Christmas Past

Christmas can be full of drama.  Witness the above photo taken outside my home on Christmas Eve 1958.  I was ten. My younger brother (13)was off with his girlfriend.  My eldest brother (16) wanted out as well.  It was lucky that he was allowed to go, for as he left he turned to look at the house and discovered the roof was on fire. He called the fire department.  The rest of us acted in ways particular to our natures. I grabbed all the animals.  (This was years after my brother's baby alligator escaped.)  My grandmother rescued my mother's mink stole.  My mother yelled at my brother to stop throwing hot water on the fire.  My father went for his manuscripts.  He was being sued at the time.
    The attic and second floor were badly burned.  The only thing left in the attic was a toy metal firetruck which my younger brother still has today.  He missed most of the drama but he got the prize.

How Green Was My Gluten

                                             "Daily Loaves" © 2004 www.cindypackardrichmond.com

   Life is full of cruel ironies.
   If I were to be executed, my final meal would  include bread, arugula, tomato and mozzarella in a balsamic vinaigrette.  Pasta for the main course, followed by a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream icing.  (I'm not talking about the fake buttercream, or the boiled or the Swiss.  Just butter, confectioner's sugar and vanilla, please.)
  Life hardly seems worth living without bread, fresh fruit and vegetables.  But that is where I am at.     I have lymphocytic colitis.  If I don't avoid gluten, and fresh produce, my life is spent in the bathroom.  My record is19 trips in a 24 hour period.  Unless I want to take steroids every day, the only cure is abstention.
   So it makes me mad when people belittle the gluten-free movement.  Sure, some people jumped on the fad bandwagon.  But for many, it is real.
   There are many gluten substitutes but none you'd ever eat again if you could have the real deal.
   Alas, there are no substitutes for fresh fruit and vegetables.
   So as we head into Thanksgiving, I give thanks that I can still eat buttercream.

Be Careful of What You Don't Ask For

                                            "Baby Toes" © 2015

     It is so easy to say the wrong thing to a grown child. Being a parent is often like walking on crusty egg shells.  You hope the calcium carbonate of the shell will hold because there is no telling what is brooding within.    Totally innocuous comments are misinterpreted and thought to be heat-seeking accusations.
      My job, as I see it,  is to cheer them on and offer ready support if things fall apart.  Not to hover, not to impose.
     I never asked my children for grandchildren.  Never even hinted at such a thing.  Not so my father-in-law. He is very old and worries that his bloodline will end.  If my son does not supply a male heir (females need not apply) the family "heirlooms" are to be shipped  to a distant cousin on the west coast. The cousin is eight years old and possibly lacking in the necessary gravitas.
    The "heirlooms" aren't worth the freight, but it's Grandpa's dismissal of the female line I resent.

    Earlier this year my son and his wife produced a delightful little girl.  I didn't ask for a granddaughter but my life is much richer for her being in it.  I see her every week.
     Such abounding joy doesn't go unnoticed by the Fates.  My son's family will soon be moving abroad with the foreign service.  It could be anywhere.  There are 280 embassies and consulates, many of them in countries I've not heard of.  After two years, they will be transferred to another country, and on and on.  We will visit of course, possibly via yak or sampan, but it's not the same as hopping on the beltway.

Oy, Portugal!

What a gorgeous country!  Also, rather treacherous (see below).  Portugal is a compact country, only 125 miles wide.  And as my husband believes in seeing everything possible, we logged 1900 kilometers on our rental Peugeot.  (And had only 340 Euros in damages.  The roads in Porto are about the width of a birth canal.) From Lisbon, we drove to both ends of the Algarve, up to Evora, Coimbra, Obidos, the Duoro wine region, Porto, Sintra and back to Lisbon.  All in 10 days.

The colors are deliciously riotous

The beaches at the Algarve are pristine. 

The wine country above the Duoro River with its endless rows of grapevines is a study in geometry.  I feared the wine country would be wasted on me as I am allergic to wine.   I discovered, however, that port(wine that has been fortified with brandy), goes down ever so nicely.

I went on steroids to tame my colitis for the duration of the trip.  Croissants every morning, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables everyday.  Oh how I've missed them.

The Portuguese are very fond of dried seafood.  Octopi dry on hangers (not all legs make it to the market)  and fish dry on flat wire beds.  The smell is as you would expect.

All in all, a delightful country.  But as I mentioned, there is an element of danger in Portugal.  Not roving bands of gypsies, but sidewalks.

