RMW Ramblings

  20 March 2021 Spring is Here At 5:37am EDT this morning we reached the vernal equinox and spring officially began.  Last year the equinox was on the 19th of March at 11:48pm, the earliest in 124 years.  Our galanthus (snowdrops)  and crocus are out, the daffodils are at the edge of blooming.  I thought I'd get in the spring spirit by doing some little paintings.  I had a packet of three plain wood frames from Ikea, and conveniently, a packet of three canvasboard panels from the Dollar Tree of the same size, 4 x 6 inches. After painting on a ground coat, I sketched on our three spring flowers with a white pencil, then did quick, loose paintings in acrylic.  They're temporarily sitting on our mantel.  

18 March 2021 James Levine A Life Seen by Anthony Tommasini  Yesterday's New York Times carried an obituary  (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/obituaries/james-levine-dead.html?searchResultPosition=3)  and a review in the Music section (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/arts/music/james-levine-met-opera-dead.html?searchResultPosition=2)  reporting on the life and career of James Levine, a long-time conductor at the Metropolitan Opera..  Both were written by Anthony Tommasini, the Chief Music Critic for the NYT.   Levine had a remarkable career and was a major force shaping the Met over several decades.  His career ended in disgrace  in 2018 amid credible claims of his sexual predation on younger male musicians.  The two articles are well written and informative, not surprising from the skillful writer Anthony Tommasini. Over the course of this winter's Covid confinement, I read Tommasini's The Indespensable Composers, a very readable...

  March 16, 2021 SAINT PATRICK'S DAY Sa int Patrick's day is soon upon us, and we all claim Irish roots.  My DNA analysi s by 23&Me says that I'm 63% British and Irish, but doesn't differentiate further.  Mary, bless her Irish heart, is 100%     Both of us are identified with the Irish counties our family stories claimed. A few years back I painted three Irish saints framed in a triptych group.  Here are the Saints of  Erin, with an explanation of the complex symbolism that I incorporated.  You can click on the picture to see it larger.     SAINTS OF ERIN This triptych is a grouping of three individual acrylic paintings united in a triple tabernacle style frame that I designed and fabricated.   Each panel depicts a saint long venerated in Ireland.   There is a color and a metal theme in each panel, a cross or cross-surrogate identified with the saint, “attributes” (items associated with specific saints in iconogr...

14 March 2021 TODAY, 3/14, IS PI DAY You know, as in π = 3.14 + infinitely more numbers.  I have a fascination with the fundamental mathematical constants and their beautiful connection demonstrated by Euler's Identity:   You can read all about it on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler's_identity My bookshelf keeps hi sto ries of e, i, and  π.  I don't know if there are books on the other two fundamentals, 0 and 1.        

    12 March  2021 ART, BOOKS, LIFE, & MORE   I've emailed, texted, Facebooked, and else about my art, photography, activities, books, collections, and more to many of you, but now I thought I should consolidate all of this in a blog.  Here's the start.  I expect to update about once a week. Winter is finally closing up.  As one last winter activity I did a painting for a neighbor.  For a Christmas card for 2020, I painted a scene on 18th St reminiscing about neighborhood snow parties when it seemed like we would be snowed out from work in the morning.  The painting was in gouache on paper. The walking figures were done separately and combined via Photoshop.  Our house in red brick is at the top of the hill on the left.       A neighbor on the other side of 18th St asked about a painting of that side.  I painted this as a gift, acrylic on canvasboard.   Warmer weather posts to come!