jmkartworks

[jmkartworks]

Farewell, Madrid – Ink and watercolor – 8 x 11 in.

A morning in late November, leaves scattering in the wind, shorter days, colder days, Madrid exhaling the last sighs of summer. My last day in Spain. I didn’t want to say goodbye.

John Singer Sargent, it was said, often chose a subject to paint by walking awhile, pausing, then spinning around once or twice, trusting. He’d stop and then set up his easel in whatever direction he happened to be facing. In a similar mood, I wandered through streets and alleys in the old neighborhoods with a sketchbook and no goal in mind.

By chance I found myself on the north side of the Prado. Crowds milled about, awaiting turns to enter the museum. Attracted by sunlight on the hillside, I sat on a stone bench and drew for an hour or so until the shadows lengthened. My bum got cold. I was getting hungry. Time to move, but the drawing felt empty. No problem: I’ll just take a photo of the scene and use it for reference later. Then I remembered: I don’t have a phone! It was stolen 3 months ago at Chamartín Station when I arrived in Spain.

Now what?

Stand up, stretch. Trust. I approached a stranger in the crowd. Would you help me? I showed him my sketch and explained the problem. He was a tourist from Mexico City and spoke no English. He agreed to take a photo of the scene with his phone and send it to me via email. We chatted about thieves in our respective countries, and laughed a lot. Hours later when I returned to my hotel, there was his photo on my laptop.

Madrid, city of my heart for more than 40 years, you are a parenthesis: On my arrival, you steal from me; when I depart, you offer me a friend.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

[jmkartworks]

A Boy in EMERGENCY - Mixed media - 5.5 x 8 in. (in a sketchbook)

The silver crescent of May’s first moon rises over the valley to the south of the hospital where a silent ambulance waits below a sign in red letters: EMERGENCY

In an x-ray room at the end of a long hallway a technician in a blue smock assures a white-haired woman that the fracture in her left foot will heal but not soon

Awaiting his turn with a therapist a man whose bride of sixteen months ago has left him is enduring a panic attack and stares blankly at a wall in a crowded corridor

The father and mother of a boy who has been crying about a rasping pain in his lungs are slowly being swallowed by their cell phones and slowly they disappear from sight

Two female EMT’s strap a roofer who has fallen off a ladder and fractured his pelvis to a gurney and wheel him past security guards and sheriff’s deputies into the ambulance

The white-haired man of the white-haired woman waits on the far side of a waiting room with a book and pencil and pen observing nurses pushing women in wheelchairs

Nurses give the roofer pills for pain and tell him that this hospital has neither doctors nor equipment to treat his wounds but he will be taken care of in a trauma center in the valley

Crying softly, the boy lies down to sleep and a nurse covers him with a sheet as the white- haired woman receives a metal four-legged walker to replace the foot she has broken

The ambulance with the EMT’s and the broken roofer pulls away from the curb and descends into freeway traffic toward the May moon crescent still rising in the twilight far to the south of the hospital.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

[jmkartworks]

Picasso – Minotauromaquia – Etching – 19 x 27 in.

Those who were paying attention in 1935 knew that it was a dark year. The economic catastrophe of the Great Depression raged throughout the world. Josef Stalin killed hundreds of thousands of his fellow Russians and deported millions more. In Italy the Blackshirts crushed any opposition to Mussolini. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles Hitler began rearming Germany. His Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their citizenship. In Spain, generals in the army began plotting to overthrow the Republic.

Those who were paying attention also intuited that 1935 was a tremor, a shadow of a bleaker darkness yet to come. In 1936, Franco and the Spanish generals staged a coup d’état; the resulting civil war would not end until 1939. Hitler’s armies invaded Poland in that same year and began constructing the death camps to which in 1942 he began deporting Jews, gays, Blacks, the disabled and other perceived threats to his regime.

In Picasso’s print of 1935, all the figures, except one, are paying attention. A half-human/half-beast is hungry. Two women gaze at a dove. A man tries to escape up a ladder. A girl-child confronts the monster with her innocence. A beautiful matador lies asleep on a panicked horse, unaware of the menace around her.

Ninety years after 1935, another darkness and other monsters are everywhere. Even here in the United States of Amnesia. I have a dream: The girl awakens the woman and shares the light and flowers. They make a bridle, mount the horse together and challenge the beast. It drops its sword. The women break the blade into bits.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

A Quarrel and Forgiveness: Mixed media – 8 x 11 inches.

