Tag: painters

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“Every real human interaction is made up of a million tiny moving pieces. Not a simple one-note situation: a symphony of cues to read and decipher and evaluate and pay attention.”
― Katherine Center, Hello Stranger

Sadie Montgomery has spent her life struggling. Determined to not need anything from her father, she decided not to study medicine and became an artist instead! She has had her share of ups and downs, but it looks like her life may finally be on the upswing. Sadie has just learned that she is a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition with a prize of $10,000. This competition has the opportunity to publicize her work more and hopefully bring more commissions her way.

Everything’s great, right?! Wrong. Her joy is shattered when she learns that she needs to have surgery right now. The surgery will be minor and she will only need to stay in the hospital for less than a week. In the midst of recovery though, Sadie discovers that the surgery has altered her ability to paint portraits in a big way: she can no longer see faces. Sadie has prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. This should hopefully be temporary, but the doctors can’t give her any definitive answers. This is the worst news a portrait artist could receive.

Sadie is devastated. Her new reality consists of avoiding looking at faces or seeing a disconnected jumble of facial features every time she looks at a person’s face. Her life just can’t seem to go right. She still wants to be an artist, her family is going through some extra messy drama, and Peanut, her dog, is now sick! In the midst of this madness, Sadie also may have met the man of her dreams. Actually, she may have met TWO men of her dreams. What is she to do? With her perceptions screwed up, Sadie walks through life slowly, wanting to make sure she knows who she is talking to without having to tell everyone she meets that she is face blind. Her journey to acceptance is rough, but at least she has these men, and Peanut, to distract her. Right?!

This title is also available as a Libby eBook, Libby eAudiobook, large print, CD audiobook, and Playaway audiobook.

“We’re all just doing the best we can. We’re all struggling with our struggles. Nobody has the answers. And everybody, deep down, is a little bit lost.”
― Katherine Center, Hello Stranger

Séraphine

- Ann Leave a comment

The French film Séraphine stars Yolande Moreau as the 20th century artist Séraphine Louis–a poor housekeeper/painter who was discovered in 1912 by the German art collector Wilhelm Uhde. Uhde was only able to give Séraphine minor support before he had to flee France due to the war, but he eventually came back to France and happily found that Séraphine was not only alive, but had continued her painting. He immediately became her lead patron, giving her an allowance and finding exhibitors and buyers for her work, until the world economic woes hit the art world and Séraphine’s mental instabilities paralyzed her painting.

I absolutely love to watch people paint–from Bob Ross to Jackson Pollock to craftsters on Martha Stewart–and so I also love films about painters since they often include a variety of short and long scenes where the artists fervidly creates their famous masterpieces. However, the greatest part of this film is not watching Séraphine’s actual painting (although that is fantastic), but seeing her gather pigments and create her own paints (for example: stealing hot wax from the church’s prayer candles). The artist never revealed her methods of creating her vibrant colors, but the film’s version of her ingenuity is, nonetheless, absolutely fascinating!

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

- Ann 1 Comment

lacuna

Lacuna: 1)an empty space or a misssing part  2) a cavity, space or depression.

This new novel by Barbara Kingsolver was worth the wait — it’s been nine years since her last novel, the very popular and acclaimed Poisonwood Bible.

The Lacuna takes place in both Mexico and the U.S. with most of it written in journal format.  Kingsolver also throws in some actual newspaper articles and other documents which add credibility to the time period (the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s).  The main character, Harrison William Shepherd, is the son of a dull Washington bureaucrat and a flamboyant Mexican mother, who has left her husband to live with a current lover on a Mexican island.  Without school or friends to occupy his time, Harrison spends many hours swimming, where he discovers a lacuna in a sea cliff which leads to a secret,  hidden pool.  As Harrison matures, his particular set of skills gains him employment with the famous artists, Diego Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo.  Since they later harbor the exiled communist Leo Trotsky, Harrison ends up working as a secretary for him as well.  This part was especially interesting —  perhaps because of the real personages in the book, it was easy at times to forget that this was a work of fiction!

After Trotsky’s murder, Harrison comes back to the United States (accompanying some of Frida’s paintings) and settles in North Carolina, where he finally realizes his dream of writing romantic adventure novels.  He becomes a hugely popular author, but his luck turns sour when he is later cited as a Communist sympathizer.

It’s not until the ending that we discover the significance of the title.  As both Kahlo and Shepherd are fond of saying, “The most important part of the story is the piece you don’t know.”  Read it and enjoy finding  out for yourself.