I studied color theory, gestural figure and portrait painting with Roman, Constantin and Marc Chatov in Atlanta from 1981-1988. My early work also consisted of etchings, aquatints and woodcuts produced while I worked as a printmaker at Odyssey Studio from 1978 to 1984.Â
In the mid to late 70’s I went door to door in Toronto, and later when I moved to Atlanta – selling prints, along with many weekend art festivals. I also had an Atlanta distributor who took prints at wholesale pricing.Â
In 1987 I changed my focus from depicting my dreams to abstraction, based on a strong relationship with nature. Color has always been paramount in the work. These later years in Atlanta produced quite large works.
hiked through the small Okehocking Preserve yesterday, originally a part of the 1682 William Penn land grant, that became Chester, Philadelphia and Bucks Counties.Â
This was Native American land (well, what wasn’t) and is still beautiful, but wooded areas that are left are mostly covered with a northern version of kudzu and other vines. In need of clean up. Butterflies all over the open fields of queen anne’s lace and clover. A sewage treatment plant is using some of the fields for ‘modification’ zones. The butterflies don’t seem to care.
Penn granted 500 Acres of the preserve to the Lenape Indians in 1685. As in history of all the states, these original Americans were basically marginalized by about 1730. One generation is all it took to decimate a whole race of people. An overview here.
However, some Lenape remained, intermarried and kept their traditions, language and culture alive, in secret.
Buddy is a neighbor cat who likes my yard, but he’s half feral.
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Before our big storm with golfball sized hail, there was this atmospheric delight, I’m doing a series of small studies;
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then we had the storm…
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My new garden plot between the apple trees. Not much to look at now and it ruined my ‘meadow’, but it means food next summer. Layered newspapers that I’d saved all year, covered with heavy black plastic. I’ll dig it next spring and enrich with local cow or mushroom compost.
farmers markets are bringing in summer fruits now. The Amish have the sweetest cantaloupes and the manager of the West Chester Growers market, Paul Hauser, has the most luscious peaches.
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these are my own tomatoes. Cherry 100’s and a few heirlooms whose names I can’t remember. One is Arkansas Traveler. I pick them green and they ripen on the sunporch or inside where the bugs won’t devour them. The cherries are ripening on a daily basis on the vines.
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and as you can see, I let them have their way in the garden. No weeding, no fertilizing, I offer freedom to spread.
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If you look closely, you’ll be able to see a bumblebee and some other bees intent on these flower buds. I can’t remember what they are, but all the wasps love them too. Blue winged wasps –or at least this is what I think they are- seem to be having a great time out there swarming around all the nectar.
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only one basil plant so no pesto this year, but a lot of nice salads and omelettes.
you know you’re old when Starbucks Java Chip keeps you up at night. Why not organic, you say? Well, I can’t find the clip from Pope of Greenwich Village; ‘Charlie, you don’t need no jacket, Â you ain’t got no job’, but that’s the gist of it. Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke here, untouched by action flicks.
“It’s a perfect film.”Â
-Johnny Depp
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this is from the Big Lebowski-one of my favorite scenes. Slapstick doesn’t get much better.
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and James Cagney as the hilarious Bottom in the Hollywood version of Midsummer Night’s Dream. 14 yr old Mickey Rooney as Puck. A classic comedy.
James Cagney and Mickey Rooney romping in a Shakespearian fairyland? This could only be A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Warner Bros.’ 1935 attempt at classing up the proletarian studio. The legendary German stage director Max Reinhardt had produced the play at the Hollywood Bowl to enchanted, sold-out audiences, and Warners decided to hand Reinhardt the keys to the studio (along with fellow Germans William Dieterle, co-director, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who adapted Mendelssohn’s music). Reinhardt created an eye-popping phantasmagoria, a movie laced with sparkling sequins, flying fairies, and moon-kissed forests. As for the words, Reinhardt had a collection of Warners studio players, notably James Cagney as Bottom, whose playing of “Pyramus and Thisby” with Joe E. Brown is perhaps the movie’s comic high point. The other actors are decidedly varied, and they tend to be overwhelmed by the production design. Not so Mickey Rooney, whose performance as Puck is a feral, antic act of imagination (he was 14 during filming); picture a boy raised by wolves who somehow memorized Shakespeare. His Puck growls and screams and mocks the drama of the other characters, a little postmodern imp before his time. (Critic David Thomson called this Puck “truly inhuman, one of the cinema’s most arresting pieces of magic”). The rest of the movie comes to earth with some regularity, but it’s a one-of-a-kind production, and a reminder of the lavish, unreal possibilities within a movie studio. –Robert HortonÂ
my sister, Gina’s newest book was published this year and is now available at Amazon. Coincidentally I met Arnold in Italy during the residency, who was a radio operator in Tommy’s platoon in VN during the mid 60’s.
