The Fishy Business of Pond Life

I waited three years for this iris to bloom in the raised pond in our courtyard.  I like to think it has a sort of Japanese serenity which belied the manic activity taking place below it over a few days last week.  


I dreamt of stocking our water wonderland with magnificent koi carp - gold, vermilion, black, white and silver cruising beauties to delight the eye. But the head pondkeeper in my life decreed that they lay waste to all vegetation and we should choose fish that were more respectful of their surroundings. His slightly annoying solution was golden rudd (with the exception of a solitary elder they're hardly even gold!)  who are discreet to the point of  being a wretched bore ninety percent of the time. Ah, but when it's feeding time,  they emerge in shoals, darting in all directions, flipping the surface with their tails as they snatch a mouthful and then coming back together in a more graceful formation.  Gaze down through the limpid greeny depths and it's delightful. 

In the balmy weather of our phoney summer last week,  I heard the sweet  sounds of some fishy business going on.  I now know this group hanky panky to be 'spawning' but
that's the limit of my understanding as to what exactly it was they were up to.  I did feel like a voyeur lying on the pond edge watching my normally shy chums brazenly wriggling into the curlywurly weeds on the surface thrashing, splashing, nudging and bumping and seductively turning turtle.  Were they discharging their part of the bargain into the water or was this some kind of communal foreplay?  It was hard to tell but I'm sure we'll see some results sooner or later.

The Blogging World is My Oyster

I feel like someone who’s thrown a tantrum and can’t work out how to stage her re-entry into family life.  Whether to burst into tears and say sorry or just amble in nonchalantly as if nothing had happened?  I certainly have my head bowed in acknowledgment of all the terrifically kind things people wrote at the time I almost slashed Rose C’est La Vie’s wrists – how attention-seeking was that?  So thank you all  for responding  and making me feel a million dollars even if I appeared to be slamming the door and storming out.  I hope I am not usually so ungracious.

I haven't been a-visiting either so I must go round and see everyone and hope you'll forgive my absence.  I have actually missed you.

Absent Without Leave

I seem to have lost my mojo so I can only resort to throwing up a little painting or two.

If I tell you that I'm disappearing for a while then I might come back sooner than I thought?

Images © Rosie West

Shadow Play

 I have just bought a handsome, seductive book: Emma Rutherford's Silhouette - The Art of the Shadow pub. Rizzoli - and thought I would have a go myself. Voila.

From top: Diana Vreeland; Grace Kelly; Edith Sitwell;  Ottoline Morrell

Glorious Parthenia!

If  anyone is in any doubt how talented, how big-hearted Little Augury is, here is proof.  The lovely Gaye Tapp and I are pleased to call ourselves blog sisters since we started out within a couple of months of each other and enjoy a friendship that is only separated by the small matter of the Atlantic Ocean.   On my first blog birthday she sent me a selection of her hand-made cards which everyone should see.

'Modesty is the citadel of beauty'. This is the legend inside the image at the top but what you can't see here is that it is printed on an insert of tracing paper.  The devil or rather, the angel, is in the detail - always inventive and witty like the relief 'Map of Matrimony' below (bearing the words Bon Voyage inside). The slippage, which occurred during scanning, shows how certain parts of the map have been reproduced, cut out and stuck on with the tiny pieces of bended card.  This girl's got nifty fingers and endless patience.

Below is a surreal work of art in card form.  It says 'On the road to the asylum' (this might come in useful one day) and the inside bears an envelope, stuck down, full of facsimile fragments and a real feather or two.  This is Little Augury curating the museum and art gallery of her own mind. We know how fertile is her imagination, how well-read she is, from  visiting her blog.

And she sent me two little treasures like this;  an oversized matchbook in appearance it opens to reveal a small sheaf of brown paper on which to send a series of billets doux or little drawings to the one or ones I love.  

Exquisite n'est ce pas.  And finally the card in which she wrote was designed for a baby shower for one of her friends.  What could be more charming for that occasion?

The seal of perfection

Where The Bee Sucks

'

The bee  apparently was the oldest emblem of the sovereigns of France and symbolized immortality and resurrection.  But Napoleon Bonaparte with his glorious talent for self-invention and legendary personal style  appropriated the bee for use on his own insignia, reinscribing it with the notion of the hive, of The Republic with himself at the head. (I hadn’t  really thought of Napoleon as Queen Bee before and nor I imagine had he.)

Today, the motif is a gift to interior designers to represent the Empire style.  I stayed in a nouveau-Empire themed hotel the other day and couldn’t help noticing the scatter cushions made of black silk woven with these pretty golden insects.  Made me feel tres Josephine pour un moment. 

The top image comes from an absolutely lush blog called Trouvais  (taken from the book 'Fabrics: The Decorative Art of Textiles' by Caroline Lebeau);  read more about Napoleon's imperial mantle here; last image  from Trouvais.  I do recommend it.

