Design, function and art

These things all come together at Vancouver's lovely old Orpheum theater - beautiful architecture, designed as a movie house, it functions brilliantly as the home for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and music.

I love going to the symphony - especially when they're playing something I've never heard before. A few weeks ago, I heard Alondra de la Parra conduct Edward Top's Symphony Golden Dragon.

Top is the VSO's conductor in residence and what drew me in was the surprise of the music. It's not that I don't like classical music - I do. Some of it - Bach, in particular - I love. But this symphony blew me away. I never knew what to expect and I fell in love.

If you want to hear a piece of music like nothing you've ever heard before, if you're interested in new music, you can check this symphony out at:  http://soundcloud.com/edward-top/symphony-golden-dragon

One of the joys of the evening, especially during the Golden Dragon symphony, was watching the young conductor, Alondra de la Parra. Her movements, her direction, became part of the music and it was an amazing experience to watch her direct this symphony. It was as if she were linked to each of the musicians by strings, as if those strings turned them into a single voice. It was wonderful.

Angela Cheng played a Mozart piano concerto - and each time I've heard her, I've been more and more impressed, but for me, as I'm not a huge fan of Mozart, that was the part of the program I least enjoyed. Luckily for me, they finished it up with Brahms, the lovely Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, and I went away more than happy with my evening.

Three of my favorite things combined on that night - design, function and art - and I walked home, in the rain, delighted with the evening.

Kate

The Art of Street Photography

Street photographers - at least here in Vancouver - were a big fixture of Granville Street (the hottest part of downtown) in the 40s and 50s. Almost everyone who walked Granville in those days had their picture taken and those who could afford it, got a copy.

This is my mother - probably a year or two before I was born - strolling down Granville with a friend.

There are thousands and thousands of pictures just like these from cities all over the world and what I like about them is that they're so specifically of their time - the clothes, the shoes, the bags, the neon on the street.

I wasn't around on Granville Street in the 40s and if I was there in the 50s, I don't remember it. But I did spend time on Granville in every decade since then - and I've watched it change and change and change.

But this photograph? This is Granville Street as I want it to be - this is the Granville Street I still (in small pieces) recognize. I recognize it in the Vancouver Block, in the Yale, in the Commodore. It's the Granville Street I want to write about, a place just barely out of my lifetime, just out of my memories.

Kate

Imitation is the sincerest form of art

Okay, maybe I've got that quote wrong - but I spent a beautiful sunny spring day in Victoria on the weekend and almost everything reminded me of England on a perfect day.

This couldn't be more English - some small coastal town that caters to sailors.

Victoria is, as the crow flies, only forty or so miles from Vancouver, but in terms of weather on that particular day? It might have been thousands.

It was so warm I got a bit of a sunburn - something that's so far from our imagination here in Vancouver right now that I wasn't prepared.

All the stores are English - china, tea, scones, beer - doesn't matter where you go, English is the name of the game. The pub we had lunch in was the Bard and the Banker, then, right down the street, another pub called The Irish Times.

And then there's the grand old Empress Hotel. Inside, it feels as if I was transported to London, dark old-fashioned wood and carpets, the menu features English high tea and curry. The building feels like it was built by English builders (and maybe it was), so there are little hallways and sets of stairs that lead you a half story up, or part way to your destination. Easy to get lost there - and maybe the getting lost is half of the fun.

You'll love it in Victoria - as long, that is, as it's a sunny day.

Kate

Alice Neel, The Soyer Brothers

This week I decided to go to my favorite art website - Mark Harden's Artchive (www.artchive.com) - and do something I never do.

I closed my eyes, ran my cursor up and down the list of artists and opened one completely at random.

I've heard of Alice Neel though I've only seen a few of her paintings and haven't been tempted to write about them. But because I tried this--I'm not sure you can call it a technique--I had to stick with it.

And I'm glad I did. I learned a little bit about her. She's from New York and she painted for many years, exhibiting only rarely. After that first exhibit? She painted and exhibited for another twenty years, and became a huge success.

There's something about this painting - The Soyer Brothers - that fascinates me. It was painted in 1973 and it feels almost intrinsically New York to me. You might see these two men on any street in the city. I imagine that they run a business of some kind together, that they and their wives, their sons (because I think they would only have sons) and their wives, their grandchildren and maybe even great-grandchildren, get together every Sunday for dinner. I imagine that they love their families but their tightest connection is with each other.

