Shorter Posts

A while ago I posted a drawing of two musicians — a base player and a drummer — and I apologized that the image was a sketch, only a “rehearsal,” and not a finished product. To my surprise, the unfinished quality of the drawing didn’t bother anyone. In fact, a former dancer said that she loved rehearsals in general and the informality of my sketch in particular.

So here’s another sketch, a rehearsal for a portrait that I recently finished. Perhaps I’ll post that painting too, someday.

The room is on the top floor of the last house on a dead end road in Lugano, Switzerland. It’s a hot afternoon in July and the windows are open to catch a breath, any breath, of air. My brother Tim writes at the dining room table. Jayne, his wife, sits on a windowsill. Their son Jake plays the guitar. (Stella, a small schnauzer, dozes under a chair nearby, but I forgot to include her.)

Aside from the presence of my family, what attracted my imagination to this scene was the summer light and shadows. Oaks and walnut trees surround the house. The green hillside behind Jayne is a vineyard. There’s a lawn below us and an orchard of apple trees. A pergola and a picnic table await for us to arrive soon with a plate of olives and Jayne’s foccacia, and a bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.

Apart from the radiators on the walls, there’s nothing to suggest November winds and leafless trees and snows that will soon blanket the vineyard. Nor is there any hint that one of the people in the drawing will see only a few more summers.

But that’s another story, and another painting: the portrait that this sketch inspired, also carrying its own weight of memory.

Ideally, commissions for paintings are usually clear and straightforward and they haven’t changed much since the days of Michelangelo. For example: I agree to paint your subject for x amount of florins, euros or dollars; we agree on the medium and the dimensions, and we agree on the deadline for its completion. I insist on being paid half the fee for my work in advance. After business matters are settled, it’s my responsibility to finish and deliver the work. I do my best to make you content so that you write a check for the remainder of my fee.

In the “real” world of painting on commission, the best of circumstances happen rarely. In the case of “A Wedding,“ however, the situation could hardly have been better. The client’s request was straight and clear: Please paint me and my husband alone in front of the altar on our special day. No priest, no altar boys, no relatives, just us.

The most important component of a wedding is the bride and groom; everything else is background. But what if the background is as interesting as the couple? Especially if it overflows with symbols? I mean that in the altarpiece behind this couple there’s nothing less than saints and angels witnessing the vows of the Sacrament of Matrimony. So I painted the watercolor accordingly, as if the earthly and heavenly realms reflected each other, both equally important.

Often clients don’t like such imaginative interpretations. In this case, the client was content and paid me what amounted to almost half of a round trip ticket to Madrid.

That was four years ago. I hope that, with the blessings of the Heavenly Host, the happy couple is still a happy couple.

The 16th century Russian archbishop Makarij complained that the “unholy objects of worship” of many Northern peoples were “forests, stones, rivers, marshes, springs, hills, the sun, the moon, stars, lakes and simply all manner of things.” Had he visited the Northlands recently, he would likely have had the same lament. In Iceland, for example, people whose beliefs predate the arrival of Christianity a thousand years ago, usually do not like to be referred to as pagans. We’re heathens, they told me, and after a moment’s reflection I understood why. If a heath is a “wasteland,” terrain that is “uncultivated,” then Iceland has more heath than any place I have ever visited. The landscape looks empty and desolate, like the surface of the moon, except that it is green, greener sometimes than the radiant greens of Ireland.

Iceland is a painter’s dream. Imagine a low sky of writhing clouds, mountains after mountains and miles of undulating hills with a few sheep grazing here and there and perhaps an occasional farmhouse. Many mountains are active volcanoes; earthquakes and geysers are also part of this heath, and searing winds from the North Pole, and the slate-colored sea all around. Geysers, storms and waterfalls create a magical landscape that is always present, like a pulse, or a heartbeat. In this stark landscape I felt like I was continually walking on the skin of a drum.

Unfortunately, this little sketch can’t suggest lava flows or thermal springs, let alone the presence of Huldufólk, the “hidden people,” who live contentedly, mostly invisibly, here in this harsh beauty. But I offer it anyway to friends in Iceland and elsewhere who revere all manner of unholy objects.