StillLife, Dead Nature or Barrel?

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Goodaboom, Monday 5th February 2007


I have just returned from the local Eye Centre, where we mounted an exhibition with birds and landscapes in water colour on Friday evening. A nice place for my paintings, and I daresay, the people there have the right eyes to look at them, at least when they come out of the treatment room!

Monday today, and some monday stress in the air... A new week is beginning, new decisions must be taken. By the amount of things we want to do, we would need more than 10 lives each and 100 together to achieve them. So priorities must be set: an awful challenge! On the other hand, the fact that we could theoretically do all we want, if time were not so cruel, is the best proof that we are quite free. But as the Germans say:
„Wer hat die Wahl
hat die Qual!“
He who has a choice, has an agony... How true!
Anyway, first of all, I´ll have to prepare my next exhibition about „Flowers and Still Lifes“. It will be the first time that I exhibit these kind of paintings outside of my gallery. No special reason... perhaps the fear that people might have found them boring... or more probably it is just myself, a fanatic of movement, who hates the idea of „still life“. Although I must say, that it is a far better idea than the French one.. French people call „Still Life“
„Dead Nature“
Macabre! This is a fantastic example how countries use different words for the same thing and how these differences can even lead to philosophical considerations about the national character!
German say „Stilleben“ too. Is that a sign, that German and English respect or love Nature much more than we French do? I have my own ideas about it.
The Spaniards are much less involved in such sophisticated considerations. They call the „Still Life“ „Bodegon“, which more or less means „Barrel“! Yes, they love their wine, and apparently can´t imagine a still life without it! Incidentally, they also use the term „Naturaleza muerta“, „Dead Nature“, and if you see how they handle their environmental considerations, such as the disposal of waste, you will realise they have plenty of examples of it!

Coming back to the Monday stress...Funny thing, fate...the same day as I decided to open Goodaskool, my Painting School online , a German man came and somehow convinced me to give him real lessons. 2 weeks before, I had let him go with a quite categorical „No“, as I described it in the Painter´s Pointer. Well, if the weather is good, the lesson will take place tomorrow, and I´ll tell you about it.

But for now, I have to go back to my two Dutch kiddies on commission.
„Tough ones!“
as Kevin says... Yes I think, I never suffered so much doing a portrait as with the oldest one. And I can´t even say what is so difficult in his face... Well, you can judge for yourself when it is finished... Friday at the latest!

Mikis Laces & Gummi Bears

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Art Studio, Friday 29 December 2006


I´ll tell you secret things about Miki today. To be exact: about Miki´s Laces. And about her Gummi Bears. The upcoming artist Kev Moore painted today the lifelike portrait to the left to illustrate this story.

Miki wears always boots, black warm german boots. In Winter as well as in Summer. A relic of her long past life in Germany, perhaps. Or maybe she somehow has the feeling, that the inner warmth might come from the feet, and not so much from the evershining spanish sun. By the way: she might be right, at least concerning the spanish sun. When you spend years under the sun, it takes on a coldness like eternity...
Anyway... as Kev illustrated it perfectly: Miki´s laces are always untied. The reason is not, as you would think, that she cannot make knots, or that the laces are too old to hold the knots. In fact she can make knots quite well as she was once first matelot on a sailing boat, whose captain has two left hands. And furthermore the laces are not real laces: as an ancient mariner, she only uses thin marine rope, and they never fail.
No, the reason is much more terrible. In the morning when she gets up, she is so impatient to begin the day with all these wonderful activities she planned from the first second she awoke, that she doesn´t even take the time to tie the laces. She cannot convince herself how wise it would be to invest one minute of her precious time doing it. Now you can perhaps imagine how dangerous her daily life might be, when you know that she spends half of her time running up and down stairs, a normally fatal occupation with untied laces....
But to be honest, she is quite good at running upstairs without tripping on her laces. Accidents dont happen often. But of course for the price paid is a lack of elegance, first because of the laces themselves, and then because of the special movements she invented to avoid the worst.

Well, Kevin says it looks quite sexy... what a wonderful example of the english sense of humour!!!

PS: and when you ask what this has to do with Gummi Bears... well, not much at all... just...Miki loves Gummi Bears and for Christmas she got her two boots full with them! Santa even took the laces away hoping she would renounce the wearing of the dangerous boots, but no way: she got some new laces... MUCH LONGER... AND MADE OF LIQUORICE!