To figure out the difference between terms like neo-classical, regency, empire and directoire  visit  design historian Emily Evans Eerdmans blog here.

*     *     *

And now, since Spring has finally arrived, with its heavy-scented blossoms I can present Emma Kirkby singing Where The Bee Sucks There Suck I.  (For some unaccountable reason this clip starts with some hugely inappropriate remarks but please ignore them because Kirkby's is my favourite version and it is utterly delightful.)   

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly. 
After summer merrily, merrily shall I live now. Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

William Shakespeare

(From 'The Tempest', words spoken by Ariel after he is set free
by Prospero.)

Odalisques Oh!

Henri Matisse, photographed by Man Ray in 1928


Reading little augury's posts featuring the painter Jean Etienne Liotard (1702-1789) here and here, it reminded me how the fascination with orientalism ran and ran.  In the collective European imagination the Turkish and North African 'Orient', has long been a site of fantasy.  The louche harem dress and those lounging poses must  have been dynamite to the tightly-buttoned 19th century armchair travellers and dreamers.

Eugene Delacroix's Women of Algiers 1834, The Louvre


Henri Matisse combined modernism with the tradition of the salon painters in his matchless series of odalisques.   I suspect these paintings arrived from a collision between his  love of the female form and his lifelong involvement with textiles, which will be the subject of a later post. Meanwhile I brighten up a dull day with these stunning paintings and drawings.

Seated Odalisque 1926, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Small Odalisque in a Purple Robe 1937,  Private Collection

The Lamé Robe 1932, Yale University Art Gallery

Odalisque with Yellow Persian Robe and Anemones 1937,  Philadelphia Museum of Art

Large Odalisque with Bayadere Costume1925, Victoria and Albert Museum



  'Odalisque' : 'a female slave or concubine in a harem, especially one in the seraglio of the sultan of Turkey.' It derives from the Turkish word oda - chamber and lik - function.


All Matisse images from Matisse - His Art And Textiles pub. Royal Academy of Arts 2005

Bad Woman ~ Good Company

It was Toby Worthington who introduced me to the New York cabaret artiste, the legendary Julie Wilson and I am grateful for his good taste in bad women.


Read more about her from one of her devotees at STIRRED, STRAIGHT UP, WITH A TWIST  here.


Bad woman - good company. That's the point. Victor Plaar (1863-1929  ) wrote my favourite phrase 'She was wild, and sweet, and witty' of  a woman who no doubt had a reputation as scarlet as  Julie Wilson's feather boa.  

Epitaphium Citharistriae

Stand not uttering sedately

Trite oblivious praise above her!

Rather say you saw her lately

Lightly kissing her last lover.

Whisper not, ‘There is a reason

Why we bring her no white blossom.’

Since the snowy bloom's in season

Strow it on her sleeping bosom!

Oh, for it would be a pity

To o'erpraise her or to flout her:

She was wild, and sweet, and witty -

Let's not say dull things about her.

Those Hands Under The Table

I have had lots of feedback now to my comic strip and I have learnt a good lesson about the power of communication.  The storyline is much more ambiguous than I realised!  Naturally, I knew what I meant.

It's my own fault but I was slightly mortified to realise that many people thought the Ambassador had his hands under the table for a reason.. blimey!  The real reason is this: I didn't have the energy to draw that many pairs of hands on the table! (Lesson No. 1 to myself: no shortcuts)

My meaning (clearly oblique) was that the scenario is a metaphor for the difficulty of making conversation to a gentleman who is hopelessly uncommunicative but nevertheless has a strong sense of entitlement that you will do the business in entertaining him.  It doesn't happen often but I did once feel completely shredded after an encounter with an ambassador who shall remain anonymous.  No, he didn't come up with the punch-line but I was bloody furious with him!

That swan!  Nobody understood that reference but there were plenty of interesting interpretations.  It was meant to represent the fact that I looked serene on the surface and was paddling like mad under the waterline.  Well, there you go Rosie..   You'll have to try a little harder next time!

Watch this space.

Comic Moments

This is work in progress.  I have just finished a short course in 'sequential' art Drawing The Graphic Novel at The Prince's Drawing School in London with delightful Emily Haworth Booth as tutor.   Novel, ha.  I balk at the idea of such a massive project for this little vignette took me rather a long time.  I had to finish it hurriedly hence the scruffiness;  and it didn't quite fit on my scanner, hence the missing lines on the panels.  I know I should re-draw it and get all the faces to match but for now it's simply the work of a beginner. 

So I present The Lady and The Jurassic Ambassador.  Any likeness to any real ambassador is purely coincidental.   [Click on the images to enlarge]

© Rosie West 2010

The Shy Daffodil

  Thank goodness I grew and drew my own  this year.  The word has come from the Lake District that our coldest winter in thirty years has delayed the onset of Wordsworth's host of golden daffodils. There has even been a plea for volunteers to report sightings of them.  Many daffodowndilly tourists will be disappointed but they should make for a spectacular Easter.