Portugal is ALL hills.  Steep hills.  Steep, slick hills.  The side walks are made of old, slippery tile shards.  The roads, built in the 1800s, are composed of uneven 5" cubes of limestone.   Nothing in Portugal is even-surfaced, except the universally glassy marble/slate bathroom floors (are hoteliers unfamiliar with litigious foreigners?).  My ankle  is dodgy enough on smooth surfaces. On cobbled streets, I'm a runaway truck headed down the mountain.  My husband held his breath for nine days, sure that I was going to topple.  The quandary: how to be protective, without being dragged along in my wake.  

I am very proud to say I slogged up and down the endless hills without incident.  We returned to Lisbon with one day left for exploring.  My husband had to go solo, as I was laid up in bed with a wrenched knee.  The night before, coming out of the bathroom with damp feet,  I skidded on the marble steps and went flying.  I'm sure the  half bottle of Port had nothing to do with it.  

Outside the Comfort Zone

    When I was a child, my mother told me 'it's just as important to know what you can't do, as well as what you can."  I'm sure she meant this to be a comfort for I had a good deal to be modest about. Lessons in tennis,swimming, sailing, ice skating, skiing, dance, flute, life drawing, sculpture, golf,  you name it, I took it.  None of it stuck.  Mom professed admiration for my attempts until one  day she took another tack.
    I have been painting now for about 15 years.    The human figure still eludes me.  I've tried, I've really tried. The last figure class I took was 6 years ago, though even then I hedged my bets.  The class was doing figure,  and with Danni Dawson's permission,  I was off in the corner painting still lifes.  Homework involved portraits.  I did as best I could.
   Last week I stepped willingly outside my comfort zone.  I took a three day portrait workshop with Dan Thompson of the Art Students League of New York.  Dan was terrific.   The first day was grisaille (laying in the portrait with raw umber and white).  The next day was color massing.  But discouraged by how little my grisaille looked like the model, I started from scratch on a new canvas.  I was pleased with the result (bottom left). Day three, the class refined the features.  As I had no color masses to refine, I quickly added color  (last photo).
  If only I had stopped there,   Instead, I spent 4 hours hamfistedly 'refining' the masses.  If you think I'm going to show you the results, you're nuts.

Day one

To Thrash, Perchance to Sleep

                       The Blowhard © 2009 cindypackardrichmond.com

   In The Hours, Michael Cunningham writes "How was your sleep, he asks, as if sleep were not an act but a creature that could be either docile or fierce."
   I have met that creature, we go toe-to-toe nearly every night.  It has met my husband as well.  Neither of us sleeps well.  My husband has a snuffagufalous embedded in his sinuses that gets feisty when he lies down.  As near as we can figure, it is very rare for both of us to be asleep at the same time.  We compare notes in the morning.
    I don't drink because I think that may be tied to the Sleep demon. My husband refuses to give up beer.  I take a sleeping pill, melatonin and a benadryl at 8:30.  We go to bed about 10:30.  He falls asleep, I toss for about a half hour, then admit  Sleep is not on my dance card.   I go downstairs to watch TV.  If I eat something it will add to my woes later, but at that point I can't say I am entirely logical when it comes to peanut butter.  I try to manufacture yawns.  Back upstairs for a warm bath.  More enforced yawns.  Back to bed, thrash, thrash.  I pull on compression knee socks, hoping to quiet my crazy legs syndrome.  Nothing.  I go to the guest bedroom and thrash.  I sit up and peel off my compression socks.  I read.  Feet tingle.  Slap on some Salon Pas pain relievers on my arches  and hope my left foot won't seize up in a charley horse.  If it does, it's back to the bathtub to run very hot water over contorted foot.
   Round about 1:30 I finally nod off.  My husband's shift starts at two. I wake up as he is nodding off at 4.  Why is Sleep so bloody complicated?

Is This Any Way to Sell a Painting?

Oddly enough, the subject of this blog is the image featured in my last blog:

"Far From Home" copyright 2003

A man bought this painting from the Art League in Alexandria, Virginia.  He got a dealer discount, I got $950.  Still, I was thrilled, a dealer liked my work.  I was more thrilled when I learned the painting was in a gallery a few miles from my family's house on Martha's Vineyard.  (Somewhat less thrilled that he was asking $4500. ) Years went by.  Some summers, the painting wasn't there, leading me to hope it had finally found a good home.

