My goodness, is it really Sunday again already? How time flies.
Unbelievably, next Tuesday will be the first day of March, a month of five Tuesdays. On the fifth one, as usual, we will not be meeting at Hickory Ridge. However, Roger and I will be home and happy to welcome any of you who would like to bring a brown bag lunch. As always at the beginning of the month, there will be a board meeting after lunch this week.
Our speaker this week will be Todd Cromack, who is in the process of re-establishing an Amherst branch of the International Association of Lions Clubs. Please come if you can, to show our support for another local organization. I am wondering if some of the students who are members of his Junior Lions Club at UMass might like to wait on tables at our fashion show. I don't know about you, but my days of steady hands when carrying cups or pouring tea are long over. Perhaps this would be an ideal opportunity for our clubs to help each other. Do you agree?
I have been spending quite some time this past week pouring over books about interior decorating in a quest to choose the ideal color scheme for our bedroom. The 'safe' off-white throughout the house is becoming monotonous and I am seeking a warmer, sleepier feel in the bedroom. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing that two family members are dead to the world in total disregard for the insomniac beside them, as neither Roger
nor Chestnut have the decency to share my sleepless vigil!
These books contain lots of information about warm and cool colors, advancing and receding effects, use of the color wheel and textures, all of which leave me more confused and uncertain than ever. I think that I may fare better by simply looking in glossy magazines until I find a picture of a room that I like and simply copying it. As you can see, I have little confidence or creativity when it comes to such things.
All these efforts have led me to think about great artists and their gifts: were they born that way; do they see the world with a color palette that is much more enhanced than mine; are they more aware of shapes and shadows; how did their drawing skills advance beyond the level of a five year old: was that by hard work and attention to detail or did it just happen?
Why, do you think, did Caravaggio go for all that chiaroscuro stuff, or how did Bellini manage to achieve such incredible three dimensional effects with holy figures gathered under archways?
Would they have wanted to paint that way no matter what era they had been born in – or at least painted modern subjects but with that type of treatment? If Kandinsky had been born a little over two hundred years earlier, would he have been so held back by Gainsborough's prissy portraits that he would have become a chimney sweep instead?
If Renoir had been born this century would he have been equally fascinated by the female form as a model of voluptuous beauty, or would he have seen so many anorexic models that he completely lost interest?
If Renoir had been born this century would he have been equally fascinated by the female form as a model of voluptuous beauty, or would he have seen so many anorexic models that he completely lost interest?
Aahh – so many deep questions and so few answers. Meanwhile, I am thinking that green would be very restful – or would I feel that I was sleeping inside a cabbage……?
Hey ho – see you on Tuesday.
