred. (No I'm not referring to the Shanghai artist, born in 1954, who cranks out dreadful urban landscapes and sailboats with a palate knife and a fan brush.) Wilfred A. Lang was a complex artist, a student of Robert Stackpole, who worked in complex layers, his imagery embellishing a mythos to ordinary subjects.

I knew Wilfred’s first wife Betty—who was like a second mother to me, and four of his children, and the infamous Sausalito Hoffmans.

Wilfred was always larger than life. As kids, we were terribly excited whenever he came to visit Pat & Betty Wall. I remember him, grizzled, and laden with massive turquoise and silver jewelry, and his haughty second wife, Marcia, in her long flowing skirts, and aquiline nose, who walked like a goddess. She very much resembled her portrait that hung above the daybed in the living room.

That colorful full-length abstract portrait that Wilfred gave to Betty mesmerized me. I always thought it odd that he gave Betty a painting of his next wife, who left him soon after. But the full-length portrait was gorgeous. As a child, I stared at it for hours on end, following the intricate ghost calligraphy embroidered on the painting.

I didn't know of Wilfred's Sonoma County presence until I began this post. I'm sitting here writing this blog post a stone's throw from where he built a house in Mays Canyon. Wilfred was friends with Bernard Zachaim, and also stayed at Marguerute Wiildenhain's Pond Farm, in Guerneville. So he also had Bauhaus connections as Walter Gropius was a frequent visitor to Pond Farm as well.

Sonoma County supported a thriving artist colony. After McCarthyism raised its ugly head, many artists, writers, and especially the Jewish movie industry folks fled the urban jungles for a country life, raising chickens. When the bottom of chicken nest fell out, and chicken farming couldn't compete with agribusiness, the fallow chickensheds morphed into artist studios. It was odd to see a portion of a movie backdrop incorporated into a chickenshed. 

Polish-born deep Leftist, Bernard Zacheim (1896-1985), a student of Diego Rivera, painted the Coit Tower murals in San Francisco. He co-founded the San Francisco Artists and Writers Union, which supported artists viafederally funded arts program during the Great Depression. The Public Works of Art Project, funded Zakheim's work on Coit Tower. Zacheim moved to Sonoma County, first to Mayes Canyon, a pocket canyon near Guerneville, and later, to a Sebastopol apple orchard. 

Several artists fleeing the confines city, joined him, Wilfred Lang, among them. I would love to know more about that era, Zacheim was always a presence at art openings, but both he and his daughter Masha, who documented the WPA mural movement are both gone now. Perhaps his son, Nathan, a mural restorer, might have some oral history of that era to share. Wilfred’s eldest son Pete, wrote a comprehensive biography, which I’ve posted below in the notes. At one point, I will weave them in with my notes.

NOT DONE

California Impressionism

Inspired by a desire to capture “impressions” of everyday life, avant-garde French artists, whose work was considered unacademic by the Salon, changed the face of art—from upholding the neoclassic ideal (think photo-realism) to focusing on the vagaries of weather and intimate life by using a bright palette, and quick, broad impressionistic brush strokes.

The French impressionist movement of 1874 was controversial because the subject matter was not Salon approved—no allegorical subject matter. It did not instruct. it was art for art’s sake, or rather, it found god in the sublime.

And instead of painting in isolated studios, they took it outside, to the fields, thanks to pioneer landscape painter, Papa Corot. Also, the invention of tube paint changed how painters painted—in plein aire.

By the turn of the century, however, Impressionism was widely embraced, with artists making pilgrimages to study with Paris’ finest painters.

The movement was embraced by California artists who also emulated 19th-century French landscapes for inspiration. Society of Six, William Keith. Maurice LeMue. Unlike east coast impressionism, California Impressionist works did not solely revolve around the vagaries of weather, or the grandeur of sublime landscapes (think Bierstadt) instead, they showcased the atmosphere and emotion of scenery—using lots of juxtaposed color swaths.

Impressionism and the California Impressionism school has certainly affected my own sense of art. We grew up with a WPA mural in the Lagunitas school office, which was later discovered to be a mural by Maurice LeMue. It became an unconscious reference when I began to photograph landscapes. So, I owe my vision, in part, to that school.



