'I'll marry Ellen": Portrait of Stuart Skelton.

So I have taken my latest portrait into the Archibald Prize competition. It is a portrait of the Australian tenor Stuart Skelton.

"I'll marry Ellen": portrait of Stuart Skelton.

 I saw Stuart an unforgettable Peter Grimes (that's where the words on the painting come from)  in London at the Coliseum. Stuart is a big fellow and had no difficulty hoisting the young fisherman's apprentice onto his shoulders when the script required.  I heard later that the tenor the following week did not find it so easy. Both portrait and the studies I made in preparation are on www.artsmitten.com

Hugo Chávez

One can't help but be impressed by the outpouring of love for Hugo Chávez by his people. He did so much for the poor and particularly poor women that it is no wonder Venezuelans love him. You have to have guts to stand up to the multinationals and the powerful Governments who support them. Compare this demonstration of caring with the general feeling about politicians here in Australia. It is like night and day.

It is interesting watching the commentary from the US, the UK and their hangers-on. If they had any decency they would be embarrassed by their anti-Chávez stance.

The video clip from Venezuela showing the wonderfully gifted conductor Gustavo Dudamel conducting the national anthem is inaccessible in Australia (and the UK). Watch here

Wagner autobiography ... much more interesting than I imagined

I am reading a fascinating book, the autobiography of Richard Wagner called My Life. It is such an interesting insight into how life was lived in 1850. I am up to the part where he and his wife are on a boat,  traveling  to Paris from Konigsberg (now Poland). They are traveling without passports and to get out of Konigsberg without a passport they had to flee across a border at night behind the backs of Cossack guards. Wagner seems to have regarded small things like laws as irrelevant to him.

So now they are on a boat being blown up the coast in a violent storm, the noise and fury of which he later wrote into his opera The Flying Dutchman.

I found my copy in English on Amazon for free, contributed by a team of volunteers. When I tried to find this again I found other copies on Amazon as well ... but not free.

Lohengrin from La Scala

Here is a fantastic version of Lohengrin ... a complete version, with Jonas Kaufmann singing Lohnengrin and Annette Dasch singing Elsa. Also with Rene Pape, Evelyn Herlitzius.

Once I start watching I just can't turn it off .... it's very addictive!

Berthe Morisot by Edouard Manet

The artist Berthe Morisot, painted by Edouard Manet

Isn't she gorgeous? I like this portrait so much I have made her my screen saver.

Books to new homes

Out they go, off to new homes.

books, someone else's treasure

Once upon a time our many boxes of books served as a stable base for a King sized mattress. Many moves later and I am still giving books away. These ones are going to the Pearl Beach Book Fair  to be held on 30 March 2013.

Will I be able to resist buying more?

Acrylic over oil

You shouldn't paint with acrylic over oil, that is unless you want an effect like this - a flaky looking portrait. Actually it looks better in the flesh than as a photo.

Sophia

Dying while doing something you love

William Bennett, Principal Oboist with the San Francisco Symphony died last week while playing with the orchestra. He was much loved and only 56 years old. The only consolation is that he died while doing something he loved ... and I can't think of a better way to go. 

Here is William Bennett playing the lovely Tchaikovsky Symphony 4 with the orchestra.

Cloudy sky, gray sea.

A cloudy day and our turquoise seas are gray and meld into the sky. 

Looking north along the NSW Central Coast

I am reminded of a picture I drew of Otago Harbour in 2007.

Otago Harbour

Kaufmann talks Lohengrin

A fascinating interview with tenor Jonas Kaufmann about Lohengrin and about 'new' productions of 'old' operas. You can see why Kaufmann's performances are so memorable - he not only has a lovely voice he thinks abut what he is singing.

Ralph Hotere, visionary artist

Vale Ralph Hotere, visionary New Zealand artist and activist who died on 24 February aged 81. His work has an uncanny knack of etching itself on your memory, never to be forgotten even if seen only once.

Ralph Hotere (photo: .tangatawhenua.com)

Ralph Hotere

Mädels and music

I am not very good at throwing things away as I always think there must be another use for them. Same for drawings. Perhaps I should have discarded these pre-2006 life drawings but I kept them and  today made a new composition. It reminds me of the painting of the girl with violin by the Italian Orazio Gentileschi.

