RMW Ramblings

  Yuletide    Saints Saint Wenceslas The third of my   Christmas season saints is Saint Wenceslas (alternatively Wenceslaus). While his feast day is in September, he is associated with the feast of Saint Steven, today, December 26 because of the Christmas carol.   St Wenceslas, Svätý Vaclav, Duke of Bohemia (posthumously titled King) has in tradition been celebrated for his generosity and kindnesses to the poor. The patron of the Czech Republic, Wenceslas has long been venerated in Central and Eastern Europe. His tradition in the English-speaking world has been informed by the carol Good King Wenceslas published in 1853 by the Anglican cleric John Mason Neale, who overlooks our scene from his framed photograph. The seven-foot tall saint carries a jug of wine and a basket food for the poor, while his page, Podavin, follows with firewood. Wenceslas’s celebration in many of the Eastern and Western churches is acknowledged by his name encircling in tr...

  Herald Angel   We replace most of the paintings in our living room and dining room with Christmas-themed    art for the holidays.  I noticed that there was a spot that lacked a seasonal update so I just painted  Herald Angel.  

  Yuletide Saints Saint Lucy The second of my Christmas season saint paintings is St Lucy or Santa Lucia. The feast of St Lucy is December 13.   This painting and my St Nicholas painting share a rectangular metallic-toned border, but different in color, tone, and framing. Saint Lucy, or Santa Lucia, was a Sicilian martyr.   In her hagiographic tradition Lucy was punished for rejecting a pagan bridegroom by defilement in a brothel.   In later   legend her resistance to the betrothal was also met by having her eyes gouged out.   She is shown in medieval art and elsewhere blinded and, as shown in the painting, holding her eyes in a cup, but her vision was miraculously restored.   Her association with vision and light is corollary to the presumed derivation of her name from the Latin lux , light.   The coincidence of her feast day, December 13, with the Christmas season, and its proximity to the winter solstice and its association with Nordic pag...

Christmas 1978 A  Retro-Deco Christmas Card For our 1978 Christmas card I made Xerox prints of a line drawing, then hand watercolor painted them.  I was apparently inspired by the art deco cards and posters from my youth in the 1940s.    

  Yuletide Saints St Nicholas Today, December 6, is the Feast of St Nicholas, the day for children's gifts in some cultures .  He was the first of three saints associated with the Christmas season that I have painted for holiday season display .       Saint Nicholas, Ἅγιος Νικόλαος, was a 4 th century bishop in Myra, Lycia (now Turkey).   The holy man is revered as a generous benefactor of the poor, with attributed deeds and miracles added to his tradition over the centuries.   The three young boys running from a wet-curing barrel in the painting had been slaughtered and left to cure into hams by an evil butcher, but were resurrected by the saint.   We also see the three poor sisters whom Nicholas anonymously provided with sacks of gold for dowries, saving them from an unwed state that would have doomed them to lives of prostitution.   The wine, pomegranates, grapes, and other provisions for the poor are similarly   representative ...

  A Homemade Pop-Up Book   Pop-up books are a Christmas tradition.  We have pop-up versions of  The Night Before Christmas,  Dickens'  A Christmas Carol,  and  The 12 Days of Christmas.  To add to our collection I made our own Christmas pop-up,  A Christmas Visit.   We'll page through it. The front cover ...  Front endpapers...     Title Page...     "The Walsh's house is very near," with Rockford Tower and Mount Salem Church popped up beyond our house...   "And through the transom we can peer," looking through a stained glass bordered transom window you can see the globe ceiling lamp in our library...         And now inside the library, "Peace, Joy, and Love are present here"...     "We must come back again next year"...   Back endpapers...   And back cover...   A detailed presentation of  "The Making of A Christmas Visit" is posted in my Google Drive at...

  Christmas 2024 Looking Back to a '50s Christmas Here's our 64th home designed Christmas card: And here is our seasonal display in our library of framed 8 x 10 prints of most of the card images from the last few decades:

  Handel and Easter A favorite of my paintings is my portrait of Handel, For Unto Us, referencing George Frideric Handel's The Messiah.   My painting title refers to a chorus in Part 1 of the work, which corresponds to Advent and Christmas.   The Messiah is traditionally performed in that season.  But the most popular and familiar chorus, "Hallelujah," dramatically concludes Part 2, which relates to Lent, Easter, the Resurrection, and Pentecost, here from my score from the 1950s. I have provided Georg Fridric with a small chorus and an accompanying orchestral ensemble.    I created a monogram for the maestro and I signed with a corresponding personal monogram symmetrically akimbo to Handel’s torso.   Two angels join the performance from above.   A rank of organ pipes halos Handel’s powdered coif. I wanted Handel to have a baroque setting, but not a traditional ornate baroque frame. I painted a baroque-revival “crest” on Masonite which is now s...

  Cork Coasters One more re-use of the star pattern that bordered our dining room in the late 1800s, stenciled onto cork coasters.   An earlier cork coaster project, these coaster sets were stenciled with a deer head decorated for Christmas, presents for my brothers. They remember the mounted deer head in the living room that our mother decorated for the holidays, a tradition continued by my brother Anson and his wife who now own the deer head.         More recently I hand painted this set of floral-themed coasters as a present for our granddaughter-in-law who shares a birthday with me.      

  The Dining Room Niche Our brick house was built in about 1882 and soon after, frame additions were made and the original kitchen became the dining room. When we bought the house in 1965 a window which was originally on an exterior wall remained, now opening into a pantry.   We had the sash removed and the pantry side closed, retaining the casing on the dining room side, creating a niche we use for changing displays. Here's one of my Christmas paintings and a painting by Mary now in the niche.  

  Seasonal Painting Change 2 Ending the Christmas season in our dining room, Annunciato ut Pastores has come down... Arrival of the Guests has gone up... The couple have arrived at a Venice palazzo by motor launch.  What is the event?  Who are the women greeting them?  And who are the couple?

  Bringing Home the Christmas Tree Our First Christmas In December 1961 Mary and I had been married less than a year.  We dove into having a family Christmas before we had a family.  Here is a reconstruction of our bringing home the Christmas tree from our 2011 Christmas card.

  Bring Home the Christmas Tree  Early 1970s Five years ago our Christmas card  reflected an early Christmas 1970s bringing home event.

  Bringing Home the Christmas Tree Christmas 1963 O ur 2023 Christmas cards were mailed out last week, remembering our 1963 Christmas. We'll be looking at other "bringing home" cards later.

  "Queen Anne" Windows When we found our present home while house shopping in 1965, one attraction was the stained glass-bordered windows and doors in the room that is now our library.      These stained glass bordered windows were a common feature of the late 19th century architectural style that is called "Queen Anne" in the United States.  (It had very little to do with the actual architecture in Britain during the reign of Queen Anne, 1665–1714.)   I eventually made some additional stained glass windows influenced by this style.  In a posting over the Christmas season I showed you our Christmas mouse.  You will note that his door has a circular version of a Queen Anne window.  I have never actually seen a round Queen Anne window or found one on-line.    I've also used this motif in a painting,  Beth Salem, haloing my imaginary personification of our house.  Recently I bought a pendant necklace for Mary that I later re...