One of the pleasures of drawing outdoors is listening. You hear the normal racket of buses, car horns and motorcycles in the streets, but if you are fortunate to be in a park with trees, sounds are softer. During the autumn months of 2024 when I was living in Spain, in Valencia, you could find me almost any evening in the Jardín del Turia with my pencils and brushes. It’s a park, almost 8 miles long, in an old riverbed. After a terrible flood in 1957, the Valencianos diverted the river around their city and now you will discover joggers, families and picnics, soccer fields, a concert hall, fountains, children's’ playgrounds, orange trees, the futuristic City of Sciences, yoga and Taiji practitioners, bicyclists and ponds. And an artist seated on a park bench at work.

As I was drawing the bridge, the wind rose. Dark clouds appeared. I heard doves murmuring. They were often out-shouted by the screech of wild parrots who, years ago, had arrived from Africa and had made their homes in the palm trees. From farther away came the sound of drums. Passing directly behind me was the clop-clop sound of horseshoes from four mounted policemen on patrol. Then, right next to me, a shout, a single word, “NO!”

It was a man and woman walking together, but apart. They were arguing in a language we all know: Pain, Hurt and other variants of a language called Love. They paused at the base of the ramp that leads up to the bridge, stared at each other in silence, then continued walking. They stopped between the saints and stared again at each other. Then she reached out and gently caressed his cheek. He took her face in both his hands and they held each other. I drew them as they moved away in each other’s arms toward the darkening clouds. Healing? I hoped.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Valencia Bridge – Pencil, watercolor, ink – 6 x 12.5 inches, Saints on a Bridge: Baldacchini – Pencil, watercolor, ink – 8.5 x 11 inches.

In Valencia there are at least a dozen bridges that span what used to be the river Turia. This sketch of El Puente del Mar dates from 1988, during my first visit to that lovely city. The bridge was built nearly 400 years earlier in 1591 to replace the previous wooden structure, destroyed by one of the region’s frequent floods.

Bridges: The city in northern Illinois where I grew up many years ago boasted four. They spanned the Fox River but not one was graced with an image of a saint. Nevertheless bridges still enchant me. Saints too. So you can imagine my fascination with this bridge in a Mediterranean port on the other side of the world.

I loved to draw the statues under their protective canopies, their baldacchini. I had little interest in the identity of the saints themselves, more interest in what roles they play. What do they symbolize? Bridges cross voids; ideally they create connections, trade and other peaceful relationships between people and places that are separated. The statues offer their blessings and protection to everyone who travels across to the other side.

In Autumn of 2024 when I made this drawing, news of the November elections in the US were a staple of European media, so living in Spain gave little respite from the flood of fear and hatred coming from demagogues and would-be dictators. But drawing can be an act of meditation: it offers time to reflect and contemplate. I was drawing bridges and saints in a city far away from my home. But in that home, saints and their benedictions had been forgotten long ago, and in my imagination, all the bridges were in flames.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

The Marionette & The Broken Man: A Sketch – Mixed media - 8 x 11 inches.

After the fall, after you slam onto the cement and sit in shock, immobile, how awful is the damage? Any bones poking through the skin? Any bleeding? Other than your pelvis and a bump on your head from the ladder, is there any other pain? Can you wiggle your toes? Do you call an ambulance first or your wife? Where is your cell phone?

Multiple fractures of the pelvis, too many for surgery. After four days in a trauma ward, an ambulance transfers you to a rehab facility. The physical therapist examines your chart. “Seven fractures of your pelvis,” she says, “including Lumbar L5, Pubic Ramus Rt., Interior and Superior, etc. You sir, are my broken man.”

Not since you were an infant have you been so helpless. You cannot sit up, let alone stand up, or walk. You cannot dress yourself or go to the bathroom by yourself. During the following weeks you learn the names of your drugs: Tamsulosin, Apixaban, Mehocarbamol, Melatonin, plus Oxycodone HC1, and Lidocane Patches for the constant pain.

The marionette. Where did it come from? Already here when you arrived? Does anyone other than you even see it? Yesterday one of the nurses glanced in its direction, stared, shrugged, then continued making beds. For the most part it remains silent except, in the middle of the night, it emits faint sounds of a harpsichord.

Then this morning, in the dark, a little wooden hand raises your chin from the pillow. A whisper: “The Sun is coming! Melting snow will nourish the oak tree and turn the gray world into green. You will walk out of this place. You will dance again.”

Then: “Take me with you! Don’t leave me alone!”

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

[jmkartworks]

Another White – Mixed Media – 8.5 x 12 inches.

