Bananas for Madame Matisse

I fully intended to post something on Valentine's Day, but I had other tasks, including the making of valentine's, that occupied me instead.

I had set a goal for myself to finish a few paintings-in-process by Valentine's Day, and I made it--just barely! Now I'm able to share them with you.

The first is called Bananas for Madame Matisse. Here's a glimpse of it.

                               Bananas for Madame Matisse,  oil on canvas, © 2011 Sukie Curtis


The direct inspiration for the painting was, believe it or not, a bunch of bananas. But in addition to the bananas themselves, my admiration for a particular painting by Henri Matisse was also at play. It's his painting known as Femme au Chapeau, or Woman with the Hat.  It now belongs to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (though their website says it is not currently on view--mon Dieu!). The above link will take you to an image as well as a short article on wikipedia.

Or you can read the basics here: Painted in 1905 in what became known as the "fauvist" style--the term, Fauves, meaning wild beasts, was not intended as a compliment to Matisse and his painting companions of the day--Femme au Chapeau caused quite a stir when it was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1905. It was the Fauves' astonishing use of color that prompted the remark about the wild beasts.

In any case, as you can see if you open the link above, the woman (thought to be Madame Matisse herself) is wearing quite the hat! It's a little hard to tell what's loaded on top of the hat, but why not imagine some bananas up there? At least that's what I found myself thinking as I painted my own bananas.

I seem to have a "thing" for painting fruits and vegetables. What can I say? I love them--sometimes more to paint than to eat! I enjoy their shapes and colors, their quirks and curves, the patterns they make overlapping one another. And I enjoy playing with those elements when I paint them.

In this particular painting, color was really the primary exploration and source of delight. That, plus the fact that the bananas in the painting are larger than life-size, since they occupy most of a 16x20" canvas. That larger than life size added to the enjoyment and sense of play as I painted.

I suppose I could have named the painting Bananas for Madame Matisse's Hat, but that seemed just a bit too much of a mouthful. (Let me know what you think.)

Now I'm thinking of a series of paintings for Madame Matisse. Next on the list are some lemons, before they become too old to use in cooking!

Blog to Blog 2

Bekah has been busy at her blog, which feels like a friendly nudge to me to do that same!

Here are her two latest posts from Nairobi. The first called "The Bubble Bursts" and the second, "Chizifreshi." You'll have to read the blog to find out what that means! Maybe I'll ask Bekah for a Swahili pronunciation guide. My slim recollection is that it's pretty straightforward--my guess is that chizifreshi would be pronounced "cheezy-freshy." Any Swahili speaker-readers out there?

I love the way my daughters inspire me to do stuff--I played off some of Anna's artistic ideas when I made valentines earlier this week. And now I will let Bekah's blogging activity spur some of my own.

Mixed Up Files, or "On Not Three Blogs"

When Bekah was in third or fourth grade and a voracious reader, there was a book around whose title I loved--From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It's about a girl who drafts her little brother to run away with her to Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where they dupe the security guards and hide in the restroom until the museum is closed for the night, and, of course, they get embroiled in solving a mystery.

I don't remember if I ever actually read the book, but its title has always stayed with me. I suppose I often think of my journal or perhaps even more so my blogging as something akin to mixed-up files. Maybe the subtitle of my blog could be: From the seriously mixed-up files of the somewhat mixed-up mind of a relatively sane woman. 


Or something like that. Because that's really what this seems to be--it's sometimes a blog about painting, and sometimes a blog about leaving the priesthood and starting over to find a new path in life, and sometimes about what it was like to have been an Episcopal priest, and sometimes it's about my childhood, and sometimes it's about . . . well, being alive, being human, being myself. (I know, that last phrase sounds a bit egocentric, but I don't really know what it's like to be anyone else.)

This blog is, for better or worse, all of those things, and in no particular order. Believe me, I spend lots of time (usually in those gaps between blog posts) debating the merits of having a blog that's only about my art or only about leaving the priesthood or only about--you get the idea. For a while I even had two blogs  at the same time, but they blurred and overlapped, and I wasted a lot of energy trying decide when I was writing for which. So I gave up on that track and retreated back to one blog.

I've even thought about starting a money blog, because dealing with money and finances and how to make a living having left the one profession I was trained for does occupy my thoughts quite a bit. And I've learned a lot about myself and money (and about money in general) in the last couple of years, and I have a few funny and hair-raising stories to tell. (Talk about seriously mixed-up files!)

