Month: November 2018

Clarity of Water

Photographer Unknown, (The Clarity of Water)

“It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion 

F. Scott Hess

 

F. Scott Hess, Unknown Title, Oil on Canvas, (Catch of the Day)

F. Scott Hess, “Light,” 2005, Oil on Canvas

Born in Baltimore, longtime Los Angeles artist F. Scott Hess attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria, and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, earning a BSA from the University of Wisconsin in 1977. In 1979, Hess moved to Vienna, Austria, where he studied for five years with the Austrian painter Rudolf Hausner, who has been credited as the first psychoanalytical painter. Through his artistic teaching experience in Vienna, Hess gained greater exposure to techniques of old master style painting, which profoundly influenced his work.

F. Scott Hess  has been described as a “New Old Master”. His narrative portraiture blends realistic scenes of everyday life with symbolic and allegorical events, humor, eroticism, and voyeurism. He begins with drawings and careful diagramming on his canvases before adding traditional oil paint or egg tempera. Hess’s works are defined by his strong brushwork, careful attention to the luminosity of flesh, and ability to capture ethereal light.

Source: generouslycrazytiger

Calendar: November 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of November

Pale Skin and Leather

November 14, 1922 was the birthdate of American actress Veronica Lake.

Born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in the Borough of Brooklynn, Veronica Lake moved to Miami, Florida with her family and attended Miami High School. In 1938 the family moved to Beverly Hills, California, where she was briefly under contract to MGM. Lake enrolled in MGM’s acting school, the Bliss-Hayden School of Acting, and soon went to an audition at RKO studio. She later appeared in the 1939 play “Thought for Food” and had a small role in “She Made Her Bed”.

Veronica Lake appeared as an extra in a number of movies. Her first appearance on screen was for RKO in the 1939 co-ed film “Sorority House”, which wound up being cut from the film. Lake was given similar roles in “All Women Have Secrets” “Forty Little Mothers” and “Dancing Co-Ed”. Producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. from Paramount Pictures decided to give her a chance in the role of a nightclub singer in a military drama entitled “I Wanted Wings”, released in 1940. This role made Veronica Lake, still in her teens, a star.

It was during the filming of “I Wanted Wings” that Veronica Lake developed her signature look. Lake’s long blonde hair accidentally fell over her right eye during a take and created a peek-a-boo effect. After the film was a big hit, the hairstyle became Lakes’s trademark and inspired women to copy it. Paramount next cast Lake in Preston Sturges’s “Sullivan’s Travels” with Joel McCrea. Next came the 1942 thriller “This Gun for Hire” with Robert Preston and Alan Ladd. She and Alan Ladd both had cameos in the all-star Paramount film “Star Spangled Rhythm” in 1942.

During World War II, Veronica Lake became popular as a pin-up girl for soldiers and traveled throughout the United States raising money for war bonds. Lake’s career began to falter after her portrayal as a Nazi spy in the 1944 “The Hour Before the Dawn”. Diagnosed early in her life with schizophrenia, Lake, after receiving scathing reviews, began drinking more heavily during this period, prompting many actors to refuse to work with her. After some time off, Lake was brought back in the 1945 “Bring On the Girls”, her first proper musical.

Veronica Lake made more movies between 1947 and 1951: a western “Ramrod” in 1947; the 1948 “Saigon” which reunited her with actor Alan Ladd; a romantic drama “Isn’t It Romantic” and a comedy “The Sainted Sisters”, both in 1948 and not well received by audiences. In 1948 Paramount decided not to renew Veronica Lake’s contract. After that, she performed in two more films in minor roles, was a television host for a brief stint and performed in summer stock theater.

In June of 1972, Veronica lake visited a doctor complaining of stomach pains. She was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver as a result of her years of drinking and was admitted on June 26 to the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. She died there on July 7, 1973 of acute hepatitis and acute kidney injury. Veronica Lake was cremated and her ashes scattered off the coast of the Virgin Islands. For her contributions to the film industry, Lake has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6918 Hollywood Boulevard.

Martin Wittfooth

Martin Wittfooth, “Bacchanal”, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 78 x 60 Inches

Martin Wittfooth was born in 1981 in Toronto, Canada. He spent his childhood in Finland, before moving back to Canada as a teenager. It was in Toronto that he earned his BAA in illustration at Sheridan College in 2003. Wittfooth then moved to New York City where he received his MFA at the School of Visual Arts.

