Still life after Chardin, after Chardin

April 28, 2024

I admire Chardin’s still life paintings greatly. Others have too. This is a copy I did of what I thought was a Chardin, but it turns out (according to the internet) to be a pastiche of Chardin, done by a ‘follower of Chardin.’

Now that I know that, I am spotting all sorts of things that suggest the painting was not done by Chardin. In particular, the perspective seems a bit ‘steep’ for a Chardin. He seems to have painted objects that were almost at eye level, but this picture was painted by someone sitting at a height well above the objects being painted. As always, I learned a lot from copying a good picture, and now I have learned a lot after finishing the copy and reflecting on it.

I originally did this painting to fit a secondhand frame from the Op Shop. A happy result.

It is hard to get a bottle symmetrical. Harder still to make bread look ‘bready’.

Frame was $2.50. Why pay more?

Iron balls and an orange

April 21, 2024

Every share house I ever encountered seemed to have a set of Boading balls. They were as ubiquitous to share houses as a dusty rubber tree and a clingy couple who would cook delicious dinners that they would never share with the rest of us. But I digress.

This is a set of Boading balls that have travelled with me through more than ten houses. They just keep turning up. I have painted them here with a piece of fresh fruit. Not that I recall seeing fresh fruit much back in any of those share houses …

Horror under the sea

April 14, 2024

“Inside my copper helmet I felt something moving! Something was creeping through my hair. I was paralysed with the horror of it. I wanted to tear the helmet from my head, yet in the midst of my terror at the thing now moving with pin-pointed feet down my forehead was the driving thought that I must not – could not – spoil the film, that no matter what, I must go on.

Now the fearsome thing was crawling over my left eye, down my nose, I could see it! My hair seemed to stand on end. I felt cold all over. The thing was a scorpion!

In mental torture, I controlled a desire to dash my head against the inside of the helmet and try to crush the venomous creature. But I knew that at the slightest movement it might bury its poisonous sting in my flesh – even in my eye. Though I might crush it, it still could blind or wound me in its death throes.

No, I must be cool, must control myself. With unspeakable relief I felt the creature crawl back into my hair … And all this time, while my mind was numb with dread … I was going through my part, acting out the scene, while the cameras clicked away and the operators marvelled at the vivid realism of my acting.”

John Ernest Williamson, describing his disciplined underwater performance in the movie Girl of the Sea. As quoted in Trevor Norton’s very engaging Stars Beneath the Sea – the Pioneers of Diving. Carroll and Graf (1999).

The last place you would want to meet a scorpion. Oh, all right: the second last place.

Vespasian

April 7, 2024

A disembodied head of Vespasian, which you can see seemingly floating in a spotlit vitrine in the National Gallery of Victoria. One of the omens that Vespasian would become emperor of Rome was delivered by a stray dog: it picked up a severed human hand at a cross roads and dropped it on his breakfast table. Different times.

I suspect being emperor of the biggest empire in the world was not entirely straightforward. Those wrinkles on his forehead did not come from nothing. He seems, however, to have retained his sense of humour. A friend tells me that his last words were: ‘Oh dear, I think I am becoming a god.’ Funny thing: he did.

Vespasian – not the god, but a god.

Laminar flow

March 30, 2024

I appreciate that lever taps are mechanically simpler to use. A flick will always use fewer muscles and tendons than a twisting motion. Though I am worried about how this labour saving subtracts yet another bit of incidental exercise from my morning bathroom visit.

It also makes it harder to adjust the tap to get just the right amount of pressure from the tap to create a laminar flow. I have spent hours doing this over my lifetime. Much harder with a lever tap; it is almost as if creating a turbulent flow was a design decision that was made when the lever tap was invented.

Those of you of a certain age and viewing habits will know of Kenny Everett. Apparently he loved polishing bathroom taps. So much so that, if I remember right, his wife bought him taps to polish. I get it, Kenny. I get it.

mmmm………..laminar

The most important painting tip of all

March 23, 2024

There is a biography in every Rembrandt painting. His central artistic skill was an intense, responsive sympathy for people. His emotional intelligence is what gave him true magnitude rather than mere greatness. To move through his lifetime of self-portraits is to read an unflinching autobiography that neither hides nor evades anything of importance.

This is a copy of one of his self-portraits from when the finances were tight and the walls moving in a little closer. It was certainly not all fun for him, but his work endures when the wealthy burghers whose portraits he painted are otherwise completely faded from view. And that is a miracle of sorts.

Tiny people on a folded napkin (or could people please give Everest a rest)

March 16, 2024

If you do not have ready access to a mountain range, a screwed up linen napkin can be used to practice painting peaks and valleys. This is a shot from near the summit of a folded napkin, featuring two tiny intrepid climbers.

And you know the funny thing? There were fewer people on this mountain peak than there are on the top of Everest. And I had ready access to food, shelter and oxygen – all in my kitchen.

The sad sad tale of Corporal Jackie

March 10, 2024

The Rest is History episode on “History’s Greatest Monkeys” is, as expected, a delight. It pointed me towards Corporal Jackie, mascot of the 3rd South African Infantry Regiment in World War One. Poor chap lost a leg at Passchendaele and, like many, was left with PTSD. He survived, continued to eat his rations with a knife and fork, and even sat up and saluted the Colonel from his hospital bed. He died of shock during a thunderstorm after returning to his birthplace in South Africa.

Jackie was quite famous and there are many photos of him. His gaze is invariably complex.

Meanwhile in a kitchen in Bologna …

March 3, 2024

Almost by definition still life painting is contemplative. And still life painters seem, by and large, to be as decorous and calm as a bunch of well organised, plump grapes. I have no idea if Morandi collected postcards of his work. I suspect not. If he did, I do not imagine he incorporated them into his work thus …

Still life with red onion, that vinegar bottle I have painted so many times, and that silver cup I have painted even more often. And a postcard of a work by the great master, Morandi.

A knight after Rembrandt

February 25, 2024

The books tell me that Rembrandt liked stuff to the point of being a hoarder. I have seen this helmet turn up in a few of his pictures. It was obviously a favourite. But where on earth did he keep the jousting pole?

Painted on MDF from Bunnings. A wondrous substance.

Got any dragons need slaying?