I have a feeling the time is near when I may actually start an art-only blog for posting images of paintings and maybe even of drawings. That one seems relatively straight-forward, and it doesn't mean I can't blog about painting in my mixed-up files blog.

But I'm not quite there yet.

I've even composed in my head a blog post titled "On Not Three Blogs," which is kind of an in-joke for students of Christian theology who might remember Gregory of Nyssa's essay "On Not Three Gods" about the doctrine of the Trinity. OK. I had to Google "On Not Three Gods" to remember who wrote it--which one of those so-called Church Fathers. But writing this has made me realize perhaps that's the title of this post.

So for the time being I will keep going in this blog, thinking of it as my "mixed-up files" blog. Or more precisely, From the seriously mixed-up files of the somewhat mixed-up mind of a relatively sane woman.

Bekah in Kenya 1

I said I'd link blog to blog with my daughter Bekah who is spending the semester in Kenya, and then I promptly forgot to do that when she posted her first entry from Nairobi! It's a great one--informative and entertaining. If only she had included a photo or two--like up close and personal with a giraffe? Maybe next time.

Here's a link to it. Her blog is called: Bekah in Kenya. Go figure! (Actually, go read it!)

Here's to Spring

It must feel like spring today in Egypt--the exhilarating, inspiring, take a deep breath and sing, shout, and dance kind of spring. At the edge of the unknown, the future opening to just what new reality no one knows.

I had already planned to blog today about spring--the hopes and longings for spring that lots of us northerners find welling up in us on these cold but sunny days, the driveway crusted over with ice, the mailbox, broken off by the plow's forceful heave of too much snow, now askew but tied onto its post with some old clothesline and my best knot know-how. The snow piles so high it's easy to imagine they will be here into May. How will the crocuses and daffodils find their way through to bloom?

But I didn't want to blog only about hopes and longings but also about the small but real, tangible signs that spring is working its way already. Last week we marked that odd day knows as Groundhog Day (and the famed mammal did NOT see his shadow), an adaptation of the day elsewhere and otherwise known as Candlemas (also the Purification of the Virgin Mary, and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple), St. Bridget's Day, and Imbolc--the latter being most likely the first of them all in time, and the other names later adaptations and reinterpretations.

Imbolc was a traditional feast day in pagan, pre-Christian Ireland (and perhaps is still in pagan and now- Christian/post-Christian Ireland?)--the day that falls midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. In pre-Christian days it came to be associated with the goddess Brigid, goddess of poetry and healing, who in time became the Christian St. Bridget. (I know, it's complicated. And it doesn't really matter if you follow me or not! I actually just read that Brigid was said to have had two sisters, also named Brigid, so that she was a "triple goddess"--imagine that! A holy trinity of Brigid, Brigid, and Brigid!)

Imbolc, on Feb. 1-2, is considered the first day of spring in Ireland. Imbolc means something like "in the womb"--because at this time of year the lambs are growing fat in the wombs of ewes, nearing birth. I like that way of counting spring's beginnings even when the fuller expression of the season still lies weeks away, buried and hidden under snow.

And so it is, even in chilly Maine!

Just a few days ago a local Maine sheep and fiber farm posted a photo of a newborn lamb on Facebook! (Open this link to Romney Ridge Farm only if you want a dose of serious lamb cuteness to brighten your winter spirits!)

Over the past ten days, we've actually passed numerous significant milestones on the way toward spring. First, on January 31 the sunrise broke 7 a.m. and is now rising at 6:46 and getting earlier every day. Next  came the day when our total gain of daylight since the winter solstice passed the one hour mark. And soon after, the sunset has passed 5 p.m. and counting.

I assume it's this growth in daylight that has set the birds to singing! I've been hearing titmice and chickadees not just making noises but singing their trademark songs. Could it be they are warming up for wooing and courtship?

It cheers my soul. So here's to Egypt, to the spring of freedom (though the road ahead may be bumpy), and to the spring of spring.

Blog to blog

Seems I've been a bit focused on things other than this blog of late. Among other things, helping Bekah to get ready for her semester in Kenya (with SIT, studying Health and Community Development) and taking her to Boston for her flight to Paris and on to Nairobi. Then it was fielding her phone calls and skype connections when her first flight to Nairobi was cancelled due to two flat tires.

