Romance, Life, and Accomplishment

He was a war veteran, and had the prosthetic to prove it. He made a donation of one leg, probably in the vicinity of Korea, in the name of preserving the American way of life. Forty years ago he and his lovely wife moved into a new house, fully intending to live out the rest of their allotted days; last week that dream was realized.

Thirty-six years after he and his wife moved into their new house, they got some new neighbors who were and still are filled with a romantic fervor regarding life and accomplishment. We didn't get to know him as well as we should have, or as much as he deserved. Our first interaction with him occurred on the road, actually; he was on I-78 in the slow lane, holding it at a steady 50 mph. We of course with our youthful enthusiasm blew past him in the left lane well over the speed limit, commenting how dangerous it was for someone to be driving that slow on a busy 4-lane highway. Irony is lost on an enthusiastic youth. Minutes after pulling into our driveway, he pulled into his. We hid behind our doors, hoping he had not recognized us. We certainly had not recognized him as our neighbor until then; we sure are the friendly sort. Several weeks later I meekly followed him at a safe distance along our little back road at a steady fifteen miles per hour. For miles. And more miles.

One day lost in thought and mowing the lawn, he startled me quite a bit when I chugged around the corner of the house and there he was, leaning on his geriatric cane and smiling. He introduced himself to me, and asked for a bit of help with something at his house. We talked for a bit, and he struck me as a very polite elderly gentleman. It was the day before Mother's Day, and he was the first person in my whole life to wish me, a childless male, a happy mother's day. I protested that wish with "But, I'm not a mother!" He adjusted my thinking a bit by responding "Does that mean you can't have a good day on mother's day?" We shared a good laugh, and then he told me how he lost his wife just months earlier. They had been married for many decades, and I could tell he missed her dearly.

They had a son who struck out on his own; the last contact they had with him was 20 years ago. At that time he was living in California. He never visited, even when his mother passed. This man was very alone. Our local police sergeant told me that his cell phone rang at least once a month with a report of suspicious activity in the neighborhood; none was ever found. The policeman believed he was called out simply so there was someone to talk to.

We invited him to our house for Thanksgiving dinner the other year; he politely declined, stating he had a prior engagement at the Heidelburg Restaurant. I saw his car parked there many evenings. I knocked on his door several times just to say hello, and he was always very friendly and loved to talk. His door didn't meet my knuckles nearly often enough. Once when discussing some of the latest happenings he told us of a local, extremely colorful weekly newspaper which he deemed as the best source of news and events. He tucked a copy of that newspaper in our door every week for some time. I'm going to miss that little reminder that he thought of us.

Another neighbor mowed this man's lawn every two weeks, necessary or not. On schedule for this past Saturday, he showed up to do just that. The doors to the house were locked and no one answered repeated knocks. The fire department came out and broke down the door for the medics who found his body in his forty year old house, where he had lived out the rest of his days according to plan. The authorities are searching for next of kin.

The winter woodworking experiment is working out nicely. Every Monday night I run from my desk, jump in my truck, and eat a Lebanon bologna sandwich and an apple on the road in order to make it to Reading at the appointed time. Old men talk about how fun a good busy retirement is, middle-aged men bend wood with steam and muscle and imagination, and strong-willed women overachieve with warped cedar and a patient instructor. It is a fine thing to inhale the scent of freshly milled lumber and the sound of a spinning lathe.

These are to be the end panels. There will be pieces very similar to this which will serve as the doors.





Camera-phone pix of the wood shop at Goggleworks and assorted personalities.

There have been a lot of changes since I updated last, namely the completion of the grisaille. I made a significant adjustment to the curvature on the right side of the pitcher after another artist pointed out the lack of symmetry. I'm somewhat embarrassed that I hadn't noticed the error myself; now that it's been pointed out to me it seems extremely obvious. Working from life is far more challenging than working from a photo for reference; translating the 3-D environment before me onto a 2-D surface while trying to produce the illusion of 3-D is far more harrowing that I previously assumed. That process is entirely new to me since with the photographic references I'm accusted to most of that work has already been done by the camera lens. At this point, I'm fairly comfortable with form with the exception of a few folds of fabric and the pitcher's spout, with which I'm not yet quite satisfied. I've started layering in color, thinly at first such that the grey actually shows through in some areas, and I'll continue this step until the entire canvas has at least one layer of color.