(Well, I found the article I was reading to be so clumsily written that I wound up rewriting it, so no quotes. So I guess this is now my writing. But there is art!) See the link here. From a Facebook post. Perhaps I will expand it into a full article in the future.

Elephant Mountain & fog, (tempera on cardboard)

While waiting to present a poetry workshop, I chanced upon an arts workshop at the Jewish elder home and I painted the morning away. Five visions of Black Mountain. This is the only way I know how to heal after tragedy. Art has always been my first language. Tempera, or cheap gouache on cardboard. Yes, cardboard. I'd run out of painting surfaces, this was supposed to be my painting palette.

Silk dragon 9.5 ", habotai silk

This fellow was probably painted on Labor Day Weekend, 2014, as I got the idea to make a 1.5 x3 foot dragon banner for my silk art booth in August, 2015.

He wasn't very pretty, and the gutta (glue lines) really sucked, so I outlined it with a marking pen, and suddenly I liked the painting. Now I need to find a photo of the Paint Your Dragon banner! This is a thumbnail.

RIchard Diebenkorn's place, Soda Rock Lane (photos)

 

RIchard Diebenkorn's place, Soda Rock Lane, Alexander Valley. My friend Leah used to babysit for Richard Diebenkorn. Every photo I take of his house reveals something sweet and quaint. So I did a negative image. It seems more fitting. More ghostlike. I love the roiling trees, like gazing into a blue fire. Doesn't it look like Richard is standing on the porch.

Robert Lee Haycock said: Been there years ago after his passing to receive some of his work that the family was loaning to the museum. I believe it was his widow I worked with then, a charming woman, who gave us the run of the house so that we could admire RD's work hanging EVERYWHERE in EVERY available space. Quite an experience.

from a Facebook post, added 6/17

Note to Molly Fisk on Painting

I can never copy anything over again in art, per se—I get bored, and lose focus—but I can create a series just fine. Each one, a variation on a theme. Consider it an exercise to paint in a series. More room for exploration and experimentation. Best words in art are: what happens if…?What's cool about the serial approach to painting is that you get lots of pieces of art (in your case, many small canvases), and loads of room to experiment. And you can work on several pieces simultaneously. One painting can set up or dry while you take the new idea to the next level on the next piece, and so on. I sort of enter into a trance state when I'm doing silk, or wet pastel series. It's like dancing with your art. The rhythm of the gleaners in the field.

27th annual ART FROM THE HEART silent auction, silk painting

"Russian River 2" 10x10" habotai silk, gutta, dye batik © Maureen Hurley 2011

Art from the Heart

Founded in 1984, Art from the Heart is one of Sonoma County's premiere fundraising events—an evening of fine art, food, and wine where artists and collectors join to support the University Art Gallery. Art from the Heart is a silent auction featuring original works of art in all media donated by professional artists from Sonoma County and the United States. Stays at local inns and hotels, theater  and museum tickets, unique bottles of wine and VIP tasting at local wineries are also included in the auction.

You may bid on my piece Feb 12th at Sonoma State University.SATURDAY, February 12, 6-9 pm: 27th annual ART FROM THE HEART silent auction to benefit the University Art Gallery at SSU. Free Preview Exhibition Wednesday, 11-8; Thursday, 11-4; and Friday, 11-8. For more information, call (707) 664-2295 or go to http://www.sonoma.edu/artgallery

Feb 13: Great to see Joel Bennett again (and his trips to Cuba) and Joe Jaqua—believe it or not, I've known him since I was 17! Joe, Chester Arnold and me were in Marty Stoelzel's painting class at College of Marin for years and years. And Neil acted with Joe's brother at DVC way back when. Small world. 

So the former (Scottish) mayor of Rohnert Park's wife bid on my piece but it went to the woman who runs J wines! A bidding war. I got to meet both of them. Very cool. Got to visit with Stella Monday, Sylvia Seventy and Marsha Connell too—it's been ages. Didn't see Greer Upton (or her piece!). ;-( Too crowded. A great turnout and a great time was had by all. 

added 2/17 

I made several variations.

