About Autumn―

Autumn doesn't last long enough I think. Only three months, like all of the four seasons, but somehow, autumn seems to be all too short. This I find sad because the vivid colors come and
go so quickly. The cooler weather wakes one up and makes you feel alive and revitalized after a long, hot, humid summer when people tend to get lazy and sluggish. Autumn comes in with a breath of fresh, clean, chilled air and nudges you to get up and get going again.
God knew what he was doing when he invented it, that is for sure.
This painting is by my favorite artist, impressionist  Edouard Cortes. I adore his paintings and especially his Parisian scenes. I learned to paint light from him and a few others, though I am not even partially as good. Anyway, I love the warmth of autumn in its colors, and in its indoor delights of cozy days and nights. I like fall and winter clothing best too.
Tell me, what do you enjoy about autumn?

Theatre du Vaudville ― Eduard Cortes

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”  ― George Eliot

 Look at the warmth in the oranges and yellows of the painting below. See how it contrasts with the gray, snowy evening? It is alive with warmth. The streets are slushy but the store windows are bright and inviting. "Come in,"they say.
In impressionism, you get the sense of what the artist wants you to see even though detail is lacking.  There is an entire story in these pictures.

Place de la Republique ―E. Cortes

Mary Petty's Final Cover Revisited

March 19, 1966 Petty final cover

This post was first published in 2012. I decided to run it again because autumn always reminds me of Mary Petty, one of my favorite artists, though I am not entirely sure why.
As always each picture can be enlarged by clicking on it.

The last cover self taught artist Mary Petty drew for The New Yorker Magazine showed the Dowager Mrs. Peabody reaching for the bell pull to call her maid Fay. Sadly the  ribbon  pull cord, breaks from age as does the string of pearls that always hung around Mrs. Peabody's neck.

The cover series, which appeared from 1927 until the last one on March 19,1966, were about the fictional Peabody family and their wispy maid Fay ("half sylph and half butterfly") .  

For 40 years readers followed the family as one by one they disappeared from the story and only Mrs. Peabody was left.  I find the last cover hauntingly sad. How hard for the elderly to be left alone in a world where all their contemporaries are gone on ahead of them.

Mrs. Peabody by Mary Petty

In learning more about Mary Petty, I discovered this sad information at American National Biography Online about her own ending.

"Petty's career was tragically cut short when on 1 December 1971 she was assaulted and badly beaten by a mugger. She was found on Ward's Island three days afterward, bruised and incoherent, and never wholly recovered. She died five years later at the Pine Rest Nursing Home in Paramus, New Jersey."

Fay," half  sylph, half butterfly". by Mary Petty

Reports say she had been beaten to the point that she was left with the mind of a 3 year old child.
So sad an ending but she left a bit of herself for us to enjoy and her legacy lives on in new admirers of her work. I hope you will include yourself among her admirers now.

She  illustrated a few books which included Goodbye Mr. Chippendale and This Petty Pace, a collection of her work from the New Yorker
I  highly recommend both .

New Yorker Cover Nov. 11, 1950

Mary Petty's work may be found on Art.com , AllPosters.com and on the New Yorker site as well. If you like her drawings,they are available full size .

Mary Petty was born in Hampton, New Jersey to Robert Davison Petty, a law professor at the New York Law School, and Florence Servis, a schoolteacher. In 1922, Petty graduated from the Horace Mann School in New York City. She did not formally study art, but taught herself to draw.(wikipedia)

Wednesday Haiku #10

temple bell artist unknown

Icy winter!
   Warm in bed,
       the temple bell startles
                    my sleepy head."
                         ... annie

my painting using special brush for tree

Two moons this winter night.

One of them is floating !

See it's light?"
     annie

unknown artist

She passed by...
A camelia blossom fallen from the sky."
annie 



click to see pictures full sized.



Note: the State of the Union post is posted again beneath this post.

A Trip to the Museum

Most definitely it is time once again to go on another adventure with Toni!

click the picture to visit Toni

The Art Museum
1.   With not much to do and living in the city, tonight I decided to visit the local art museum before it closed. As I entered I encounted the ticket agent who seemed terribly bored.

2.   Looking straight at me and greeting me with a smile  he said "You are my 10th costumer today. It's been a very slow day  because of the weather."
I paid the fee and went into the museum hoping to relax a bit. It was a terrible day weather wise and nice to see some lovely art work instead of the steady downpour outside.
There was a nun standing and looking intently at one painting.
As I stood next to her she said, "Lovely, isn't it? Do you know what it is all about?"
I had to admit that I really didn't know what the artist had in mind but I had my own ideas.
She explained the painting and it was then I realized this was the great Sister Wendy!
Pleased that I was so keen on her teaching she offered to take me around and explain some paintings to me.
3.   Guiding me through the Great Room where all the great masters of art and their paintings and sculptures stood I was amazed to see all the paintings through the painters eyes via the descriptions and stories of Sister Wendy.

