Thursday, March 14, 2019

New art, music, fun stuff


Link to my website: Claude Lyles Art Works

Reminder that you can click on photos to enlarge and pinch open even further.  March 14, 2019.

New Art: (finally)
I started five works in my early Feb workshop painting Plein Air (outdoor) with Morgan Samuel Price. I am not accomplished to finish in the 2 to 2 1/2 hours you have before the shadows and light direction change. So, worked on them in the subsequent weeks and finished them over the past week or so. They are in oil, the three smaller ones are canvas on board, the larger two are canvas pad which I will mount on board.  The first one was in my previous blog but I wanted to keep them together. I need to move on, so what you see is what you get. No mas.
9 x 12" statue in garden
9 x 12" Three Pots



Arbor, Naples Botanical Garden 14 x 11"

Bocce Balls, Naples Botanical Garden 9 x 12"

Delnor-Wiggins Pass St Park 11 x 14"
On my website you can see works from her workshop 2 years ago that I did in D-WSP. It is a nice beach with facilities if you visit. Naples Botanical Garden is well worth the $20 admission. Its relatively new, 5 or 6 themed areas, water, walking trails, and a good cafe. Highly recommended.  Ed. Note: After I started painting, two couples said "oh, look! Bocce Balls." They then walked over the terrace and started playing which is why the placement of the balls differs in the two pieces.

Tomorrow joining for the first time Lee Plein Air Artist group in Lakes Park. New colleagues and the closest group to my location. Hope it works out. 

Not My Art:
The Alliance For The Arts did not accept my submission for the All Florida Show. There were 664 entries. A neat occasion occurred last Saturday when the jurist spoke discussing what and why in regard to his selections. One item I have already noticed is BIG sells and they like to choose BIG for the shows and he admitted as much. So, I guess I will be painting BIG. To be honest, so many of the Florida homes have 10 and 12 ft ceilings so tall walls need large paintings. I get it. 
1st Place, Two Girls, approx 3' x 4'




This is very large, oil, might be 6 x 6 ft. 2nd place.
 These two are about 2' x 2', 2' x 3':
I liked this the best. It had a clear acrylic/encaustic finish over it.  Enlarge it. 
Painterly portrait

Individual wood and cement buildings on a multi-level platform. Supposedly, artist's asst needed 3 hours to instal. 

(A Little) Humor: 
So rather than donate $500,000 to USC and ask them to admit her daughters (and if they can't hack it, so be it) which would be the school's choice to do so, But Nooooo, she spends the same amount of money illegally bribing coaches or administrators through a fixer to accomplish the same thing, only now she could go to jail, will have a criminal record, probably lose her position in Hallmark Movies and probably pay a fine. And the already admitted fixer goes to jail. And the school coaches and administrators (rightly) lose their employment. Arrogant or stupid, or both? Include the other 50 or so indicted?

And, I am going through the cable show listings and I see that at 9 o'clock on consecutive channels two shows on the G Bush family...those are their cousin in Alaska that they never talk about, right?

Problem:

This in one month, now month-after-month, and these are the people caught or who turned themselves in, there are even more whom we know nothing about. And again in March. And again in April. And...  no one cares that this is going on? No one wants to fix it? Oh yea, and again in May, in June. Yikes!


Good reading: 
If you want some common sense reading  on our current craziness, written by a mid-80 year old Black economist, Walter E Williams, go to his link. Try his syndicated columns first to grab a good feel for what he has to say. Here is the link Walter Williams George Mason U dept of Economics You want to enjoy him while he is still with us.

In additions to his writing he has links to other worthy authors and the Quotations section references utterance from others, two samples chosen at random:
  • “A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that … it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
    – Milton Friedman
  • “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office”
    – Aesop
Where Am I?
Some of my readers aren't sure just where is Fort Myers Florida. It is further south than many think it is. It is about two hours drive north to Tampa, two hours southeast to Miami, about two hours directly east to Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Ft. Lauderdale, etc. 

I marked the map with an arrow. Ignore the law firm ad. It is a great map to show our location. All on Interstate highway over 5 hours to GA border, 8 hours drive to Pensacola in the upper left. Jacksonville is in the upper right. Orlando kind of in the center; Gainesville and U of FL above that. It is a big state. 65,000 sq miles; 1,300 miles of shorelines. 21 million residents. Much of the land to our south and south east is The Everglades which is shallow swamp land; except for the coasts, most of the space you see below the big Lake O. Orlando has the 2nd largest college campus in the US - U of Central Florida. Three NFL teams, 2 MLB teams, two NHL teams, two NBA teams, pro soccer teams...lots to do. 