Mädels and music

Young Woman Playing a Violin by
Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639)
 

Electric Violin

Last Friday I saw Richard Tognetti play Brett Dean's Electric Preludes (commissioned by Jan Minchin) on his electric violin.  The violin is bright red .... very fitting.

Electric Tognetti

Review of concert  and chat between composer and violinist

Ya-Fei Chuang plays Rachmaninoff

How's this for fancy finger work?

Under the duck's wing

Today I sorted through the boxes of materials I had accumulated while writing Blue Tulips. As I worked a tiny (about 3cm wide) circle of paper dropped out of one of the files. It was a small drawing from mid 2005 that had eluded my search when I looked for it to include in the book as an illustration. I had not remembered it was so small ... had probably looked for a larger drawing. It says a lot about my state of mind at the time when I drew it.

Under the duck's wing

I kept the cards, the letters, the original emails (not sure why these) but discarded the draft versions of the book. I had a lot of disc versions as I knew it would be some years before I could work on it again and I was afraid of loosing the material in the interim. I didn't guess there would be a seven year gap between finishing the story and publishing it.

Today as I sorted I thought of Richard Wagner who had a seventeen year gap between the third (well, half way through the third) and fourth operas of the Ring Cycle. Like me, Wagner moved a good deal and I suppose he also had boxes of materials he had to take with him. My sympathies Mr Wagner.

Famous Ring Documentary

I recently discovered a brilliant summation of Wagner's Ring Cycle on You Tube. It's called In the Eye of the Ring.

Anthony Ernst, exceptional presenter

Anthony Ernst was a good speaker when I saw him 10 years ago but he has become an exceptional speaker since then.  This weekend he spent two days presenting his ideas about Wagner's Ring Cycle to a gathering of 150 Sydney music lovers and at the end he got a well-deserved standing ovation.

Anthony Ernst at the Sydney Weekend workshop.

He is not only a good speaker (he spoke for one and a half days without notes), he is a thinker and a lateral thinker at that. His wide musical experience (he currently works with the Strasbourg Orchestra) enables him to make connections in the music that elude many and it certainly also helps that he started his career as a student of voice.


I had always thought of the Ring Cycle as a story about the demise of the aristocracy, which it is at one level, but it is also a story about the rape of the environment and how we can rescue our world. This is the story at a deeper level which I had only recently begum to appreciate.

Anthony started by taking us on a historical journey through the time from when Wagner was 20 up to the time when he started writing the Ring Cycle when he was 40 years old;  from bucolic landscapes to the industrial revolution, a change that deeply affected Wagner.  It is a change that is still working through the system today which makes the Ring Cycle as pertinent today as it was in his century, perhaps even more so.

Not many operas address current issues and present a philosophy for dealing with them.

Wagner weekend

This weekend I am going to a weekend workshop called Forging Meaning out of Music Heritage, Complexity and Vision of the Ring with Dr Antony Ernst as presenter.

Anthony Ernst addressing NSW Wagner Society members in 2002

I made this sketch of Anthony Ernst when he addressed the NSW Wagner Society in 2002 and it was  later used on the cover of a book he published with the support of the Wagner Society.

Since then Anthony Ernst has been in Germany working with several European orchestras. It will be very interesting hearing if and how his views have changed.

Elisabeth Meister - British Soprano

I just discovered the British soprano Elisabeth Meister's blog. She writes so well about the rigors of a singer's life .... delightful stuff.

elisabeth meister's blog

A jacket for all time

A long time ago, when women were wearing clothes with large padded shoulders I bought an Escada jacket  It is 80% linen, 10%silk, 10% cotton which is a combination that never seems to crumple and I wore day in day out for several years. It was so beautifully made that I was never able to throw it away despite its unfashionable huge shoulders.

Today I undid the part of the lining that had been the last thing sewn up and turned it inside out. When you look on the inside of expensive European clothes you see why they are expensive. Everything is properly reinforced, the jacket can be turned inside out through a gap just wide enough, the sleeves are eased in with double tapes and, when you try to alter them, you find it is easy!

 In no time at all I had taken out one layer of padding (the foam had completely crumbled but the other wadding was intact), trimmed down the shoulders and sewn it together again.

That jacket reminds me of good washing machines that are easy to service and never wear out.