4.   Upon leaving I wondered If what I had seen was truly a new beginning in  love for art and art history. Sister Wendy had awakened in me a great interest in knowing why and where and how.

Sister Wendy is an art teacher but that is putting it very mildly. She is a joy to learn with. This lesson is amazing and a little shocking, too.
The series is on YouTube, so do yourself a favor, continue your education with a trip through the world of art with Sister Wendy.
This video is very short.

Another Look at Mary Petty's Art

Rainy days make me think of  The New Yorker Magazine  covers but I am not sure why or where that originated.
I have written about Mary Petty and her The New Yorker covers before.   And I've written about her final cover here as well.    A sad story to be sure.
But I prefer to celebrate her art because I admire it so very much and I am a great fan of the cover art on the New Yorker magazine in  general.
I would like to buy a few prints at Art.com and frame them. Its so good to have art around you, especially art you love. For me it is art that tells a story.
As a matter of fact I enjoy The New Yorker covers so much that my daughter bought me the complete set on DVD's that comes with a large coffee table sized book all about them. It's wonderful!
Mary's characters came to life on the cover of the New Yorker magazine with a series about the rich Mrs. Peabody and her life from young adulthood until her final days and the story of her adorable maid Fay, "half sylph and half butterfly" .
The first drawing is one of my favorites showing her conservatory on the brownstone in winter. It's a cozy look I think being inside tending your plants and watching the city go by.
Here are a few of the pictures this remarkable artist drew.

Happy New  Year

Phesant season

hailing a cab

This must be the Peabody's summer estate

 Fay downstairs polishing the silver

All sorts move n next door sometimes

Nobody..NOBODY..gives Mrs. P a ticket!

Ummm, warming the buns

not an easy job!

And then there are her humorous drawings:

Virtual Blog Tour

Today is my turn on the Virtual Blog Tour and I am excited and happy to share my post with you and then introduce the ladies who will take their turn on the tour next week,July 7th.

The first question is what am I working on?

I am always working on a project of some kind or tweaking something I have done long ago to make it better or different in some way. 
Usually my projects have to do with music or painting and occasionally it is something around the house or outside with my water gardens. Most of my paintings end up as headers on this blog.
Some of my music has seen the light of day in use at weddings.

I have ghost written but that's odd because you are fleshing out the idea of someone else using your own words.  

I have been working on a painting of Barnegat Light which is one of America's tallest light houses.  I can see it across the bay in the distance on the barrier island by Barnegat Inlet.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
What a very difficult question.
My art is amateur stuff.    It is untrained (except for watching Bill Alexander  as a child) and without real rules.  It is just how I see things coming out in what I paint , write or play on the piano.
I can't say it is unique except to say it is my own and what I do is done based on my limitations which are many.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

 I paint what I see and what I know and what I want to be true. I grew up around the seashore and in the great outdoors.
It is now and always has been an important part of my life so I paint it and I paint it again and again because it is a constantly changing vista. It is never the same two days in a row. Each time you see it things are different and I love to paint that if I can.

When I take photographs they are often a bit blurry because my body is not stable because of my spine.  My camera is not the best and I have no training at all.  I just want a record of something lovely that I have seen or a memory to save like anyone else. Nothing fancy.
I share photos and art because it is part of my life and I like to share that with my friends.
I share with others because I just love what they share with me!    Anything from what they bought for groceries, what  movie or TV program they liked, to photos of their families. Just anything.
 I just love it all and the chance to know other people a bit more.

4. How does your writing/creating process work?

My writing, my painting, my music begin with inspiration and then I just move and it comes into being.
I feel as though things make themselves and are in there waiting to come out and show themselves.
Michelangelo said "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free" and I understand that very well because it is so true.

For instance in painting clouds on a sky background I saw mountains and voila, the painting changed to a lake surrounded by mountains! 

 

I painted a lake and it wanted to have trees.
Then the easy listening radio station  on my computer played "Church by the Wildwood" and the little brown building wanted to be  placed  there.
"no spot is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the dale".
Well,no dale, but the woods are there at least!
The little building wanted a huge glass door so it could shine out onto the lake.

