tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37361470427420206192024-02-20T10:55:39.545-05:00Moonbeams and Sunbeams: Aspects of N.A.C.Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-18906694923200704272020-08-19T18:13:00.000-04:002020-08-19T18:13:38.190-04:00 SOME POEMS Instead of writing my usual narrative, in this post I would like to stick to some poems I wrote a number of years ago and which contain reminiscences of childhood and family. There are just three poems. The first one, "Autobiography", is based on memories of my childhood home on the outskirts of Birmingham, England, and particularly features memories of an ancient church near my home. Then follows "Family Album", with memories of my father's parents, who were the only grandparents I actually knew. Finally comes "Family Saga" with my mother's tales of her own grandparents who lived in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland.<div><br /></div><div> AUTOBIOGRAPHY</div><div> </div><div> When I was small I lived in a green land --</div><div> Revisited, sparse enough, with bright red brick</div><div> Springing between the calculated flowers.</div><div> But in that seeking time it seemed to me</div><div> Nothing but fields stretched out on either hand</div><div> Until they reached the blue horizon's edge.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> For me the trees grew green, adventurous in Spring,</div><div> Rich in the Summer and in Autumn, finally</div><div> Intricate pattern of iron work, austere in Winter.</div><div> For me the fields grew flowers. Each new plant</div><div> Was like the finding of a continent</div><div> To me, conquistadora. All my senses</div><div> Greeted whatever lay before them, glad</div><div> To recognize the texture of a mat</div><div> (Thrusting my hands among the long-haired fleece)</div><div> The rough and granular work of a pebbled wall,</div><div> Digging out shards with broken nails and watching</div><div> The glint of sun om granite, feeling</div><div> Sunlight absorbed by stones sink down again</div><div> Into my body, leaning full against them.</div><div>\ I felt things with my feet: the rich black squelch</div><div> Of mud or macadam between my toes,</div><div> The springy, sheep-bit turf, the leather arms</div><div> Of our much harassed armchairs, or the bed,</div><div> Sharp with its pointed pebbles, of a stream</div><div> So shallow it barely reached above my toes.</div><div> Water I loved indeed to touch and handle:</div><div> Black and perhaps unfathomable pools</div><div> Lurking in gullies at the foot of hills,</div><div> Sea, on the rare occasions when I saw it</div><div> (Making me almost drunk with exaltation</div><div> When the wave bucked beneath the boat) but most</div><div> Of all the shallow little stream that ran</div><div> Through fields and woodlands, breaking and curvetting,</div><div> Surrounding tiny obstacles, then smoothing</div><div> Itself to a small, sleek imitation of</div><div> The long Atlantic swell, in little frets</div><div> Caused by the pattern of its two inch bed.</div><div><br /></div><div>;</div><div> </div><div> A wood and fields comprised my known world:</div><div> A golf course lay beyond. A small estate,</div><div> Yet endlessly productive of delight.</div><div> Of terror too. Imagination helped.</div><div> One day I found an egg beneath a hedge,</div><div> In texture quite unlike the eggs that broke</div><div> To form a clamorous nest of early birds,</div><div> Their beaks still gaping for the endless worm</div><div> That nest was safely tucked inside the hedge</div><div> And some way further up, concealed from travelers</div><div> Who did not so minutely scan as I</div><div> The objects they encountered on their path.</div><div> This egg was horny skinned and strangely hued</div><div> With oily hues like dribbled gasoline.</div><div> I thought of all that I had ever read</div><div> Of snakes, their habits and of dragonets.</div><div> The end of school meant anxious visiting</div><div> With wary step and timorous roving eye</div><div> To look for alteration in the egg.</div><div> A boy who found me hovering round the hedge</div><div> Which marked their garden's limit took me in</div><div> And showed his rabbits and his bicycle;</div><div> I soon escaped to mark the spot again.</div><div> I hardly know if I was frightened when</div><div> My daily visit showed a broken shell,</div><div> A vanished occupant. For weeks I went</div><div> Another way, to shun the cockatrice.</div><div> Another vision, scarcely less suspect,</div><div> Came monthly rolling on down Manor Lane.</div><div> There, at a turning near the school,</div><div> The gypsies' never ending caravans</div><div> With their full complement of men and boys</div><div> And walking mothers wearing their old shoes</div><div> Taken from garbage cans along the road,</div><div> Superlatively down at heel but fine,</div><div> Magnificent in dirt. They always wore</div><div> Most curious wrappers, black with orange sprigs,</div><div> Tying across the side with thin black tapes.</div><div> I used to wonder where they got them from,</div><div> For I never saw them anywhere for sale.</div><div> They were disturbing but they never stopped.</div><div> They seemed to breathe a different air from we;</div><div> Dragons and snakes were closer than they were.</div><div> And yet they never once disturbed my dreams.</div><div> Strange as they were, they were no cause for fear.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> The passing pattern of my days assumed</div><div> A patchwork glory. Nothing was too small</div><div> To be excluded from experience</div><div> And nothing was so great it over-topped</div><div> The rest of life and minimized its worth.</div><div> We never had to go to church, yet still</div><div> I felt a thrill on entering that place--</div><div> Unforced and therefore stronger holy fear.</div><div> The massive vaulting of the church, so huge</div><div> I could not force my head back far enough</div><div> To view the timber arches of the roof,</div><div> Formed far too vast a box for my small heart</div><div> Thudding between the hassocks and the pews.</div><div> Eternity made strange the monuments</div><div> And dusty marble wigs of antique men</div><div> With all their sculptured virtues at their sides.</div><div> Large things seem larger to a ten year old.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> That sentiment was strong indeed, and while</div><div> I drifted down an aisle like some church mouse</div><div> Or even, bold with dread, approached the Bird</div><div> That held the Book in fierceness and in bronze;</div><div> While this suffused my soul I dared not own</div><div> Another feeling than magnetic dread.</div><div> But when I found myself outside again,</div><div> Alone with sounds and leaves and mossy stones</div><div> And sorrowing angels drooping in their wings</div><div> With testimonials to local names,</div><div> I plucked up courage far enough to rout</div><div> Amid the graveyard garbage for old flowers</div><div> And fly with shrieks and scattered trophies from</div><div> Indignant hobbling guardians of the tombs.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> I could not wish myself at any time</div><div> Returned again to that remembered past</div><div> For every joy brought compensating grief</div><div> And anguishes to great to bear again.</div><div> But while I lived in childhood I could yet</div><div> Forget each grief the moment it was gone</div><div> And meet the constant bully with surprise</div><div> On each occasion. Joy I too forgot,</div><div> Living the moment as it came. One thing</div><div> I could grudge at this hour and that is time:</div><div> Continual leisure of the infant life</div><div> To spend as long examining a leaf</div><div> As it demanded and no moment less.</div><div> And what prevents me now from watching leaves?</div><div> I own no fewer seconds in the week.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> FAMILY ALBUM</div><div><br /></div><div> All the life of his life,</div><div> My grandfather, who is long dead,</div><div> Worked in the Jewelers' Quarter.</div><div><br /></div><div> He had a big red nose and mild blue eyes</div><div> And a silvery white moustache.</div><div><br /></div><div> To look at him in his overalls</div><div> You would never think him aesthetic</div><div> But he would buy pictures instead of meat</div><div><br /></div><div> When he was young with two little boys</div><div> And a careful, brisk young wife.</div><div><br /></div><div> They stood in a group for their photograph:</div><div> Grandfather wistful, Grandmother blurred</div><div> From holding her restless sons.</div><div><br /></div><div> Only her hands stood out --</div><div> Iron hands, imprisoning little boys.</div><div><br /></div><div> Her hands held tight and never let go,</div><div> But Grandfather's hands hung open</div><div> For experience to run through.</div><div><br /></div><div> Grandfather bought and sold and gave.</div><div> Grandmother made, kept and mended.</div><div><br /></div><div> These were their patterns through life..</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> FAMILY SAGA</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> If I choose to go back further,</div><div> I come to my Great Grandmother.</div><div> She was named Barbara Morrison --</div><div> I am named Barbara after her --</div><div> And she was born on a croft.</div><div><br /></div><div> When she grew up she was pretty</div><div> And she fell in love with a sailor --</div><div> Most of the boys were sailors --</div><div> But her family said No.</div><div> They found her a rich, middle-aged husband.</div><div><br /></div><div> My Great Grandfather whom she married</div><div> Was a very remarkable man.</div><div> At the age of fifty he was the richest man</div><div> With the widest whiskers on the whole of Bernera.</div><div> He was also an Elder of the Kirk.</div><div> But he didn't start out that way.</div><div><br /></div><div> Hear the tale of my Great Grandfather!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> For thirty years he sat and thought --</div><div> Not all the time-- He worked a turn --</div><div> But when his work was over, he</div><div> Would think and let the cabbage burn.</div><div><br /></div><div> The thought that occupied his mind</div><div> Was how to find the proper way --</div><div> And to finance the plan, when found --</div><div> To make his lobster fishing pay.</div><div><br /></div><div> He sat and thought for thirty years --</div><div> For thirty years and then some more --</div><div> And finally the plan was born</div><div> When he was nearing thirty-four.</div><div><br /></div><div> He shipped upon a cargo boat</div><div> Destined for Canada.</div><div> He flexed his muscles every night</div><div> And said a little prayer.</div><div><br /></div><div> He prayed like Samson he might be</div><div> Great, tall and stout and strong</div><div> And likewise wise as Solomon</div><div> Without doing anyone wrong.</div><div><br /></div><div> Upon arriving at the coast</div><div> He leaped upon the shore</div><div> And started chopping trees like mad --</div><div> No other could chop more.</div><div><br /></div><div> They were well paid, Great Grandfather</div><div> And all the other men.</div><div> But while they squandered he would save</div><div> And earn some more again.</div><div><br /></div><div> Before he had been many years</div><div> Upon that fortunate shore,</div><div> He'd saved five hundred pounds in gold</div><div> And sailed for home once more.</div><div><br /></div><div> Once home he hired two men to dig</div><div> And with their help he made</div><div> A most enormous lobster pond --</div><div> Like Aberdeen harbour, it is said.</div><div><br /></div><div> He filled that pond with lobsters blue</div><div> From all the seas around</div><div> And when the other men sailed out</div><div> No lobsters could be found.</div><div><br /></div><div> They all were with Great Grandfather</div><div> Who sold them -- at a price.</div><div> He was the richest man for miles</div><div> And got Barbara, which was nice.</div><div><br /></div><div> Now this great man is dead and gone</div><div> But still the things he did remain.</div><div> He built that pond like Pyramids</div><div> To win an everlasting name.</div><div><br /></div><div> Some time ago an engineer</div><div> Officially sent up from London</div><div> Came many miles to see this pond</div><div> And could not think how it was done.</div><div><br /></div><div> Great Grandpa used his natural brains</div><div> To do what others could not do</div><div> And even now the Government</div><div> Is baffled by the things he knew.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> Barbara survived him. She bore two sons</div><div> And adopted two children as well.</div><div> She was made with a leaning to hope</div><div> And a heart like the widow's cruse.</div><div> Furthermore she had natural curls.</div><div><br /></div><div> For a matron these were improper</div><div> But she tried to repress them in vain.</div><div> Since her marriage had failed to depress her,</div><div> Nothing could ever achieve it.</div><div> She died in her sleep, smiling.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div>. </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> .</div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>l</div>Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-6199135213345949332020-08-04T18:22:00.000-04:002020-08-04T18:22:16.834-04:00Scottish Presbyterians Aunt Mary was quite shocked when she entered an Anglican church and saw a religious picture on the wall, as she considered that idolatrous. She really upset my mother by writing to her when my mother was in India to say that she was grooming her daughters for damnation by sending them to a convent school. But when she took me to one particular Protestant church when I was a child she was really sorry for it. That church was having a communion service by passing round little cups of grape juice and little plates of bread. It didn't occur to Aunt Mary that no one had explained to me about communion and she was completely taken aback when I started shouting out "I want refreshments! Everybody else is having refreshments! Why can't I have refreshments?" She had to take me out of the church and never brought me back.<br />
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Something she really insisted on was avoiding all theatrical performances, whether in the cinema or on stage, as that was participating in telling a lie.</div>
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Two other things she really insisted on were strict chastity and Sabbath Day observance. Men were to be avoided at all costs, an insistence which got her the reputation of being a Lesbian in some parts of the family, although my mother refused to believe it. Men, according to her, were just so many rapists. And on Sunday you should spend the whole day reading the Bible and going to church and not even think of taking a walk for pleasure.</div>
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In stark contrast to Aunt Mary were two other important figures in my childhood, Aunt Maidie and Our Evelyn. Aunt Maidie was no relation but my mother's best friend. She was involved quite openly in an unmarried sexual relationship and took the occult much more seriously than religion, although she was glad to have her mother praying for her during the Blitz when she was an air raid warden. Our Evelyn, who was a nursemaid my mother took on when I was about eight, was Catholic and made attempts to convert me that made much more of an impression on me than my Aunt Mary's similar attempts . It is probably because of her that I take great pleasure in saying Catholic prayers today, even though that doesn't stop me being a Quaker. So all that ends up as quite a mixed bag of religion.</div>
