Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 74

Fragment

This little 2 1/2" x 1 3/4 " fragment was the only interesting or salvage-worthy piece of a much-larger painting I did this afternoon. I drew in the morning and it went well, but this afternoon - yeech! It's amazing what a disaster a watercolor can turn into! This one went into the poubelle, but long ago my teacher told me to look at every painting, good and bad, using cropping corners if it helps, and see if there are areas that stand out as better than the rest, and then figure out why. Throw the paintings away if you want, he said, but before you do, cut them up and save the good pieces.

I always do that. It's funny how much it helps me feel like I'm learning something. What's pleasing here? The two pairs of clear complementary color -- the yellowish-ochre and the slate blue, and the pink and yellow-green. The well-defined round shapes in the back contrasted with the spiky shapes in the front. That doesn't make a painting, but it gives me some reminders. And tomorrow is another day.

Right now I'm going to walk home -- it's a gorgeous day here in Montreal, and I hope you're getting some good weather where you are, too. Go out and enjoy it!

Every Blade of Grass

I'm just back from a visit with my father. One morning I woke early to find fog covering the lake, and went down to the shore.




It was cool, and very still, but nature had been at work.

There were fairy cobwebs.

And alien spaceships.

And jeweled tapestries.

I sat and watched the sun slowly become visible through the fog, as swallows skimmed silently over the water...

...and every single blade of grass seemed precious.

Bouquet

and a detail, about lifesize:

Dahlias, heliopsis, globe thistles, fringed shasta daisies, phlox. The garden is bursting, and I'm drawing rapidly to try to capture its amazing energy in these last few weeks before we tumble into autumn.

Today I started work on the first of two painting commissions I've received this summer - both for people who want pictures of their gardens. It's a happy thing, to try to preserve some of that ephemeral beauty not just for now, but for posterity.

Last night I took a walk in Parc Lafontaine. The sun was going down, and people were sitting in small groups, finishing their picnics or bottles of wine, talking quietly. The families of ducklings were swimming back and forth along the shore, hoping for handouts; the little ones aren't so little anymore, in fact they begin to look very much like their mothers through they still make baby-duck peeping sounds as they swim. Someone was also piloting a radio-controlled sailboat on the lake, a pretty pure white scale model that moved in the breeze very much like the real thing.

At the far end of the lower lake are several benches, and on the furthest one was seated an old man, playing a small accordion and singing. His bike leaned again the back of his bench. The man was bare-headed, with a tousled head of white hair, and he wore a reflective vest over his clothes. I liked his voice and the ease of his playing, and sat down to listen. He sang traditional Quebecois songs, and evey now and then a traditional English or American tune, with alternate verses in English. I found myself singing along as he went through the many verses of "You Are My Sunshine." Another old man, wearing a rosary around his neck, pulled his bike up on the next bench and also sat down to listen. The singer sang with that nasal Quebecois inflection I've come to appreciate, and although he was appreciative when people passing by left him a coin, I had the distinct feeling he was singing because he loved to, not primarily to make money in this low-traffic, low-key place.

It was a beautiful evening, with the breeze blowing the tops of the trees to one side, the murmering of other people, the occasional quacking of the ducks or cry of a seagull as it dipped its wings over the water, the lapping of the little waves, and the music, so clear and unaffected. I stayed for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then got up at the end of a tune to continue my walk, leaving a few coins in the singer's spread-out coat. Merci, je suis plus heureuse maintenant, I told him, with a smile that he quickly returned. Thank you, he said, in perfect English. It makes me happy when my music makes other people happy.

Breads by Other Names

Clam pizza and a plain margarita pizza at Lombardi's.

We intended to go on a bit of a pizza-crawl in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, but although we thought we could eat three or four pizzas during our stay, we only managed two. Even pizza by the slice tends to be excellent in the city. There are lots and lots of fantastic sit-down, whole pie pizza places in New York, and we've already sampled a number of them: John's, in the village, and Patsy Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge are two standouts that come to mind. But we wanted to try a few new ones. The first night, we ate at Giuseppina's on 20th St. and 6th Avenue in Brooklyn, and it was excellent but so dark in the restaurant that I couldn't take a good photo. They don't serve anything but pizza and calzone, and the restaurant has a nice dining area, reminiscent of small fancier Italian bistros, where the low light puts the focus on an enormous C-shaped marble counter where the pizza is rolled out, thrown, and assembled, and behind it, the glowing semi-circular mouth of the brick oven which reaches temperatures close to 1000 degrees. We ordered a classic Margarita pizza: homemade tomato sauce, real mozzarella, and basil. The crust was truly memorable, and I also liked the sauce very much -- and we told the owner so; he was making the pizzas and talking to the customers, many of whom he seemed to know. I'd go back for sure.

