Tuesday, November 3, Leaves Falling

My Ostraka:  History IV: xlii

I am sitting on my leaf-strewn deck, a fine oak tree is looking over my right shoulder and all around me, those rusting sounds of leaves, branches, all these things of nature saying good-bye.  A crow has landed on the topmost branch of one of my pines, another in the pine tree right in front of me, another cawing from the neighbor’s yard. I throw a stone in their direction as my sympathies are with cardinals, sparrows, wrens, not with these dark predators.  Oak leaves start drifting onto my summer table; I couldn’t ask for a more idyllic setting under which to write.

I started getting jazzed by the shape of oak leaves, after finishing my first Alexander the Great watercolor I featured in my November 2 post.  I made several sheets of sumi ink studies of oak leaves, just looking at various leaves and turning my calligraphy-style brush to make the shape of each leaf.  I hope to make photo-etchings of these calligraphic leaf shapes as part of a suite of etchings.  These sheets of soft sumi ink leaves sit on top of my flat files and inspire me, even if I don’t have time to make etchings yet.

Meanwhile, I started looking for watercolors that were not yet fully-developed. I found some that I thought would benefit from additional oak leaf imagery.  I started with a watercolor featuring an ancient ruin, Selinus, Temple C, a powerful ruin I have used a number of times,  The surviving temple is so provocative, a long surviving collonade and a tumble of pillars strewn in the foreground.

The city of Selinus, an ancient Greek colony in Sicily, is famous for its ruined Doric temples.  It is situated near Augusta on the east coast, 20 km north-northwest of Syracuse, Italy was the westernmost colony in Sicily,.  Selinus was founded in 651 or 628 BC by colonists from nearby Megara Hyblaea and from Megara in Greece. It achieved great prosperity in the 5th century BC, when its great temples were built. The city was destroyed by Carthaginians in 409 BC and again in 250 B.C. The site was then essentially deserted. The acropolis was refortified in the Byzantine period. Excavations have uncovered Selinus’ extensive ruins and suggests that the city’s monuments were toppled by earthquakes rmore than by warfare. On the acropolis were four large Doric temples, two of the sixth century, two of the fifth, and a small shrine. None of these has been securely attributed to specific deities, but are identified by letters (Temples A, C, D, and O; Shrine B).

My original watercolor featuring Temple C had a ghost image in faint watercolor of the Sphinx of Giza in blue and another ghost image, Marilyn Monroe’s famous lips, in quinachridone magenta. I love combining ancient and contemporary imagery in one painting, giving us an opportunity to connect past and present. Marilyn’s lips loomed large over the picture space.  Over these I painted Temple C, the collonade a man-made horizontal, the horizontal lips from a beautiful contemporary icon. Temple C is in quinocridone burnt sienna and mauve so the whole painting pulsated with color and images. 

Suddenly, Vergina’s oak leaves seemed suitable, as Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world at the time.  A display of delicate falling leaves seemed right.  I was also experimenting with Daniel Smith’s luminous watercolors and added bright dots of pale blue.  This is, after all, a vision, not an illustration.