You must give birth
to your images.

They are the future
waiting to be born.

Fear not
the strangeness you feel.

The future must enter you
long before it happens.

Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Our greatest inspirations come naturally, quietly, suddenly when our mind and soul are at ease and when our observing eye is alert to nuance and detail.

Riding on the wings of these imaginings are thoughts, searching for form, struggling to be born in language. The language of art.

With patience and love, the artist creates.

Joyful the day when creation is true to its source.

Images for this post are from Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi, Italy.

Built in the late Republican period in the 1st century BC, this temple was erected by the quatorvirates Gneus Cesius and Titus Cesius Priscus. Once thought to have been dedicated to Minerva, when a votive plaque to Hercules was later discovered, it is now believed that the temple was dedicated to him.

The facade’s six fluted columns support Corinthian capitals and stand on plinths that rest on steps leading to the pronaos.

In 1539 the inner sanctum of the temple was transformed into the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, with further alterations added in the Baroque style during the 17th century.

This week’s image ~ Night-lit Column Base, Tempio di Minerva, Assisi, Italy.

All I want to do when I finish a picture is to fly away. I like life. I am bored by the intellectuals, or these people who call themselves intellectuals. They try to give an exact name to everything. ‘A good woman.’ A bad woman.’ And they are not real intellectuals. In the original meaning of the word, an intellectual was someone who had intellect.

But the people who now call themselves the intellectuals have become interested in the movies. They want to give an exact name to my thoughts. I do not believe an artist has or needs to have exact thoughts. Any talking he does outside of his work means nothing. It is a lot of stupidities.

I do not want to have a fixed idea about life. The only thing I want to know is:

Why am I here? What is my life?

I am not sure of anything outside of my work. The older I become, the less I know. I do not follow a particular system of working or of living. I just live. I just do things.

~ Federico Fellini, Fellini on Fellini

This week’s image ~ above right ~ Creative Commons, permanently scatterbrained/Flickr.
Thumbnail image ~ Above the Clouds.

After decades of living and painting in or near Paris, Renoir settled permanently in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1907 at age 67 where he spent the last 11 years of his life. The mild Mediterranean climate, the colorful landscape and the luminous light inspired perhaps his greatest work.

Terrace in Cagnes

Initially, Renoir enjoyed the conviviality of town life in Cagnes (living in rented quarters attached to the post office) before moving with his wife Aline and his sons to “Les Collettes,” a 9 acre farm on a sloping hillside with its striking ancient olive trees, orange groves and picturesque, old world farmhouse. Drawn by the timeless beauty of the land, he had already visited the property several times to paint. When he learned that a prospective buyer planned to fell the trees to make a carnation nursery, he acted quickly to purchase what would become for him his “earthly paradise” and final canvas.

Cagnes

Life there for Renoir was both tranquil and lively. Thanks to ongoing sales of his paintings and increasing fame, he was finally free from the financial worries of his youth and middle years. Mme Renoir lost no time in revitalizing the farm and having a simple but spacious home built that included small balconies with views of the hills beyond and an upstairs studio where Renoir worked when he could not be outdoors or in his indoor-outdoor painting “shed” among the olive trees.

Anemones

Understanding his sociable nature and concerned that he might feel isolated in his idyll, Aline encouraged company to come and reinstated her practice of preparing pot au feu dinners on Saturday night for whoever might arrive. Monet, members of his art dealerʼs family, the Durand-Ruels, and Cezanneʼs son, Paul were among the many friends who visited Les Collettes, as well as young artists who made unannounced pilgrimages to see the master. There was also a steady stream of villagers employed to help with all the work involved in running a household and working farm and to attend to the needs of Renoir as he became increasingly crippled by the devastating effects of rheumatoid arthritis. He relished the sights and sounds around him–his young son “Coco” climbing the orange trees, the arrival of his chauffeur Baptistin bringing news from town, the lively chatter of the women going about their daily tasks.

Still Life with Apples and Almonds

The years in Cagnes were ones of great productivity and fulfillment in Renoirʼs artistic life. While ironically his physical capacities were waning, his artistic powers grew to new heights. He painted every day from a wide range of subjects. One day it might be a simple still life of fruit and nuts picked from the trees (Still Life with Apples and Almonds, n.d.) Another, a scene of washerwomen at the river where the figures seem to merge with the landscape (Washerwomen at Cagnes, c. 1912). He used many of the young working women from the household as models, culminating in an extraordinary series of paintings of bathers and nudes. The figures shimmer softly in rosy-golden tones, luscious as ripe fruit. Known aptly today as his “Iridescent Period,” Renoir was now drawing upon a lifetime of experience since becoming a porcelain painter at age 13, confidently expressing his love of light and composition, blending the human form and the natural world into an inseparable, harmonious whole.

Washerwomen at Cagnes

Wheelchair bound and losing strength but driven to keep working, he began a new exploration in his last years creating several sculptures in collaboration with sculptor, Richard Guino, including the acclaimed (or majestic) Venus Vitrix which today graces the grounds of Les Collettes and the Renoir Museum. His love of life and his craft never failed him. Painting a fresh bouquet of anenomes on the day of his death, Renoir reportedly put down his brush and made his last statement: “I think I am beginning to understand something about it.”

