Hot Like Madrid in the Summer


It’s hot, here in Bloomington. For the past few days I have been contending with the heat by staying in the studio all day, working on the computer and on the paintings. When it finally cools off a bit, at around 8:00, I have headed out for a nice bicycle ride on the trail. Catching the last rays of sunlight on the Clear Creek Trail, while getting some exercise, is a very nice thing about being in Bloomington.

In his travel guides Rick Steves talks about the paseo, the traditional evening stroll in warmer countries in Europe. If it is hot all day, it makes sense to stay in and try to keep cool, then come out when it is less hot and try to feel like you are in touch with the rest of the world. It was a part of being in Madrid that I loved.

People just walk around the wonderful city, through the old streets and neighborhoods, though Madrid is relatively young for a European city. Some stop at bars and restaurants and celebrate with friends, but some just enjoy the leisurely stroll. I saw families, with young girls in what I assume to be traditional costumes, and the parents, nicely and soberly dressed. I didn’t feel that people were expected to necessarily talk with each other. People see each other, maybe a little smile or acknowledgement, maybe not. The communication was the simple group enjoyment of being together at a nice time of day in a nice place.

It seems like a good way to live.

When I first got to Madrid, in May 2016, I wondered what I was doing there. After a long flight, walking in a disoriented, jet-lagged state through the airport, then figuring out the metro, finding my Airbnb… it’s nice here, but why have I spent so much money, and gone to so much trouble, to be here?

Then I saw online that the Prado was still open! It’s open until 20:00 (8:00 p.m.)! So I walked there, following a recommended route down the beautiful Calle de las Huertas. That street reached the wide, tree lined Paseo del Prado. I crossed, and there was the gray stone building with the statue of Velazquez. I had a bit of the sense: this is why I am here. I bought my yearly pass, showing a photocopy of my passport. I think it was less than 50 euros, a much better deal than individual admissions, and an absolute bargain considering the time, energy, and attention  I would be investing in my experience there over the next two weeks.

On my first day there I don’t think I made it to the Velazquez paintings. There wasn’t that much time at that point. I stopped at a painting, and it was getting, surprisingly, more and more interesting the longer I looked at it. There was a lot going on, many figures doing many things, but it had a depth and feeling I found unusual for such a busy scene. It was The Forge of Vulcan, by Jacopo Bassano:

https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/vulcans-forge/ad0e619f-6fe5-4566-b9bc-95a11b63bde2

 I started to draw from one of the figures, then came back the next day and did some more. For my first three or four days at the Prado it was my ‘check-in’ painting, the one I went to first, to start my day of drawing in the museum. Here is my first group of drawings from the painting.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Am I Doing This?

Image
Why Am I Doing This? I have decided to write a blog about art and travel. Things that I like to think about, and talk about, tend to fall under these categories, so it seems to make sense. Why am I doing this? One reason has to do with something that contemporary artist Vincent Desiderio has said about art making in general, that it is a process of self-enlightenment for the artist. Bo Bartlett, another major contemporary artist, with whom I had the good fortune to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, spoke of an idea that I think is similar: making art is a way to wake up. But art serves the viewer, as well as the artist. I hope that this blog, like my artwork, may be interesting and useful to other people. I am working to link this to my Facebook account, which will, I hope, help more people see it. This calm little interface on Blogger that I am now using is more to my taste than is the dense web of information that a Facebook page has to offer. So if I
Read more

Birthday

Image
This is a detail of a painting I am working on. That rectangular shape is the start of a birthay cake. My mother made a cake for me when I was three or four, at the end of the 1960's, or five months into the 1970's. There is a photo of me sitting at the table in the apartment my parents were renting on Montgomery Ave. in Ardmore, with my mother standing nearby and another young person, who I cannot now identify, looking off to the left. The photo is square, the original Instagram, but black and white, not murky 70's color.   In this painting I started painting the cake and the white table cloth in green because I felt like it. I wanted to have my feeling supersede any intrinsic requirements the subject may have presented, for the sake of my ongoing connection to my work. Sometimes when this allowance is made surprising connections are made, or depths are revealed that feel true to the subject. And sometimes the self-satisfying decision can just express my feeling, whic
Read more

William Brymner, Girl with a Dog, Lower Saint Lawrence

Image
This is a sketch from William Brymner’s painting Girl with a Dog, Lower Saint Lawrence, from 1905, and a reproduction of the painting.  The piece caught my attention during a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2017. The subject matter was unusual. A girl sits on the sand, or dirt, wearing what I guess was everyday dress in 1905, and holds a stick in front of her dog. Is she restraining the dog from greeting the viewer? Or is she protecting the dog from us? In the painting she has an expression I would describe as angry or frustrated. I find that my sketch adds more sadness. In the original work she faces the viewer more directly. In the painting she is connected to the land by similarity in value and color, and is held down by a horizontal land form in the middle ground. In my sketch I lightened the light on her hat, separating it from its surrounding values and perhaps connecting it more closely to the sky. I like the comma in the title, separating the protago
Read more