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Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-85268517807115094162020-08-04T18:01:00.003-04:002020-08-04T18:01:54.844-04:00Following Presbyterians Yesterday I spent several hours composing a Blog to which I gave the title "Scottish Presbyterians" and which I ended up accidentally deleting. It was all about a couple of members of my Scottish mother's family who were full of doom and gloom and premonitions of disaster and considered this a right attitude to religion. I went on about this in considerable detail, not realising that by so doing I was becoming thoroughly negative myself. But she was not negative herself at all. Calling the Blog "Scottish Presbyterians" I was giving the impression that all Scottish Presbyterians were like this. And yet my mother was just as convinced as they were about the rightness of the religion in which the whole family had been brought up although she was quite different. She was both fun-loving and kind. She was also very far from believing that she had all the right answers. As a result she tended to admire the one Presbyterian relative to whom I was particularly hostile and tell me to be like her, simply because this relation was so steeped in religious observance that my mother had to believe that she was really good.<br />
I feel I have to go back to the beginning again, so instead of calling this Blog "Scottish Presbyterians" I am calling it "Following Presbyterians", meaning to imply that I am following up on what I said before even though I hadn't actually published any of it. I just thought I had.<br />
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I could go on in some detail and at some length about the ways in which my mother and Aunt Mary (as I was taught to call this particular relative) professed the same beliefs and yet were quite different in their attitudes and behaviour. In fact I think I will.<br />
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But first I would like to comment on certain aspects of human behaviour. It seems to be typically human to form groups which protect their own members in opposition to other groups, starting with the nuclear family and then going on to link together people living in a particular place or belonging to a particular profession, class, race or religion. Tolerance seems very hard to acquire and requires quite a lot of effort, "I am better than you are because my group is better than yours" seems like a nearly universal reaction.<br />
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Aunt Mary felt like that about being Scottish rather than English and Presbyterian rather than Catholic. She went back to Scotland every summer, returning with a large bouquet of white heather, and felt she had to do this to maintain her moral fibre while being obliged to earn a living in the sinful city of London. As for the difference between her and Catholics, she was quite sure she was saved and bound for heaven while they were all going straight to hell. It didn't bother her in the least that Catholics might feel the same way about her. They were simply wrong.<br />
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In contrast, after the departure of Nurse Boone and as her family continued to grow, my mother hired a much less prestigious nursemaid by the name of Evelyn Shephard who was staunchly Catholic, apparently quite unconcerned that Evelyn might try to convert us. In fact Evelyn did make this attempt, filling me with such admiration for the saints that I still feel it today. In fact as a child I even wanted to be a saint myself until I discovered that becoming one wasn't that easy.<br />
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It wasn't exactly that my mother didn't care what we believed. She did become quite upset when my sister Ann, having been sent to a convent school in India, started attending mass on her return to England. She only calmed down when Ann pretended that she was thinking of attending the University of Geneva. My mother thought Geneva was still the city of Calvin, which it, not. Rather my mother was so convinced of the rightness of her own faith that she tended to regard other faiths as comic rather than dangerous. When Evelyn responded to the news that my parents had married in a registry office by saying that they were living in sin and we children were bastards, my mother thought this was hilarious.<br />
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When I think about that, I realise that my mother didn't feel threatened by religious differences any more than she felt threatened by the company of the gypsies or by the presence of an unmarried mother next door. This girl, who called herself Mrs. Lamb without anybody believing that she was actually married to Mr. Lamb, lived together with him and their two children. Her own mother had disowned her, saying that having one child could be a mistake but if you had two, you were doing it on purpose. To say they were ostracised is putting it mildly. Mrs. Lamb couldn't do her own grocery shopping without being insulted by the shopkeepers, so my mother sent me to do it for her without anyone suspecting and she always gave me a large tip for it because Mr. Lamb had money. I almost forgot to mention that Mr. Lamb had a legal wife who refused to divorce him and was paying child support to a third woman. Hearing all this, I took a good look at Mr. Lamb one day to see if I could see anything special about him but I couldn't. Where my mother's acceptance of Mrs. Lamb was concerned, she was motivated not by easy approval but by pity, while my Aunt Mary insisted so stoutly on perfect chastity that she regarded all men as potentially evil and to be strictly avoided.<br />
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The total difference in attitude which I perceived in so many respects between my mother and Aunt Mary is liable to occur in every group and religion. Just how far does this go? What seems to be involved is the contrast between those who have a real feeling for humanity and those who are wrapped up in their own self importance, whatever they claim to believe.<br />
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.Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-80230716628110128552020-07-08T16:31:00.001-04:002020-07-08T16:31:41.195-04:00ANGELS AND OTHER TUTELARY SPIRITS The last Blog I posted was all about my Guardian Angel. One thing I didn't say about him is that he's a very tricky character. In fact he's such a trickster that I think he's related to the Norse god Loki or else to the indigenous characters Raven and Coyote. It was through his trickiness that I was able as a child to escape unharmed from that child moleste., Through my angel's close acquaintance with tricks I was able to see through that scoundrel's attempts to trick me and deceive him in my turn. When he said he would take me to the woods, I said "Oh, that would be lovely! Do you know where the woods are?" and took his hand as I did so so that I could let go of him easily when there was a suitable time. He said, "No, I'm a stranger here," so I said "Then I'll show you the way" and led him towards my parents' home, chatting as naively as I could all the way. When we reached it I ran in.<br />
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One thing I wasn't able to do was get him arrested because my parents' didn't believe my story but thought I had made it up. After all I had been in the habit of telling some pretty remarkable stories about having been a Scots terrier in a previous existence. But I really didn't mind not being believed so long as I was safe. At any rate I knew that that man would have lost faith in his powers of deception. Maybe, although that is perhaps too much to hope for, he never approached another child again, fearing the visibility of his guilty secret.<br />
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One thing my angel is not able to do is hit all the right keys on my computer, so you will have to excuse my typos. He belongs to a much earlier time. In fact I'm sure he goes back to the Stone Age, long predating Christianity. In fact he may actually be the Norse god Loki in a new guise or else Raven or Coyote. After all, Loki was considered an enemy by the Norse gods, who were quite accomplished villains, for he brought about their downfall, plotting it from the start, and thereby cleared the way in Scandinavia for Christianity. But people have always known about tutelary spirits.<br />
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So-called "primitive" people are regularly accompanied on important journeys by animal spirits and this is particularly the case with shamans. Most people are familiar with the sets of animal cards for telling fortunes which are based on indigenous beliefs. When we use them, we are of course calling for guidance on the over soul of each particular animal as it has become known to us through its distinctive character and ways. I have even come across an account by a well known psychic, Colette Baron-Reid, in her very informative book, "Messages From Spirit", of how she got some cockroaches to move out of her apartment into a neighbour's by appealing to the Over Soul of the cockroaches. This author says she is sometimes taken for a witch but the the world of Spirit is far too vast and generous to be limited to that. However witches were well known to have pets, sometimes toads but more often black cats.<br />
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The witch of Endor, in the Bible. had a familiar spirit, although we are not told if it was an animal spirit, which she used to call up the spirit of the prophet Samuel to answer the questions of King Saul, and psychics and mediums nowadays regularly have spirit guides. But of course they have to be careful what kind of spirit they pick. Certain sources of spiritual guidance such as the ouija board are quite notorious for calling up the wrong kinds of spirits. There is a well known story of how one couple of young men were led to complete psychological and spiritual disaster by it. But however angels, no matter how tricky' are a completely different kettle of flying fish.<br />
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Angels are unreservedly good and bearers of messages from God to Man in whatever religion they may appear. Gabriel bore the message of the Koran to Mohammed and of the Annunciation to Mary and he may have been the one who warned Joseph in a dream to flee with the Mother and Child to Egypt. Michael fights on God's behalf and Raphael heals. But there are myriads of angels. Everyone, without exception has his own guardian angel, although some of my friends are more conscious of his presence than others. Some people are more conscious of their besetting devil, who is also in constant attendance. My naughty Quaker friend, Basil Ivan Rakoczi, about whom I have written in a previous blog, once told me the following story. When he was a little boy he was told by his religious teachers -- I think they were Jesuits -- that he had an angel on his right shoulder and a devil on his left. He should always listen to the angel and ignore the devil. But he felt sorry for the poor little devil who was being ignored and decided to listen to both, with the consequences we already know about.<br />
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Apart from angels and in a different category, in other religions we find gods and daemons. Socrates put great faith in his daemon, to whom he listened all the time and on whose advice he unfailingly relied, even when it advised him to accept the death sentence passed on him by the leaders of Athens. And the priestesses of the Pythian oracle served Apollo as the psychics of their day. Each god or goddess was the tutelary spirit looking after whoever was dedicated to that particular deity's avocation, much as guardian angels or patron saints can be nowadays. All this is typical godlike behaviour.<br />
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But there is a different category of gods I have heard about recently who are worshiped in modern times and who co-exist with Roman Catholicism in Haiti. I heard about Voodoo a long time ago and regarded it with horror as unreservedly evil. When I heard a friend of mine was practicing it I fled from her house in terror. Since then I have read a book which puts a much kinder face on this practice. It is called "Mama Loa" and it is a sympathetic account by a social scientist, Karen McCarthy Brown, of the comfort and help this African religion has in the impoverished and beleaguered lives of Haitian women. Not all bad reputations, as we know from other cases, are actually deserved,.<br />
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That is all I have to say on the subject of angels and other tutelary spirits for the moment. Maybe some other day I will get back to the topic of "Stories in the Bible", which was the one my guardian angel had me discard.<br />
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<br />Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-82375814024235980052020-06-16T15:56:00.001-04:002020-06-16T15:56:50.744-04:00My Guardian Angel In my next few Blogs I would like to discuss the topics of my mother, sex and religion. Art is an important topic for me too but I have already discussed that quite a lot. Basically what I am setting out to do is describe how I encountered in childhood the values I finally espoused as an adult.<br />
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I have had a strong belief since I was a child in my Guardian Angel. I was taught to say a prayer in bed at night that I still say:<br />
"Now I lay me down to sleep,<br />
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.<br />
And if I die before I wake<br />
I pray the Lord my soul to take."<br />
Another one went:<br />
"Four angels round my bed:<br />
Two angels at my head:<br />
One to watch and one to pray<br />
And two to carry my soul away."<br />
I no longer pray the second one. Instead, every morning, I say the following prayer:<br />
"Angel of God, my Guardian dear.<br />
To whom God's love commits me here,<br />
Ever this day be at my side<br />
To light, to guard,<br />
To rule and to guide."<br />
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Having a continuing interest in the occult which I inherited from my mother along with a belief in more orthodox religion, I read the autobiography of the famous medium, Sylvia Browne, several years ago, and was surprised to learn that when she said this first prayer as a child she was frightened by it. She certainly got over that fear later on as she came to communicate with the dead in public and on a very grand scale. But although I have never tried being a medium, I was certainly not frightened by it. I have always accepted death as a perfectly natural part of life and nothing to be afraid of. This is something I heard from my mother again and again. There was a little piece of family history she told to inculcate it.<br />
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My mother's mother died giving birth to her and as it was considered improper for her father to have sole charge of a little girl she was brought up by his mother. My mother much admired her grandmother for her warm heart, her neighbourly ways and her endless generosity. She gave me her grandmother's name of Barbara in the hope that I would turn out to be like her. Certainly my mother wanted all her children to meet death in the same way her grandmother had done because she told us all the same story. When her grandmother was quite old and living alone, her favourite brother came to visit her. He told her a funny story which made her laugh. Then she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, smiling, and stopped talking. Half an hour later he realised she was dead.<br />
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We all listened to this story suitably impressed with the exception of my youngest sister, Annabel. When my mother started out, "Now, Annabel, you mustn't be afraid of death," Annabel retorted "Oh, no, Mummy, I'm not afraid of death. I've always longed to be a dear little worm!" My mother and Annabel were living in Texas at the time and I was living in Illinois. My mother thought Annabel's retort was so funny that she wrote to me about it. But I had never put up the same resistance.<br />