None of this might be true, but that's the feeling I get from this portrait. Alice Neel makes me feel as if I know them intimately, as if I see them every day, watch as they walk down the street, as they deal with suppliers and employees, as they go home to their apartments (in the same block as where they grew up) and their wives, often phoning each other during the evening to talk about... What? Baseball, maybe? Or the news they've just seen on CNN?

The intimacy between the two of them shines right out of the oil and canvas.

I'm definitely going to try this again.

Kate

The art of window dressing

I'm always fascinated by store windows and often pause to examine them more closely. One of the stores in Vancouver that I've been watching - and will go out of my way to check out their windows - is the Louis Vuitton store in the Hotel Vancouver.

It's not exactly on my way to anywhere I go on a regular basis - in fact, passing it involves a 3 block detour - but it's worth it.

The windows aren't just gorgeous (and I'm not even including the LV bags and shoes and clothes) but they're interesting as well.

Their windows change every month or so and they always have something that links the windows together - this month it's these brilliantly coloured arrows. There are three windows - this one, another one similar holding up a man's satchel with arrows that are coloured in more manly hues - deep red, green, blue - which I didn't find as attractive.

And then there's this window...

The dress, I admit, doesn't do a whole lot for me - but the window? I love it. I love the meticulousness it must have taken to get those arrows exactly right. I love the imagination that thought of it in the first place. And more than anything else, I love the way (see below) that the reflection was taken into account.

Not just art, but science.

Because there aren't two dresses, but depending where you are in relation to the window, it looks like there are - brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Kate

Springing into art

There is no art more beautiful than that very first blush of spring - especially when you've had as wet and dreary a winter as we have this year. I took this photo over the weekend and have kept it on my desktop ever since.

Because it's as if the daffodils, the magnolias and the cherry trees dragged spring with them as they blossomed, rather than the other way around.

The year, the flowers were blooming long before any of us actually believed that we were going to have any spring at all.

And once they got started, they were quickly followed by the forsythia, the faint blush of yellow (precursor to their gorgeous green) on the willow trees, the occasional day warm enough to wear a sweater instead of a coat.

And to celebrate?

Today, despite the rain and the cool temperatures, I wore my sandals. Only for a couple of blocks, but still. Feels like spring to me.

Kate

Cover art

I've been very lucky with my covers (as you've seen with the cover for Dragonflies and Dinosaurs). This is one of my favorites - also from Harlequin Next and another one of my out of print books that will soon be available as an e-book.

But really, for me, this is all about the art. Yes, I love the book, but I think I love the cover even more.

It's the movement, the color, the way the title fits right into it...

It's perfect.

Kate

The art of the winter sunset

It usually rains in Vancouver in February - so sunsets of any kind are few and far between. This was last night's sunset - an absolutely beautiful walk on the beach in the early evening as the sun fell beneath Vancouver Island.

See those mountains in the distance? Those are Vancouver Island. We only get to see them half a dozen times a year when there's the perfect combination of circumstances -

1. Sunshine - which doesn't often happen in the winter, remember, Vancouver is the land of the rain;

2. Clear skies - again, if the wind's in the wrong direction, there's just enough pollution to mask this far distant island;

3.  I actually have to be out on the beach at the exact right moment.

And I was - and it was perfect.

Kate

Art wishes

I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to be able to paint.

Maybe it's because I worked in the art business on and off for many years - call it artist's envy, I guess. I saw these beautiful pieces and I wanted, somehow, to be able to recreate them myself.

I've taken a few courses, starting at the very beginning, progressing (not very far) to watercolor courses. I've painted a few watercolors - though none of them worthy of even being shown in the cabinets at your local community centre.

But there are days like yesterday when I arrived at the office early and saw the sun rising and the clouds and I thought of Monet and how he painted clouds and I felt sad. Because it was so beautiful, so perfect, and I knew I'd never paint it.

My skills aren't in my hands, they're in my head - I have writing skills but ... I've tried music, I've tried painting, I've tried dancing. But, although I enjoyed them all, I am never ever ever going to be very skilled at any of them. The thing I'm good at? Is listening, seeing, enjoying. And I guess I'll have to settle for that.

So here, for your viewing pleasure, is one of my favorite Monets - it's the clouds for me.

