Gary J. Kirkpatrick Art and Travel Blog
Posting original art
Gary Kirkpatrick March 2017
This slide show is from photos I took at the Science Museum exhibit in Valencia. There are thousands of these small sculptures (usually about a meter in height but sometimes higher). There are two that skewer Trump. Next year I expect many more, as most of these were begun well before the election. These amazing sculptures employ hundreds and hundreds of artists here. The large sculptures range up to 25 meters/80′ in height. They all display great imagination and ability! Enjoy!
Here are two videos of the amazing opening act of Fallas 2017. Fallas is Valencia’s annual festival, an Unesco heritage event. There are hundreds of sculptures 25 meters in height and thousands of smaller ones. There is a mascleta – fireworks without much light- every day at 2pm, and fireworks at night that are not just literally over the top. This one featured a first- 50 meter/ 165′ vertical firework trees. Amazing! The first of those below is mine and is just two minutes, the second is professionally done and is about 10 minutes.
Enjoy!
I always carry a small notebook with me. If I am sitting around and see something or someone interesting, I give it a go. Here are some recent ones.
These miniatures are just $50 each. Prints too.
Here are my two paintings reflecting my thoughts on this man, the “So-called” president of the United States.
This last piece is in response to those who complained that opponents were not giving him a chance.
January 28, 2017
While in Philadelphia for my wife’s swearing in as an Italian citizen we visited the Philadelphia History Museum. They show a good video about the city’s founding. See link at bottom, first in a series.
Penn was not born a Quaker. In fact the earliest image we have of him is this painting, done during his service fighting a rebellion in Ireland. He is dressed in armor. He became a Quaker during his college years, a period of intense religious conflict.
His father was a close associate of King Charles II. When his father died, Charles still owed substantial sums to Penn’s father, which he settled by granting huge areas of land which Penn wanted to call Sylvania, the latin for ‘forest.’ The King insisted on adding “Penn” and thus came into being the name of the present day state. The grant included the area today known as Delaware.
The new proprietor, then probably the world’s largest individual landowner, first landed in America in 1682, afterwards traveling up the Delaware river to found Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. To attract Quakers he wrote a prospectus that brought in some 250 well to do Quakers. He eventually distributed it in Europe, attracting Hugenots, Mennonites, Amish, Lutherans, and Jews. He limited his own power as leader, a notable innovation, as was open discourse, akin to a Quaker meeting. Prisons were workshops designed to teach rather than punish. Swearing, lying, and drunkenness were forbidden as well as “idle amusements” such as stage plays, gambling, revels, masques, cock fighting and bear baiting.
He began advocating for a union of the colonies and his Frame for a Government contained many of the principles later to inspire the US Constitution. However, his attempts to establish a true City of Brotherly Love failed within two years. He had returned to England, never to return, and soon city leaders had reneged on the agreement Penn had forged with the Lagniappe.
We visited the village where our nephew Travis worked as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was a fabulous visit despite the primitive conditions- the people were just so loving and friendly. These are the only ones I still have and I am offering them for the next week at special prices. See blog on Zambia for further accounts of this special journey.
Women, with Towel shows another in the mirror. A third appears in outline, derived from the Portrait of a Young Woman, recently attributed to Leonardo. Her outline is done with a water color pencil, otherwise the work is acrylics. The background is applied with a knife. Original and prints.
I did these small paintings at Aranjuez, Spain. The Summer Palace of Spain is located there. I wrote a bit about Aranjuez at http://www.garyjkirkpatrick.com/aranjuez-the-summer-palace-of-the-spanish-royalty/
A fall scene at Aranjuez:
At Aranjuez is the same scene as Carmen at Aranjuez. But there is no railing separating her from the harsh reality below –it’s nearly winter, the icy gray of the cold Rio Tajo running on the backside of the Palacio. Nonetheless there is beauty of sky and the shimmering reflections to enchant, but, yet, stay back. It reminds of those mythologies we invent to account for both the cruelty and charm of existence; no wonder our deities are so self-contradicting.
I was thinking of how I would miss my new friends, the warmth of her standing there contrasting with the coldness of the water, the building, affection as a guard against life’s sometimes harsh realities.
This building sits just across from the Palace. It was built in the mid 1800’s and completely renovated.
Aranjuez is just south of Madrid and home to the summer palace. It was built in the second half of the 16th century under Phillip II. The town was originally inhabited only by the court but now is a small but vibrant town dominated by the tourists who visit the palace.
The main entrance is through a gate that leads onto a large courtyard.
Visitors would have entered through the doors to be confronted with a magnificent marble staircase and a ceiling high above. Nowadays visitors enter through a much smaller entrance in the Renaissance style wing. This style features a rather flat presentation, with pediments of various sorts adoring the windows. Here you can also see the Romanesque arches, rounded versus the sharper edges of the Gothic style.
The interior visitors access is limited to two floors. Once you climb the main staircase there perhaps a dozen rooms. Some are more what you might expect in terms of high and painted ceilings, luxurious furnishings, and rich colors. Others are intensely decorated with ceramics:
The palace sits on the conjunction of two rivers, the Tagus and Jarama. The rivers feed numerous fountains and maintain the extensive gardens.
Nearby is the Palcio de Sivela, built in 1860 and completely restored in 1988. Here is my impression of it
December 6, 2016
We set off on our journey from Valencia to Aranjuez at 7am on Sunday. The train route takes you west through massive fields of grapes dotted by the occasional and equally massive wine storage units jutting some 25 meters toward the clouds, stopping in a seemingly endless number of small towns along the way. Progress is slow and the it gets much slower as then we enter the National Park known as Torcas de Palancares, leaving the farms behind.
The ravines (barrancos) along the train route from Valencia to Aranjuez dig deeply into the rocky orange soil. Because it has been raining, itself a bit of a refreshing oddity, rivulets flow beneath the train as it slows to 20 kph as we inched across trestles, looking straight over the side at the rocky bottom far below. You don’t feel confident out there in the middle. They are going that slowly for good reason.
There are more people on the train – so vacant we practically got on a first name basis with the conductor- than live in the protected zone portion of the journey, judging by the total lack of dwellings and just the occasional dirt road. A large bird, a hawk or perhaps even an owl, swoops across the tracks, looking for an unwary rabbit. The boars are too big to lift so they are safe from his talons.