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When I was around ten years old I fell ill with cerebro-spinal meningitis. I could not keep any food down. Every time I ate I threw up. I hated it so much I actually wanted to die. I was quite prepared for an angel to carry my soul away. Or two angels, as the case might be. And I have always been aware since then that life was a gift that would some day be taken away, there was no knowing when. The idea doesn't bother me. Although when the meningitis didn't kill me, my mother and I considered that a cause for celebration. The doctors had just invented a pill for it.<br />
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Where angels were concerned I had read about Abraham entertaining angels in his tent. Later I was to read about an angel coming to Mary and other angels announcing the birth of Jesus to some shepherds. My mother had handed me the King James Bible when I was six and told me to read it, but without offering a word of explanation.Apparently she thought the meaning was perfectly clear and self explanatory.<br />
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I loved stories so much that my mother had taught me to read at the age of four so that I could read stories for myself and wouldn't be pestering her to read to me all day long. Here was a brand new big book of stories for me to read, so I got on with it. I already knew the Alice books so I followed the advice of the King of Hearts: "Begin at the beginning and go on to the end, then stop." Alice was already my role model, but I was quite prepared to accept other role models. And so I began at the beginning with the Book of Genesis, which rather puzzled me, as at first I was simply not prepared to accept the story of the Fall.<br />
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My highly trained nursemaid, Nurse Edith Boone, known as my Nanny, had taught me to think and reflect and apparently she had given me the idea that that was the idea that that was what God wanted us to do. I was sure that God wanted us to know as much as possible and shocked that anyone should maintain that there was anything he didn't want us to know. But I didn't want to be hasty so I went off to a quiet place and reflected on it. Then it came to me that knowing Good and Evil wasn't the same thing as knowing facts as you can't know Evil without being affected by it. So the story did make sense after all.<br />
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Nurse Boone left us when I was six so I hadn't actually discussed the Bible with her, so far as I remember. With the outbreak of the Second World War she considered it her patriotic duty to work in a munitions factory. I have been told that she was a member of a religious sect called the Plymouth Brethren who are apparently not unlike Conservative Quakers, although without being pacifists. They are so staid that they drove Aleister Crowley to rebel against them by becoming a black magician. Perhaps that is what they are generally best known for.<br />
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Age six was an important time for me. The war started, Nurse Boone left, I started reading the Bible and my mother started supplying me with quite horrendous sexual information. Just as she wanted all her children to be prepared for death, so she wanted us all to know about "the facts of life."<br />
As a trained nurse she knew this was important. But she never mentioned that they had any connection with love, which I think was an important omission. The total effect was quite frightening and fitted in with what I was reading in the Bible about Sodom and Gomorrah. However it turned out to be quite useful in a practical kind of way because when I met a child molester when I was coming home in the dark along a deserted road four years later I knew exactly what to think of him and his offer to teach me games I'd never played before. I thank my Guardian Angel for showing me exactly how to get away from him and get safely home unharmed. My Guardian Angel is very resourceful. With that I end my tribute to him.<br />
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"Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-5001369303723364722020-03-31T17:15:00.003-04:002020-03-31T17:15:35.152-04:00Previous Existences Some people think I'm crazy but I'm pretty sure I've remembered six or seven previous existences. This started when I was about ten years old. I was quite sure I'd led a previous existence as a Scots terrier. I don't remember all the details now but I did then. I used to tell long detailed stories about it to my four-year old sister Ann in bed at night. Apparently I had all kinds of adventures. Furthermore I also knew that in the life before that I had been a bad human being and had to retrace my evolution by sinking to the level of a dog. However I had been such a good little dog that I had been allowed to become a human being again.<br />
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If I had been living in the Far East when I had this experience and talked about it my story would have been accepted without question, as reincarnation there is a matter of accepted belief. There are all kinds of stories in India of a child born in one village remembering a life in another village, being taken there and being able to prove it. Remembering previous existences is particularly important for establishing the credentials of certain holy men, as we see from the example of the present Dalai Lama. And the Buddha went through all kinds of animal existences, as the tale is told, being a particularly noble, self-sacrificing animal in each one. But I was living in twentieth century England in a home devoid of Hindu or Buddhist beliefs. My father was a freethinker and my mother a Scottish Presbyterian. What could have induced me to come up with these stories?<br />
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However I was in fact subject to certain occult influences which could well have excited my imagination along these lines. My mother might have been expected to be dour, hardheaded and canny. But it is the Lowland Scots who have earned this reputation and my mother came from the Outer Hebrides where people believe firmly in psychic powers, known as the Second Sight, and put out milk at night for the fairies to keep them from draining the cows, while my English scientist father tried and failed to convince my mother that all this kind of thing was superstitious rubbish. My mother managed quite easily to reconcile her religious beliefs with her more magical ones. So did her best friend, whom I was taught to call Aunty Maidie, who was a Highlander, at the same time as she was sufficiently canny to hold quite an important job in the Civil Service.<br />
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Living as we did on the outskirts of Birmingham, we found ourselves on a Romany travelling route. On my way to school I would frequently see their painted, wooden, horse- drawn caravans pass by, with the men driving and the women, who were the fortune tellers, walking in the road. My mother was always inviting these women in, and they chalked their patterans, which you would call hobo marks, on our gate posts. My mother said "Oo, I wonder what they mean!" and my father said "they mean {A fool lives here.}". But she was able to defend herself. One day my father came home from work and said, "Well Mary we're moving". He expected her to be surprised because he never told her anything of his plans beforehand, but she just said, "I know." "How do you know?" he asked. "A gypsy told me."<br />
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My mother also subscribed to an occult magazine called "Prediction" which featured horoscopes by her favourite astrologer. According to her we were all supposed to do exactly what this astrologer said. I too read this magazine and believed in it. I probably learned from it about reincarnation. So right now I might dismiss my ideas on this subject as childish fantasy if I had not had several memories of previous existences, quite unexpectedly, in middle age.<br />
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I was taking a course in ancient Greek at Brock when I found certain words which sounded Greek but weren't in the Greek dictionary, popping into my mind. I asked the professor, Fred Casler, about them and he said they were Doric. Doric was the ancient Greek spoken in the countryside and I had never been exposed to it. It must have come from somewhere. Shortly after this I stayed in bed for a week, feeling ill, and spent the whole week watching pictures of former lives flash across my mind as if on a movie screen. To this day I cannot be entirely sure that they were real memories, but how did I come up with the Doric?<br />
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I would like to write them all up and see if I can get them published. I have finished one account, in narrative verse, about a descendant of the Witch of Endor who falls in love with Jesus and follows him around Galilee. I have shown it to an Anglican priest who liked it and even admired it. I have also done some work on the others. There is a great deal of variety but this time round I did not see myself being a dog!<br />
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Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-64176117209506510922019-08-03T12:28:00.000-04:002019-08-03T12:28:17.123-04:00Goddess or Witch?<br />
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W hen I held a reception for my May 2019 art show at NAC, some young women artists came up to me and asked if I had any pictures of Goddesses because they were planning a group show of Goddesses and would like me to be in it. I said I had half a dozen, but then when I looked through my collection of my own work I found I had a whole lot more. Getting quite carried away, I did several more and ended up with an entire show of my own. Not hearing any more about the projected group show, I decided to put mine on.<br />
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I learned about the Greek and Roman divinities in high school and was quite moved by them, responding to them pretty much as if I were an ancient Greek or Roman myself, But we did not hear anything about any other religion or mythology apart from reading the Bible, which, according to British educational practice at the time, we read without any reference to denominational teaching , I do not have any Norse or Hindu divinities in my show. However, although it is very bad theology to call the Blessed Virgin Mary divine, I have included her because I think she is so important and I have such a strong attachment to her. Taken altogether, my show is a tribute to many feminine aspects of the Divine. As the Kabbalah claims, all the different religions are attempts to reach the Divine, which, in itself, is beyond human comprehension.<br />
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My Goddess show will be viewed in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe, September 1 to 15, with an opening reception in the same place in the afternoon of Sunday, September 1, 2019, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.<br />
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The Book Launch, which is part of the same event, is devoted to a second edition of "The Witch Poems", a book of humorous verse which I first wrote and published in 1995 to a fair degree of local success. In fact it sold out and people have been asking for more copies ever since, so I have set out to meet the demand. The Book Launch will take place in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe in the afternoon of Sunday, September 8, 2019, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., together with a reception.<br />
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For those who do not already know "The Witch Poems", I should explain that it is a book of poems that are both humorous and at the same time quite genuinely religious, written under the persona of a witch. In my original edition I made some attempt to explain this persona in a foreword in which I referred to certain feminists in Quebec who were calling themselves witches. In fact, a little later, W.I.T.C.H. became quite a popular acronym among feminists all over North America. But simply calling myself a feminist was not a complete explanation.<br />
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Now that I am setting out to give the whole truth, I will say that I had actually been quite strongly influenced by my friendship with a Gay male witch by the name of Basil Ivan Rakoczi. He is chiefly know for his work as an artist which after his death brought him quite a lot of fame. After running into him at an academic gathering through one of those coincidences which Carl Gustav Jung considers quite uncanny, I spent a great deal of time with him while on sabbatical in Paris many years ago. He took a friendly interest in my writing and painting and it is largely because of him that I have become so productive in retirement. In fact I might almost say that it is only now that, owing to his encouragement, I have embarked on my real career. Unfortunately we parted on bad terms shortly before his death because I was so shocked and frightened by some of his magical practices. I write about this relationship in the completely new foreword to my book.<br />
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Another new feature consists of illustrations of charms and spells which I drew myself and which are much more personal than the otherwise good illustrations done by Lesley Bell for the first edition.<br />
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I owe Basil, to whom I have become reconciled, a debt of gratitude for opening up to me a whole new area of creative independence. On this occasion I ask myself, am I good or bad, loving or hostile, creative or destructive, wise or psychotic, goddess or witch? But I am really not too concerned about how I may be viewed because basically I am happy and at peace with myself. I am constantly reminded of my Grandmother's state of depression in old age when she used to repeat "I'm an idle old woman, I might as well be dead." I am so much better off because I am not at all idle and I am glad to be alive, whatever anyone thinks. And so I ask my readers and viewers to accept both aspects of my show: the Goddess and the Witch, and not choose between them.<br />
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Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-19221370597586406282019-05-10T15:55:00.001-04:002019-05-10T15:55:51.027-04:00<br />
<h2>
The Rite of Spring</h2>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Some people who know my work came to the show Lynne Mawson and
I held at the Mahtay </div>
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Café in March to celebrate International Women’s Day. It
was such a tribute to women that the same people will probably be surprised to
learn that I will be holding a show at NAC, May 25 - June 2, that will be
almost as much a tribute to the male gender.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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What accounts for this? I have resurrected some paintings I did
in Paris in 1974-75 and have not shown before. The show also includes some new
paintings, I did quite recently in the same vein. I left for Paris in 1974 to
work on a sabbatical research project on Marcel Proust. This plan fell through because I discovered on reaching
Paris that the information on which I’d based this project was inaccurate. Other Proust research took its place and did, fortunately,
lead to publication because I was spending a lot of time with other Proust
scholars.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Other people I met were the man I loved but was obliged to
leave, and my artistic mentor, Basil Ivan-Rakoczi, who lived in Paris but whom
I’d already met in Canada at a meeting of the Learned <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Societies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He had congratulated me there on the paper I gave on retellngs
of the fairy tale The Sleeping Beauty, saying he was very interested in
folklore and inviting me to look him up in Paris.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was very keen to do so because he had offered to introduce
me to Robert Graves and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Samuel Beckett.