 

I have asked a few ladies but some just cannot take part right now.  So, I have only two who will be joining in. Still, that's two blogs for you to visit and I will also list some other bloggers who have taken part.
If you visit them our community can grow! They will be posting on July 7th.

Let me introduce you to Melanie from Joy in the Journey who shares her joy on her blog.
Melanie is a mother of 3, grandmother of 12 and pet mama of 2.
Melanie lives in central Florida and cares for her aged mother who lives with her.
After 25 years in the nursing profession she is enjoying retirement. This talented lady quilts, and spends time reading, napping, blogging, and doing volunteer work at her church.

The second lady in the tour is our dear Toni at Town Village Notes.
Toni was born in the Bronx, New York and currently lives in  beautiful upstate NY  in the town of Germantown, Columbia County.
She is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend and a coffee lover  who has been blogging since 1995.
Her  talent for poetry and graphic art can be seen on her blog.

Others who have joined in the tour :

FourSimply Living   

Picking Poppies

 Daniela at  Sweetly Dreaming of the Past.  
Daniela's blog is exceptionally lovely. She teaches so much  of the romantic side of history  and shows pictures that bring it alive. And she writes the blog in both Italian and English. How cool is that? 

Each of their blog posts contains the names of other women who have joined in so you can find lots of interesting blogs and the wonderful women behind them! This is how the blogging world can be kept alive and vibrant.

Mary Petty's Final Cover...

March 19, 1966 Petty final cover

The last cover self taught artist Mary Petty drew for The New Yorker Magazine showed the Dowager Mrs. Peabody reaching for the bell pull to call her maid Fay. Sadly the old ribbon cord breaks from age as does the string of pearls that always hung around her neck.

The cover series, which appeared from 1927 until the last one on March 19,1966, were about the fictional Peabody family and their wispy maid Fay ("half sylph and half butterfly") .  

For 40 years readers followed the family as one by one they disappeared from the story and only Mrs. Peabody was left.  I find the last cover haunting and sad. How hard for the elderly to be left alone in a world where all their contemporaries are gone on ahead of them.

Mrs. Peabody by Mary Petty

In learning more about Mary Petty, I discovered this sad quote at American National Biography Online about her own ending.

"Petty's career was tragically cut short when on 1 December 1971 she was assaulted and badly beaten by a mugger. She was found on Ward's Island three days afterward, bruised and incoherent, and never wholly recovered. She died five years later at the Pine Rest Nursing Home in Paramus, New Jersey."

Fay," half  sylph, half butterfly". by Mary Petty

Reports say she had been beaten to the point that she was left with the mind of a 3 year old child.
So sad an ending but she left a bit of herself for us to enjoy and her legacy lives on in new admirers of her work.

She  illustrated a few books which included Goodbye Mr. Chippendale and This Petty Pace, a collection of her work from the New Yorker
I  highly recommend both .

Art and Weather

I thought I would share with you my favorite artist, Edouard Cortes(1882-1969). To the left is the painting "Place de la Republique" He is an impressionist and while some think impressionism is the "easy" way to paint, it is not. Many artists can reproduce real life, but impressionism requires the ability to make something out of brush strokes that is recognizable. You can click on this to see it larger. I love his visions of Paris and his landscapes of Bretagne and Normandie. He , like me, seems to like the twilight and rainy or snowy weather. They are very interesting to paint , certainly. The only problem with any art online is that each computer sees the color and light differently. So what I see when I have the real painting in front of me might be distorted slightly when you see it. Theatre du Vaudeville, to the left here, is one of my favorites. I love the bright light. I have learned a lot about painting light from reproducing some of his techniques in painting. I have learnt a lot from Thomas Kinkade also. Many consider Kinkade to be shlock. I don't. I consider those who think he is to be snobs of the first order ( and usually people who can't paint at all). To me if you love it, then that's all that is needed to make it great art for you. I always have one of Cortes' paintings as my desktop theme. It has never changed in all these years. I find these scenes to be inviting and evocative. Somethings do change, though......... Like Weather and Blogger. While I like Blogger, it has now got a real problem lately with spam in comments from Europe and the orient. So, I have had to institute moderation because of it and might have to do more if it doesn't stop. I guess there isn't much they can do to stop it but I can stop it here if the comment dashboard will work right and that can be another problem but it's free so you can hardly really complain. It is bitterly cold here.Though its certainly been much colder, the damp air makes it feel worse. Up north they may have had some snow again but down here we are now snow free. It rained the other day and washed all of it away. I am very happy about that because I don't have much use for snow anymore. It looks nice for an hour or so and then its a pain to shovel and remove it and keep walkways free from ice.