The gallery floundered and became a trendy clothes shop.  (Lest you feel pity for the gallery owner, he actually owns the block of upscale stores. ) One of them, "Portobello Road", is a bookshop/artgallery/vintage souvenir shop.  The books are eclectic and to my liking, so I go there every year.  This week I was stunned to find "Far From Home" amid books, leaning directly against a white pole. (See first image)  

The price has dropped to $2500.  Perhaps he'll throw in the pole, if you ask nicely.

Lucky Me

          "Far From Home" © 2003  pastel on sanded Wallis Paper

   
     I am too lucky.  I was born into a  family that loved me (even after I made fun of  them in my first novel).  I married a good man and have two amusing, grown children.  I've never made much money but I have been able to work as I wanted, first as a novelist and then an artist.  Unfortunately, I've done nothing to deserve this good fortune, which means it can vanish in the blink of an eye.
    When I look at all the misfortune in the world, I am thoroughly abashed.  It's not that my life hasn't had it's rough patches, but that others have never had a smooth patch.
    Those that know me, call me a pessimist.  It is true that I complain, grouse, and bitch to excess. If something can go wrong, I assure everyone it will.  Actually, I am an optimist just trying to trick the Fates.
    I would like the Fates to know I don't take this grace for granted.  I am ever so grateful.

Bad Publicity

                                   " Roman Holiday" © 2009

"They" say there is no such thing as bad publicity.  I wonder.  Recently, I have "boosted" my Facebook posts to generate sales.  My paintings have been woefully lame when it comes to self-promotion.  And truth to tell, I'm not much better.  My parents encouraged us all to succeed in our chosen fields, but then we were to be modest about it.  It took me years to accept a compliment without batting it away with a sarcastic remark.

Facebook claims to boost images by sending them to the friends of my English-speaking friends.  And their friends, should I want to pay more.  I am worried for my friends.  Some of the responding Facebookers look unsavory.  One man's cover picture was of a pile of naked women, inked toe to brow with tattoos.  His own photo gave me pause.  Perhaps he was an actor on "OZ", but I suspect he was a guest of the state.  What was it he liked about my work?

People should keep their politics off Facebook.  More often than not, I am startled by people's political choices.  Especially people whom I once thought reasonable.  I learn from their mistakes, keeping mum   with potential clients in my studio, even when they are covered head to toe with tats.

Face Lifts

   
                                                "Librarian of Congress" copyright 2004

 Lately, I've noticed that women who are my contemporaries look a lot younger than I.  My jiggly bits are sagging.  By next year, my breasts will be even with my elbows.  I could do something surgical, but who am I kidding.  My father repeatedly told me when I was a teenager that "Beauty is as Beauty does."  I still don't know what that means, but I assume since I was applying makeup when he said it, he was referring to my weight.  I only wish I was now as fat as I was when he thought I was fat.
My mother, Virginia Packard, was blessed with strong cheekbones, a lithe body and a wicked sense of fashion.  I, on the other hand,  am saddled with thin lips and a thick body.  My sense of fashion is relatively good (I read Vogue, watch Project Runway etc) but tend to wear whatever fits.  My husband once believed the adage that a man should look his mother-in-law for a preview of his wife's future.  Who was I to  dissuade him?

   I watched a documentary about face lifts years ago.   The surgeon put his hand between the skin and the deep fascia to remove the tissue sheath.  I've done the same a hundred times, clearing the membrane of a whole chicken to add herbs.   The documentary  was enough to put me off surgery and roasted chicken.
   My mother had a face lift when she was 58.    My parents rented out their home in New Canaan every summer. One year, my mother's face lift coincided with an open house. I came home with my fiancé to visit her.  My father had stuck my mother in the smallest room of the house so as to not frighten potential tenants.  I thought him a cad.  Until I saw her.  She looked nothing like my mother but an enormous blue and black Kabuki mask, tottering on narrow shoulders.  
   Two weeks later, still swollen with the blue fading to yellow and purple, my mother gamely went to the Yale Club in New York City to meet my fiancé's parents for the first time.  I've never admired her more.