In fact, he never did do this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think the fact of the matter was that he had actually got
to know both men by mixing in the same cultural circles but they had taken a
dislike a to him upon finding he was gay. But I did meet people who know him,
quite unexpectedly, by turning up at the Quaker<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Meeting House in Paris and finding it full of his pictures.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I got to know him better, I discovered that he had come
to Paris from Ireland where he had worked as a Freudian lay analyst, a poet and
a part-time painter.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In Paris, he painted full time, told fortunes and enrolled
some young friends in a group for transactional analysis, which I joined,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Irish Quakers had invited him to join the Religious Society
of Friends, which he did, although with some doubts about his own suitability.<o:p></o:p></div>
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His Hungarian father and his Irish mother, who was an heriditary
witch and had introduced him to witchcraft mixed with Catholicism, had met
while travelling in Ireland with the gypsies. He himself was an honorary gypsy
and wrote a book on the Tarot, which he illustrated himself, as a means for
gypsy initiation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In English, the title was the Painted Caravan, and in French
La Roulotte. <i>Initiatique</i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">He preferred to say Gypsy rather than
Romany. I have this book in both versions and frequently use it.<o:p></o:p></i></h1>
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I was not shocked or surprised to hear all this as my own
mother had made me quite used to this kind of thing, although she would have
been shocked to be called a witch. She considered herself a good Scottish Presbyterian.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The two of them read the same Occult magazine called
Prediction.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On a typical weekend in Paris, I attended Basil’s “At Home”
on Saturday afternoon, Quaker meeting on Sunday morning and the Louvre on
Sunday afternoon. The love of my life visited me on Sunday evening. I also
attended when I could a life drawing group led by Basil. He got me painting in
watercolours on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>very large sheets of
paper.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I took these paintings home with me from Paris. Recently, I
finished and polished them. And I painted some more pictures in the same size
and style.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is all these pictures I shall be showing at NAC in May.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Basil was known as a symbolist painter, going in for dreams,
legends and fantasy. This is very much my own inclination. Recently, I had a
visit from a couple of artistic friends who asked me if my own work had been
influenced by the Tarot.</div>
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I said my first influence had been the illustrations in my
children’s books but I showed them the Tarot books by Basil.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The paintings I did in Paris are mainly based on Greek,
Roman and Norse mythology.<o:p></o:p></div>
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They represent Bacchus, Phoebus Apollo, Ganymede and the
halls of Asgard. Also included are some semi-nudes of male figures.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are just two examples from the Christian story. That is
the Grail and the serpent in the garden of Eden. I have included one angel but angels are found in more than one religion.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I feel I’ve gone back to a time in my life where I was
younger, more open to experience, and more poetic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Basil died soon after I got back from Paris, but his influence
is still with me. I think, though, I have finally shaken off the curse he put
on me because I strongly disapproved of his using bad magic as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>well as good. No wonder he had doubts about his suitability as a Quaker.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-78091580680083354902019-03-26T15:45:00.003-04:002019-03-26T15:45:39.759-04:00GreetingsGreetings to those who missed the Women's Day Art Show set up by Lynne Mawson and me! Lynne brought back all my unsold pictures to my house. If you want to see them, call me at 905 685 6709 any time between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-76256917401041465292019-02-07T16:19:00.000-05:002019-02-07T16:19:17.440-05:00WOMEN'S DAY ART SHOW<div>
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This Blog is being published by me, Barbara J. Bucknall, to advertise the art show that Lynne Mawson and I will be putting on in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe to celebrate International Women's Day which will be taking place on March 8, 2019. The show will run from March 8 to March 15 and will be sponsored by Bethlehem Housing and Support Services and its Housing Hero Fundraising Initiative. Two of my original framed paintings will be raffled at the Bethlehem Fundraising "Empty Bowls" dinner on March 6, 2019 and two of Lynne's will be raffled on the last night of our art show. Both raffles will be fundraisers for Bethlehem Housing.</div>
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Lynne and I are putting on this show together because we share an interest in portraying female figures, whether human or divine. Our dedication to art is deep and sincere, playful and joyful, serious and humorous and might even be called religious in its total commitment. Not that you need to genuflect when entering our show, but we have both portrayed some women who stand well above the ordinary human level. Lynne will be putting some actual goddesses on show but not putting them up for sale because they are too precious to her. My own divinities are much more accessible. While including some pagan goddesses, I also bear witness to a devotion to the Virgin Mary which is quite unusual in a Quaker. We also paint plenty of human women and Lynne's are quite humorous. Mine tend to be more serious. It was in fact Lynne's sense of humor that endeared her art to me.</div>
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About her goddess pictures, she says: "The goddess image comes to me from time to time. This is art I cannot force. I lay down three colours, close my eyes and move my brush around the canvas. Then I walk away. Once dry, the canvas is observed from many angles. It is then left on my art table. Walking by from time to time, I give the canvas a quick glance. At some point, but not always, an image begins to appear. At that point, I drop what I am doing and put chalk to canvas. She is revealed! The goddess pictures are very special to me. I am delighted that her images cannot be forced. They form such a personal and powerful connection. People have commissioned goddesses. Never have they been satisfactory in my eyes."</div>
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Most of Lynne's pictures are very human portrayals of plump Bathing Belles. They are saved from being repetitious by the intense joy she takes in varying colour, contrasting foreground and background and varying the patterns she uses on their swimsuits. She tends to go in for circles and spirals. She says the way she feels about spirals is quite visceral. Of these bathers she says: "Having had body issues for my entire life, I strive to present the zaftig human female form in a positive and powerful, yet playful way. Working on these images helps me overcome the shame I have felt on inhabiting this body, by making the rounded form vital, strong and beautiful. While working through my own issues, I hope my work brings joy to those who view it. Most of the images are cropped: perhaps a good shrink could explain that, but for now just know that these cropped images are aesthetically pleasing to the artist. Perhaps there are issues that are not yet ready to be revealed in my art."</div>
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Lynne and I both paint from our deepest feelings and the inspiration for my own paintings is just as random and comes from just as deep and hidden a place as Lynne's goddesses. I have been painting since I was introduced to art in grade school at the age of six. My teacher, unlike Lynne's, gave me great encouragement. My younger brother Malcolm did the same thing and our mother encouraged us by setting us to work painting Christmas cards. My art class was the happiest part of the school week for me all the way through high school. But when the time came for me to enter university and I won a place at Oxford, I was strongly discouraged from doing anything so unintellectual. Embarking on an academic career, I still loved to view and collect art, but I treated my own art as a mere hobby.</div>
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As we were growing up, my siblings and I all paid regular visits to the Museum and Art Gallery in our home town of Birmingham, England. Our grandfather was something of an artist since he was a silversmith, painted as a hobby and bought original art. Our father had a knack for drawing but treated it merely as a hobby, as he wished his children to do. As a child I loved the illustrations in my children's books so much that I wanted to become a book illustrator myself, but my father denied me the opportunity. Nothing, however, could stop my brother Malcolm from becoming a full time artist, although our father tried to divert him into becoming an architect and ended up calling him a fool. But Malcolm's artistic career has proved a tremendous success, little as our father liked his art and tried to persuade him to take up writing instead if he was going to be creative. As it happened, all of us turned out creative. Our sister Ann had quite a gift for poetry, which I have worked on together with her, and our brother Bill took his own path, plunging into music and medicine. Our father even managed as a scientist himself to disapprove of that, telling him that medicine was not an exact science. Perhaps our mother was the really creative parent, although it was our father who taught us to debate when we were quite young. She was an excellent letter writer and story teller, having emerged from the strong Celtic oral tradition of the ceilidh or folk festivity.</div>
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I received a strong impulse towards what was later to become in retirement my full time dedication to art when I was teaching at the University of Illinois in the 1960's. I had already discovered the great novel of Marcel Proust when I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois and had been deeply impressed by what struck me as his truly religious approach to the various arts, especially since I had already picked up a similar attitude from the PreRaphaelites in the Birmingham Art Gallery. I ended up writing my doctoral thesis for Northwestern University on this topic. As another religious interest I started attending the local Quaker Meeting which appealed to me by its emphasis on contemplation and meditation and almost complete lack of dogma. Although I also attend High Anglican services, I have stayed with the Quakers ever since. Another benefit I got from them was that they afforded me access to the Art and Music Departments. I actually sold one picture, a fantasy oil painting based on an actual dream, to the Head of the Art Department. In the Music Department I met Ben Johnston who was a personal friend of John Cage and introduced me to him. I also took art lessons from Ben's wife Betty. John Cage came to have a very strong influence on me eventually, although to begin with I was quite shocked by his insistence on the path to musical composition being the creation of random noise. His final effect on me was to get me to abandon any planning and preparation in my painting and just paint by inspiration as the spirit moved me. Of course this is also a very Quakerly thing to do. What I chiefly got from John Cage was his insistence on what is random.</div>
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Nowadays I work mainly with markers on paper, since I like to draw rather than paint. Mainly I use Winsor and Newton watercolour markers, but sometimes I use Prismacolour or coloured ink brushes. I make random strokes with various markers until finally a recognizable picture emerges. This picture frequently takes me by surprise by its faithfulness to my own feelings. Then I contemplate it, looking for a meaning in it and give it a title. This seems to me very close to the way Lynne creates her goddess paintings although I had not heard of them until quite recently. But of course in my own case any subject can emerge. </div>
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In spite of this similarity we came to art in very different ways. Let us listen to what Lynne says: "I have been making art since I was a child in Kindergarten, when my teacher informed me that I was not colouring "the right way." The task was to colour a picture of Santa Claus. Having been to see the man, I was well aware that his suit had a textured quality. Happily I set to the task, making tiny, tiny circles that left bits of wax on the paper, creating the texture I wanted. The teacher, seeing this, took my paper to present it to the class. I was so proud...until she informed the class that this was the way NOT to colour: we should follow instructions.</div>
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Grade 9 art: we were to use plaster to make a textured painting. Again, I happily created texture on the board and painted a landscape. Nope. The texture was to have the scene within it.</div>
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In university, taking a teachers's college training course on how to teach art. The instructor was most arrogant and unpleasant. We were to create a plaster wrapped wire sculpture. My mistake was titling the piece "So you think you are an art critic." C minus. I have been colouring my own way ever since.</div>
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Most of my recent work is oil pastel over an acrylic paint base. I've found that good quality oil pastels spread like butter. I enjoy the tactile experience as much as the end product. While having had no formal training (not much luck with instructors) I've picked up many a fine technique from the pages of Pinterest.</div>
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Much of my inspiration was found when teaching art at the primary and junior levels. During my last two years of teaching not much attention was paid to curriculum. Having had minimal interest or success with formal techniques, I was not much inclined to go past the basics. It was more helpful to teach these things as they cropped up or were important to the student. Spontaneous expression seemed more important. This was grade 4. They had years to learn the technical stuff.</div>
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I ran into a student when he was in grade 7. He said art wasn't as much fun any more and had I ever heard of this thing called "perspective"? I laughed and apologized. I explained that I was at the end of my career and wasn't much worried about administrative repercussions. My program consisted of teaching famous artists and creating works based on or inspired by their styles. The Georgia O'Keeffe lessons? They were just flowers!</div>
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The enthusiasm and excitement when it came time to create their own pieces was marvelous. I can still see their faces when they came in from lunch to find that their art paper was taped to the underside of their desks. Michelangelo would have been proud. If he could paint on his back for ten years they could survive eighty minutes. There is much to appreciate and try to emulate in the work of children: exuberant and unselfconscious self-expression!'</div>