Though I have to admit that I also love the train!

Kate

Van Gogh - Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum

This painting - like many of Van Gogh's great paintings - was painted in the couple of years before his death, while he was at Arles in France.

It's kind of a companion painting to the more famous Starry Night paintings which were painted before and after this one - at least it is for me.

It has the night stars, but they illuminate a warm street scene filled with people enjoying the night. I like to think this painting was done on a day when Vincent won the battle with his mental demons and was able to see the joy and beauty and comfort of the human world.

Plus, this painting for me exemplifies what I love about small town France. I've sat in dozens of cafes like this one, sipping a glass of wine, eating a jambon and brie sandwich, having coffee and a croissant. And more than anything else, enjoying the buzz of conversation and the relaxing atmosphere that a visitor is almost always assured of in any one of thousands of cafes throughout France.

Kate

The art of the photograph

Alfred Stieglitz is a photographer and I love his photographs.

I first got to know him through his connection with Georgia O'Keeffe, one of my favorite painters. They were married for many many years and many of his photographs echo or are precursors to, her paintings.

I like his early photos, like this picture of the wintry Flatiron Building in New York from 1903, to the much later ones, like this different view of New York (From the Shelton, West) which he took in 1935. I'm fascinated by the way the technicalities of photography changed over those 32 years, and I'm fascinated by the way, despite those changes, I can still see that Stieglitz took both of these photographs.

But the photographs that blow me away are portraits. Below are a self-portrait and one of the many, many photographs he took of Georgia O'Keeffe. There's something about the way he sees people (including himself) - focused, intense, as if he's looking into his own image in their eyes. They look directly at the camera, there's no fooling around with what we see now in photographic portraits. The face isn't angled to be seen at its best, the head isn't resting on a hand. These portraits feel solemn and real in a way that few modern portraits do.

Kate

My favorite Rembrandt

Because Rembrandt was poor for all of his life and mostly couldn't afford models, he did self-portraits throughout his life.

The painting - at the Frick Museum in New York - is my favorite.

I have spent hours and hours sitting in front of this painting, in fact, if I don't have time to spend anywhere else, I will spend all my free time in New York in front of this painting.

The color, the light, the hands - all amazing, Rembrandt at his very best. But the painting, despite its brilliant color palette, is so so sad. It always makes me cry.


Kate

The art of the femme fatale

There's just something about those classic black and white movies - and it isn't always about the director or the story or even the acting. Sometimes it's about the beauty - and for me, there's no one more beautiful than Gene Tierney. I caught a terrible movie - and I can't even remember the name of it - late one night on TCM and I saw this face.

I wished that I could paint it because it's one of those faces that's just as beautiful when still as it is when it's in motion.

If I could have any face I wanted (and I'm pretty happy with mine), I'd have this face.

What about you?

Kate

Arnold Bocklin - Isle of the Dead

This morning I did something I haven't had time to do in months - I went to one of my favorite websites and spent some time just hanging out, looking at art.

If you haven't been to Mark Harden's Artchive and you're a fan of art of any kind (because it has literally everything) - www.artchive.com - you'll want to put this on your favorites bar.

There are over 250 artists and some 3000 scans - good ones - of art, plus links to art that isn't on the site. You can choose to look at a style of art, an era, a group of artists. It's a terrific resource.

Today I found Arnold Bocklin - a German painter who spent a lot of time in Rome. This painting blew me away. Bocklin (or Boecklin) spent a lot of time in Rome and he actually painted this island five times. This version, it seems, he painted because a widow had asked him for something to meditate on.

For me, it's the light and dark, the way the figure on the boat and the coffin glow, the way the trees are somehow so very Italian.

Lovely morning for me.

Kate

Mary Comber Miles

I came home this afternoon and found an invitation to an art gallery opening in my mailbox. It was for an exhibit of the work of Mary Comber Miles - work I love. She's spent most of her long life painting water color botanicals - flowers and plants in a precise elegant way that's distinctively her own.

These paintings remind me of those beautiful Victorian books of plants, faeries, architectural details, the amazing paintings of birds by Audobon. They feel timeless yet also of their time.

The exhibit opens next Wednesday and I'm going to be there. A whole room of perfectly detailed and accurate paintings and a chance to meet the artist. Who could resist?

Kate