In creating this post, my intention had been to show, as I had promised in an earlier post, images of Saints on a Bridge. Well, that changed. On a recent visit to my local market, I noticed a single flower alone and forlorn alongside a display of a dozen fresh bouquets. It was a paperwhite, a leftover from the Christmas holidays. Flowers don’t speak English, of course, but the feeling I got from this one was, “please take me to your studio and draw me before I die.” So I did; here is the sketch.

A surprising thing that often happens when I’m working/playing is a kind of inversion: I draw a tree or a person or a flower and in return, it seems to draw me. In this sketch, I began drawing stems and blossoms, but as I listened, I gradually shifted focus to the bulb and the roots. Why, I don’t know, I was just letting myself be guided. I’d like to say, “I thought such and such,“ but these aren’t thoughts; they’re more like insights or imaginings: “A flower has no purpose other than to be itself, a flower. To exist with its fragrant petals for its own sake, for it’s own short life. This sketch is like that. It has no purpose other than to be what it is, a kind of “paying attention.” It will not appear later in a painting. It’s just the record of a man with a pencil and some colors observing something that interests him.”

What I learned from the flower is this: “I need three things to live: sunlight, water and dirt. I rise out of darkness and dirt, just like you humans. You expect enlightenment and illumination to descend to you from above like the Holy Ghost, but it also arises, like me, from below.”

Next: Saints on a Bridge

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

[jmkartworks]

Paperwhite Narcissus: Sketch – Pencil, ink, watercolor – 8.5 x 11 inches.

“For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” Mary Oliver

When I return to the USA after spending time elsewhere, I’m often asked questions like: “Iceland, that must be a really different world! Do you get culture shock when you go there?” Well yes, it’s a different world. But the biggest culture shock usually hits when I return home.

When I recently came back to California after many weeks of living in Spain, the difference between Europe and here that struck me most was the American obsession with “winning.” Perhaps because it’s November, I thought. Somebody won the World Series, the elections are over, and now football commands attention. All opponents have been, or were being turned into, “losers.” Is there an insult more dreaded in our culture than “loser”?

So why, I wondered, did thoughts of winning and losing occur to me when I happened to be drawing flowers? I had bought them at a local market because their tall, slender shapes resembled trees. Also, I could see the roots! But they grew quickly and soon the stems would not support the weight of the flowers. Could I finish drawing before they began to droop?

How to pay homage to little, evanescent trees, to draw them accurately, not run a race with them? To pay attention is to search: Erasures, hesitations, mistakes are all part of the process. In this case, I “lost” the drawing. It’s only an echo. So here is the result of the process, the loss. The misdirections, uncertainties are all here, just as I made them.

And yet, the world is still full of doorways to temples, even ephemeral flowers that briefly resembled trees.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my book]

[jmkartworks]

This is the first post in December, the last month of the year, and it was supposed to show drawings of “Saints on a Bridge.” But then I got a reminder that as a part of its series of “Writer’s Talks,” the Royce Branch of our Library at 207 Mill St. in Grass Valley, has invited me to be a guest writer/speaker.

So on Monday evening, 9 December at 5:00 p.m., I’ll say a few words about my book, “Double Vision, Waking Dreams.” That is, we’ll consider: Images and Imagination, Dreams and Soul. Oh yes, and Food.

The contents of my remarks are suitable for adults and children of all ages, so I welcome everyone in advance. Let’s have some fun. Please join me on Monday the 9th at 5:00 at the Library.

Next Post, next week: Saints on a Bridge.

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Meanwhile, for more thoughts, words and images:

[this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

La Acordionista, my Last Sketch from Spain – Pencil, ink, watercolor - 5.5 x 8 inches.

It is always a pleasure to arrive – anywhere - in Havana or Reykjavik, or Rome. It’s a special joy to arrive in Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The city has welcomed me for more than 30 years. Of course, the opposite is also true; leaving is invariably sad. Especially when you say goodbye to friends.

What makes Valencia feel so open to foreigners like me? Diversity: every day in the streets and stores, you hear the languages of immigrants from China, Venezuela, Germany, Pakistan, Lithuania, Japan, Romania. And every day you encounter those immigrants while you are doing the most mundane things., like sharpening knives. For the past few days I have been saying goodbye to such friends, old and new, with the added sadness that these goodbyes might be the last. So farewell to:

Paco and Maye, my hosts for the last two months, Álvaro, knife-sharpener without equal, Chelo, expert herbalist, who also sells incense, Jorge y Gustavo, brothers, in whose store I buy most of my brushes and colors, Alen, who sells books, all in English, Ibrahim, a clerk in my favorite bakery, Elena, fellow artist, who owns the Black Light Gallery, Soledad, another artist, and a kind, kind woman, Esther, who makes photocopies when I need them, and Victoria, the lady who plays her accordion on a windy corner in front of a bank.