Face Lifts

   The above statue of Evangeline reminds me of my mother, Virginia Packard.   She was blessed with strong cheekbones, a lithe body and a wicked sense of fashion.  I, on the other hand,  am saddled with thin lips and a thick body.  My sense of fashion is relatively good (I read Vogue, watch Project Runway etc) but tend to wear whatever fits.  My husband once believed the adage that a man should look his mother-in-law for a preview of his wife's future.  Who was I to  dissuade him?
  Lately, I've noticed that women who are my contemporaries look a lot younger than I.  My jiggly bits are sagging.  By next year, my breasts will be even with my elbows.  I could do something surgical, but who am I kidding.  My father repeatedly told me when I was a teenager that "Beauty is as Beauty does."  I still don't know what that means, but I assume since I was applying makeup when he said it, he was referring to my weight.  I only wish I was now as fat as I was when he thought I was fat.
   I watched a documentary about face lifts years ago.   The surgeon put his hand between the skin and the deep fascia to remove the tissue sheath.  I've done the same a hundred times, clearing the membrane of a chicken to add herbs.   The documentary  put me off surgery and roasted chicken.
   My mother had a face lift when she was 58.    My parents rented out their home in New Canaan every summer. One year, my mother's face lift coincided with an open house. I came home with my fiancé to visit her.  My father had stuck my mother in the smallest room of the house so as to not frighten potential tenants.  I thought him a cad.  Until I saw her.  She looked nothing like my mother but an enormous blue and black Kabuki mask, tottering on narrow shoulders.  My fiancé gasped.
   Two weeks later, still swollen with the blue fading to yellow and purple, my mother gamely went to the Yale Club in New York City to meet my fiancé's parents for the first time.  I've never admired her more.

Free At Last!

                                   "Color Echoes"© 2015

    I started this painting to be in my usual style, but the left half reminded me of Diebenkorn's Ocean Park Series, so I went with it.  The finished image is far superior to what you see here.  The camera angle was so skewed that even Photoshop couldn't remedy it.
   The 'free at last' refers to my retirement.  I quit my day job.  Granted it was just one day a week, but still.  I was a sales clerk in the Art League's Supply Store.  It was a great job.  I loved my boss, interacting with other artists, learning from some, teaching others.  Most of the customers were great.   But after 15 years, clerkdom has lost its glamour.  And I really hated fighting rush hour traffic.
   So what will I do with this new freedom?  As it happens, nothing good.  I cracked my patella (spontaneously) last week.  No surgery required, just 6 to 8 weeks in a 30" brace.  Walking, or rather galumphing, with it for one day skewed my back.  Shortly after I am released from the brace, I am having a total ankle replacement.  Months of recovery, I'm told.
   At least I won't be stuck in beltway traffic on my ankle scooter.

Unexpected Gifts

A good friend, Judy Yavit, is a world traveler.  She has brought me many gifts.  In hindsight, my favorite was a blank notebook she gave me in 1992.  Now, it is nearly full of  quotes, political cartoons and things I found funny, odd or provocative.  Today I am going to share lighter fare.

The above image is from the Washington Post, from February 2011.  As the caption states, an anti-government protester in Yemen "with pieces of bread taped to his head shouts out slogans."


From Pam Houston's, Cowboys are My Weakness: "He'll be gone six weeks.  I asked him if he wanted to make love.  He was just lying there, you know, staring at the ceiling.  He said, 'I was just trying to decide whether to do that or go to Ace Hardware.'"

Bumper sticker:  "I love animals.  They're delicious."

Richard Russo in Nobody's Fool:  "She had married a man whose idea of luck was road kill."

Zanne Early Stewart, of the late Gourmet Magazine: "He's like the man who knew how to spell banana but didn't know when to stop."

Alice Thomas Ellis, The Sin Eaters: "Ermyn was asleep on her back and Lilliputian insects were considering how best to break her up and carry her away."

The late Molly Ivins described Arnold Schwarzenegger as looking like "a condom stuffed with walnuts."

Gravestone in Kilmarnock, Virginia: "I told you I was sick."

Mark Helprin decrying modernist art as a function of totalitarianism,'there are a thousand abstract segments in a Raphael, but not a single Raphael in an abstract.'

Richard Russo, Empire Falls: A maitre d' in an upstate New York Italian restaurant, "Do you have reservations?"  "Who wouldn't?"

Michael Holroyd's autobiography of his life as a poor little rich boy: He retreated to the world of books, "which the family borrowed from the local library and baked on principle to kill off the germs."

My husband: "Is there stress after death?"

Zoe Heller Everything You Know: "Lately when I lie on my back, I have noticed it (her stomach) swerving away, settling in a puddle of flash at my side.  In the mornings, I wake to find it lying next to me, gazing up at me like an affectionate haggis."

Ford Motors hired poet laureate, Marianne Moore, to come up with a name for what was ultimately called the Edsel.  Some of her suggestions; Resilient Bullet, Mongoose Civique, Varsity Stroke, and my favorite, Utopian Turtletop.