*  *  *  *  *

Garden at Les Collettes

When I visited Les Collettes and the Renoir Museum in his home there, I was first inspired by the story of how Renoir saved the ancient olive trees. Then visually I was struck by how the the knotty, twisted roots holding onto the earth resembled the photographs of Renoir’s hands, painfully misshapen by rheumatoid arthritis but firmly grasping the paintbrush. I was moved by the tenacity and resilience of both. (I have read that when Matisse asked Renoir why he continued to torture himself with the effort to paint in his last years, he replied, “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”)

Renoir – Cagnes-Sur-Mer

gnarled and twisted now
one with the other
the painter, the olive trees

Source material:
Anthony Bosman – Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Jean Renoir – Renoir My Father
Derek Fell – Renoirʼs Garden
Denis Rouart – Renoir
Susan Vreeland – Luncheon of the Boating Party and website
Barbara Ehrlich White – Renoir: His Life and Letters
Renoir Museum brochure and website

About Jane Benson:

“Poetry has been part of my life since childhood when my mother read aloud her favorite Robert Frost poems and I wore out our copy of Robert Louis Stevensonʼs, A Childʼs Garden of Verses.

“More a reader than writer of verse, I like to collect poems and share them with others, sometimes learning them by heart. Occasionally, I write haiku for myself to capture a feeling, image or experience –a moment in time that I want to remember.

“Recently, I began a group for poetry lovers at Deborahʼs Palm, a new nonprofit community center for women in Palo Alto, CA.”

Love’s Labor’s Lost, one of three plays performed as part of Shakespeare Santa Cruz 2010 ~ now in its 29th season ~ opened July 21 in the Festival Glen, a natural amphitheater in the redwoods of University of California, Santa Cruz.

Directed by Tony award-nominated Scott Wentworth,

Love’s Labor’s Lost is Shakespeare’s most profoundly Elizabethan comedy, replete with witty debates, dazzling wordplay, and strongly drawn comic characters.

The play is set in Navarre, a kingdom devoted to the quest for self-improvement through bookish study. The king’s youthfully naive self-imposed command not to allow the distraction of women into the court is all but shattered with the arrival of the Princess of France and her feminine entourage.

The men, who had vowed to avoid all women in favor of intellectual pursuits, immediately fall head over heels and begin finding ways to allow the power of love to take its natural prominence over learning and the affairs of state. But the realities of life finally intrude on the revelries.*

The relaxed atmosphere and park-like setting of this outside venue invite theatergoers to enter into another world for a few brief hours. Many families, enjoying this regional cultural treasure, bring a picnic lunch and recline on blankets on the forested slopes. Glen tickets are reasonably priced so more of the public is able to attend performances here and benefit from the offerings Art provides.

As the 2007 commencement address speaker at Stanford University, award-winning and internationally acclaimed poet Dana Gioia presented an impassioned argument for the value of the arts and arts education:

Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world—equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being—simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images.

Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it remembers.

Due to underfunding, Shakespeare Santa Cruz almost closed its doors last year. However, thanks to efforts of theater lovers and donors from far and near who recognize the value of Art (read Donor Notes), Shakespeare Santa Cruz survived and continues to inspire and educate young and old alike.

* Text from website of Shakespeare Santa Cruz.

Formerly Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia currently directs the Harman-Eisner Program in the Arts at the Aspen Institute.

Near the Rodin Sculpture Garden on the Stanford Campus in Palo Alto, California, environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy and eight skilled dry-stone wallers from England and Scotland worked steadily for three weeks in 2001 to construct Stone River. For this sculpture, Goldsworthy and his team chose sandstone salvaged from university buildings destroyed in the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes – an original and creative way to reuse local materials.

The 420 foot-long sculpture emerges from within a gentle furrow and gives the feeling of having been excavated from the earth, where it will eventually return. Visitors can physically move along Stone River by following its flowing outline. With Stone River, Goldsworthy strives to make connections between what we call nature and what we call man-made. He beckons us to stop, to stop and see movement of time in the stone.

An abiding theme in Goldsworthy’s art is the natural ephemerality and transcience of life. He says of his photography:

Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle, which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit.

Indeed, his own works of art are remarkably vulnerable to weathering and change:

As is everything in the universe. As are we human beings. By accepting the inevitability of change, we gravitate to the part in ourselves that we intuit and know is constant and indestructible.

Nature, observes Goldsworthy, is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding.

Weekly Image ~ above rt ~ Stone River, Andy Goldsworthy.

NOTE: If you’ve visited the Lake District in Great Britain, you might have seen similar dry-stone (without mortar) stonework, still standing after hundreds of years. “A great part of the Lake District…is in the public trust something like our national parks. This because of Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), the writer and illustrator of children’s books, who lived in the Lake District, purchased large tracks of land during her lifetime and left it to the Government with the stipulation that the land be protected and kept in its pristine state…The results of all this are that the Lake District is a beautiful place, undisturbed by development and little changed over the centuries.” Troutbeck, A Visit to the Ancestral Longmire Homes in England, Robert Allen Longmire, Quail Press, 1992, p.3.