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There is much that Lynne expresses here that is true for all artists. Of course we all have to learn from great art and I have been fortunate enough to spend a sabbatical year in Paris surrounded by museums and art galleries. Every Sunday afternoon I spent in the Louvre and I also received personal help and encouragement from a gifted professional artist, Basil Ivan Rakoczi, who enrolled me in his life drawing group. But I am sure Lynne learned as much from her students as I did from him. My brother Malcolm once said, "When you see what a little boy of ten can do, it just makes you sick. The only thing that consoles you is knowing that he won't be able to do it in a few years." He himself makes a practice of telling his admirers that he is able to paint as he does because he is in touch with the spirit of his childhood. As the great French poet Baudelaire once said, "Genius is childhood recovered at will" and Marcel Proust begins his great novel with his narrator's involuntary memory of childhood.</div>
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My sister Annabel has observed that her grandchildren create much more freely than her adult students, who are seriously hampered by fear of not doing "the right thing" and making mistakes. I feel that I have been liberated from this fear by allowing myself to be completely free and random. Not everything I paint is all that great, but this knowledge does not inhibit me and I feel that I too may be able one day to recover my childhood. I have spent many years of my life studying Marcel Proust but the time has now come to treat him as a source of inspiration. </div>
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Lynne and I hope you will enjoy our show. Neither of us has exhibited a great deal. I have had three shows and have shown in the Pumphouse gallery. Lynne has shown in church arts and craft shows and in the Pumphouse gallery and also has a Facebook page, titled "Baubles and Babes." I am not as good at handling technology as she is and I am indebted to her and Natasha at N.A.C. for their technical help. We are looking forward to meeting a wider audience.</div>
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Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-38477073754117527932018-11-26T15:59:00.000-05:002018-11-26T15:59:02.126-05:00ART AND POPULAR CULTURE<br />
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A long time ago I gave a paper at a conference on Popular Culture on the way the word "lady" is used nowadays.It used to be used to describe a woman of the upper class who was well behaved and had good manners. She was entitled to respect and had to be treated with the same good manners she showed to others. She was unquestionably superior to the working class and expected deference from her social inferiors. No special talent or skill was expected from her to justify this deference -- simply the accident of birth and a certain inculcated code of behaviour. Talent and skill, if she had them, were supposed to be limited to drawing room entertainment such as playing the piano. For instance, Jane Austen was known both in life and in death as a lady rather than as an author.<br />
A lady's social role was largely decorative. In so far as she was useful, it was in the social arts and in household management. She was expected to be attractive without being explicitly sexual in looks, dress and manner. A lady was a person with whom a gentleman could find respite and solace when he relaxed from the onerous demands of his necessary duties. What was considered serious work was incumbent on him, not on her. All this set her apart like a luxury article and made her superior without necessarily bestowing on her any further wealth or prestige.<br />
This view of the role of a particular kind of woman was expressed very eloquently in a Pears soap advertisement of the Edwardian era. It showed a little girl washing herself to the accompaniment of the slogan "Preparing To Be A Beautiful Lady." Physical Beauty was part of the lady's role and had to be worked towards like all her other assets. At this point, I should add, gentle birth was becoming less of a requisite for a woman to be called a lady. Talent and skill were beginning to be recognised and becoming a lady was something one could acquire by merit.<br />
Pears soap advertisements were attractive and even inspiring and my sisters and I were happy to have them decorating our bedroom. But there were many other advertisements surrounding us, most of which were equally attractive and ingenious. For instance our Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup tin bore, as I think it still does, the Biblical motto "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." This allusion to one of the feats of the Biblical hero Samson carried a very loaded message. By devouring Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup, it suggested, we would not only be acquiring strength of a legendary nature by enjoying its sweetness; we would be performing an outstandingly morally worthy act. I was born in 1933 and I enjoyed all the advertisements with which I was surrounded as I grew up. The art of the advertiser was sufficiently recognised in the skill it took that Dorothy Sayers used an advertising company as background for her detective story, "Murder Must Advertise."<br />
As Melanie MacDonald has shown in her artistic reinterpretation of the advertising of the twentieth century, advertising took considerable artistic skill. Respected and successful artists were often commissioned as was Georgia O'Keeffe by Dole to paint a pineapple. The company paid for her to travel to Hawaii to do it. She had respect as a working woman rather than for birth and breeding, but respect was still involved --respect for the artist and respect for the general public. One series of advertisements I appreciated for its wit and humour appeared on billboards for Guiness. It showed a zoo with a prominently displayed zookeeper. In each poster in the series a different animal was snatching his drink away from him as he exclaimed "My Goodness! My Guiness!" I looked forward to those posters although I was much too young to drink.<br />
Respect for the general public seems to be disappearing and when some attempt at respect is made it is pretty superficial, as when one says "cleaning lady", which is quite meaningless, rather than cleaning woman, and refers to all the women one knows as ladies and all the men as gentlemen. The African Americans are not the only ones to feel that more respect is needed in our society generally.<br />
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<br />Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-11525143888157130712018-10-14T15:36:00.000-04:002018-10-14T15:36:07.057-04:00ART AND HEALTH<br />
I am 85 years old and as is only natural at my age I have been having problems with my health. In fact if it had not been for medical intervention, I would be dead by now. Not that I even wanted the medical intervention all that much. I was not suicidal, but as a result of remembering previous lives I am quite convinced that death is neither final nor permanent but we just go on from life to life, learning all the lessons we have to learn before being released to a state of bliss. Not that the prospect of all these future lives is necessarily a pleasant one. Some orthodox believers think that believing that God is loving means that all we have to do is be reasonably good -- not even perfect -- and we only have to ask God to hear our prayers and He will make life easy for us. Our own memories of personal experience can tell us that this is not the case. A loving God does not necessarily want to make life easy for us any more than loving parents choose to give in to their children's every whim. Expecting life to be easy is simply not realistic.<br />
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So when I had a heart attack in New Year 2016, I knew that I only had to wait for death and it would come. I was not at all afraid of anything about it except the fact that I was living alone and consequently would have to die alone. I did not want to die in hospital where the natural process of death would be interfered with. I wanted to die at home in the presence of a good friend. So I called a really good friend who is very protective of me, but, since he is such a good friend he refused to do any such thing but called Emergency. The ambulance came and I was shipped off to the St, Catharines General Hospital and fitted with a pacemaker, which saved my life.<br />
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A change that came about as a result is that a neighbor who was living in the rooming house next door and who had seen the ambulance come and go offered to move in with me and look after me as he had looked after his mother in her last years. He is still with me. He is a real expert on the subject of physical health since he once trained for the Olympics. He has helped me so much with my exercise and nutrition, which are both really essential for health, that in spite of the fact that I had surgery for colon cancer in 2017 -- of course because of it as well -- my health is actually getting better. When I last saw my cardiologist he said I was in great shape.<br />
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But there is an additional reason for my improved health, both physical and mental, and that is that I am constantly doing art. I always loved to do art ever since I was a child. There is a longstanding tradition of artistic talent and interest in my father's family although my mother could only draw stick figures. My father could sketch quite well but preferred to treat it only as a hobby and quite actively tried to discourage us from taking to art as a career because he said there was no money in it. His father used his own interest in decoration as a silversmith and was successful at it, so my father really had no reason to be so disparaging. He actually had three children who were actively interested in art: myself, my younger brother and my youngest sister. He succeeded in diverting me into an academic career, since this was also something in which I was deeply interested. and the teachers at my high school were strongly encouraging me to pursue it. But my brother and sister both managed to get into art school. My sister went on to a respectable career as an art therapist for mentally ill patients until she married and was able to pursue art as a hobby. She has ended up giving art classes to tourists on Hawaii. My brother was absolutely determined to be a great artist and with the help of his wife, who supported him, he has achieved that goal, painting under the name of Malcolm Bucknall and showing his art on Facebook. He makes a lot more money in his old age than our father ended up doing, but of course that is quite an exceptional outcome.<br />
Until I retired I did not spend much time doing art, although I did find time for it on two occasions: in my last year at the University of Illinois and when I went on sabbatical from Brock to Paris in the l970's. I'll tell you about these two occasions later on. But ever since I retired in 1993 I have dedicated myself t artistic creation of various kinds and been deeply fulfilled and blissfully happy. I have been doing some writing but most of my creativity has gone into visual art. My Brock pension supplies me with ample means to do so.<br />
Part of my joy in art comes from the sheer application of color. I started out with watercolor and would just take a big brushfull of color and draw it across the paper in different directions. This was not a particularly sophisticated technique, pretty naive and rudimentary, and I took no great pride in the results. Some people give up on art because they feel they are not producing great art from the start and have little prospect of ever doing so, but I did not even want to produce great art. I left that to my brother, from whom I was actually buying his art because I admired it. (I bought from other artists too). I just wanted to have fun and I got it by the application of color and the free and easy movement of my hand and arm across the paper. It was quite as much therapy as what my sister had been doing with her patients and I felt completely relaxed. I am sure this simple happiness was good for my mental and physical health and aided the good effects of exercise and nutrition. There was no struggle or striving, no competition as there had been in academic work, just the simple satisfaction of doing this thing for the sheer sake of doing it and for no other reason.<br />
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I have tried other media, such as gouache and oils and marker, and have continued to have fun trying these different techniques. I get quite a rush of inspiration every time I try a new medium. It is genuinely exciting. As I get more proficient with constant practice I take increased pleasure in the effects I am producing and like to show off the results. I took a course from Linda Hankin, another Niagara artist, in how to use the right or intuitive side of my brain in my art and the result is increased skill and joy as I apply my watercolor markers, which have become my preferred medium, to the paper , with no preconceived plan about what I am doing, and astonish myself about what takes place on the paper. I hardly need to watch television or read as I have such an endless source of entertainment at my disposal. Strength through joy, as Hitler said, But I think I have a far better way of obtaining it than Hitler ever did. I had times of being happy and productive in my academic career but also times of being completely miserable. I suppose there were things I had to learn from my distress. But now I am learning to be completely happy as an artist and something tells me that that is what I will be doing in my next existence. I am already looking forward to it.<br />
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<br />Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-74069899517549962582018-09-10T15:34:00.000-04:002018-09-10T16:06:22.280-04:00EPIPHANIES<br />
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I am starting this blog again, not with the immediate intention of reviewing any of the shows at N.A.C, but rather with the intention of holding forth about Art and Beauty as I have felt their impact at various moments in my life.<br />
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I can clearly remember that first moment of revelation. It was a vision of colour which I have never forgotten. I must have been about four years old and my mother had taken it into her head to take me to a dance class in a studio near our home. I don't know if she had any particular reason for doing this, but she was always keen for me to acquire elegant accomplishments, to make me into a lady. She came from a poor, country family herself, but she had ambitions for her children. I remember that I was walking along, holding her hand, full of trust and confidence, when I suddenly caught sight of an empty Milk of Magnesia bottle lying in the gutter. I was instantly transported by the sight. It was such a beautiful blue, of the shade of blue I later learned to call Cobalt, that I felt I had never seen anything so heavenly. I was far too young to think of an empty bottle as trash. I was willing to accept everything I encountered as potentially wonderful. But this was an experience beyond anything I had come across before.<br />
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I was already past middle age when I came across Abraham Maslow and learned what he had to say about peak experiences and their importance in forming a creative personality, but this was definitely my first peak experience. So far as I have any conscious memories, at any rate. But before I came across Maslow, my studies in English literature taught me to call it an epiphany.<br />
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For the benefit of those readers who do not know what an epiphany is, I turn to the Oxford English Dictionary. It gives two definitions. One is ecclesiastical: "The festival commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi, observed on Jan. 6th, the 12th day after Christmas." The second one is more general: "A manifestation or appearance of some divine or superhuman being." In English literature it is frequently used figuratively, which is the sense in which I am using it. The blue of my Milk of Magnesia bottle struck me as so truly glorious that it seemed almost divine, entering our ordinary world from some higher sphere. Not that I could have used those words to describe it at four years old, but it was what I experienced emotionally and only now can I find the words to describe it.<br />
