Pale and Interesting

Did everyone have a good weekend?  We had a glorious sunny weekend in L.A. and Saturday's dinner reminded me how I need to cook more!

This week, I'm going to do something quite different from last week's posts. I've culled images from diverse sources of a wide variety of things.  What they have in common is that they are mostly handmade and that they have a cool and restrained allure.  Since they're all quite varied in style I'm going to spread them out over the week in different posts, grouped according to certain affinities some have for others.  Today's post is about two English artists.

Via lovely Florizelle, at le divan fumoir bohemien from a post she did earlier this year, a painting below by Harold Harvey.  Harvey (1874-1941) was an English painter who trained at the Academie Julien and started his career in the impressionist tradition of that Paris school's famous alumni, (Pisarro, Sisley, Bonnard for example), but finished in a very distinctive and classical-but-modern vein that captures for me a particular aspect of everyday English life and character.  I love the blue light in this painting, the Vermeer-esque organization of figures and furniture, the side lighting, and the clarity and crispness with which it is rendered.  But it is also very English in its blend of "homeliness" and grace, the chalky earnestness of the rendering, and the casualness of the subject matter.  

As with Mrs. Feesey's work below, it is colorful, but in a restrained way.

From the April 2010 World of Interiors, comes paper cut collages, and needlework in a slightly naif style, by ninety-plus year old Irene Feesey made up as "she went along".  Sadly I think that here is another exceedingly talented and prolific female artist (see my Mary Fedden post two weeks ago) who (very likely because of her gender) has not, in her lifetime, received much (or even sought) public recognition for what she has done.  

Hers is an example of someone doing something quite sophisticated that communicates as simplicity and freshness. I think that this is really what all this week's  "Pale and Interesting" ideas have in common.  There is also a slight element of the unexpected in them.  Which might be that simplicity, that forthrightness.

Photo: Antony Crolla

So English.  So pale, yet so interesting.

Dinner Table Conversation

Pierre Bonnard, "Reflecting on the Day" 1924

I'm cooking for company again this weekend!  What about you?  Hope it's good and that you get caught up in all the best ways!

Golden Mountain

So hubby and I took a short road trip this weekend to visit family.  

Over the years we have had quite a few road trips in California.  It never gets old.

As anyone of you knows, who has ever flown into San Francisco, California's great glory

is her natural beauty.  Haunting, effortless, colossally scaled beauty.

"Purple mountain's majesty" was written FOR California, BECAUSE of her.

Her hills are just as glorious.  By the age of ten I had already fallen in love with the hills around San Francisco at the moment when they were green.  I've always wanted to walk right over the hills and among the oaks of California - up and down the state, like so many had to before me.  My Dad always told us kids that we would all hike the Pacific Crest Trail together.  But other dreams took precedence.

The Chinese who built the railroads and much else in California called it the "Golden Mountain".

Not because of the precious metal to be found deep inside the earth.

But because of the gold that mantled the earth.  At this special time.

It looks like a Mexican Indian's mescaline dream.

Or an Indian Indian's detour on his way to Holi.

But no, it's not colored powder or psychedelic imaginings.  It's Mother Nature washing her paintbrush across a landscape, and dousing it with poppies, daisies, and in the hollows, purpley-blue lupins.

These pictures were taken at Gorman.  The only spot in the mountains called "the Grapevine" on Route 5 where the hills were in bloom last weekend.  

Mountains, take a bow.  Vous etes carrement en beaute!!!!!  

p.s. to Kenza:  good guess on the car, but if you look really close at the license plate, it will tell you the name of another 1970's TV detective


p.p.s. to everybody:  please do click to enlarge.  it will be so rewarding!

Corner View - Earth Day

Today's Corner View is "Earth Day".  Here are a couple little images I've been keeping aside and hoping to find a way to use.  They seem to work for this theme.  What do you think?  Like little visual anagrams of Mother Earth.

The top one is of a vertical garden that is being cultivated in my neighborhood.  I hope to post more photos when it gets properly going.  The middle one is from Maisons Cote Sud Dec 09/Jan 10; photographer - Henri Del Olmo !  It's a beautiful image, no?  The one below is my photo again, of the

paving at the new Chinese pavilions at Huntington Gardens in San Marino.  I hope they remind you of Mother Earth and why she should be precious to us.  In all her marvelous variety, delicacy and strength.  They do me.

Along the same lines, in the post previous to this one,  I have also posted shots from the Chelsea Flower Show.  If you haven't, you should check it out for some of Mother Nature's fairly astounding miracles.  And truly the miracles that must be contemplated when you consider that all those plants are trucked in and installed - not grown - on site really, barely within the week of the flower show!  Tomorrow I'll be posting the mountains northeast of Los Angeles, covered in poppies, lupines and daisies.  Unbelievable!  So hope you like this one.  Soon I'll be popping by to see all of your Corner Views!

If you're not a regular, Joyce can probably help you find others of today's Corner Views at her blog here while Jane of Spain Daily is on vacation in Mexico.

Chelsea Flower Show

Tickets are still available for the Chelsea Flower Show, May 25-29, 2010 in London.  Here's the link to the Royal Horticultural Society which sponsors it.  In the upper right hand side you can purchase tickets right away, lower below gives you a quick idea what's still available as far as dates.  It's not too late to book!

Since we ARE talking London, a sunhat/sunscreen AND umbrella would be good to bring along, as well as a nice packed lunch and cold drinks.  (I recommend a crayfish and arugula sandwich from Pret-a-Manger on the Kings Road or CHOCOLATES from the Artisan Chocolatier nearby on I think, Sloane Street.  Otherwise, there are food trucks but the lines are long. )  You should check the site to see if they allow you to bring lightweight-foldout seating 'cause last time I was there, there wasn't enough seating.  Short of that, wear comfortable shoes and be ready to have a long day on your feet.  There WILL be security checks.  And you might spot an English gardening celebrity!  There are plenty of nice restaurants on the Kings Road and Pimlico Road for dinner afterwards.  (See my post about the Orange Tree Pub.) Which you will REALLY appreciate with a cool refreshing bottle of wine.

And if you go don't forget to come back and tell me all about it!

Candy Stripers

Did everybody have a good weekend?  Here a some spring-ey flowers from St. Luke's Churchyard in Chelsea, London. I'll be back soon to share more goodies with you! 

Where Are YOU Going?

We've spent a nice week with my Mother's side of the family, now we're off on a road trip to see my Dad's side. So much family, so little time!  What are you doing this weekend?

Meanwhile, who's car is this?