Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Musings and nostalgia

 


"So you speak to me of sadness
And the coming of the winter
Fear that is within you now
It seems to never end
And the dreams that have escaped you
And the hope that you've forgotten
You tell me that you need me now
You want to be my friend
And you wonder where we're going
Where's the rhyme and where's the reason
And it's you cannot accept
It is here we must begin
To seek the wisdom of the children
And the graceful way of flowers in the wind"

Rhymes and Reasons 
John Denver

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,




And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree




Thursday, August 10, 2023

Friday, February 17, 2023

Howler Monkey Belize Trip Nov./Dec. 2022

 

"Then the Earth grew old, its landscapes mellowing and showing signs of age, its ways becoming whimsical and strange in the manner of a man in his last years..." 

The High History of the Runestaff

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Ivan Kenneth Eyre (15 April 1935 – 5 November 2022)


  I finished school and moved to Calgary to join Helen in the summer of 1988. We were both at the U of C that summer just in time to see Personal Mythologies/Images of the Milieu a solo show by the Canadian artist Ivan Eyre at The Nickle Gallery. One day a week admission was free (we had little money) and I was there every lunch hour. Later the library I worked in in Calgary  held Eyre's large painting Floodwood, a strange merger of still life and landscape typical of the artist. Another library and I shared my office with a print of his landscape Red Hill. Since my first viewing of his work Eyre has not just shared my personal space through his works but also my imaginative space through his oft repeated images of wheeled horse, giants shapes in the sky and hornblowers. I have collected show catalogues, books and a few works. He has influenced how I view the cityscapes and the landscapes of the prairies in which I have spent most of my life. As Helen once said after seeing his cityscapes one learns to look up at the tops of the tall buildings to catch a glimpse of the Eyre hornblowers silhouetted against the prairie sky.

Obituary

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/winnipeg-mb/ivan-eyre-11003438

Wikipedia entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Eyre

A lovely youtube clip of Eyre in his studio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4URm0196QjM

When I look at a painting it isn't only the painting I see but the thing that I am. If there is more in the painting that I am, then I won't see it.

Ivan Eyre

Thank you Ivan.



Sunday, October 30, 2022

I'm back




"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
            Shall be lifted—nevermore!"
The Raven, Poe

Monday, May 9, 2022

Spring back/Winter Wonderland

 


  "Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, 
     its white flag waving over everything,
      the landscape vanished,
      not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   
      and beyond these windows"

      from Snow Day
       by Billy Collins  



And let's remember.