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Epiphanies do not come too often, and I can only think of one other one, although I do experience a more human, natural kind of joy every time I encounter Art or Beauty and particularly when I practice art myself. This other epiphany came when I went abroad for the first time, to the South of France, I had received a good grade in French on my School Certificate examination, a test which all English high school students had to pass at the age of sixteen before going on to pass a more advanced one at the age of eighteen. To reward and encourage me for this achievement, my father had arranged for me to go on an exchange visit with the daughter of a prefect, that is the man in charge of one of the administrative units into which France is divided. His prefecture, in the Southwest of France, was a handsome old building but the full glory of the South of France did not burst upon me until the prefect took us to their summer cabin on the beach by the Mediterranean.<br />
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Before that I had only swum in the chilly waters off the coast of Devon, and the Mediterranean was so smooth and warm and calm and welcoming and such a beautiful blue. Furthermore I had come equipped with a shabby one piece bathing suit whereas the prefect's daughters sported bikinis, which has just come into fashion, and I did not want to be seen sitting around on the beach with them. So I was hardly ever out of the water, to the alarm of the prefect who thought I was so much more immature than his daughters that I was hardly safe to be left on my own. He kept watching me from the beach, afraid I would drown. But I did not let his fears stop me.<br />
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I emerged from the water one morning in such a state of bliss, it was another epiphany. In fact I felt even closer to the Divine than I had done on the previous occasion. It was a true mystical experience and just as unexpected as my first epiphany had been. No one had told me that such a thing was possible. Apart from getting lectures from a tiresome, Calvinistic aunt, my only spiritual training had consisted of reading the Psalms as part pf my exploration of the Old Testament, which my mother had told me to read but had not attempted to explain to me. The chief thing I got out of the Old Testament was respect for a lot of impressive characters who led very exciting, sexy lives. But no one had suggested that my own experiences might be anything like theirs.<br />
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My mystical experience was one of joy and love -- universal love. I felt I had fallen in love with the whole world and with everyone in it. I had heard a lot about falling in love since I came to France, especially from the prefect's daughters, but I had been attending a single sex school and had never experienced anything like this before. I thought "What is this? What is happening to me? Can this be love? Yes, I must have fallen in love. But who with? It must be Maurice Doucet, the prefect's secretary, who has been so kind to me." And I did make sheep's eyes at Maurice for a while, but without embarking on much of a romance. In fact it felt like a bit of a disappointment to be reduced to one man after having been in love with the whole world. But the memory of that pinnacle of bliss as a reaction to natural beauty remains with me as a lasting memory and does not fade away.<br />
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Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-938881239036093072017-01-30T17:14:00.000-05:002017-01-31T12:22:35.411-05:00NAC AS A SPIRITUAL SOURCE<br />
For two months there are going to be no further art shows at NAC as the gallery will be closed for renovations, but the Quakers will continue to meet there for Worship every first and third Sunday of the month at 11 a.m., going on to discussion at noon.<br />
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Steve Remus was surprised when some people from the church of the Silver Spire approached him about the spiritual significance of art, as he thinks of himself and his colleagues as atheists. Perhaps it is a rather old fashioned idea as it was in England in the latter part of the nineteenth century that aesthetes and artists believed that they were practicing a religion of art. This was sufficiently well known that Gilbert and Sullivan made fun of it in their comic operetta "Patience", singing<br />
"Though the Philistines may jostle,<br />
You will rank as an apostle<br />
In the high aesthetic band,<br />
If you walk down Piccadilly<br />
With a poppy or a lily<br />
In your medieval hand."<br />
This was particularly directed against Oscar Wilde but it targeted aesthetes in general, the enemies of art being termed Philistines by analogy with the enemies of Israel in the Old Testament.<br />
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No one talks about a religion of art nowadays, although I once did in connection with Marcel Proust, but yet the people who love art feel that there is a spiritual component to it, although that spiritual component may be more like Zen than it is Judaeo-Christian.<br />
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I am a Quaker, so I can safely say that the Quakers who meet at NAC like to do so because of the spiritual component of the paintings hanging on the walls. I think it is fair to say that we think of ourselves as spiritual rather than religious in any orthodox sense. We gather to sit in silence until one of our number feels inspired by the Spirit to deliver a message which comes from the heart. No direct reply is made and those present will continue to sit in silence until some other message is heard. But we cannot force the Spirit so maybe no message will be heard.<br />
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At noon we shake hands and a discussion follows, mainly about things that passed through people's minds but which they did not feel ready to express. There is no discussion of doctrine, because we avoid dogma. If any controversy were to arise, it would not be about belief.<br />
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One of my friends calls me a Bitsa -- bitsa this, bitsa that -- because I remind him of his Chinese father, who could be Buddhist, Confucian or Christian depending on the occasion. In this I feel I am not exceptional as a Quaker.<br />
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Anyone who thinks they would feel comfortable with this approach is welcome to join us. If I were speaking in Meeting, at this point I might say that we welcome any individual truths that point to that one overriding Truth which is only known to the Spirit. But that would just be me talking, although others might agree. Our minds are all different, so Meetings vary, being predictable only in the broad, general terms I have already stated. I hope this gives you some idea of what to expect.Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-33391129425506644522016-12-19T19:33:00.000-05:002016-12-19T19:44:05.871-05:00EMERGENT ART <br />
When I look at the current show at NAC by Justin Pawson and Geoff Farnsworth, the term "Emergent Art", which I found quite baffling when I first came across it, begins to make sense to me. These pictures seem to be emerging from the artists' lower depths like improvised jazz pieces, without regard for standard categories such as "representational", "abstract" or "surreal." These categories are mixed. The representational faces that look out at us from what seems like a rupture in an abstract surface, in Justin Pawson's paintings, seem to belong to the world of fantasy and science fiction, and a very aggressive world at that. The titles are no particular help in identifying this world. Steve Remus compared them to the quite arbitrary titles attached to jazz pieces when I commented to him on this.<br />
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I think the picture by Justin Pawson I found most striking is "Babel" because the title is such an obvious non sequitur. When you hear the word "Babel" it is natural to think of the Tower of Babel, with the builders, stricken by God for attempting to reach the heavens, opening their mouths to offer incomprehensible fragments of speech, the languages having been divided. But the huge dark red face which dominates Justin's painting is alone in quite a pleasant, appealing abstract area, with light, cheerful colors that in no way suggest Divine Retribution, while the mouth is tightly closed. It is such a severe face-- my companion said it looked like Joseph Stalin--that it seems to be expressing condemnation rather than enduring it.<br />
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I said in my last Blog that Amber Lee Williams seemed to be engaging in soliloquy rather than inviting dialogue. Here we seem to be listening to two soliloquys harmonizing with each other. The comparison to jazz comes to mind again. Geoff's paintings are less immediately self contradictory than Justin's, but here too the line between abstract and representational is blurred, the two styles being broken into squiggly fragments, while the titles, such as "Amygdala Unit", are equally disconcerting.<br />
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The one of Geoff's I liked best was "Satori in Red and Blue", which shows a male figure in a red coat and blue boots standing in a snowy backyard. The term "Satori", which is applied to a sudden burst of consciousness after Zen meditation, seems appropriate, given the ordinariness of the scene. "Before Enlightenment you chop wood and carry water. After Enlightenment you chop wood and carry water." But for all I know, Geoff's intention may be just to pull our legs.<br />
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But I now have another artist to mention. While I was viewing the above paintings at NAC I was invited to step round the corner to Melanie MacDonald's sale. There I picked up the catalogue for her show "Scraps" at the Niagara Falls Art Museum, which I had unfortunately been unable to attend. The introduction pointed out the sheer novelty of her completely unironic approach to the commercial art of an earlier time as it had been preserved in scrapbooks. She really elaborates on that earlier vision on a very large scale. This too can count as Emergent Art because it is so surprising and unexpected, a completely new departure.<br />
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My final comment comes in the form of a poem I wrote some time ago about an experience of my own.<br />
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THE DOOR<br />
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We come to the door and find it locked.<br />
No answer to our call. <br />
But picking the lock we think should present<br />
No difficulty at all.<br />
However if we with craft<br />
And cunning machinery come<br />
To pick the lock,<br />
The intricate tool refuses,<br />
The skilled electricity fuses<br />
And we are forced to stop.<br />
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But then one day we are wandering,<br />
Lost in a dream:<br />
The door stands open wide.<br />
Without volition<br />
We find we have stepped inside<br />
And gifts are in our hand.<br />
The unknown glory lights unbidden<br />
Our purpose and our land. Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-49450159083146066082016-12-05T14:10:00.002-05:002016-12-05T14:22:18.440-05:00DISTANCE LENDS ENCHANTMENT, MAYBE<br />
As I consider the recent Voix de Ville Extravagonzo and the present show at NAC by Amber Lee Williams, I am left with an impression of distancing. The foreword by Steve Remus to the little brochure accompanying Extravagonzo talks of resisting attempts to possess and oppress us. In other words, the young people at NAC are Romantic rebels, committed to a work of liberation from prevailing accepted attitudes.<br />
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Part of this falls under the umbrella of atheism, which is what I cannot go along with. When I was a student at Oxford in the1950s, obstructive, domineering authoritarianism was applied by atheistic professors who disparaged and even persecuted the Christian creative thinkers J.R.R.Tolkien and C.S.Lewis. Consequently I found the comedians in this show profoundly alienating.<br />
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I was not alienated, however, by most of this show, which I found fascinating and charming and above all surprising. I felt that I had somehow entered a stranger's dream with all its bizarre twists and turns and sudden leaps of faith, without quite knowing how I got there or what prompted it.<br />
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The distancing in Amber Lee Williams's show is rather different. There is only our own movement, from one part of her show to another, no sound and very little color. We remain on the periphery of what Amber chooses to convey.<br />
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To begin with, she superimposes white scribbles on a series of commemorative photographs which explore identity by displacing it. Then we pass to a cluster of used tea bags. Then we are confronted with old children's books which seem to be placed on a rustic base out in the country with twigs overhead. The pages have been glued together and then perforated to reveal photographs of the artist's daughter and mother. This is followed by a solidified bag of baby socks and a series of photographs from a family album. Old and young, male and female, are pieced together and surrounded by a diaphanous watercolor haze.<br />
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Altogether we find ourselves listening to a soliloquy rather than being engaged in a dialogue or swept along on a flood of eloquence. We may in fact be listening to a language spoken before we were born and to which we will return after death. Amber's show represents a challenge: a challenge to move out of our accustomed reality and cross a strange frontier. This is very much in keeping with NAC principles.<br />
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The same challenge occurs, in a much more recognizable and welcoming way, in the puppet show in the NAC window, now in its third incarnation Here we are presented with four tiers of puppets admiring a three ring circus, with a lion and his tamer on the middle level, acrobats above and merry and sad clowns below. To me it came as a welcome return to my own highly peculiar brand of normality. Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-34068557419918193222016-11-08T11:06:00.001-05:002016-11-08T11:06:45.500-05:00IS OUR ART DISPOSABLE?<br />
I should begin by apologizing for posting this blog so late. I was held up by a bad cold. Two of the exhibits have already been changed. However I will go ahead and post the blog as I originally wrote it on October 25 2016. <br />
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Is our Art disposable? Is anything that we create nowadays built to last at all or even to be taken seriously for very long? That is the question I was asking myself as I came away from the three exhibits that are currently on display at NAC. <br />
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The most striking and immediately accessible one is in the window of NAC and takes up the whole window. It consists if interesting, grotesque looking hand puppets, at least thirty of them, all different. Most of them are arranged in three tiers on one side of the window, all gazing in the same direction and forming an audience. They are looking, with wooden fixed expressions, at a terrifying scene that is taking place on the far sider of the window. A huge monster is griping a helpless puppet in preparation for destruction, while observed by two other puppets, one male and wearing a white jacket, obviously a doctor, and the other a terrified female, presumably his assistant.<br />
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The whole thing has been constructed and put together with a great deal of care and skill and is easy to appreciate as Halloween entertainment, but it is on show longer than that and will be replaced by similar exhibits by the same group of artists. None of all this will last forever, but, as the French say, nothing lasts like what is temporary. Perhaps this is actually the least disposable exhibit, the one that best accommodates traditional aesthetic criteria, even though made of perishable materials.<br />