Confer: Rivers and Tides, a documentary on the work of Andy Goldsworthy directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer.

It is from Japan’s Hakone National Park, situated southwest of Tokyo amid the volcanic mountains and verdant forests of Mt. Fuji’s Five Lakes region, that California’s Hakone Gardens takes its name. Overlooking the Valley of the Heart’s Delight (now known as Silicon Valley), Hakone offers not only a global heritage forum for art and culture, it provides each guest a healing sanctuary from the stress of modern life.

Walk through the impressive main gate onto the Moon Bridge to watch colorful koi swimming in the pond. Imagine the splendor of a full moon mirrored there when viewed from the terrace of the Moonviewing House. To the music of hillside waterfalls, wander through the bamboo, camellia flower, tea, and Zen gardens, taking a moment in the Tea Waiting Pavilion to observe the harmony of plants, lanterns, carved stones, and walkways that have been masterfully placed for their beneficial, restful effects.

To deeply appreciate Hakone ~ or your own garden refuge close to home ~ visit it in Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter to see the remarkable seasonal changes of nature and to reflect on the meaning of Zen Master Tenkei’s words:

See with your eyes, hear
with your ears.
Nothing is hidden.

Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California, is one of twelve sites in the United States to receive the Save America’s Treasures Award, given by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Weekly Image ~ top rt ~ Kasuga Lantern

Images whose color and form change and refresh our state of being are images that renew.  They possess a magical, transformative power. Interior designers and artists have long recognized how profoundly color and form impact our psychological and physiological states.

By choosing images from Nature as the subject of my art, I hope to engage memories of early images from childhood. There is nothing to figure out. We immediately recognize what we see and respond spontaneously and openly because we have a primordial connection to Nature. We are renewed by the beauty of Nature throughout our lives.

IMAGES FOR RENEWAL is an expanding collection of photographic giclee prints on canvas, which now comprises over 150 images.  We introduce seven here.

Persimmon Glory.  This picture was taken on an afternoon in autumn when the light was clear and revealed detail. It contains both abstract and realistic components. The shades of blue and green in its background combined with the yellows and oranges in the foreground create a feeling of uplifting joy. The persimmon branch acts to ground the composition.

Splendor. This dahlia’s solar form evokes the power of giving, of shedding light. The macro lens allows us to see the exquisite beauty of the flower in a way our naked eye does not. It causes us to stop and look differently.  The tapered and layered arrangement of the petals brings interest to the image. The petals are the same yet different. Some are little more orange. Some have a stripe. Some more yellow. This image brings to any space warmth and a feeling of generosity.

Liquid Amberlight.  This image symbolizes change. Positive movement. This is reinforced by a blue sky and a glowing golden background. The colored leaves dance while trunks remain firm and enduring.  With the appropriate lighting, the image become almost three-dimensional and is equally lovely close up as it is at a distance. You will note that while symbolizing change, there is no emotional baggage in this image. No sentimental heaviness. Change is vibrant and fascinating. It is natural and graceful.

Fiesta. This image suggests a feast, a party, a time of gathering for shared celebrations. These flowers are bursting with energy and say, “Let’s have some fun!”  A young wife, newly married Alaska, purchased this for her kitchen, so no matter what time of year, she’d have a cheerful companion with her while she prepared meals.

Desire. This image is ideal for a bedroom. Soft, sensual, erotic, a coral rose speaks the language of romance. It communicates intimacy and dares to reveal what is hidden.  A rose is a rose is a rose. “There are many levels to relationships,” this rose is whispering. “Look deeper.”

Elysium. Elysium evokes a heavenly spectacle a place where a state of ideal or perfect happiness may be achieved. For all of you who have seen a Japanese maple in full autumn color, who have stood under its boughs, you know how transporting it can be. It is intensely beautiful and captivating without being overpowering. The reds and yellows of this image will enliven any interior space. There has been no artificial color editing on any of these prints.

Serenade.  Pink, purple, a ruffle of delicate roses, perfect for a woman’s study or work area.  These elegant flowers remind us to take pause to appreciate what sustains and nurtures us. To be grateful for life’s simple pleasures.

IMAGES FOR RENEWAL are timeless and won’t go out of style. They are versatile and adapt very well to many design styles.

Now a few details about the giclee itself:
•    Each print is numbered and signed by the artist
•    Each giclee is individually printed using pigment-based inks
•    Pigment-based inks are less susceptible to fading than dyes
•    Natural canvas is hand-stretched on a ½” finger-jointed pine frame, which is light but sturdy
•    Canvas stretch looks like a traditional painting (not a drum)
•    Image is hand-coated with a medium gloss giclee veneer, creating a water resistant surface
•    Veneer contains UV inhibitor
•    Image dimension is 22” x 28”
•    It’s easy to hang and very light
•    Giclees can be enhanced with a frame that harmonizes with the interior space or without a frame

Enjoy a slideshow of these photographic giclee prints on canvas.