DRAWING THE LINE SOMEWHERE

Or All About Making Your Mark

One of the best ways to go on about yourself, albeit obliquely, is to proffer advice.

STRANDS AND BROKEN SHELLS

Or Thoughts for the Year to Come

I think if I had to choose what seashells I prefer, I would respond “The broken ones.”

ABOUT THE MOVING OF MOUNTAINS

Or the Able Tools of Patience and Passion

It seems we humans have a certain preoccupation with material things.

SHIPS, SAILS AND FARAWAY PLANETS

The Forgotten Voyage of William M. Timlin

Several months ago, I received one of those offers that cannot be refused. Calla Editions, the fine art book imprint of Dover Publishing, was preparing a re-edition of William M. Timlin’s book The Ship That Sailed to Mars. Would I like to write an introduction?

Well, yes, of course yes.

~ THE DEFINING OF DREAMS ~

Women in the Golden Age of Illustration: Florence Harrison

“The chief obstacle to a woman’s success is that she can never have a wife. Just reflect what a wife does for an artist.” ¹

~~~

“I see a little girl sitting on the grass, beneath the limes in the hot summer-tide, with eyes fixed on the far away blue hills, and seeing who knows what shapes there; for the boy by her side is reading to her wondrous stories of knight and lady, and fairy thing, that lived in the ancient days…” ²