I Ask the Audience: Somebody Name That Film For Me

This has been bugging me over a couple of centuries..  In the early 1950s I was taken to the Odeon by a nanny who I suspect should have sat me in front of Pinocchio but no doubt came to the correct conclusion that if she gave me enough ice cream I would keep quiet and watch the film of her choice. I think it starred Judy Garland but  I could be wrong and then it will be impossible to identify I suppose.

 I may have taken my afternoon nap through most of it because I have just the one image  in my memory and that is the closing scene which involved a handsome man in a white towelling robe.

  He walked off the terrace down a couple of steps and dropped it on the sand.

Then he waded slowly into a sunset sea

never to return was the impression I had at the time.  Or maybe he was just having a pre-prandial dip but somehow it felt more dramatic than that.  Was nanny sobbing? I can't rightly remember.

I shall be very embarrassed if I have imagined all this and terribly grateful if anybody knows what I am talking about.   If you did see a film something like this,  forgive me if my visual aids have put you off it for ever.  

Mother's Handiwork II

I spent so much time looking for this photograph last night that I had to add it as a postcript.  It is not entirely as I remembered it. I was hoping to look a little less well fed and that my mother had taken the hair rollers out first.  My sister Elizabeth got the white shoes and the bow huh.  

*          *         *

So where's the respect from my own daughter today?

Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday, synonymous with  Mother's Day, is a moveable feast in Britain because it is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Christian calendar.  Originally it was the day people visited their mother church in honour of the Virgin Mary and then it became traditional as the one day of the year when the poor old domestic servants were allowed to visit their families.  I prefer the term to Mother's Day as it free from commercial connotations like Hallmark cards but that's just me.

We are celebrating the centenary of my mother Mitzi's birth this month. She died in 1990.  Like many of her generation she did not really voice her maternal love for her four daughters but we were in no doubt about it.  One of the ways she expressed it was by making us beautiful clothes: smocked vyella frocks,  sundresses, gingham school dresses, towelling beach wraps, summer shorts, nightdresses, housecoats, party dresses .. I still remember my delight and pride in them. 

 I  adored going to the shops and choosing patterns, heaving the great books from Butterick, McCalls and Simplicity around, flicking through the pages and always sneaking a look at the Fancy Dress outfits at the end of the children's section. I spent hours with her at the dining room table, listening to her breathing as she pinned out her patterns.  Loved the sound of the scissors scything through the fabric and the sweet aroma of new material.  Loved the    gentle whirring of her Singer sewing machine and every detail of the making except for standing around while she fitted me and measured a hem.    

The narrative of one of the dresses my mother made me.  I wore this darling  when I was five for a little play at school. Geoffrey Christmas (I'm not making it up) and I had approximations of christmas stockings tied on our fronts and had to hold hands by the tree. I was mortified but that's beside the point.  Fast forward to 30 years later at a jumble sale held at my childrens' school, not many miles from where I grew up. I am rooting through the piles of clothes and there it is! I remember the nylon fabric exactly (an exciting innovation at the time)  and it has all the hallmarks of my mother's workmanship, down to the edging on the collar. I never found out where it had been in the meantime but clearly it was meant to survive and come back home.   

Image top: http://coutureallure.blogpsot.com

The Compassionate Eye: Henry Moore as War Artist

The Shelter Perspective: The Liverpool Street Extension 1941

Reducing the magnificence of Henry Moore's sculptures to a 2-D photographic image doesn't work for me. You can't savour them from every angle or appreciate their overwhelming impact in the space.  At the Henry Moore show at Tate Britain here his drawings have as much eloquence, particularly his iconic series of London citizens sheltering in the underground from the nightly bombing raids in the Blitz.  Moore was appalled by the poverty and squalor he encountered in these claustrophic living tombs and the sight of sleeping bodies in rows he could only compare to the horror of the slave ship.  

Photo: Lee Miller, Henry Moore in Holborn underground station 1943

 

 These outdoor images, some of which I have reproduced individually below,  are a master-class in the art of being an eye-witness: immediate, dramatic, full of information.  I marvel at his sense of scale: monumental scenes reduced to a thumbnail.  But the subject matter is sometimes quirky, surreal in the way he juxtaposes sheep, for instance, with bombers, a crashed plane lodged against a haystack or 'peaceful women' with 'sudden devastation'.  I spent a long time in front of this composite and I hope they repay you for giving them your close attention.

Eighteen Ideas for War Drawings 1940 Pencil, wax crayon, coloured crayon, watercolour wash and pen and ink on paper 27.4 x 37.6 cm

searchlights

flashes from ground

gun shells bursting like stars

devastated houses

bomb crater

contrast of peaceful women with sudden devastation

Haystack and aeroplane

burning cows

spotters [?] on buildings

barbed wire

Cows & Bombers

Bombs bursting at sea