A close up of the clam pizza at Lombardi's: this topping was really really good, with two dozen fresh clams.

The next night, in Manhattan, we went to Lombardi's at 32 Spring Street in SoHo, a famous pizza restaurant that's become an institution. It was busy, with tables on many levels, and a rushed staff, so I already felt un-special as soon as we were seated. The pizza is good, but I wouldn't call it great, although the clam pizza as different and delicious. I thought the crust was too chewy, but the sauce was good, the beer was good, and the company was excellent. A fun experience to chalk up, but one we probably won't repeat. I'd rather eat at John's. The problem is that we're spoiled: J. makes such good pizza at home that it's hard to beat.

 

An egg bagel with lox, cream cheese, capers, and red onion.

Breakfast, however, was another story. I know, I know, I'm being disloyal to Montreal to even post pictures of NY bagels, but damn, they were good. Fresh and hot from the oven, covered with a shmear of cream cheese, maybe some fresh lox, the waxed paper crackling, the sesame seeds adding their nutty flavor as you sit and eat your bagel on the street with some good coffee: it's a great way to start the day. Monteal bagels are quite different: about half the size, harder, with a different texture and crust, and also a bit sweeter: NY bagels have no sugar in them at all. The Montreal bagels are just as good, but such a different species of breadlike thing that I don't feel they can be fairly compared.

I must admit, however, it's been a bit depressing to go back to my low-carb, post-vacation diet!

And my favorite: a sesame bagel with lox-scallion-and dill cream cheese.

And a Not-So-Quiet Place by the Water

Next stop: Brooklyn. Here's a close-up of J. riding toward me along Brooklyn's new waterfront park, on the edge of the East River.

And here's the full image. We rode down Vanderbilt Avenue from our bed-and-breakfast, down along the old navy shipyards, along cobblestone streets, and finally onto this boardwalk and under the Brooklyn Bridge.

It's quite the view of lower Manhattan.

And at the far left, there's Lady Liberty, presiding over the harbor.

--

We've been up on the Esplanade in earlier visits, which is really beautiful, but you don't get the same connection with the water and the city beyond as you do in the new park. They've done a wonderful job; rolling berms separate the park from views and noise of Brooklyn, and there are thick plantings of native shrubs, lots of grass, and while there are some nice kiosks for food and ice cream, it's not at all commercial. There are low-key, low-intensity spots for sitting, for families to cook a barbeque, recreational areas including some huge lovely playing fields and a rocky park with fountains and waterfalls for kids to play in, and this end of a pier, fitted out with stainless steel sinks and bait-prep areas for fishermen.

"What are you catching?" I asked. "Striped bass," this fellow told me. He was from Puerto Rico, and a veteran fisherman. "Des catchin blues ovah deyh," he said, pointing toward Governor's Island. "And deyah too," indicating the tip of lower Manhattan. "Bluefish?" I said. He nodded, grinned, and shook his head. "Not heah! Dunno why." I asked him what they used for bait and he explained and showed me: a big fish that they cut up into pieces. Each of the fishermen had four rods, which they bait, cast, and then set against the railing, waiting. Seemed like a contented way to spend a hot day, down by the water in the breeze.

Then we rode back up into the city of Brooklyn, and stopped for lunch. The service was very slow - a new chef had come on that day, they said, so I had time to sketch the people at the next table on the butcher-paper that covered ours.

We were really hot by that time, and unfortunately a little sunburned, so we went back to the B&B. I took a shower and then went out to explore the neighborhood and visit The Community Bookstore, which TC and friends has shown me on a previous visit.

I also found a fabric store with a beautiful selection of Indian cottons, including the piece above. Couldn't resist. And at the bookstore I bought, appropriately enough, the latest issue of Granta, titled "Travel," in which there's an excerpt from Teju's forthcoming book on Lagos. Smaller and larger, both, our world.