Howard Stern referred to George W. Bush as "Hop-a-long Apathy."

The National Tartar Association has decided that men should wear underwear under their kilts.  One indignant Scot said if he were to wear any underwear, it would be made of twigs.

Eric Newby, Slowly, Down the Ganges: the author approaches a group of Indians warming their hands near a funeral pyre.  He says, 'It's a good fire.'  One replies, 'Yes. It is a woman."

And lastly, Willem de Kooning: "An artist is like a man at the circus, standing off by himself, trying to balance on one finger.  The point is, no one asked him to do it."

Goodbye, Old Friends

                                                    "Sink, Sank, Sunk II"  © 2011

  This piece has been a crowd pleaser.  For years, people stopped on their way out of my studio, surprised by this piece.  People revisited the painting.  Some brought friends back to see it.  The sink is part of the antique plumbing in the Vineyard house.  The animals are mostly wind-up animals I got off ebay.
   I didn't expect the painting would ever sell, but on Thursday a  family from Los Angeles was smitten.  Part of me was sad to see it go, but another part was revving up a new windup toy scenario.  Stay tuned...

What are Memories Made of?

What are memories made of?  Puppy dog tails, bakery smells, the feeling of sun on your face?  I only know for sure that memories are not made of megabytes.  For the second time in eighteen months I have had a 2 terabyte external hard drive go belly up.  We lost power last night and I lost about 30,000 images.  Apparently, I am supposed to have backup for my backup.  It puts me in mind of Bertrand Russell who delivered a speech about galaxies.  A woman in the audience said that was nonsense, everyone knew that the earth sat on the back of a giant tortoise.  Russell asked, "ah, but what is the turtle standing on?"  Her response, "it's turtles all the way down."  To be data safe in this brave new world, it seems we need banks of external hard drives, 'all the way down.'
   The above photo is my new granddaughter.  (Baby picture removed at the request of her parents) I hope to have many memories of her that don't require backup.  I have kept a journal since 1976, a reassuring hardcopy of my life.  I am missing the year my son was born.  He was a very fussy child.  Not his fault, as it happens.  The pediatrician prescribed warm water with karo syrup for his colic.  He was allergic to corn syrup, so I was pouring gasoline on the fire.  Now I wonder if things were so bad I contemplated infanticide and tossed the journal destroy the evidence.

What's In A Name?

                                   " The Offices of Tilted and Askew" © 2007

   Names have been much on my mind lately.  I just finished Suri Hustevedt's The Blazing World.  I found the novel difficult to get into with references to Kierkegaard, Danno and Diderot in just one paragraph.  I felt as if I had been plucked from the couch and dropped  back into one of Carol Dupre's seminars.  They were fascinating but also mentally challenging and discomforting.  The Blazing World deals with an accomplished artist Harriet/Harry Burden who feels her work has been ignored because she is a woman.  She tests her theory by using three male artists (masks) to show her work as their own.  I forced my way through the first half of the novel, only because I am an artist and felt it behooved me to do so.  Midway through I became engaged with the characters and enjoyed the premise.  
   I have always signed my paintings CP Richmond.  Not to pretend I was a man (male artists sell better) but because I never liked my name, Cynthia.  There's not a lot you can do with such a prissy name but shorten it to Cindy.  "Cindy", to me, was a cheerleader.  No one has ever offered me pompoms.  I thought of changing my name to Thia, but that smacked of overreaching.
   I take great care with the names of my paintings.  Lisa Semerad, the artist, once told her class "anything you can do to make the viewer take a second look is worth the effort."
The attached image is of one of my favorite paintings, though I couldn't begin to explain why.  It went through a series of names (ie.,"Pandora Has Left the Building")before settling on "The Offices of Tilted and Askew".
   I am about to become a grandmother which has also fueled my interest in names.  Apparently, singularity is all the rage.  No one should be burdened with a common name.  Nor one that doesn't pose the question, is the addressee male or female?  Parker, Aubrey, Avery, Riley and Peyton are popular girl's names. When I hear some current boys's names I wonder why they don't just stick a "kick me" sign on the kid's back the first day of kindergarten.  A sampling: Usher, Magnus, Ignatious, Banjo, Cosimo, and Draco. I think it's easier for girls to carry an odd name.  One of the top names for girls, according to the Huffington Post, in 2014 was Imogene.  Some of my friends children have named their children  by where they were conceived, i.e.. "Siena."  (I am so relieved she wasn't conceived in Bologna.) 
  It's a new world.  Oddity is the new normal.