There are more friends, but here space is short. I did not embrace and say goodbye to the person I most wanted to, Viviana. She’s an immigrant too, from Italy; Valencia is her new home. She and I never say goodbye.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Aunt Pura in The Bardo - Oil on canvas – 21 x 29 in.

This is the final image of my transformation of Paco’s aunt. The first impression of her when he showed me the original portrait (enclosed in this post for comparison, see above) six weeks ago was not pleasant. The lack of warmth in her expression reminded me of some nuns I had the misfortune of encountering during childhood. “People are misbehaving somewhere,” she seemed to be thinking, “and are going unpunished.”

During her life she was called, Pura, short for Purificación. The Pure One. How does one live up to such a name? In the Catholic tradition, a soul that is not sufficiently “pure” at the time of death has to spend time in Purgatory to make the soul worthy of entering into heaven. When I began to repaint Pura, I had no idea of where we were going, except that I just wanted to treat her gently, with care. So I gathered my colors and brushes and we began to wander away from Purgatory. It was a surprise to paint trees and night and the moon around her, as if they welcomed us. Then came snow and clouds, then the edge of the sea. Everything began to feel like an embrace.

I tried to paint edges of energy, shapes in-between: between autumn, winter and spring, between day and night, between the sea and the forest, the organic and the mechanical, jewels and leaves, the lights of a city landscape. Or is that shape at the bottom of the canvas just a circuit board, or a strange pinball machine?

In a few days I’ll be leaving Pura and her nephew here in Valencia to return to my home in California, to a different, beautiful bardo. So this not a final image. It’s just where I have been able to pause a bit from painting us.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Everyone who is reading this is doubtless aware of the catastrophic storms and floods that have crippled a large part of the Province of Valencia here on the Mediterranean Coast of Spain. I post this photo of me (and Susanne Moisan, my friend from Hamburg, Germany) to assure all of you kind people who have sent worried emails inquiring about my health, safety and whereabouts, that all is well here in Valencia city. We have been spared the worst of the disaster. More posts will follow. Thank you for caring.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Paco’s Aunt, Phases 4 & 5 – Oil on canvas – 21 x 25 inches.

One of the many things I learned from my students during the years I taught classes in watercolor, figure drawing and oil painting was that often the biggest obstacle the students faced was their own fear of making mistakes. It seems natural that we want to impress a teacher, to get her or his approval. So we draw and paint the best we can and yet we discover that we are more apt to create mistakes and messes than artworks we can be proud of. Often my attempts to console students who were struggling (without exception, all were struggling at some level!) were successful, especially when I used baseball as an example. “If you get a hit once every three times you step up to the plate, you are considered a superb player. But this means you have failed two out of three times! How do you accept such failures? This is a question only you can resolve.”

Keeping messes and mistakes in mind, here are the latest phases in my transformation of Paco’s Aunt. Into what, you wonder? Well, I wonder too. But the deeper I wander into the woods, the more it seems that the painting is not about about her being any “thing.” It’s more about her having been, and now becoming . . . I’m hoping to answer questions, resolve mistakes and have a finished painting within a week or ten days. Thanks for your patience.

Meanwhile, I offer these latest changes for whomever might need some encouragement. If a painting is not a struggle, then what’s the point? Aren’t our imaginations always prodding us ahead of ourselves and our skills as artists always lagging behind? Isn’t this is just life, totally normal?

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Paco’s Aunt, Phases 2 & 3 – Oil on Canvas – 21 x 29 inches.

Several days ago, I posted two images that showed the beginning of the transformation of a portrait of a woman, the result of a challenge given to me by her nephew. They were the first of a series; here are the next two phases. Lapo Guzzini, my friend and colleague, calls the transformation of the portrait, “creative destruction.” But what does it mean to create destructively? Or to destroy creatively? Such paradoxes resist explanation. I hope the images themselves will give you some insights.

I have had only two clear objectives in this endeavor: to respect the woman and also the artist who painted her. There are other objectives, but they remain far from clear. For example, I’d love to paint what I’m not able to see. A thought like this may sound odd coming from a visual artist: we’re supposed to paint things people can see, aren't we? Also, for many years I have been fascinated by change; I mean by everything changing, constantly and always. So how does one paint change on a flat surface? I don’t know, and I’m not being coy in saying so. It’s true: I don’t know. The best course I follow then, is to experiment. And to trust. Something will happen.