Reading: 
Air & Space magazine, Southwest Artist mag, starting The Power of Habit.

Watching: 
From our local library DVD collection we watched Leave No Trace...lots of stuff to think about including parent/child relationship as it fluctuates, PTSS affecting Vets, Government Agencies truly trying to help Vets and homeless, life in nature vs life with "things, and community vs isolation.

Picked up today: Incredibles 2 and the new A Star Is Born.

Watching: FL Rep
Next Week will be  Million $ Quartet about an impromptu jam session involving Presley, Perkins, Lewis, and Cash; followed in April by  a world premier: Native Gardens. That's it for the season. I was looking at the subscription for next year: Not sure if we will take all of them -
Always...Patsy Cline - all of her hits
The Fox On The Fairway - "Phenomenally funny"
An Inspector Calls - Tony winner
Alabaster - world premier
Barefoot In The Park - Neil Simon
A Gentleman's Guide To Love And Murder - Tony winner for Best Musical
Every Brilliant Thing - one man show
A Doll's Hose, Part 2 - "Smart, Funny, Engrossing"
Ripcord - High-stakes comedy about two woman of a certain age...


Wednesday, March 06, 2019

Fine Art, Spring Training, books and music

Link to my website: Claude Lyles Art Works

Reminder that you can click on photos to enlarge and pinch open even further. Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019.

New Art: 

This is a statue in a garden of our host when we had our outdoor painting workshop in Naples in February. Oil on canvas board, 9 x 12.


Old Art: 

Four redo's, and I am finished. Naples House is from Plein Air workshop two years ago, The yard scene is a 4 x 4 miniature from Zaandam NL from our trip last summer to the Rhine River. The palms are from fall visit to Key West and I softened the clouds in the New Mexico desert near Clayton.






Art Purchased: 

Watercolor by my workshop teacher Keiko Tanabe - Sunsett II (Bradenton Beach)
 World famous, art is her second career after being involved in International Business. Started to watercolor in 2005.  Currently lives in San Diego.

The second workshop demo was by Kenn Backhouse. He was focusing on shapes, color values, and composition.




Laying in shapes with underpainting.
Spring Training in Florida: 

Century Link Hammond Stadium 3 miles from my house.
My seats are between home and first, directly up from the mound, last row, in the shade and sheltered from afternoon rain showers. Easy in and out with stairs and elevator right behind us.  The Cardinals are not coming to Fort Myers this year, for some reason,  so I went to their road games in  Lakeland vs Detroit and Clearwater vs The Phillies. It was my first time in either stadium.  I stayed in St Petersburg after the Detroit game, with my friend Marty. We then joined Bill and Mindee for the game in Clearwater. 
From seat level looking back at South Fort Myers
Tigers vs Cards in Lakeland

Cards (in grey pants) vs Phillies in Clearwater

Next year Atlanta is relocating to the Gulf side just north of Port Charlotte so we'll have 4 teams within easy drive time.

Twins Catchers  putting on their gear
Studio Fun: (Cheap Thrill): 

In 2005 during our trip through Europe I purchased acetate photos of stained glass windows from cathedrals. Ran across them while organizing the closet so I put them up on the sliding door out to the pool from my studio to enjoy the light effect. 

 Strasbourg, Notre Dame, Chartres, and Sain-Chappelle. The latter was my favorite visit. It is a small (relatively speaking) family chapel for the Kings' residence on Ile de la Cite in the Seine River in Paris. It was commissioned by (Saint) Louis IX and finished in 1248. When you are in it, you can see the colored light spots on the ground and walls move as the sun changes location. Like being inside of a jeweled crown. 















Travel: 

Coming up, June 29, 50th High School Reunion at Saint Mary's. Looking forward to catching up.

Listening To:

Pat Matheny - Question & Answer album
Carmen McCrae live album - Live At Birdland West
Sinatra - Songs For Swingin' Lovers
Echo & The Bunnyman - Ocean Rain - too experimental. Still like Lips of Sugar and Bedbugs and Ballyhoo.

Our only symphony visit this year was a Pop's concert featuring the music of Neil Diamond, with the tribute band Super Diamond playing in front of and with the SW Florida Symphony Orchestra. Sounded like him, lots of hits; however, the tribute bands in general can lose the need to duplicate mannerisms or speech accents. Just play their music, dress like them if they need to. 














This month's Florida Rep show was pretty good, Noel Cowherd's Hey Fever. Somewhat dated but fun nevertheless. Coming up is Million Dollar Quartet



Reading: 

Two beginner's books on Magic Tricks, also two DVD's.

Humor from Reader's Digest and The Irish Post:



Founding Father's comment - he must have know Fake News was coming one day...