~~~

“There is no earthly reason why women should not be illustrators.” ³

~~~

 

Come Unto These Yellow Sands – but mind the naked fairies…

A Few Words First

Most of my favourite newsletters are the ones I’ve not written. Not principally because some generous soul has spared me racing against looming deadlines, but because the texts written by talented authors who generously allow me to reproduce them here are always a delight to discover.

Charlotte Zeepvat is, in her own words, a “compulsive researcher, endlessly fascinated by finding things out, model maker, painter (never quite finding the skill to match the pictures in my head but still game to try) and would-be but probably-never-will-be illustrator, historian by training, writer, and collector of old photographs.” She writes books, occasionally illustrates them, and knows astonishing things about subjects few have heard of or even considered.

Charlotte has a web site, currently with hoarding all about and “Under Construction” signs up all around, and very politely declined my offer to list her books because they “probably won’t be of much interest to anyone who wants fantasy and fairies.” So, you’ll have to look up her work on your own. You can also take her qualification of “would-be but probably-never-will-be illustrator” with a grain of salt. Her artwork is detailed and exquisite.

But, in the meantime, read on, and do mind the fairies.

 

SHIPS IN THE AIR

Or a Short History of Flights of Fantasy

“…Give me the ships, with sails adapted to the heavenly wind; there will be fearless people, even if they face the immensity. And for those descendants who in short time will venture themselves by these ways we will prepare…” The words are from Johannes Kepler, written to Galileo Galilei in his “Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo” published in 1610. Four centuries ago.

THE DREAM OF EMESE

Or An Intricate Intertwining of Threads

Many months ago, while investigating – if investigating is not too diligent-sounding a term for my somewhat directionless wanderings on the track of some mythological creature or other across the marches of cultural history – those wonderful places in time and geography where ancient cultures meet and exchange the greatest gift: the transference of elements of their beliefs from one to another, I stumbled across iconography all but identical from Persia and Hungary. I promptly sent a note to a friend and colleague from Budapest, asking if the tale of the Dream of Emese might ring a bell.

A SHOULDER TO LEAN ON

Or Reflections by a Vicarious Southpaw

After a half a century of diligent draughtsmanship one would think that much if not all of the process can be taken for granted. (Estimation based on the point where I most distinctly recall encountering my first major difficulties in drawing what I wished – a recalcitrant cow* - sure sign that it would never be possible to be fully satisfied with a drawing, meaning of course that the only choice left was to spend a lifetime or so working on it.)

TWO YEARS OR TWO THOUSAND MILES

... Whichever Come First
Or the Statistics of Art, Parentheses Parity and Pencil Parings

Two years ago today, I stepped off a plane in Wellington and said to myself “Well, I’m back.” It had been a while, clearly, and in all honesty, I thought at the time that now, two years along, I’d be repeating myself, but back on the other side of the globe…

THAT EXTRA DIMENSION

Or Imagining, Subtracting and Adding: the Arithmetic of Painting and Sculpture

Well, they’re back!

ULLAGE

Or the Fine Art of the Empty Space

It’s no secret. I quite like words. Meeting new ones is like meeting new people, each toting an etymological suitcase of complexity and experience in the simple syllabification of a few letters.

STANDING STONES

Or How the Past Can Inspire the Now

Actually, this entry might well have been entitled “a friend in need…” as ambition had gotten farther down the road to writing something than the writing itself. Some how, the year’s end and this one’s beginning, which I had hoped to dedicate to getting a goodly, or at very least, a respectable number of words written, somehow was consumed by more mundane pursuits, doing nothing amongst them. Thus having ceded to the sirens call of sloth, I was girding my loins to dash something off in my usual state (a narrow land, situated between Dismay and Panic) when a friend offered a text, and I gratefully accepted.

A SHORT HISTORY OF HOT AIR

Or Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…. Phlogiston!” (Hearty applause)
“And its creator… Georg Ernst Stahl!” (The house comes down)

It is a shame such a scene never took place, but the world of 18th century science was such a mix of daring, foolishness and showmanship, stranger things might have happened.¹

For two millennia, life on Earth was measured in terms of the oligarchy of four: Earth, Air, Water and Fire, as proposed by Empedocles in 5th century BC, though the fifth element or quintessence, Aether, a kind of cosmic glue holding it all together, was considered to circle in the space around the Earth. The 5th element handily took care of the eternal and immovable cosmos, as the other four elements were known to be rather less stable, besides being often uncomfortably hot, cold, wet or dry. The elements were decidedly finicky.

For example, they had a tendency to catch fire.

THE ART OF TALKING ART

Or Getting A Few Words in Edgeways

This is an essay about the fine art of talking about… art. There’s decidedly an art to it. Serious art critics, who speak about serious art, adopt a palette of authority, sternly applied with brushes that brook no objection, deciding what constitutes Serious Art, and what is not. I do take some small comfort from the fact that this exclusivist approach has been a constant since people have been authoritatively writing about art, though membership in the ranks of Serious Artists is as ever-changing as the passengers on the quay of a train station. The other constant is that we always seem to be right. Now. And look on those who were right before with derision and commiseration. Undoubtedly someone will one day look on what we say and shake their heads.
In light of this, I’m always reminded of John Ruskin’s lecture on Classic Schools of Painting given at Oxford in 1883, when he described Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s “The Pyrrhic Dance” as “exactly like a microscopic view of a small detachment of black beetles, in search of a dead rat”. Tastes change.
Leslie Stem is a film-maker, artist and writer, and not afraid of speaking her mind. Or of graciously agreeing to stand in for me, when, in some desperation, I asked if she might not enjoy the exalted, albeit virtual, status of guest newsletter-writer (and save my skin in the process). *

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Welcome to the NEWS section. Newsletters appear, weather permitting, once a month. Subjects vary, but only according to whim and circumstance. CHRONICLES archives the successive newsletters, OUT & ABOUT announces events and public appearances.

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• DRAWING THE LINE SOMEWHERE
• STRANDS AND BROKEN SHELLS
• ABOUT THE MOVING OF MOUNTAINS
• SHIPS, SAILS AND FARAWAY PLANETS
• ~ THE DEFINING OF DREAMS ~
• Come Unto These Yellow Sands – but mind the naked fairies…
• SHIPS IN THE AIR
• THE DREAM OF EMESE
• A SHOULDER TO LEAN ON
• TWO YEARS OR TWO THOUSAND MILES
• THAT EXTRA DIMENSION
• ULLAGE
• STANDING STONES
• A SHORT HISTORY OF HOT AIR
• THE ART OF TALKING ART

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