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I suppose if flowers gossiped – and who’s to say they don’t? – I might be mistakenly identified as the Hannibal Lecter of the local floral community. “He kills flowers!!!” the chat would go, “Tortures them with no water, lets them dry out to withered, filmy husks. Look what he did to my oldest friend Rose!”
(sigh) It’s never good when the flowers turn against you; next thing you know your lawn’s overrun with nasty, ugly weeds. And, if the local vegetable population gets wind, good luck with next year’s zucchini crop (remember: never piss off a zucchini, they’re in everything. Think of an angry zucchini bread for breakfast. Yikes!) I’m still taking a hit for that whole asparagus-in-a-toaster public relations disaster; the damn thing was unplugged! Who knew asparagus had no sense of humor? Or art for that matter.
So it’s all a perception-versus-reality thing. I really enjoy the character of a dried flower, I think it does things with filtered light that healthily hydrated, well adjusted blossoms don’t. But try explaining that to a perturbed Red Mum with an attitude, it’ll get you nowhere. Maybe next to a Purple Beach Mussel but what good is that?
BARKING UP the WRONG MUSHROOM. Here it is, the middle of Spring already, almost Summer, and I’m sending artwork of Autumnal decline. How perverse.
While I’m not claiming to have found this seashell in the woods (that would’ve been SOME high tide,) with its surface mottled with moss greens and browns, I thought it would fit well with the other forresty stuff I’d collected last Fall. COLD OLD & ROUND because it was DAMN COLD, I’m OLD and the shells are ROUND. Or I’m ROUND, not sure.
More nonsense at my website of CURIOUS PAINTINGS.
Despite my earlier bleatings about tramping through local hills and dale to collect nature samples for my CURIOUS PAINTINGS series, I stumbled across BIG RED, BIG LEAF, above, after having completed a bank transaction in downtown Ipswich. No getting lost in the forest or running my boat aground in the river, I managed to simultaneously complete 2 tasks at once, itself a HUGE rarity, by conducting bank business AND finding something new to paint. If I’d gotten a parking ticket, it would’ve been 3 things simultaneously but they don’t issue tickets in downtown Ipswich.
At the very least, BIG RED, BIG LEAF provided me the chance to throw a lot of red paint around the studio; you’d be surprised at how little red is used in nature, excepting Autumn. More paint, red and otherwise, at http://www.briancody.com.
Perhaps it’s the arrogance of middle age, but I didn’t think I could get lost anymore. I don’t mean lost on the interstate and stopping at the next gas station to get directions, but Hansel & Gretel lost where you start wondering what it’ll be like to sleep under a pile of leaves. And whether your death by wolves will be quick and what do those little red berries taste like? Never mind if your kids will even notice, much less care, if you’re missing.
But enough of this therapist’s couch stuff. We tried walking a new, recently opened Trustee’s Reservation trail and got lost. Which provided me plenty of time to collect foresty-stuff, an AUTUMN ASSORTMENT as it were, for either future painting or that evening’s dinner.
More survivalist’s art at my CURIOUS PAINTINGS site.
Another November return to Appleton Farms, this time equipped with a collecting bag, rewarded me with even more forest stuff suitable for painting. Dead leaves, pygmy pine cones, anonymous killer mushrooms and bumblebee flowers were the standouts from this trip. Similar yet different from my collection of CURIOUS SEASHORE paintings, where an assortment of clamshells, seaweeds, mussels etc. have been rendered more or less in situ, I get to play with these forest elements until an interesting composition shows up. Or a couple of monstrous centipedes come slithering out of something, sending me squealing out of the studio in search of body armor and serious weaponry. More tales of art heroics at http://www.briancody.com.
Asked to choose a single, simple phrase to describe the Summer of ’09, a local duck replied “Too much damn RAIN!” Yet despite Boston’s weather behaving more like Seattle’s, there have been moments of sunshine, even heat. The day I captured this Hot Summer Seaweed (“captured” only in a manner of speaking, it wasn’t actually trying to escape) was a scorcher, with the sun punishing anything left up on the beach.
For more tales of seashore outrage, be sure to visit my collection of CURIOUS PAINTINGS.
. . . summer. Warm weather, warm colors, warm outlook. As opposed to today’s outlook, March 2, which promises temperatures in the single digits and 8-12 inches of snow.
There’s a beach out there somewhere with my name on it, as opposed to a driveway lurking out there with the same name as well as the aforementioned snow. Wonder why it seems easier to shovel sand than snow; must be the attitude.
Summer brings opportunity to wander the beach without having to wrap oneself up in layers of survival gear. There are other reasons to look forward to June, but not having to strain to hear the ocean above the crackling and crunching of multiple thinsulate/polyester/microfiber skins – all named after distant mountain ranges I’ve never heard of – makes it easier to enjoy the experience.
Another benefit is the light, never still as it skips across assorted surfaces, revealing and obscuring details, infuriating those of us anal-rententive enough to try and capture it.
Curious Paintings by Brian Cody 