Posted on by Aletha Kuschan · 4 Comments

Tango Concertante

painting-singing-bird-smaller-fileI have been painting today while listening to Cho-Liang Lin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra playing Lalo Schifrin’s Tango Concertante, a piece that I only know because I chanced to hear a live performance of it by Cho-Liang Lin and the Apollo Orchestra in Bethesda, Maryland a couple years ago.  We knew the cellist playing the solo in the Apollo Orchestra’s performance.

I was so glad when I discovered that the piece was available on Youtube and must have listened to it at least 25 times in just the days and weeks immediately following my introduction to it.  I have lost count now how many times I’ve heard it.  It only grows richer to me with every listening.

Lalo Schifrin is most famous for his television and movie music and very most famously for one theme, the music that introduced the 60s era television show Mission Impossible.  While I love the Mission Impossible theme, Tango Concertante is a thousand-fold more complex and beautiful.

You might notice that it has fewer than two thousands views!  And that is so wrong!  Recently my daughter sent me a video of a mockingbird singing and it had a half million views.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I love birdsong.  I love mockingbirds especially, but you can listen to a mockingbird anytime you please in spring and summer.  They are all virtuosos, and they’re sitting in every tree.  In contrast music like this comes along rarely!

Well, it’s the background music for today’s painting session …  here it is ….

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Posted on by Aletha Kuschan

more window shopping

the bonnard painting dining room with window etc

There’s one other window that I want to have a look at before I begin working on the BIG painting.  It happens that the Library of Congress has some windows that are rather like the one in Bonnard’s painting of the dining room at the Villa Castellamare.

I would go there right now with my camera, but Mother Nature doesn’t want to do anything these last several days but rain.  Rain, rain, rain all the time.  Of course she’s got to stop raining eventually.  And when she does I’m off to the Library of Congress for more window shopping.  In the interim, I’ve found this picture at the Library of Congress website.

library of Congress window with view of capitol building

As you can see it’s got the balestrade just like Bonnard’s window (top of the post).  Naturally, you will not be seeing the United States Capitol in my painting.  I’ll be finding a landscape to view from this window if I decide to use it.

My teacher Monsieur Bonnard has just whispered something in my ear.  He says that while he used to love to take photographs himself, that if I want to have a better contact with my motif, I should take a little notebook and a stubby pencil and make some DRAWINGS while I stand in front of the actual window.  “Take your photographs, bien sûr, but makes the little Croquis too.”

bonnard croquis fenetre ouverte
Pierre Bonnard, croquis – une fenetre ouverte

So, anyway, either I photograph — AND DRAW —  another window soon, or start building my Ark.  If it’s the latter, I need to get some doggie sailing outfits for Lucy and Zoomie!

Link to the Library of Congress window:

https://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetryroom/3-view.html

Posted on by Aletha Kuschan

putting the flowers into the vase

studio with flowers may 18

So it’s time to transfer some of the flowers in the newest bouquet, the ones on the aluminum easel, to the painting above it.  The painting on the wooden easel is an intermediary stage between me and the really BIG painting.

I’ve been working on this 24 x 18 inch study for a few days in succession.

Jump flowers, into the picture!

bouquet study may 18

And the flowers of the actual bouquet are now kind of spent.  Some are a little worn and others have gone entirely limp!  But that pretty rose is still firm.  It refuses to open, but it still looks like new.

flowers spent may 18