The Power of the Apron

I've been cooking and painting all day today! 

Painting and cooking. 

It is almost the same. 

Playing with paint

I prepare before I start a painting as I prepare before cooking. I lay out my paints the same way I arrange my ingredients on the kitchen counter. And then the cooking starts. I chop and mix, adjust the taste, add more of this and that and wipe my hands on my apron! It's frantic and messy! 

Painting is even messier, I mix the paints, spill a bit more, wipe it, draw on the canvas, erase it, draw it again, get it right! And all the time I wipe my fingers on my apron.

Call me crazy but I think it is all in the apron! It holds the incredible power to transform me into a chef and a painter. It guards me and protects me. And bestows the confidence of the professional on me.

Opium Dreams

Opium Dreams by Attila Sassy

If ever a large Russian woman named Ludmilla tells you to eat poppy seed paste with honey before bed, do it, it works!

I finally slept after a long period of white nights. OK I'm exaggerating a bit. My nights are not exactly white, more like "polka dotted black and white". I fall asleep but I wake up every 3 hours (like a baby - I'm aware of all the associations behind this grrrr!). I tried different types of pills. Some worked, some didn't. So I asked Ludmilla, after all, she managed to spring clean my kidneys with her potent herbal concoction, maybe she'd be able to mend my broken relationship with Morpheus!

The paste worked. No breaks! But the dreams! The dreams were bizarre to say the least. I visited all genres, horror, comedy, romance! All in one night. The colours were so vibrant, the reds and the oranges just mesmerising!

I treasure my dreams. I write then down. They are after all direct messages from my subconscious, my Jabba the Hut ego. I try to listen in as much as possible. No Kubla Khan is going to come out of them but the colours inspired me to start painting this

The beginning 

Intensity

Almost done

The Nature of Being Still

These carrots used to be alive. Enclosed in soft brown, nutritious earth, with their green leaves swinging to the whims of the autumn breeze. 

Then, human hands forcefully pulled them out, stack them in a brown box, shipped them halfway across the world,to  end up on a chilled self of a American hypermarket. 

They were again picked up by the hands of a considerate cook, who trimmed them and cleaned them and then roasted them. And thus they died. 

I found this photograph a couple of months ago, posted on one of the numerous food blogs I subscribe to  (unfortunately I don't remember which - if anyone recognises this photograph please let me know and I will give the appropriate credit to the photographer). 

I loved it the moment I saw it. Its genius lies in the simplicity of the composition and the positioning of the objects which creates the illusion of depth. The perspective is very well balanced and the colours are well matched, combining the vibrancy of the orange with calmness of the grey-purplish background. These carrots are by no means dead. The photograph has immortalised them.

I've decided to try and capture these elements in a painting. It seemed easy at the beginning but it is proving to be quite a challenge, finding the right tone of orange and brown and green. I want to infuse them with life. 

I've never liked the term "dead nature" that is frequently used to describe this type of paintings. There is nothing dead about them. So many paintings are so alive that you can almost reach and pick up the fruit and flowers. That is why they are called "still lifes". Life cought at it best moment, immortalised for ever.

My attempt is very modest compared to the Dutch, German and Flemish masters of the 17th century. It is not yet finished. I hope by next week I will be able to capture the life of the painting, even for a tiny, flinting moment.

Was she dreaming of him? Picasso's “Le Rêve”

Last week a bunch of us gathered in an impromptu painting studio at an underground garage and had a go at painting one of Picasso's abstract works called "The Dream" (“Le Rêve” ). 

Picasso La Reve ,1932

We were not alone. We had the help of two academically trained painters and some nice bottles of Spanish Tempranillo wine. (Spanish wine in honour of a Spanish painter).  

It is a painting of a woman, sleeping peacefully as she reclines on a armchair and while I was trying my best to copy the brush strokes of the master, I could not help but wonder who was that voluptuous, blonde. Was she his lover? Her semi-naked body implied that and her tilted head, with that slightly hedonistic smile surely could not have suggested otherwise.  

I went home and looked it up. The woman immortalised in this and many other paintings was Picasso's teenage "erotic muse",  Marie-Therese Walter whom he met on a Paris street around 1927 when he was 45 and married. He painted many pictures of her and had a child with her and four years after his death she committed suicide.

"La Reve" as well as many other paintings belong to his period of distorted depictions of reality with oversimplified outlines, eye catching colours, and covert sexual innuendoes.  But this painting became famous not only because of the erect phallic symbol carefully hidden in the upturned face of Marie-Therese, but because it would have yielded the highest price on record  for any piece of art, a whooping $139 million, hadn't his owner, the Las Vegas casino mogul Stephen A. Wynn, accidentally slammed his elbow through the canvas. Fortunately the painting was repaired but the sale never took place. 

I hope the extensive research and time I spent learning about the painting, the model and the creator himself, will count towards some much needed atonement after my attempt to copy this masterpiece. 

Work in Progress & Humming Suggestions for the Weekend

This is what I'm working on at the moment. A lighthouse  in the sunset. When finished it will go to a very special new friend as a birthday present. I just hope I will finish it on time. 


As I was working on the painting today I was humming this song....

I love the song and the video clip! I am sure I will be humming it all weekend....


(P.S. I apologise for the poor quality of my photographs so far. I'm in the process of choosing and buying a new camera. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated)

Dream and you shall paint

In the middle of May 2010 I had a dream. It went something like this: I was married to a very famous painter, I did not know who he was. We lived in an enormous house with a garden enclosed by high walls. In my dream I saw myself arriving home one day and finding a bunch of people waiting in my entrance hall. When I asked what was going on someone said that they were gathered there expecting the great painter - my husband - to come and paint for them. I did not know where he was. He was missing from home and I had no idea of his whereabouts. So the daunting task of completing his unfinished paintings fell on me. I was terrified, never having touched a brush let alone paint with it. Some people from the group became restless. I had to act quickly. Picking up a brush I started painting on the half finished canvases to mixed responses from the crowd. "You will never be as good as the master", "we want our money back" and so on and so forth. However, there were also some encouraging ones "try harder, it just takes practise and patience" a soothing male voice whispered in my ear. I knew then that my husband - in the dream - had died and I had to take care of his work from now on....


A strange dream by all means, don't you think? Dr.H though so when we talked about it and gave me some very helpful insights about its meanings and symbolisms but none of them included the exhortation to go and paint. 


Two weeks after the dream I received an email from an acquaintance about an American painter who was giving art classes to anyone interested. That was my cue. The universe was definitely telling something and I could not just ignore it. I signed up and the rest is history...ok I am exaggerating a lot actually, but I was able to  paint quite a few pieces and I continue to paint until today. Mind you I am no Rembrandt, not by a million, but I managed to fill the walls of my apartment, met some great and seriously talented people along the way and most of all explored a side of myself that was hidden for many years. 

My 1st attempt in painting with 

Watercolours