Sunday, November 10

Working on my Christmas Card....

Um... ChristXmas card... Sorry...


Wuddaya think? Got everything covered here? Wait... did I write Xmas? Darn... Meant to write HOLIDAY card. Now... now I gottit all fixed, huh? Suggestions? Lots of time to get it to the printer... I'm going to mail the things on April 1, that way I won't seem sectarian, y'know? 

3 comments:

Cedric said...

And may you dream of a grey-scale Xmas...

Lovely picture Ted and really digging your sensitivity... Ho ho ho, Christmas cards on April 1st. I like it. I like it a lot. Merry Fool's Day one and all 🎅

BTW, the picture looks different to your usual work. Did you paint this from scratch? Either way, nice work mate.

Ted said...

Sad. I cannot leave replies on my iPhone. I type them in the first flow of my reaction to your comments. Bur for some reason they will not 'upload'. Those responses go away... wonder where? Is there some great jumble of pixels someplace, like the elephant graveyard?

Anyway, I wrote my first thoughts to you a few mornings ago but they are gone now. Pity since the lost thought is always so profound... or at least I (we?) remember it that way :-)

We're living in the very moment when two cultures are smashing into one another Cedric. Yeah, culture's always changing but it used to do that either gradually, or as the result of conquest didn't it? This time there's a verge going on and stuff we used to do a and feel's become hostile and hurtful. Just like the things new-culture folks do. Did I mention the L.P. Hartley quote that haunts me these days... "The past is a different country. They do things differently there."

In that country there were Christmas rules that are different here. Were they better rules? Damned if I know what 'better' means. But this time of year, I grow nostalgic about that place. Problem is, travel visas aren't issued anymore.

And so each year I do a sappy Christmas tree card. This one involved me smashing together a couple of pictures of pine trees I took, then swirling on seasonal color sauce. Wish I could draw... It's hard to take pictures of memories. And my art is entirely photo based.

Cedric said...

I am not one for nostalgia as I know that the good things in the past are remembered better than they really were just as the bad things are remembered as worse. But what is happening to culture today is not so much a a change as it is an abolition, an eradication of things that made life interesting, joyful and dear to many. While I have no issues with sweeping away any discriminatory aspects of culture, humans, across all cultures, suffers greatly when the changes come as a punishment for real or perceived actions of the past, or present, when it's done by a non-representative group of people.

Anyway, well done with the Christmas tree. I would never have thought it was done from a photo. And digital as they are, I do like being able to see each brush stroke. Such strokes, whether they be from brushes or rags or knives or chisels, marries the artist to the artwork in a way that even dark-room photography will never do for photographers. You Ted, manage to bring this marriage to photography and I am grateful that I get to enjoy it. Thanks mate.