This is based on a pen and ink miniature, with many elements of fantasy.
Palau de la Musica– Section of the Band
Gary J. Kirkpatrick
¡Hola de Valencia! First drawing from Palau de la Musica
We are back in our favorite winter quarters, where the sky is always blue and the winter temperatures moderate, the street life vibrant, the food fresh and varied, and the people warm and friendly. It’s a place that brings smiles to our face the moment we look out the window or go out the door.
The flight from Rome is normally quite beautiful. You might get a view of the Coliseo. You fly over Sardinia and then get a lovely view of Valencia. Not this flight. Weather has hit the entire Iberian Peninsula, and even Valencia is effected. Light rain greets us but still we shed the jackets and sweaters we were wearing to get to the airport in Rome.
We are staying in a new ‘piso.’ This one is near Plaza de Toros, much larger than our previous place, more expensive too, but better for the painter in the household. We will miss our view:
We go to the Palau de la Musica here most Sundays to listen to the symphonic bands, of which there are many in the province. The first Sunday we heard the Banda Municipal. I often do small pen and ink drawings as I listen. Here’s the flautist playing a piece by one of local composers:
Hagia Sophia (circa 550), one of the world’s greatest buildings
September 20 2015 Istanbul
The Hagia (Holy) Sophia (Wisdom) is a stunning domed building built as a Greek Orthodox cathedral in 537 when Istanbul, then called Constantinople, was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire(also known as the Byzantine Empire). Between 1204 and 1261 it was a Roman Catholic cathedral. Following the conquering of the Empire by the Ottomans in 1453, the Hagia Sofia became a mosque. In 1931 it was closed and then converted into a museum, which it is still. The minarets and round domes give it an Islamic setting, and some of the interior maintains that influence as well. Nonetheless it is an impressive structure, notably the dome, and for 1000 years it was the largest cathedral in the world, replaced in 1520 by the Cathedral in Seville.
Here are some stock photos of the interior. It is way too dark and large for me to get good photos. These are mosaics!
Istanbul Modern is another pleasant surprise
The Istanbul Modern is another pleasant surprise in a city full of them. The artists on exhibit when I visited yesterday were mostly Turkish, some trained here and others in the US and I think one or two in Germany. Most of the work is representational but very creative in a modernist sort of way, as you can from the photos I’ve placed below.
The installations made sense- how unusual- and were interesting as well- also unusual. One was a young man playing make-shift drums, another various people lip synching Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’ Behind thick sets of hanging strands of fabric hangs a geographical globe with stars and planets on the walls, while in another section is a political globe. In a third room a face of a woman is projected onto a mannequin. She is singing.
Not so pleasant is the getting there. There are large signs and even an arrow pointing tot the enntrance. The large signs do not point anywhere except for the one with the arrow, which points down a lonely, shabby alley. I walked past it thinking this could not be. But it was.
The location challenge came after I ran across an angry confrontation a few hundred meters from the entrance. There was angry shouting and a man banging hard on the hood of a van. There was pushing and shoving. The police arrived. I heard four bangs, someone with a notepad came running toward me. I then turned around and scooted back a hundred meters, and crossed the street. A security guard told me it was not gun shots, just more banging on the van I suppose, so I went on. Traffic had piled up between me and the scene so I felt reasonably safe.
Here are some of the pieces I found interesting. The first is fabric sewed onto canvas, probably my favorite, which given I am not a fabric art fan in general, is a strong endorsement:
Haggia Sophia, a World Heritage Site, noted for its architecture and mosaics
September 20 2015 Istanbul
The Hagia (Holy) Sophia (Wisdom) is a stunning domed building built as a Greek Orthodox cathedral in 537 when Istanbul, then called Constantinople, was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire(also known as the Byzantine Empire). Between 1204 and 1261 it was a Roman Catholic cathedral. Following the conquering of the Empire by the Ottomans in 1453, the Hagia Sofia became a mosque. In 1931 it was closed and then converted into a museum, which it is still. The minarets and round domes give it an Islamic setting, and some of the interior maintains that influence as well. Nonetheless it is an impressive structure, notably the dome, and for 1000 years it was the largest cathedral in the world, replaced in 1520 by the Cathedral in Seville.
Here are some stock photos of the interior. It is way too dark and large for me to get good photos.
These are mosaics!
Helsinki- some fabulous interior Jugend (Art Nouveau) decorations
September 8, 2015
Photos from Florence
September 28, 2014
Just spent three days in Florence. Here are some photos of the town. The overviews are from the Michelangelo Plaza.
[slideshow_deploy id=’2098′]
The Zambia Series
A few of these are still available. Please contact me for information.
From our safari to Zambia, June 2014.
These paintings are mostly from my journal, which I did while we were there. Some of the very small ones I later did on larger paper, also in water color.
We traveled by train for 1500 kilometers from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania to Zambia, and spent several days in a small village where our nephew works as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It was an uplifting experience.
It started with an hour long walk in the dark (see the painting “Heart of Lightness”). As we approached the village we heard shouts of joy, hugs and kisses soon following. Then they sang for an hour, choral harmony in which the whole village joined. We were perfect strangers yet they welcomed us as if we were long lost relatives. We lived in a small hut and watched the people work on the dam, harvest cassava and do other chores. What loads the women can carry on their heads! We ate with them, partied with them. They are sweet and innocent, these people of Lunda land.