Pitcher with Grapes - Still Life

I thought I'd share a WIP here rather than Facebook. I'll probably only post completed images to Facebook from now on and share works in progress here. Some of you may notice that my technique, subject, style, or all of the above may change from one piece to the next. The source for behavior is not undiagnosed bi-polar but rather my utter lack of professional training. There about as many varied techniques for producing a peice of art as there are artists doing the painting and I'm trying to explore the vast range of options to find what works best for my temperment and hand. I have an appreciation for multiple styles from painterly alla prima, to classical realism, and even photorealism. And within those styles, I'm attracted to many subjects, from wildlife, to portraiture, and my newfound appreciation for still life. It may all seem vastly schizophrenic for me to be rendering each hair on a tiger one moment and then producing a painterly still life the next, but I assure you there is a method to this madness. Eventually I hope to settle upon a technique which works best for me and begin focusing on that.

For this piece I am loosely following what is known as the Flemish Technique, an Old Master style that employed multiple layers which helped those artists achieve such masterful control of light and color. This is the first time I'm actually painting from life and I've already grown to appreciate why so many "purists" advocate working only from life. Modeling form and value is so much easier when I'm viewing the subject through my own eyes rather than the mechanical lens of a camera. What you see here encompasses three steps. The first step was a fairly detailed pencil drawing of my composition on the canvas which has now been fully covered. Second was the imprematura which is the brown tone that you see. The canvas is covered with thinned paint and the lights are wiped out with a rag and the darks are accentuated with more paint. Once the imprematura is dry the third step is the grisaille and is basically a value study of the completed piece. In this step form is modeled and is most important for creating the illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface. Some artists will complete a grisaille in multiple layers; here I will use only one. Once completed it will resemble a completed painting in monochrome. After I am finished with the grisaille, I'll start layering on thin glazes of color to start giving life to the piece. The technique also traditionally includes a "dead layer" which I still have not yet managed to fully understand, and depending upon who you talk to, rubbing a dried onion accross the surface between each stage, but for the sake of retaining my sanity, I will not be completing those steps.

It's fairly small, only 9X12 so the tiny grapes were giving me a headache by the time I set down my brushes. This represents probably about three hours of work not including the thumbnail sketches I did before working on the canvas. That is far more time than an experienced artist would have invested in this already. I'm still not very efficient so the actual process takes painfully long for me.

The latest

The lack of updates has not been due to a lack of activity... but perhaps a combination of Facebook updates and lack of blogtastic inspiration. We've been busy with a number of things, most notably getting more involved with our church. In addition to being asked to lead worship Sunday mornings every four weeks (three other men and I share the responsibility), Amy and I were asked to teach an equipping class. Our church has a concept of "Win, Build, Equip, Send" for growing the body; the goal of Sunday school (aka Equipping Classes) is to build and equip so that we become missionaries not in the classical sense but in the workplace and neighborhood. For a time last fall enthusiasm was at a bit of a low for us; one Sunday we attended Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan to experience worship with intelligence before going to see The Milkmaid. What we heard from the mouth of Tim Keller was "we need to as a church win people to Christ, build them as believers, and equip them with the tools they need to be sent into New York to repeat the cycle." We came away from the service with an appreciation for our country bumpkin Evangelical Free church and our pastor who is evidently 5 years ahead of the leader of the most intelligent church on the east coast. We don't have small groups for post-docs and artists and executives, and that's ok. We do have classes for engaged couples and on world religions and in Galatians and that's ok too. Our goal for the class we are teaching is to explain how that just as a successful marriage is so much more than just sticking it out until death because that is the vow, a successful life in Christ is so much more than just forgiveness of indiscretion because that is the Promise. It is a beautiful thing.

This past fall the Piker within roamed freely and with little hesitation decided that bookcases are too expensive. Instead the #2 pine from and Amish-made shipping crate transformed itself into a proper bookcase and surprised us both. Now I've received requests from a particularly enthusiastic fan who would like a few more things of that nature. An end-grain cutting board made an appearance in the kitchen, and a maple buffet table is on the way and set to debut in the late spring.






This is about the way it should look. Very likely in the spring I'll be more humble about it...



But for the winter we are holed up reading marriage philosophy and freeing ourselves from the bondage of chasing fulfillment and learning the freedom of servanthood, and while she paints an accurate sand piper beach scene with her hands upstairs I smash and cut mine in the basement with power saws and spinning knives. The general appreciation for hand tools and the safety and lack of dust that comes with them is growing within our household.