Richard Bell, Yorkshire artist

Danny Gregory interviews Richard Bell, a Yorkshire artist and author who keeps a wonderful record of plants and wildlife in his backyard, throughout the seasons--as well as of scenery and human activity in his local community (Wild Yorkshire). Mr. Bell shares how he has been able to forge a career in art, while working within boundaries of physical limitations.

Amigos

Mellow Mushroom mural

Perimeter at night

Cane's, Johnny Bucelli's

Heritage Cooperative building, December

From the east.

Dancing Hares in Rain

From southeast.

News and weather

Thanksgiving, early.

Sunny Street Cafe

Trying out Winsor & Newton water color marker, cadmium yellow pale. Not so pale! Prize from a Blick spin-the-wheel giveaway.

Game Day

Football traffic backed up, hours before the game.  Christmas-colored tail gate tents lined parking lots along the road.  Pedicabs left us in their dust.  We escaped through San Margherita, where we waited again--this time on a train.

Burger and fries

Amigos

Trying out white Uni-ball Signo pen, on what appears to be a mural of a pineapple farm. (Update: agave farm?)

Hares in Autumn Light

From northwest. Trying out Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen.

Town clock

Rolls (waiting on lunch)

In memory

Mellow Mushroom

Lunch special.

Beating the bounds of art: Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura, from his essay Withoutside: Transgressing in Love:

What if we considered limitations as the beginning of our creative acts, to see the boundaries of life (and death) as the starting point of our discussion?  If we are to honor such a reality, then, paradoxically, we may see beyond them. Limitations can be a catalyst to find freedom.  That is what the Incarnation of Christ teaches us. Jesus “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing.” (Phil. 2:6,7)  By humbling Himself, he lifted all of us broken human beings with Him. Following Christ is also to recognize and honor the limits and boundaries of being human; less is more.

In William Blake’s Jerusalem, he coined the word “Withoutside.” We vacillate between needing the boundaries of “with/outside” and needing the freedom of “without/side.” As we do, perhaps it is possible to expand the borders of art in both ends of the spectrum of human potential and brokenness.   But our call at first is to deal with the excess of our past, to turn towards humble, normative human acts.  Then, paradoxically, we must also seek excellence, to reach for the stars of artistic promise, to seek generative solution to cure the impoverishment of the language of art.

The first part of this journey, “with/outside,” will involve a willingness to volunteer restrictions on choice, such as honoring traditions and communities, to allow for the roots of our expressions take deeply in the soil of culture.   We may need to pause and give birth (perhaps literally) in order to be human now.  Even raising children, and other such self-discipline of not making art can be the “art form” of our new century. This could be the most transgressive art of our times. For if our starting point is no longer in our capacity to make (an Aristotelian definition of art), but also in our capacity to destroy (as in the Manhattan project), our Ground Zero lives should begin anew with the basics.  In such a time as this, our songs may sound more like lamentation than celebration. In facing the sinister, active forces at work in culture, our strategy may seem invisible to the powerful, and powerless as a newborn, our focus localized to the minute particulars of our daily lives.  And at such times, rebellion may look like ordinary human activities simply done in faith. We are, after all, attempting to draw life unto death by scratching our lines in the ashes of ground zeros all around us.  Perhaps we need to start with loving each other.

Read the whole article. (Originally published in Image Journal, Issue 60.) Fujmura has studied, and creates in, the Japanese Nihonga tradition.

Dancing Hares,  Early November

From southeast.

Culver's

Mellow Mushroom

Loss

Baja Sol--formerly Don Pablo's-- was leveled today, to make room for a bank.

The last remaining edge of the Bridge Pointe shopping center was razed soon after I sketched it.  Alegria's has been replaced by Amigos, and the Azteca Grill by the Fiesta Bar and Grill.

In "beating the bounds," we are reminded not only of the gifts, limits, and responsibilities of freedom and stewardship, but also discover what has been lost, and perhaps, replaced--or is in need of repair.

On the road to Holmes County

Fall foliage

Rolling hills, farm buildings

A little wine-tasting tent stood in the drizzle, on the edge of a parking lot in Millersburg.

Fiesta Bar and Grill

Potbelly Redux

"Laissez les bon temps rouler." (Advice from the potato chip bag.)

More on Boundaries

The Rt Reverend Anthony Footit, in "Solomon's Seal," from A Gospel of Wildflowers, 2006, p. 50:

Law places boundaries on behaviour. On the sixth Sunday of Easter it is still customary in some parishes to beat the bounds--to process around the boundaries, and at the same time ask God's blessing on the seeds sown in fields and gardens. Hedges and walls and boundaries help to prevent trespass and acquisitiveness--wanting more than we need. "The law does not change the heart, but it does restrain the heartless" (Martin Luther King).

(The well-known British artist Pat Albeck illustrated Reverend Footit's essays with lovely floral watercolors.)

Dancing hares in September

From southeast.

Summer house

Neighborhood duck

There were two, but only had time to draw one.

School Yard

Color guard practice

Bench/brick/bush impression

Koosje Koene's Fall Feast, Re-visited

Koosje has once again posted her autumn pattern video. (My sketches lose resolution in translation through the Blogger app.)

Note: I think the pots toward the left on the bottom were drawn from life, large urns outside the school entrance.

About drawing

Why We Draw, by Richard Johnson, in the Washington Post.
Four Stories of the Heart, also by Richard Johnson, in the Washington Post.
(HT: Parka Blogs.)

Steak 'n' Shake

Bouquet

Aladdin's

Continuing education

Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center.

Donatos

Two young Amish workmen, waiting on pizza with an "English" man.

Waiting Room

Steam Thresher Parade

Dancing Hares, July 2015

From southeast.

Lunch at Tucci's

Beyond the Boundaries....

Opened Eyes, sculpture by Dr. James DeVries, donated to Cedarville University.
Opened Eyes, sculpture by Dr. DeVries, in Grand Rapids.  Additional views and angles.

Country kitchen

Community Church Window

January 2015

July 2015

Edith Schaeffer, in The Hidden Art of Homemaking, Tyndale, 1971, p.41:

Everyone who has any talent at all in sketching, painting, sculpturing or carving, should have the opportunity to use that talent. The expression is important for the person, and can tremendously enrich the lives of other people. What can you do?

First of all, be satisfied with the fact that although your art or talent may never be accepted by the world as anything 'great', and may never be your career, it can be used to enrich your day by day life: enrich it for you, and for the people with whom you live. And secondly, come to a recognition of the fact this it is important for you to be creative in this area to the extent of your talent: important for you as a person who is a creative creature. 

Doctors' offices

Waiting room

Exam room

License plate

Seen in school pick-up line, a few months ago.

Macaroni Grill

Azteca Grill

In memory