A Quiet Spot in the Woods

We've been away, visiting friends. Our first stop was a cabin in a rural part of southern New England: a dwelling, a garden, a hillside in the forest, a sparkling brook.

After arriving in mid-afternoon, we went for a walk. Our host knows mushrooms, and as we walked he spotted small orange chanterelles. We picked several handfuls, and he sauteed them in butter, and served them on his homemade bread as our first course. I can't even tell you how delicious this was!

 

We ate and drank like royalty, and the dinner ended with a beautiful tarte studded with fresh-picked red, black, and yellow raspberries from their garden.

After much conversation and catching-up, we slept in a calm room with a faded patchwork quilt and old New England furniture. Outside: stone walls, moose antlers, the call of wood thrushes.

In the morning we ate fresh eggs from a nearby farm, and more of that delicious bread, and jam, and coffee, on the outdoor table.

Our hosts had to leave for work, but we stayed for a few more quiet hours, reading and drawing. What a peaceful and beautiful way to begin a short vacation, and such a happiness to catch up with old friends.

 

A Haiku Series to Beat the Heat

A sore back demands
gin and tonic, a handful
of potato chips.

--

The lime slice floating
in its carbonated sea
--a drowning green moon.

--

While sun-like peaches
lie in pleated purple ruffs
ready to bleed gold.

 

--

I've been away; back in Montreal now, with a report on the travels coming soon. My back is better, it's been a little cooler here, and I hope everyone is coping with the heat and humidity.

Black

Roadworks slowed us. The iron-rich earth was a brilliant red.
The red
was apt. On these lands people had warred and sold people to people.

 

On
the long narrow track to the beach we passed a field of
decapitated
palms, the stumps in serried ranks. A sadness fell.

 

To travel is to look and fail to understand what one is looking at.
We went to the Door of No Return.

--Teju Cole

 

I'm deeply moved by Teju Cole's unfolding series of tweets and photographs, in real time, of the journey he is taking today from Lagos to Ouidah along the Slave Coast.

More than anything I have read in this sad week, these restrained, short sentences, each word carefully chosen, speak powerfully to me about the origins of racism in America. Can we -- so many of us white and privileged -- stop and try to put ourselves in the place of our African brothers and sisters, sold into slavery, held in chains in coastal slave forts, and eventually packed into ships bound for the western hemisphere? Can we allow ourselves to consider our parallel but enormously different subsequent histories, as well as the many ways in which we continue to deny and turn away from the truths of persistent, endemic injustice and inequality?

 

Alex Colville

Alex Colville, the Canadian painter, died peacefully on Tuesday at his home in Nova Scotia, at the age of 92. Many of us recognize his most iconic images without, perhaps, even knowing the painter's name. He was an official war artist during WWII who later became an easel painter with a painstaking technique of laying down his pigment in tiny dots. His paintings, with their deceptively mundane subjects that also express feelings of anxiety, tension, and foreboding, say a great deal about life in the later half of the 20th century. An obituary and appreciation published by the CBC remarks that the artist became quite popular in Germany, where he did a residency. Colville is quoted as saying, "Germans know how bad things can (and did) get...Everything in my paintings that frightens Canadians seems to appeal to Germans." In his work I find echoes of the melancholy loneliness of realists such as Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, and the British painter Eric Ravilious -- but Colville is uniquely himself.

I became more aware of Colville through my friend Vivian Lewin, who wrote a series of poems about his paintings. Today I asked her to share one with you, and to say a few words about why Alex Colville mattered to her, and also what, if anything, was particularly Canadian about him. Here is her answer, followed by her poem, "Dog and Priest."

 

Beth, you asked me about Colville. I have always judged myself harshly for not being brilliantly productive, for brooding over unhatched plans and vague intentions, for collecting bits of raw material and feeling incapable or at best unready to use them in any conclusive way. In 1984, the year my marriage ended, I wandered into the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and saw an astonishing exhibit of work by Alex Colville.  It included not only a good sample of his paintings, drawings, and prints, but also many excerpts from his notebooks and drawings and sketches collected over many years.  I could see how he was patient but not pushy with himself--it seemed to me that he was both relentlessly persistent and resolutely patient, allowing the images that moved him to gather themselves--ripen, as it were--and in good time to find their places in finished work.  