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As we advance into the Dennis Tourbin gallery, we are faced with a spectacle that initially seems quite dull and normal but is in fact disquieting. The walls are hung with framed photographs from the St. Catharines Museum of public buildings, most of which used to form the architectural background to our lives but are no longer with us. They were designed with some care by respected architects but have been replaced with buildings that are roomier and more convenient but not remarkable to look at. There has been quite a drastic change in our streetscape but I doubt whether anyone outside the St. Catharines Museum has really noticed it. I know I haven't. Buildings used to be constructed once upon a time with an eye to beauty and durability, like the Parthenon and the medieval cathedrals, but this is no longer the case. <br />
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Coming to the third gallery, which is habitually more offbeat, I found myself face to0 face with conceptual art. I had only heard about it before. For instance, I had heard about an artist who exhibited elephant dung to show his disdain for all previous art. A museum bought it in order to fulfill its obligation to record all trends in modern art but then became concerned about how to preserve it. This paradoxical dilemma shows that the curators have not really understood what they were investing in. In conceptual art it is the idea that counts, to the exclusion of any visible, tactile or audible phenomenon to which it is temporarily attached.<br />
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The exhibit in question is called "Twenty-three Days at Sea." It was commissioned by Access Gallery of Vancouver acting in partnership with the Burrard Arts Foundation and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. It wished to support four young artists in residence but was deterred by housing prices in Vancouver. Consequently it sent them on a twenty-three day sea voyage, each in a separate container ship, from Vancouver to Shanghai. They had instructions to record their impressions, knowing this would be difficult as container ships are so much more anonymous than merchant vessels used to be. In an earlier age the artist would have brought back detailed journals and albums. As things were, they brought back a log book, lists, videos, recordings, barely visible photographic prints and small wooden models. The small wooden models are the most tangible and creative items, but the other items tend to represent the absence of any Romantic value in this sea trade. <br />
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This kind of art the Access Gallery's curator calls "emergent," that is, rising from the depths but not yet completely in view. I can in fact grasp the idea and can imagine doing this kind of thing myself. I can imagine setting out on a sea voyage with twenty-four empty jam jars attached to pieces of string. A jam jar would be lowered into the sea on twenty-three consecutive days and its contents carefully preserved. The twenty-fourth jam jar would remain empty to embody the idea of the project. When I got back to a galley I would set up a series of microscopes where people would analyze the sea water to enter into the spirit of the voyage. <br />
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What would emerge would be their reactions in response to my reactions rather than anything strictly tangible, although they might form a feeling for the sea. It would be a new sensation, quite different from anything previously considered art, which would make it conceptual. It might be quite fun as a conceptual experiment. But, speaking personally, the idea makes me sad. This art is so disposable that it makes me feel that our very humanity is disposable too.Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-45591585620128566532016-09-07T17:41:00.001-04:002016-09-07T17:41:29.192-04:00bill bissett <br />
Although Bill Bissett is an important figure in modern Canadian literature, I had not heard of him until a couple of weeks ago. This is probably because, although I got a thorough grounding in British literature, I am much more familiar, as a French teacher, with Canadian literature in French than in English. I told Bill that when I met him. He says he has French ancestry and also Micmac and American, so he is not only affiliated with Canadian English speakers. In fact, although he did not bother to say so because it is such a well known fact, he makes reading his poetry as difficult as he can, since he groups his words into clusters of sounds spelled phonetically. <br />
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Reading his poetry takes quite an effort, but once you have made that effort, he reveals himself as very lyrical and spontaneous. He was young in the sixties when he started writing and he seems never to have lost that youthful freshness and exuberance. There is something so forthright and direct about his expression of his feelings that it seems quite childlike. Jesus said that we had to become like little children and find the kingdom of heaven within us. I do not know if Bill subscribes to any official religion and it did not occur to me to ask him, but he did tell me that he attaches great importance to practicing meditation.<br />
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There is no barrier to getting close to his painting. It is very spontaneous and direct, full of strong, bright colours, especially red, yellow, blue and violet. He even uses quite a lot of gold. They are painted full on without any compromise, often in squiggly lines which look as if he just picks up his paintbrush and launches a direct attack on the canvas without stopping to think. I asked him whether he paints without planning. He said that he often meditates before painting, but without making any preliminary sketches, and if anything interrupts the flow he stops. I felt very sympathetic to this approach.<br />
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People are portrayed in his show but there are very few depictions of human bodies. Instead there are a great many faces in simplified, graphic outlines. Some bodies under the faces are reduced to masses of squiggly lines in primary colours. His pictures are quite large, allowing for the full sweep of the painter's arm. Some of the faces look straight at us and some are profiles looking at each other, but what he seems to prefer is to show one profile impinging on another, forming an egg shape. Something about this makes me think of Pre-Columbian art in its directness. He seems very concerned with communication in its most genuine form.<br />
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His use of colour is very strong, direct and emotional. Besides faces, there are quite a few free hand circles enclosing circles in contrasting colours. Although these circles do not contain geometric patterns but remain empty at the centre, I take them to be mandalas, which Bill does go in for. They also make me think of the art of Zen. But Zen art is freer, airier, less substantial and solid. <br />
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He also paints what one would be obliged to call abstracts, although they do not use geometric patterns but rather resemble thick tree branches. However the colours are not naturalistic. <br />
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The paintings are what first catch one's eye, but there are also a number of small black and white drawings composed of small, circular clumps attached together to form designs that lead one into fantasy. He uses them to illustrate his poems. <br />
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I am very happy to have met Bill Bissett who, in spite of being famous, is so friendly, natural and unostentatious in his approach. He seems like a special human being. <br />
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Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-1815797908439797672016-08-15T17:12:00.001-04:002016-08-15T17:36:08.121-04:00"Devolve" and "Scenes from Late Capitalism"<br />
"Devolve" is very impressive. Everything in it is labeled untitled. And yet these works do seem to convey a definite message in spite of the lack of words. When I came into NAC and saw the array of huge flamboyant pictures, mainly in red, orange and yellow, by Wayne Corliss, it made me think of Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was so suggestive of fire from heaven. I would like to suggest that Wayne's pictures be reproduced as illustrations to Milton's "Paradise Lost", they seem so much like poetry about Lucifer's fall from heaven. Light and fire and an awe-inspiring violence are all suggested in swirls of very definite downward movement. And of course the massive size of these pictures also suggest something truly grandiose. <br />
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Each picture is different in spite of their basic similarity, like coming again and again to varied expressions of similar emotions in music or poetry. The same theme is touched on in different but equally glorious ways. As in the case of Milton's poem, Lucifer, the fallen Light Bringer, is still a glorious angel in his fall. However the final picture in this series seems to show the calm, peaceful radiance which filled heaven after the rebel angel's departure. I may be letting myself be carried away, but the two cubes poised on their corners which introduce and conclude this series and contain a lot of dark green and dark blue could represent Lucifer ruling in Hell after serving in Heaven.<br />
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The equally poetic works by Amber Lee Williams follow. They are much smaller and to tend to run to shades of grey, beige and blue. They are quite decorous although some are dark. The poetry they evoke is private, personal and domestic, making me think of Emily Dickinson rather than John Milton. Amber does say in her artist's statement that she has drawn on her own life experiences in her art. She works in beeswax, with a blow torch, and says that sometimes she the medium takes over, but to me it all looks very precise. I noticed several pictures with small light coloured circles like portholes for the artist to look through. These pictures seemed to be painted with the inner eye, giving the viewer entry into the artist's mind.<br />
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The second show, "Scenes from Late Capitalism" by Nathan Heuer, is quite different from anything in "Devolve." It is drawn with a great many straight lines, in a reasoned, abstract, understated, somewhat satirical way. There is a definition of a straight line as "the shortest distance between two points" and Nathan covers the shortest distance between constructing a motel or a factory and letting it fall down. Nathan says that his object was to show utilitarian buildings set up and abandoned in the spirit of consumerism. However in his drawings, they still appear intact.<br />
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The works by Wayne and Amber might be described as abstracts, for lack of a better word, but Nathan's work, while strictly representational, is far more abstract from the emotional point of view. The two shows are a study in contrasts.<br />
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<br />Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-76652719508157301172016-07-18T17:36:00.000-04:002016-07-19T19:48:37.362-04:00ARIADNI HARPER: 15 YEARS - PHOTOS IN PAINT<br />
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Ariadni Harper's large, representational images at NAC are solid and reassuring. They carry a sense of strength, firmness and peace. She seems to have special interest in nourishment, as witness her pictures of lobsters, both cooked and uncooked, roots and fish ready for cooking. But she is also interested in living animals, whether goldfish darting about in a lily pond or a pug dog, and also children.<br />
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She is interested in depicting her images, which started out as photographs before being transferred to paint, from odd angles. One example of this is "Birthday Dinner" in which the entire canvas is filled with cooked lobsters jutting into each other with no sign of any background. Another is "Reflections" in which the artist has concentrated on reflections in the water from the bow of a boat, while showing very little of the rest of the boat at all.<br />
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A really disconcerting example of this approach is "My Squirrel" which shows the artist's hands holding a very detailed depiction of a creature which doesn't look very much like a squirrel at all but perhaps more like a magnification of a baby bird. "My Squirrel" may be her pet name for it. I was completely taken aback by the way she used representational detail in two completely different ways in the same picture so that the two things jolted you out of your expectation of a single coherent picture of recognizable reality. She seems to have set out to overwhelm us with a realism whose ultimate effect is quite unrealistic and yet convincing. She is not imitating Magritte at all and yet she makes me think of him. She makes us doubt the evidence of our own eyes rather than her technical ability. This must be the picture she is proudest of as she uses it to advertise her show.<br />
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In the midst of all her reassuring solidity she is very inventive and goes straight to the heart of what she is depicting. For instance, her painting of root vegetables carries the very essence of roots so that it is not simply the expression of their appearance. They might almost be the Platonic Ideas of root vegetables. Whatever she paints, it is the essence of that thing. She is also quite a colorist, as we see in the edible sherbet colours of "Cotton Candy Clouds". She makes me want to absorb her paintings into myself as part of the structure of my own body.<br />
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These paintings are the result of fifteen years of work and represent a surprisingly coherent experience, given that they are stretched over such a lengthy time frame. Solid as her pictures are, the artist seems solidly settled within herself. Perhaps this explains why she has included architectural details along with her natural objects. Her natural objects have their own architecture, so these different things blend together quite seamlessly. Her eye organizes reality so that we can accept it without question. <br />
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AN APOLOGETIC POSTSCRIPT<br />
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I see I have tried to be too clever and subtle and have actually insulted this artist by what I intended as a compliment. It has been pointed out to me that what the artist was holding in her hands in the painting "My Squirrel" is not a baby bird at all - indeed it doesn't even look like a baby bird - but a handful of black walnuts. She is calling herself a squirrel for collecting them. That just shows how badly a critic can go wrong in bringing depth psychology to bear on what is simply representational and the artist is making no highfaluting claims to be anything but representational. So please accept this apologetic postscript as a reminder that I am not infallible even if I am an academic. In fact that turns out to be a drawback.<br />
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Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-39044598031931862222016-06-28T15:17:00.001-04:002016-06-28T15:17:49.495-04:00WILLIAM GRIFFITHS <br />
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At first glance I took an instant dislike to the abstracts of William Griffiths currently on show at NAC. They simply did not speak to me, and since I like to take a sympathetic interest in the works of art I review, I really wondered if I would be able to write about him. This attitude changed when I read his artist's statement. The statements of young artists, struggling to make their art sound as important to other people as they feel it is to them, are often vacuous and pretentious, but William Griffiths, who is an artist of experience and even some international reputation, comes straight to the point. He says "I am intrigued by the beauty in the natural world ( landscapes, trees, rocks ), as well as the beauty in man's manufactured masses ( metal, deteriorating structures, forgotten dwellings ). I photograph overlooked objects, and use them as inspiration for abstract work. I strive to recreate the moment and express what I see."<br />