So I apologize for this mess I’ve made of the portrait. But it’s only temporary. Phases 4 and 5 will come along soon. Thank you, I appreciate your patience in following the trials of the metamorphosis of this poor woman. We’ll find our way out of the woods. Perhaps better said: we’ll find our way by going deeper into the woods, and getting lost.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Paco’s Aunt – Oil on canvas – 21 x 29 inches.

During a career as a professional artist for the past 50 years, I have become accustomed to painting unexpected subjects. Especially, it seems, when I’m living in Valencia, Spain. For example, a lovely young friend here once asked me to paint her unclothed (her, not me) because “I’ll never again have the beautiful body I have now. I want to show my grandchildren what I used to look like.”

Then last week my friend Paco asked for a favor. He showed me an oil painting of a woman and wondered if I wouldn’t mind destroying it for him. It was a traditional portrait of his deceased aunt, painted by a well-known Valencian artist in 1974. By "destroying" it, he meant defacing it: Miguel, he said, you can do whatever you want with this woman, especially if you paint a big red X over her. Whatever you do, I'm going to keep her and hang her above my desk.

Evidently he and his aunt did not get along. Had she willed the painting to him out of spite because she knew that he would have had to pay a hefty inheritance tax on it? Was he going to save her defaced image in order to spite her, even in her grave? (He and I will have to talk.)

Meanwhile, yes, I said, but no red X’s! I’ll transform her, but into something beautiful we can both be proud of. So during these next few weeks, I’ll share with you the story of his aunt’s metamorphosis.

Here's an image of her portrait and my first response: to cut a blindfold out of the fabric of an old umbrella so that her ghost won't be able to see what I'm up to.

More images will follow in a few days. Thank you for staying in touch.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Flowers on a Window Sill, Breganzona – Watercolor – 10.5 x 18 inches.

Painting dreams is a meditation that brings joy: I mean, brushing pasty, colored stuff on a piece of paper or fabric with your fingers and brushes and some water or oil -- the act itself -- creates joy. And gratitude. Why, I don’t know, so years ago I stopped trying to understand dreams, those invisible visitors, and just painted them as best I could, whenever they happened to tug at my sleeve. However, when you get down to the nub, it’s the same with painting anything else, whether it’s street corners, other human beings, clouds and space, dogs and cats, snowstorms, flowers: the subject doesn’t matter.

For me, everything I want to paint seems to flow out of a feeling of wonder, and paying attention to wonder: What’s going on here? Like those yellow things poking upwards and the red things falling under their own weight? We call them “flowers” and give them names, like “geraniums.’ They grow out of “dirt,” like the green things, called “trees,” that are reflected in what we call “windows.” Everything we see here (and everything we don‘t see) depends on an energy we call “sunlight.” It creates “shadows” on a “wall” that is “weathered.”

Before I die, I would like to paint the energy -- the verb, I mean -- that flows through these nouns. For the moment, paying homage to flowers on a window sill and stains on the wall of an old house that used to shelter farmworkers, in a summer morning’s sunlight, in the southern part of Switzerland, this brings immeasurable joy, and gratitude. Painting this is just another way of painting dreams.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]

[jmkartworks]

Playing Pétanque – Oil on canvas – 24 x 32 inches.

If I wrote well enough to write a poem, I would write a poem about Playing. On summer afternoons in the south of France, the Mediterranean hardly a breath away, our poem would be about playing pétanque. The object of the game is to toss a steel ball, a boule, so that it gets closest to the target, the cochonnet, than the boules of whomever we are playing against. Or rather, playing with. Because the real object of our game is not to win, but to have fun with friends, and strangers, and with each other.

In the painting, the man in the white shirt has just launched his boule into space. The object of his aim, the cochonnet, is the small, reddish ball in the foreground. As an artist, I was less interested in his accuracy than in the scene itself: the intense attention of the other players, the sunlight and shadows, the summer heat of Provence. And of course, a fascination with summer afternoons, with playing, and with you, wherever you may happen to be.

Those summer days in France happened years ago. Now I’m in a Mediterranean port in Spain, drawing and painting dreams. Summer is ending. October just peeked out from under the skirts of September. Leaves fall, the nights grow longer. On the other side of the world, my country seems to be drowning in waves of mistrust, spite, lies, fear and hatred of other people. Fear and hatred of women too, especially women like you.

From one heart to another, here’s an image of a memory for you, to play with you again, now, wherever you may be. Even if it may not be summer anymore.

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Other links: [this post on my website] [about my new book]