If there is anything inherently Canadian about this, I think it is the fundamental refusal to be flashy for the sake of flashiness, but instead to invite time as a partner in the solving of problems. Not to think first of turning a quick profit on a short-term solution to a hard question. And to be unafraid of hard questions--even, at best, humble in the face of them, and in the face of life's real difficulties. I am grateful for his example and his work.

--Vivian

 

Dog and Priest, Alex Colville, 1978. Acrylic on hardboard, 52 x 90 cm. 

DOG AND PRIEST

 “...there is no
limbo, purgatory,

 or hell for animals.”

--Alex Colville

 

Like a present still wrapped up

the man in full clericals reclines

on a bleached wooden dock while past his shoulder

lichen-covered rock

drops down towards the water, a textbook

picture of symbiosis,

 

scratchy firs rising from it

in northern, diffuse light. The far shore

is delectable. By his side a Black Lab

levels its muzzle

to inhale the horizon and this profile

serves to eclipse the priest's face.

 

Ripples cover the water

like souls hastening towards a cure,

attracted the more by his ability

to love another best,

and they crowd at the pilings, swirling against

his vow. His inertia

 

is an achievement. He looks

calmly out and might not see it all –

this body might be only one part of what

opens to the sea

just around that point. For now, sun-warmed dry wood

holds him up. He's in no rush

 

to put on a simpler suit

like his companion's shinier coat,

this retriever whose heavy collar has worn

quite comfortable:

who knows no need to dress up or strip down,

just water and plunging in.

 

--Vivian Lewin ( 1989)

 

Poem (c) 2013 by Vivian Lewin; please do not reproduce without permission

 

 

Fire and Ice

When we got home last night we were both beat. I was telling J. about my last blog post, and he suggested that we should go to a Dairy Queen after dinner and try one of these Blizzard concoctions. OK, I said, where is the nearest one? Out came the smartphones. Ave. du Parc, he said, looking at the map... Hmm.

I saw lightbulbs going on in his head, and then he spoke into the phone: Romados Portuguese chicken Montreal. Up popped the reference, with a phone number, and when he clicked his phone automatically went into call mode, with the Romados number at the top. A glance in my direction: We could order the chicken so it's ready when we get there, then hop on our bikes and go up the rue Rachel path, pick up the food, then ride up to Mont Royal park, and then we'd be right next to the Dairy Queen on Parc.

I'm on a diet, I said, lamely, and grinned at him.

So in 20 minutes we headed off on our bikes, up the hill. "See, we're burning calories, said a voice behind me. I'm sure we'll have worked off all the fries by the time we get to the park.

Rotisserie Ramados, the king of Montreal Portuguese charcoal-grilled chicken, just reopened this past weekend after a terrible fire last year, and last night the lines of people waiting to order were incredible. However, there's a separate line for phone orders. I stayed with the bikes and took some photos while J. went in; we didn't have to wait long.

The restaurant is located in the heart of the Portuguese neighborhood, just above Eglise St-Jean Baptiste.Those are the Romados windows on the left. There are a few more tables for people who want to eat inside than there used to be; there's also the bread and pastry counter with wonderful things like little custard pies. Most people buy their food to go.

So we ended up at Parc Mont Royal, which encompasses the entire eastern side of the mountain. The park was designed by Frederick Olmstead, and it's beautiful, huge, and varied, with meadows, lakes, wooded areas, paths, overlooks. This is just one little section.

This graceful winged lady presided over a beautiful evening.

And the chicken didn't last long. I was good: I didn't eat very many fries, and I didn't eat the chicken skin, which with this particular meal is almost a sacrilege.

We enjoyed the view and the people-watching, and lay back and watched the clouds.

Then it was time for dessert: our first-ever Blizzard. I let J. choose, and he got mint oreo cookies as the mix-in. They put the ice cream and the cookies in a big machine and whip it all up, and hand you a large paper cup filled with the stuff. It was cold, and minty-chocolatey, and quite delicious, even for people like me who think ice cream should be creamy and not, well, gritty.

A very Canadian night, then; a very Montreal summer night too. And then we rode home: downhill all the way.