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Of course every artist I respect strives to recreate the moment and express what he sees, but William Griffiths and I have very different ideas of beauty. My ideal of beauty is expressed by Baudelaire in his famous poem, "The Invitation to the Journey." <br />
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"There, everything is order and beauty,<br />
Luxury, calm and deep sensuality."<br />
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Baudelaire was thinking of Dutch interiors, for he was inviting his lover to join him in Holland, but I find the same inspiration in other works of art, for instance in the landscapes of George Sanders, with which I have filled my living room. I cannot imagine covering my walls with the abstracts of William Griffiths, which are austere and uncompromising to the point of brutality. <br />
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I don't often get excited about abstracts. I admire the abstracts of Lynette Fast, which have a playful, fantastic kind of beauty, but usually I can take abstracts or leave them alone. As Steve Remus remarked to me, abstract art has been going on for a hundred years and it's hard to do anything new or shocking in that field, but William Griffiths manages it. Furthermore, what really struck me when I took a closer, more objective look at his art, is that every picture is different. That takes some doing. Usually, once an artist - and that applies to really good artists too - has found a style that suits him, he tends to produce endless variations on the same design. I know I do it myself.<br />
But in the case of William Griffiths one picture seems to contradict the one next to it, even in the physical way it is put together. Maybe that is why I found his show so abrasive at first. <br />
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For instance, "St. Peter's" - I am not sure if this is the one in Rome or a parish church of the same name since we see it basically in a vague, misty outline - is completely different from some other pictures around it, which have distinct shapes with little knobs glued onto them. In some pictures the definite shapes are in distinct, separate layers. Next to "St. Peters" is a bunch of orangey pink zigzags on a blue background which justifies Steve Remus's praise of William Griffiths as a colorist, but is in opposition to the misty, semi-representational dark and light greys of "St. Peters." Quite different again is a picture that leads off the show, "Vacant Lot." When I first looked at it, it just looked dull and drab. Then when Steve Remus shone a light on it, I saw an interesting jumble of blacks and reds. Then this in turn turned out to be painted on a pliable panel of some heavy material which, when lifted up, revealed the lighter vacant lot below. Different again is a pyramid which William Griffiths simply calls "Pyramid." The more I looked at this how, the more interesting I found its contradictions and varieties. Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-70066810894747527992016-06-19T14:26:00.000-04:002016-06-19T14:26:55.697-04:00"THE KURFUFFLE OF 1902" BY FITZROY WESTFEATHER, ILLUSTRATIONS BY DOYLE O'DOYLEY<br />
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The show that is presently on at NAC is quite disconcerting. It consists of a number of illustrations taken from a short, unpublished book which purports to be in progress. The book is lying around for our perusal and was originally presented to the Queen, one of whose ladies-in-waiting politely declined it on her behalf.<br />
<br />
Steve Remus felt I needed some help in writing a blog about this, so he told me that, in spite of the title, the book is a sendup of The War of 1812 and the author, who is using pseudonyms, is schizophrenic. He invited me to ask the author questions about anything I hadn't understood. The chief question I asked him is whether he feels skeptical and sarcastic about the diagnosis of schizophrenia. I do have the impression from reading his book the author is skeptical and sarcastic about the reality around him or what modern Canadians take to be that reality. I once asked a psychologist to define schizophrenia for me, since it obviously does not consist, as so many people suppose, of having dual personalities, and he said that the split involved was a split from reality. I told a close friend that, sand he said "Whose reality? What reality?" which is quite a question. <br />
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I think that we can take it that the mentally ill patient is told that his view of reality is basically mistaken and should be corrected. Since all we have to go by in discerning reality is our own perceptions, this news is not welcome. Some mental patients have what is commonly called "insight," that is, they agree that their perceptions are mistaken and try to go along with having them corrected. But since they are human beings and have egos and rely, as almost all human beings do, on telling themselves stories about themselves, even they put up a certain amount of resistance. I have personal experience of this myself, so I know what I am talking about. <br />
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An extreme example of this resistance can be found in the satirical novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. I had not read it myself until I saw that the author of the work I am reviewing mentioned it, but it is so well known, if only from the movie based on it, that I hardly have to describe it. <br />
<br />
Being cuckoo is such a common and derisive term for being crazy that the author I am reviewing has filled his story with cuckoo clocks that are crafted locally and have roused the inhabitants of New Amsterdam (New York) to such a pitch of fury by their total unreliability that they are descending in a body on Shipman's Corner (St. Catharines) to destroy all the cuckoo clocks. This I take to be the chief allusion to The War of 1812, particularly as a young lady called Laura goes trekking off to get soothing help from what perhaps should have been the British Invasion, but is actually a musical group sponsored by the American Ambassador.<br />
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Absolutely no one on either side is taken seriously by the author. Laura Secord isn't, Harriet Tubman isn't, the "Injuns" who helped the Empire Loyalists aren't, the Americans, who include Twain and Obama, aren't. The author is just having a good laugh all round as what we consider the reality of politics and history. At the same time he refuses to take even the work in which he is doing this seriously. It is certainly far less serious and convincing than "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."<br />
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Where the illustrations are concerned, I asked the author, who is also the illustrator, if he had made a special effort to keep the illustrations simple and childlike. I think he did, to get a deadpan effect, but he hadn't told me so. <br />
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I think that we can suppose that he is on the road to recovery because he is in control of the products of his imagination and reaching out to share them with other people instead of being controlled by them. But perhaps he still has a way to go before reaching out in a way that is totally convincing.Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-68854548235067216592016-05-30T20:21:00.000-04:002016-05-30T20:21:06.325-04:00POSTCRIPT NUMBER ONE<br />
I have decided to include a few musings of my own by way of a postscript to my reviews of shows at NAC. My tenant Andrew, who has been posting my Blog for me recently, suggested I do this. He is quite a movie fan and has been getting DVDs from the library for the two of us to watch. It is so long since I have been to the movies that they are quite new to me. The latest one we watched was "Fame" ( the original 1980 movie starring Irene Cara amongst others ) and Andrew asked me to review it.<br />
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I took a lively interest in it because one of my Southern nieces attended Julliard School of Music and when last heard from was playing in the Houston Symphony Orchestra. She had plenty of encouragement from her father, the musically gifted pediatrician Bill Bucknall, who made her her first viola. In a similar way, my librarian nephew, Tim Bucknall, is getting his daughter Carolyn trained for an artistic career. He has all the more reason to do this as she is dyslexic and has no skill in handling words. But his primary motive is to follow the trail blazed by his father, Malcolm, who opposed an adamant resistance to our father's attempts to divert him from art and shunt him off into what that man thought was a more lucrative career. Although his father called him a fool, Malcolm had done very well for himself and even has fans in Australia. So I was interested to see what all these lively young people in New York were doing with their talents.<br />
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The first thing that struck me about this movie was the title "Fame." I immediately thought of what the poet John Milton had to say on this subject. <br />
"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise<br />
( That last infirmity of noble mind )<br />
To scorn delights and live laborious days."<br />
All these young actors, dancers and musicians may not have scorned delights because they certainly enjoyed what they were doing to the extent of its containing the whole meaning of life for them, but they did lead most laborious days and scorned any attempt to divert them from it. Milton speaks of the desire for fame, from a Christian point of view, as "an infirmity," a weakness, but as an English critic has remarked, although the poet Gray talked of a "mute inglorious Milton" lying in a country churchyard Milton himself would never had tolerated a life that was mute and inglorious. Otherwise, why would he have described his poetic talent as "that one talent which is death to hide?" Like all creative geniuses he opted for fame, although his Christian conscience told him to prefer humility.<br />
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But part of the truth to reality of this movie is that only some, no matter what their talent, actually end up getting fame. They risk everything to end up waiting tables, perhaps, The movie is fiction, but as Jean Cocteau put it, this fiction is a lie that tells the truth. This is what makes this movie supremely worth watching, unlike the remake.Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-20833995184955525902016-05-30T18:04:00.001-04:002016-05-30T18:11:50.379-04:00PASSAGE AND RECALL BY KRYS KACZAN PASSAGE AND RECALL BY KRYS KACZAN<br />
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Restored to memory,<br />
As the dawn breaks upon my sight,<br />
I recover meaning<br />
From the shadows of the night.<br />
Memory, open the door <br />
To so much and so more,<br />
Hold the door open,<br />
Now that I have awoken;<br />
Not that I slept much at all.<br />
I have lain awake<br />
More than half the night,<br />
Wondering how we gather meaning<br />
From all the vestiges of seeming,<br />
So we read our life like a book.<br />
Again and again we look <br />
For the meaning of a smile,<br />
A tear, a laugh, a cry.<br />
And memory, careful memory, supplies the answer why.<br />
Open Sesame,<br />
You have to say,<br />
But it is no use forgetting<br />
The word to unlock the hoard.<br />
As the pen is mightier than the sword<br />
Because it is able to record,<br />
So the paint brush can do this as well.<br />
The memory is one of sight,<br />
Born fresh and new upon the light.<br />
Krys, a Niagara artist, has been able to recall<br />
Across the passage of the years,<br />
That time when she was a child<br />
And when she first smiled <br />
To see the apple blossom break<br />
Into snowy clusters to burst forth and shake<br />
Along the gnarled and twisted boughs<br />
Of the many orchards on her family farm.<br />
Away and away the trees rolled <br />
In green clumps and ridges,<br />
Quite green again, once the blossoms fell,<br />
After having burst forth in such an orgy of white.<br />
She remembers it so well<br />
That she has been able<br />
To tell it like a fable<br />
Of Creation on its first days,<br />
When God turned His gaze<br />
On the world He had just made<br />
And saw that it was good.<br />
That is its meaning<br />
Contained in shape and seeming,<br />
In every shade and hue,<br />
Old, preserved in the mind,<br />
And eternally fresh and kind.<br />
<br />Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736147042742020619.post-34801534865238848232016-05-25T18:02:00.001-04:002016-05-25T18:02:57.775-04:00FOUR RESCENT GRADUATES - FOUR MEDIUMS<br />
Modern art really began when Diaghilev brought the Russian Ballet to Paris in 1909. His message <br />
to the musicians, choreographers and dancers who worked for him was "Amaze me !" They rose to the challenge in ways that astounded, mesmerized, disgusted, fascinated or shocked their audiences at the time, and creative types have been trying to produce the same effects ever since. The artists in this show, judging by the elaborately impressive way they describe their own works are no exception.<br />
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My brother, the painter Malcolm Bucknall, once told me that when he was reviewing another artist's work, what he tried to do was not so much to express a final objective judgment as to evaluate the work in terms of the artist's intentions. He said this seemed to work and he advised me to do the same. So, taking a stab at the idea that these four artists, like so many others since 1909, want to amaze us, I ask myself, "How did they go about it?"<br />
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The work that struck me immediately as most amazing, so that I wondered when I first saw it if it was a work of art at all and not a curtain hung to signal the absence of a work of art which would appear later on, was the first of two works labeled "Ornate Fiction" by Alexandra Muresan. Looking more closely at it, I perceived that what looked like a drape carried a picture in ink that was quite detailed but not a depiction of reality. It also afforded glimpses of drawing on a panel underneath. Both works labeled "Ornate Fiction" reminded me of successful works of speculative fiction in the way they combined the representational with the inventive and imaginary. The title suggests that this was what was intended. <br />
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"Play Food" by Katie Mazi was what my eye fell on next. Digital photographs of breakfast or snack foods which, as the artist explains, might appear in an advertisement, are, she appears to say, intended to disconcert rather than tempt us to consume, unsettling our notions of reality and what we can generally expect. The fried egg that just sits there, enjoying its state of being, is a striking example of this. <br />
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The bunches of patterned textiles hanging from hooks and labeled "Untitled" by Jennifer Judson are also disconcerting. We look at them and wonder if they are intended to be pot holders, cleaning rags, dish towels and so forth but they refuse to be identified as any of these things. I was tempted to take them off their hooks and see what they could be used for, but because of the respect we have been trained to show for a work of art, I didn't dare.<br />
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We see the influence of people like John Cage and Marcel Duchamp in some of this, but when we come to the three quite pleasant large abstracts by Matt Caldwell we see them in a different light, largely because we have become quite used to abstracts so that they no longer shock or surprise us. Judging by the artist's statement, they count as amazing because they turned out to be so different from what he was used to doing. First of all, he amazed himself.<br />
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I suppose this is true of all four artists, who are quite self reflective and appear to have started with an idea at least as much as with an image. Maybe this is typical of recent graduates and they will become quite different later on. That should be interesting to watch.Barbara Bucknallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00174900122608788985noreply@blogger.com0