In his recent works, Wittfooth explores the ancient art of shamanism and the current renaissance it is enjoying around the globe. The optimism which emanates from his new works is a product of Wittfooth’s gradual uncovering of enlightening shamanic practices, which he has observed as holding the power to break us free fromthe status quo and the dark path it has lead us down.

Gottfried Lindauer

Gottfried Lindauer, “Kamariera Te Hau Takiri Wharepapa”, 1895, Oil on Canvas, 83 x 71.7 cm, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

Gottfried Lindauer, a portrait artist, was born in Pilsen, Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,  who relocated to New Zealand. Lindauer’s portraits of Māori are diverse in their subjects and in how he depicted them. They can be presented full-length, half-length or in bust format for instance; frontal, body in profile or face to the front, as in his many portraits of Ana Rupene and her baby. Besides his portraits of eminent Māori, Lindauer produced many of little-known or ordinary Māori people, most of whom wear European dress, as would have been the case in their daily life.

Kamariera Wharepapa, born in 1823, was one of fourteen Māori who travelled to England aboard the ship Ida Ziegler under the sponsorship of Wesleyan missionary William Jenkins. While in England he was presented to Queen Victoria and married Elizabeth Reid, an English housemaid. The first of their five daughters was born on the return journey to New Zealand and the family settled in Maungakahia. There, in 1864, Elizabeth helped her husband lobby for a school, which was eventually built. Wharepapa died in 1920 at his birthplace Mangakahia.

Source: isluma

Calendar: November 13

A Year: Day to Day Men: 13th of November

Blackwork and Cigarette

November 13, 1850 was the birthdate of author Robert Louis Stevenson.

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a noted lighthouse builder and harbor engineer. Though healthy at birth, Stevenson soon became a victim of constant breathing problems that later developed into tuberculosis. These persistent health problems made him extremely thin and weak most of his life.

By the time Stevenson entered Edinburgh University at the age of sixteen, he had fallen under the spell of language and had begun to write. For several years, he attended classes irregularly, developing a bohemian existence. At the age of twenty-one, he openly declared his intention of becoming a writer, against the strong opposition of his father. Having traveled to the European mainland several times for health and pleasure, he now traveled between Scotland and a growing circle of artistic and literary friends in London and Paris.

Stevenson’s first book, “An Inland Voyage” published in 1878, related his adventures during a canoe trip on Belgium and France’s canals. In 1879, Stevenson stayed in an abandoned mining camp in the United States, later recounted in the 1883 “The Silverado Squatters”. A year later, he was back in Scotland; however, the climate in Scotland proved to be a severe hardship on his health. Stevenson and his wife soon moved and lived in Switzerland and the south of France. Despite his health, these years proved to be productive. The stories Stevenson collected at that time, ranging from detective stories to Scottish dialect tales, were published as “The New Arabian Nights” and “The Merry Men”.

“Treasure Island”, first published as a series in a children’s magazine, ranks as Stevenson’s first popular book, and it established his fame. A perfect romance, according to Stevenson’s formula, the novel tells the story of a boy’s involvement with murderous pirates. “Kidnapped” published in 1886, set in Scotland during a time of great civil unrest, has the same charm. In the 1886 “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde”, Stevenson dealt directly with the nature of evil in man and the hideous effects that occur when man seeks to deny it. This work pointed the way toward Stevenson’s more serious later novels.

In 1889 Stevenson and his family set out on a cruise of the South Sea Islands. When it became clear that only there could he live in relatively good health, he settled on the island of Upolu in Samoa. He bought a plantation, built a house, and gained influence with the natives, who called him Tusifala or “teller of tales”. By the time of his death on December 3, 1894, Stevenson had become a significant figure in island affairs. His observations on Samoan life were published in the 1896 collection “In the South Seas” and in the 1892 “A Footnote to History”.

Fernando Pessoa: “The First Property of Things is Motion” (Part One)

Tattoo Art in Motion: Part One

“Our problem isn’t that we’re individualists. It’s that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven’t done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.”

― Fernando Pessoa, The Education of the Stoic