 

Russian River, finished drawing 9x12

Outline for silk template

Klee Quilts (art) tempera

In class demos. Most of these pieces were painted in January. Tempera on 80 lb white sulfite paper, each block is 12x18". So this one is 36" x 54",(3' x 4.5') and the ones at the bottom of the page are 3' x 6'. Hence the name quilt.

 
This bank of demo tempera images (each one is 12x18") I did in my art classes covers an entire blackboard (I teach K-5 kids). In each class, I demonstrate how to hold the brush, make fat & thin lines, circles...

It's a lesson I developed on the work of Paul Klee but my images are more analogous with Keith Haring's style. I had a neighbor, Betty Wall, who made crazy quilts. So that too was an influence. I also wore a colorful top to teach in, that had African motifs, so many influences went into this particular style.

Kids each made their own Pall Klee style monograms based on their initials and/or geometric shapes. Start with the lightest color. Black is added last as it pollutes the water, and other paints.  Added 3/2017.

 

 
  
 

Landscapes (tempera, art)

February 29, 2008  art is from 2006 to 2007.

In each class, I begin this lesson with large gesture painting so kids won't freak over details. I  deconstruct several large calendar photos on the board to show the basic shapes. (KISS: keep it simple, sweetie). I laminate 2 photos back-to-back and let kids choose an image.

We air draw the shapes first before we begin painting. I don't let kids sketch with pencil because they get too caught up in it and forget to paint. And we only have about 40 minutes to paint and clean up! So making big gestures with the arm translates well.



These are, for the most part, quick 2-5 minute sketches of landscapes with tempera to demonstrate how the landscape is comprised of basic shapes (layers). Note the photo is a model. We work from calendar photos. Tempera on 80 lb white sulfite paper, 12x18" each.



We look for basic shapes to emulate. I demonstrate water and sky with wet on wet technique. Though we're using tempera, or poster paint, it can be thinned down and used like watercolor. I paint paper with water first and add color sparingly. Their palette contains only four colors: yellow, magenta (no red), cyan/sky blue and dark blue. And from that, they make all the colors of the world. Brown is made from all three primary colors. As is black.

I don't give kids little brushes. We do these paintings with fat 1" wide brushes! Harder to get details that way. We go for the basic shapes. The rest will follow.

Since I rarely have more than 10 sessions per class (sometimes I only see kids 5 times in any given year), I streamline and accelerate lesson plans to cover maximum ground. So this lesson focuses on primary color mixing and identifying simple shapes.



These sketches introduce the idea of water horizon line. Sometimes the easiest way to begin a painting is to put a horizontal stripe down the middle. I usually start with yellow and add layers of color. There are four colors in their palettes (really ice cube trays) Yellow, magenta (no red), cyan/sky blue and dark blue. Nada mas! And from that, they make all the colors. Brown is made from all three primary colors. I tried using stabillo pencil to sketch in black...I will do anything to NOT put black in the painting tray/palette (really an ice cube tray).



This is an unfinished sketch of Maui. A child was having trouble seeing the basic shapes so I did a quickie demo. I've given up on letting them sketch first with a pencil (though I did on this one to show him the shapes), because they'll spend the entire hour drawing and not painting. We usually have only an hour total to complete our work, not much time to crank out art!




I'm noticing that the longer I work with a particular group of kids, the more in depth and realistic my demos become. I worked with these kids in 3rd and 5th grade and so I was able to refine the info.






With an advanced class, I introduced the multi-color dabbing technique for shrubbery with sparing use of black and white. I also tried to introduce light direction as well, with less success. (added 3/17)

Butterfly paintings (in class demos) (art)

I have a lot of big drawings I do to demonstrate to kids. Most are vaporware, drawn on chalk or whiteboard. Tempera and water base black marking pen (Eberhart Faber) 12x18" each. Bilateral symmetry is really tough for little kids to master, so I often fold the paper into quadrants. They later cut them out and put them in the classroom. Huge butterflies adorn the walls.

Tempera and water base black marking pen (Eberhart Faber) 12x18" each. I also give kids a slideshow to demonstrate the wide variety of moths and butterflies. Then they invent their own. I also use this demo time to teach insect anatomy. Art and science are one thing. Does it have a thorax, check, antennae? Check. Proboscis? Check!