Paul Gauguin’s paintings have interested me for his use of bold colour  and his depiction of  ”Other” in the figures of his Tahitian women.

So I was looking forward to seeing this collection of his life’s work. Interestingly, I came away from the show with a very different view of the man than I’d expected.

I’m not attempting to capsize the reputation of an artistic giant. I’m in no position to do that. I only offer an honest response based on my experience in the exhibition.

I do appreciate his accomplishments. He was a pioneer in his use of colour  - the dreamy blues, lush greens, tropical yellows and striking fushia evoke the heat and humidity and “otherness” of place. And he deserves credit for busting out of the bucolic French countryside of Impressionists in search of a new subject and way of seeing. He brought to modern art a new way of seeing.

But what a found in Gauguin was a wholly unpleasant man who exploited his subjects and showed (I thought) questionable talent in some respects. His early work in Brittany was unremarkable and it was clear that he needed something new to make his mark as a “world class” artist.

My strongest reactions emerged as I moved onto the Tahitian women who made him famous.  I began to turn on him, despite the seductive colours.

Gauguin arrived in Tahiti expecting a land and people untouched by Western sensibilities and values. To his disappointment, the Christian missionaries had beat him to it and his subjects were not the tribal water nymphs he’d hoped for.

He was just another tourist in paradise.

So he made up the story. He mythologized the women, imagining them as primitives and gentle savages, lounging by pools, their pert breasts displayed without shame, their eyes gazing in innocence. Imagine the contrast to the laced-up women of French Impressionism.

Gauguin called up a fantasy that predated the reality, if that vision ever existed at all.

I was unimpressed by the forms of his women. They appeared out of proportion, thick and squat, almost amateurish in some instances. The depictions weren’t disjointed in the purposeful Cubist sense seen in Picasso or in the native works of folk artists. They just appeared unskilled.

I had a similar response to his clouds. Unconvincing.

Syphilitic and nasty in character, it would be easy to dislike him as a person.

But I disliked him as an artist. He used these women to promote himself in the competitive market of French art. He made a fiction of subjects but sold them as the reality of the “Other.”

He was very successful in creating a legacy. He is regarded amongst the greats of post-Impressionism.

But I don’t buy it and that is the joy of visiting a life exhibition like this. You can see and decide for yourself – whether it’s the work of a master or not.

Thanks again to the lovely Zed for the prompt on this post.

They physics geeks are beside themselves and trying to contain their excitement.

They think the data produced in these collisions will help us understand – among other things – the first moments of the universe.

The last two attempts to get the thing going failed so it was a rather pressurized environment there at CERN this morning.

But now they are shooting beams through the underground network of tunnels and producing collisions and new particles that will give us new information about our world.
The models are beautiful.

These experiments will tell us about the formation of the matter, dark matter and the extra dimensions that may exist around us.

It is a very exciting time.

My ambitions for an idyllic English country garden were halted somewhat the day I beheaded the begonias.

It happened during the transplanting, plop, plop, plob and off they fell.

The grass around the flower bed was strew with the colourful petals of the fallen begonias.

RIP Begonias.

RIP idyllic English Country garden

Say bye bye to shining, shimmering, sleek.

Think big, back combing and bee hive.

Think 80s hair bands, mousse, and heavy-hold spray.

Think Dolly Parton.

Think whatever you want. Big hair is back.

Angelina Jolie, Liz Hurley, Amy Winehouse. They’re all wearing it.

Even the hairdresser of this typist tells me that big hair is beginning to make a comeback in these parts. And that’s saying something in a town where 90s prom-girl up-do’s still rule the wedding circuit – fifteen years after the fact (according to my hair dresser.)

I don’t know. I think I might be ready for big hair again.

Are you?

I’ve been told by a gay friend that this show has a huge following in his “community” because it presents an accurate portrayal of the lives and psyches of gay males.

It’s well known that the writer of the series, Darren Star, is a gay male, and that his interpretation of Candice Bushnell’s columns is loose.

Not to go all post-structural on you here, but isn’t it a good bet that Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha are really Calvin, Matthew, Charlie and Sam?

Go here to view this set in Flickr.

Early one sunny August morning, I turned off the highway to take a picture of a beautiful still lake. The lake was pretty, but it was in the field next to the lake that I stumbled upon gold.

There were hundreds of spiders’ webs*, their gossamer fibers sparkling with the dew.