We went to bed Saturday night knowing that she had set at least four different alarms in her hotel room at Charles de Gaulle in order to be sure to make it back to the airport for her second try at getting to Nairobi. When our phone rang at 5:30 a.m. Sunday finding me largely still asleep, I was awake enough to know that this was not a good sign. She should have been in the air to Nairobi.

No such luck. Her flight had been postponed again--this time because the crew was late arriving at the airport and the aircraft had not yet been checked for flight readiness. How reassuring.

I spent the next few hours repeatedly checking the Air France flight status website, watching as the the flight's scheduled departure got moved later and later in 10 minute increments, feeling powerless and fretful. At one point, I found myself thinking, "What if I considered the possibility that somehow it's better that this flight leaves late? What if I didn't chafe at this reality?" I don't know if this marked a step forward in maturity and wisdom, but it did open up a bit of open space.

Bekah did eventually get take off from Paris on Sunday. After calling SIT's headquarters in Vermont to be sure that someone would meet her in Nairobi, I did my best to get on with my day.

For some odd reason, neither Air France's website nor www.flightsarriving.com was able to confirm that her plane ever landed in Nairobi! We simply chose to assume that no news really was good news--that had something unthinkable happened, we would have heard, and that Bekah was fine and had connected with her SIT group in Nairobi.

How wonderful for David to receive an unexpected phone call from Bekah today, using a borrowed cell phone as the one she had just purchased was not working! And later my phone rang out with the sound of an arriving text--"Hi. Are you getting this? This is a test."

She's still far away, and for four months. But she's fine. And with the wondrous connecting thread of technology an option at least some of the time. I am grateful.

So now it's time to link blog to blog. One of Bekah's study abroad scholarship grants requires her to keep a blog, posting at least once a week. Here's the link for Bekah in Kenya. Enjoy!

More Calendars = More Time?

Wow. Here it is January 6 already, and I'm longing for a bit of that slack tide that I wrote about in my last post almost a month ago! Or looking for some way to stop time, or at least to slow it down.

Meanwhile, I've noticed that by quirk of fate, through a combination of gifts and purchases, I now have five calendars--two small decorative ones, two large art ones, and one good sized very plain one. Five calendars, not counting the two family calendars in our kitchen. Nor the two daily planners that I bought--one pocket-sized one that rides along in my pocketbook and one larger one for my desk.

I'm wondering what's going on here. Do I somehow think that more calendars equal more time? Or that having more calendars and planners increases my chances of being organized and using my time well?

That has a bit of the ring (or sting?) of truth about it. This starting a new year thing has reactivated my fantasies of being more organized, using my time better, getting more accomplished. And behind those fantasies lies a bigger, harder task--getting clearer about my life!

Maybe I always feel this way right after New Year's. Maybe I always get caught up in the new year/new me/new life kind of thing. There's something about passing this large marker in time of one year turning to the next that stirs up questions, most of them full of high expectations, about the territory that I've crossed in the year that is past and where I hope to be by the time New Year's rolls around again.

But somehow it feels more intense a longing this year. Maybe it's because I spent several days right before Christmas helping to move my mother from Maine to Connecticut and then spend time in the days after Christmas supporting Anna in finishing her college applications.

All I know is that I stood for almost an hour in the daily planner aisle of Staples the other day, searching and hoping for the "perfect planner," not knowing exactly what that would be but figuring I'd recognize it if and when I saw it. I chatted with other shoppers who came and went. We all agreed that there were way too many choices and that none was "just right." And yet they seemed able to make a decision and move on.

I stayed there and stayed there, walking a few feet to my left and trying those, then to my right and looking there. Back and forth, back and forth. I'm sure I probably looked many times at the same ones, not remembering one title or cover from the next.

In the end, after selecting the large plain calendar that I eventually bought, a planner that I had no doubt stared at before but not noticed caught my eye. Its pages are laid out quite differently from the others, and while I can't say it's perfect, it was different enough to seem worth trying. So I bought it along with the calendar.

But for right now it's that large, plain, black-ink-on-white-paper calendar that is beckoning to me. And I think that's because for right now it looks so clean and spacious, like a fresh snowfall before any footprints have crossed it. It seems to be suggesting to me something about simplicity, something about slowing down rather than speeding up, and something about taking stock before the turn of the year gains momentum and brings new deadlines.

I think I'd secretly like to choose one of the calendar's spare white squares and mark it off all to myself, set up some boundaries, and climb right in. And then simply luxuriate in one day--one twenty-four hour block--without any agenda. No expectations. No obligations. Just a day.