Blog

I will take a moment here to acknowledge Crystal Jonkman, to whom I am married, quite elatedly, and who continues to constantly astound me with her incredible artistic strength and passion. Her field of art is music, something which consumes her every single day and many nights. Classically trained, she plays the pipe organ and piano. Not just dabbling in it the way I do in my painting. No, she has competed nationally and internationally to considerable acclaim. She is a wonderful choral conductor whose joy in vocal harmony encourages others to achieve their own very best. Of late, she divides professional time between Richmond's St. Michael's Episcopal Church and the Greater Richmond Children's Choir, a fine organization indeed.

On the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, I joined Crystal (as I've done for several years now) at a Richmond Symphony "Lollipops" Concert. Why? Because for many years running at this annual holiday concert for children, a chorister from the GRCC has sung solo as the symphony accompanies the holiday film "The Snowman." This isn't Crystal's gig, it's all Richmond Symphony. But Crystal supports her kids. And their parents. And music. It's what you do when you want the best for those you mentor.

Imagine you are 12 years old, sitting on the stage with dozens of professional adult musicians facing some 1,500 or more audience members, knowing you will be the only one singing when the big moment arrives. I can't. I cannot see my once twelve year old self being able to do anything even remotely as public and focused and possible to screw up. I would have been an oxymoron: petrified jello. Yet every year, a 12 year or so old kid steps up and sings and just blows the auditorium away. In clear, crafted tones and with firm commitment to honor the composer's vision over the performer's ego. A professional just as Crystal has instructed. These kids are fantastic. 

In my younger days courting tinnitus listening to extremely loud rock music I would never have been able to predict that one of my annual highlights would be to sit happily with hundreds of fidgety tykes during a holiday concert waiting for the Snowman's magic to happen yet again. But it is, it is. Earlier this year, GRCC singers participated in a presentation of Carmen along with the symphony, members of the Virginia Opera, and guest mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. Crystal was backstage and tells me that Ms. Graves was all over the young singers as they came off stage, handing out high fives and enthusiastically telling them"you killed it! You totally killed it" Crystal's been in the biz long enough to distinguish polite praise from the real deal. This was the real deal. I write this because I believe that all of these young choristers kill it when they get the chance due at least in part to Crystal's instilling so much love of singing and the art of being professional. They reach high and they make it. And I'm proud of them. And of her.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Listen to the words of an 11 year old choir member: "I never knew the Greater Richmond Children’s Choir would be so much fun! First we got to sing with the world famous opera star Denyce Graves! Now we get to sing with a famous choir made up of singers from all over the country!"  

Or learn of the even younger singer who demanded a password from everyone entering the rehearsal space, including Crystal and her assistants. Her required password?

"I Love to Sing."

Thanksgiving is, I think, my favorite holiday. Not for the feasting. Not football games. Nothing to do with the must-start-buying-stuff frenzy that has nibbled around at its edges. It has much to do, of course, with being thankful. Which I am.  

I think, however, that what I most like about it is that it offers the chance to just stop for 30 seconds. Chill. Relax. No fireworks. No marching bands. No rushing to some event or service. Peace. Catch your breath. Say thank you and mean it.

Some of you reading this will rightly point out that preparing a full-out turkey and trimmings meal and cleaning up afterwards is about as relaxing as a jackhammer. I'm sympathetic. And given I will be the primary performer of such functions in our household this year, I stand behind all I said above. Perhaps its something zen in my innards that makes me think this way. Maybe it has something to do with reading A General Thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer before the meal, words of such resonance they power an entire year for me. Maybe I just like Autumn. Whatever the mechanics of it all, it is, as I said, my favorite holiday.

I searched the archives to find some nice Autumn painting to accompany this pondering. Either they'd been blogged about before or they didn't capture my mood writing this. So I break the rules to include a Spring scene: fields of trillium in the woods of Wintergreen. I think it is okay to do so because Thanksgiving is not about rules. 

I'm a bit early on this one. Thanksgiving is still four days away. Hope yours is wonderful. 

This is the story about the first painting to be sold off of this website.  It’s a two-parter.  Not in the sense of your only being able to read the first half now and a sequel next week.  Rather, there is some background about the title and other information about the painting itself.

BACKGROUND

We love our backyard fire pit, which has been the site of many a pleasant evening with friends sipping wine, roasting marshmallows, and solving every one of the world’s problems in scintillating conversation.  I can be, however, overkill in my enthusiasm for it, as evidenced by January 2016, when my brother-in-law and I enjoyed a “snow fire” during a blizzard.  It was GREAT. 

It WAS great, that is, until the heat from the fire melted the snow accumulating on our clothes.  When the temperature is in the low 20s, sitting and letting your clothes get soggy is not even remotely wise.  Don’t believe me?  Put a wet wool sock in your freezer for 10 minutes and then use it as a scarf.  Still and all, we had a lot of fun and it makes for a happy memory.

THE PAINTING ITSELF

Richmond has mild winters.  Snow is rare but it is not unheard of, which means when it does happen the following does as well:

• Weather forecasters begin announcing pending snow one week before the event with gradually increasing hysteria, which means that
• Grocery stores run low on milk, bread and baby food, and completely out of beer and potato chips, and
• Schools close, usually until the following month, while
• Everybody drives like a complete jerk, except me.  (Which is what everybody else thinks too, especially the dolts who don’t understand that four-wheel drive is not particularly useful for stopping).  Finally
• 90 percent of the citizens LOVE it, while the rest grumble like pre-conversion Scrooges contemplating a Salvation Army kettle ringer

Joy regarding snow events in Richmond is especially felt by my painting friend Courtney, whose excitement about capturing a snowfall in a painting is on par with that of a Jack Russell terrier when a meatball hits the floor.  Just a couple of weeks ago, she painted a beautiful one of the Fan neighborhood before the snow stopped falling.  And through the magic of social media we were with her every minute of the process. 

So I took up the gauntlet and worked on a snow painting of my own.  Snow is a challenge, of course, being just plain white.  But it is lot of fun to paint.  And what better subject than our fire pit?  After last year, though, the idea of a snow fire is a non-starter for me.

Which is why the painting is called “No Fire Today.”

I usually adopt technology just as it becomes obsolete.  For example, several years ago I finally upgraded from a VHS tape player to a DVD player only to discover that online streaming had became the thing.  Meaning our DVD player has been used fewer than a dozen times, usually to play "A Christmas Carol" every other year.*

Hopefully, starting a website for my art will not represent the same phenomenon.  Do websites still exist? Do people use them?  Or am I supposed to Twitter this to Facebook using an Apple Watch?  Or is Facebook a thing of the past?  Who knows?  I know that Twitter is still something because politicians, at least one, famously use it to express misspellings with multiple exclamation points to factory managers and actresses.   Trying to figure out how to hashtag artworks in one hundred characters using bird sounds, however, is beyond me.  Consider me old school, but when you get right down to it a webpage is a darn friendly technology to show, and view, things which are visual.  Except to my mother and mother-in-law, both of whose ideas regarding new-fangled technology rarely involve electricity.  Still, the rest of you:  ENJOY!

I hope to present new articles - blogs - on a regular basis.  If all goes well, some will be funny.  Others informative.  None should be so long as to tax the reader, especially as some of you will be reading them on your phones (presuming, of course, that some hitherto unknown technology will not be zapping everything by osmosis directly into your brain - at least long enough for people to find the technology indispensable before it is inevitably discovered to cause deadly whim-whams in the anvil bone in the middle ear).  

Your feedback is welcome.  Even if you feel you must tweet it to the "worst artist ever!!!!  Sad!!!"

*The good one, with Alistair Sim