It was like entering a fun park with only ferris wheels or walking through a diamond farm. I had to pick my jaw up off the ground and for two or three short seconds, I was speechless. (And this speaks volumes.)

I only had my 17-40 wide angle so photographing these webs meant getting close. Many of these shots were zoom cropped for a close-up view of the dew.

Spiders are fantastic engineers, but I never realized they were such gifted artists too.

If I had to make a top-ten list of the best moments in my life, this would be right up there on that list.

* Keen GT followers will recall some of these pictures from previous incarnation of GT.

Women used to wax floors. Now they wax themselves.

I was thinking about this the other day as I was having my brows done.

“Waxing is a rip roarin’ good time,” I said to the esthetician. “You do the rippin’. I do the roaring.”

So she ripped. And I roared.

And that’s just brows. Think full Brazilian. Or for men, the ultimate waxing package: The Back, The Crack and The Sack. Yeeeeoooocccchhhhh!

Can it get more barbaric? I mean, applying hot wax to the skin and then ripping the hair out by its roots?

Someday we will look back on this waxing fest, and wonder what we were thinking? Just like we look back at the floor waxing of the 50s.

A cloudy day burst into flame at the very end as the sun dropped below of line of cloud, casting orange, red and pink hues across the underside of the cloud. These shots were taken in Warwickshire in the Cotswolds, a range of hills in Central England. This is where I spent Christmas.

The colours in the sky were changing before my eyes as the sun sank to the horizon. In one shot, you can see the light shooting sideways across the top of the hedgerows and in another a puddle gives the distinct impression of a ghost.

The low light at the end of December is a photographer’s dream and in a spectacular landscape like the Cotswolds, the beauty is intensified. And to think I almost didn’t brother with the good camera and the good wide angle lens.

I love finding an envelope in the mailbox that is not:

a. a bill

b. a pitch from a charity I’ve never heard of

c. a tax-funded newsletter from a politician who wants to let me know all the things she/he is doing in Ottawa.

I love seeing my name appear in someone’s own handwriting. There is nothing more delicious that opening up the envelope and reading the little note inside. I also love to receive beautiful cards that I can display on my fireplace mantle piece. If the card appeals to me in a certain way it will remain there long after Christmas, sometimes for years.

Sadly, the handwritten Christmas card is one of those traditions in decline. Even handwriting is something you don’t see often these days.

But a handwritten card is the most personalized gift you can give or receive and therefore one of the best presents there is.

I was the newbie and Pat extended herself to me on the first day, offering a friendly smile and welcoming questions about how long I’d been painting and how I managed to find my way into the popular class.

By the second week, we’d established common ground. We’d both lived in Britain and loved it.

She’d been in London during the swinging 60s. She’d told me about the outrageous Mary Quant miniskirts she used to wear, traipsing up and down the Kings Road and hanging out on Carnaby Street, the epicenter of swinging London.

They were the best years of her life, she told me. And she meant it. You could tell by the smile in her eyes.

She moved back to Canada in the late sixties but she’d never quite got London out of her system. She went back many times to visit old friends and remember the good times they had together in the 60s. She envied my dual citizenship and said she’d move back in a snap, if she could. I got the sense that things weren’t so going great for Pat these days.

The last time I saw her was two weeks ago. She asked me for drive to the next class because she wasn’t sure her usual lift would be available. I offered to pick her up. She gave me her number and said to call first.

When the day of the next class arrived, I called to offer a drive. After four rings, I heard Pat’s voice but it was on the answering machine. I assumed she found a drive with someone else, but she wasn’t in class when I arrived and no one had heard from her. Strange.

The next week she was absent again. The woman who sometimes drove Pat was worried. Pat hadn’t returned her calls or answered the door. Had anyone else heard from her? No one had.

I had a funny lump in my stomach that stayed with me the whole day. I phoned Pat later that day. Her voice answered and told me to leave a message after the beep. I didn’t.

The next morning, I opened the paper and saw her face. In the obituaries.

Pat died on Nov. 6th a few days before I was supposed to drive her to art class. There was no explanation of what happened, no funeral or service. Sometimes obituaries communicate more by what they don’t say.

If there is a heaven, I sincerely hope that it’s heaving with leggy, long-haired Londoners, traipsing up and down the Kings Road dressed in Mary Quant minis and wearing smudgy eye make-up. And I hope Pat will be right middle of it all for all eternity.