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A new day

It is snowing.

Snowing at midnight, New Year's day. I have just walked back from San Marco, crossed the Rialto Bridge, and when I got to my place, I decided to walk over to the Canal, about 30 m, just to be quiet and alone for awhile.

Standing on the wooden jetty, drinking in the quiet and the peace, I felt a coolness on my forehead. Then another, like an angel kiss, and then something landed on my cheek. I felt it melt, like tears, and wiped it away. Refusing to go way, I stood there, demanding more blessing, and I got it when I turned to the light behind me. Snowflakes, in ones and twos and threes; and then in tens... falling like shooting stars, except slower and weightlessly. Enough is a feast, I thought, and came inside. The time on my computer was 12:05.

How we get blessed, when we seek out the quiet. Earlier I fled the crowds of San Marco, thinking, all these people, looking for what we have not lost.

Suikerbekkie

On Christmas Day, I went for a walk and saw an old friend. High on a thorn bush, but at eye level, singing her little lungs out, was a pretty grey heuningbekkie.

Like the artist, the hummingbird is the bringer of sweetness. It is our role to find the sweetness in nature, often among the thorns, and to harvest it for its joy, releasing it as song or as a painting.

In American Indian Culture it is known as a totem animal, a pointer from nature; this is who you are, these are your strengths, this is your nature.

It was around three years ago that the hummingbird entered my life. A few days before Christmas, we found a hummingbird perched on our Christmas tree, in the position of the angel. That makes it twice that she visited us, first on a Christmas tree, and again on Christmas day. How unsubtle do I have to be, she seems to say, before you get my message?

This is how the book, Medicine Cards, refers to the hummingbird:

"If Hummingbird is your personal medicine, you love life and its joys. Your presence brings joy to others... You know instinctively where beauty resides and, near or far, you journey to your ideal... Hummingbird will no doubt give you a flash of spirit, darting here, there, and everywhere... Beauty is the target, and Hummingbird's mission is to spread joy or to be destroyed."

To read this again, just four days before setting out for Venice on a pilgrimage of beauty, is very strange. Nice, yes, but rather awesome.

This story is now also on my blog.

Working in Venice

With the holidays, all the shops are closed, but so far it looks as if I might have a bit of difficulty in finding large canvases.

Sketching away, in the streets, at home, and in restaurants, my great hope is to concentrate on chiaroscuro and the effects of light, together with my fantasy vision of strangely mysterious women. In the absence of large canvas, I plan to do a few small studies of single figures of these women, in simple but dramatic situations. The main object for the moment, though, is to compose, and for this, I walk and I look. It is a tough life, but somebody has to do it.

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday, and that you are ready to get back to some lovely painting. All the best for the New Year!

Website

http://artistvision.org/
http://rynoswart.wordpress.com/

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