I hope you will enjoy my portrayal of the experience, the colors, the scenes, the sense of innocence.
Heart of Lightness We walked on the path towards the village under the glow of the yellow moon. After almost an hour we saw the glow of campfires on the hill. Soon we were welcomed with shrieks and smothered with hugs and kisses on the cheeks.
The Chorus After we arrived they sang in harmony for an hour. Children in the front row would sometimes bang the rhythm on the ground. The second row was for the teens, and the adults were in the last.
They sang beautifully.
Women Dance At night the young women danced around a campfire, for which they used a brazier. The wood fire cast an orange glow. My original was just 2″x 4″. The rhythms were mesmerizing. Even some of the older women (by older I mean over 25, as the life span here is just 45) joined in. I wanted to also.
Women Collect Sand The Peace Corps project is a small dam for filling fish ponds. They need the protein and the income. They do not have much of either. They have goats but they do not eat them, they are for dowries, and they are lactose intolerant so nary a piece of cheese in the country. In this painting they collect sand for the dam.
Walking the Bush We explored the area around the village. Here are friends walk through the bush.
What I experienced gave me a new perspective, different colors, the elongated limbs, the redness of the soil.
Pula, Croatia, and its Fabulous Roman Amphitheatre
August 22, 2014
Our visit to Pula, Croatia
Croatia is just to our south, and we’d never been there. It has a certain allure because it is Western European but somehow not, as it was part of Yugoslavia during the post war period. It became more Slavic during that period and the traditional folk dance music you hear in the video (link below) reflects that origin.
Pula like Trieste is on the Adriatic. Most noted for the Roman Amphitheater, it also has a temple and other bits from the Roman era. It is an attractive town with 20 km of rocky beach the locals love.
To get there by land you cross Slovenia, so it’s 3 countries in two hours on the fast bus, but four hours through even more of the Croatian countryside on the way back. Slovenia is in the EU but Croatia is not, so there’s no border check leaving Italy but in and out of the other two countries there is. With my shiny new Italian passport we had no problems, although Peg was stamped in and the border guard suggested she get a ‘permesso di sojourno,” (residence permit) which as my wife and with an officially registered marriage certificate, should be no problem at all.
It’s a lovely town with architecture from the 13th, 19th and 20th century. There are pedestian zones, lots of cafes and eateries, summer sunshine and today a very pleasant temperature, in the low 20’s. People walk about in shorts and lightweight shirts. You hear what I assume is Croatian, lots of Italian and perhaps as much English; people who deal with tourists spoke it reasonably well.
It’s about a ten minute walk to the Amphitheater from the bus station. The amphitheater is enormous, probably not as big as the Coliseo in Rome, but it is much more intact. Only the seating area is largely gone, maybe a few hundred left out of the original 25,000. It must have been spectacular when filled, and the fabric roof in place.
The main pedestrian zone is one of the more attractive ones we’ve seen but not all that different from others. We had lunch in the area. The service was very attentive, and the food quite good, for a bit less than Trieste, even, although we’d heard Croatia has become quite expensive.
It is still an active port and ship building continues. There are large bays for ship repair as well as large yellow cranes for unloading and loading cargo vessels.
A Bit of History
Human remains (Homo erectus) in the area date to 1.5 million years. Pottery dates to 6000 BCE. Inhabitation in Pula proper dates to the 10 century BCE. Greek pottery and statuary remains attest to that people”s presence.
Starting around the 1st century BCE a Venetic or Illyrian tribe lived here. Under Julius Caesar the town became an important port, with a population then of around 30,000. However it sided with Cassius against Augustus, and the town was destroyed. It was soon rebuilt and with it came the amphitheater (finished in 68 CE) which you will see in the slide show video.
The Venetians took over the city in the 1200’s and the Hapsburgs arrived in 1997. After WWI the whole peninsula became part of Italy. Mussolini persecuted the Slavic residents and many fled. The Germans took over in WWII after Italy collapsed, and Pula was bombed heavily by the Allies after the u-boat installation. Pula joined Yugoslavia in 1947. Most of the Italians fled in 1946-47 in the run up. To this day, Croatia is predominantly Roman Catholic.
http://youtu.be/hEF_PE8XBTo?list=UUl7YKIwsWVvA_jQrQVcxYRg
See my art at http://garyartista.wix.com/gary-kirkpatrick-art
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo at the Civico Museo Sartorio
August 14, 2014
We visited the Civico Museo Sartorio this week. It’s on the other side of Trieste but certainly walkable for us. It is another mansion owned by a wealthy family that now holds the family’s collections, furniture with plenty of room for exhibits. The mansion is huge, at least 4 stories and I bet there’s a hundred rooms.
The Sartorio family lived there from 1775 until Anna Segrè Sartorio donated the property to Trieste, requesting that it become a museum. The Allies made it their headquarters after WW2 until around 1953. The city renovated afterwards. Stunning floors and ceilings, endless displays of ceramics, and portraits that went on and on.
The special exhibit displayed the drawings of Giovanni Batista Tiepolo, an amazing artist whose vast out of drawings and paintings make him one of the worlds best albeit less known. . He died in 1770. Here’s one of his drawings. Many of the ones we saw were done in ink. They’ve been restored, having been found in bad condition. The ink was acidic and had to be neutralized, and the backings removed and replaced. This is quite an extensive collection.
See my art at http://garyartista.wix.com/gary-kirkpatrick-art