The Lady in the Big Hat Invites You… | First Night Design

FROM THE ARCHIVE 28th February 2013 – And I still haven’t done any more drawing!

The Lady in the Big Hat #1 Personalized Announcements by FirstNightDesign I am delighted to tell you that I have just sold one hundred invitations of  The Lady in the Big Hat. I often used to draw …

Source: The Lady in the Big Hat Invites You… | First Night Design

Take care and keep laughing!

How to paint with a jittery duck | Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo

Though Nick and I are challenged in different ways, I know exactly how satisfying it is to be able to create a picture digitally. His mother Sue explains.

When I left him, my son was gleefully painting with a duck. The duck had, in the early stages, seemed a bit jittery, but once it had its feathers smoothed, the results were quite amusing. Now, lest…

Source: How to paint with a jittery duck | Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo

First Night Design | Me, Paul Klee, and Scleroderma #WorldSclerodermaDay

It’s World Scleroderma Day so another outing for this post to spread awareness of this little-known auto-immune condition that affects me.

It’s a very strange feeling when you discover that an artist you admire had the same disabling illness as you have, especially when it’s relatively rare, not to mention impossible to de…

Source: First Night Design | Me, Paul Klee, and Scleroderma

First Night Design | Me, Paul Klee, and Scleroderma

Originally posted on First Night Design.

It’s a very strange feeling when you discover that an artist you admire had the same disabling illness as you have, especially when it’s relatively rare, not to mention impossible to describe succinctly. Paul Klee — though it wasn’t diagnosed until ten years after his death in 1940 — had Scleroderma, an autoimmune condition that can be utterly debilitating. I have wanted to write about Scleroderma and its affect on my life and work for some time but I never thought I would be doing so with reference to Paul Klee!

In essence, Scleroderma in all its forms is a chronic circulatory and connective tissue disorder in which the body’s defences attack its own organs and tissues. The Raynaud’s & Scleroderma Association website describes it thus:

‘Scleroderma is an uncommon disease of the immune system, blood vessels and connective tissue. In this condition the skin, usually…

via First Night Design | Me, Paul Klee, and Scleroderma | First Night Design.

First Night Design | Frida Kahlo | ‘I used to think I was the strangest person…’

Originally posted on Synkroniciti

The Two Fridas, Frida Kahlo, 1939

‘I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.’

―Frida Kahlo

See original: Quote for Today: Frida Kahlo

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Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | Me, Paul Klee, and Scleroderma

Hairdryer in Marc’s Garden by Paul Klee (1915) © First Night VintageAvailable on Greeting Cards, Postcards, Prints, Stamps & Wrapped Canvas

It’s a very strange feeling when you discover that an artist you admire had the same disabling illness as you have, especially when it’s relatively rare, not to mention impossible to describe succinctly. Paul Klee — though it wasn’t diagnosed until ten years after his death in 1940 — had Scleroderma, an autoimmune condition that can be utterly debilitating. I have wanted to write about Scleroderma and its affect on my life and work for some time but I never thought I would be doing so with reference to Paul Klee!

Paul Klee in 1911, photographed by Alexander Eliasberg

In essence, Scleroderma in all its forms is a chronic circulatory and connective tissue disorder in which the body’s defences attack its own organs and tissues. The Raynaud’s & Scleroderma Association website describes it thus:

‘Scleroderma is an uncommon disease of the immune system, blood vessels and connective tissue. In this condition the skin, usually of the hands and feet, becomes stiff, tight and shiny. As a result of changes in these three areas, the body produces too much collagen. Collagen, which is the major protein of the connective tissue, binds the body together and is found in the skin, blood vessels, joints and internal organs, such as the kidneys, heart, lungs and bowel. There are several types of collagen and different forms are found in different parts of the body. They are produced by cells called fibroblasts. When fibroblasts produce too much collagen it results in fibrosis, i.e. thickening.

In addition to affecting the fingers, the fibrosis may spread to other areas and organs of the body. The arms, face, trunk and legs may be involved and movement of the limbs may become limited.’

Paul Klee as a soldier in 1916

Paul Klee was born into a musical family in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, in 1879. His talents were such that he could easily have pursued music instead of art but he found the musical milieu at that time ‘restrictive’ and was increasingly drawn to the world of art, even though his parents wanted him to follow a musical path. “I didn’t find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement.” (Wikipedia) He was a leading force in most of the prevailing movements such as Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism, as is clear from even a cursory look at his work. He created a vast array of watercolours, etchings and paintings during his life.

Flower Myth 1918

I’d like to take up his story from 1931. Having taught at the Bauhaus for ten years he went on to teach at the Düsseldorf Academy. But everything came to an end in 1933 when a newspaper denounced him: ‘Then that great fellow Klee comes onto the scene, already famed as a Bauhaus teacher in Dessau. He tells everyone he’s a thoroughbred Arab, but he’s a typical Galician Jew.’ Wikipedia

His home was ransacked by the Gestapo and he was fired by the Düsseldorf Academy. He and his family fled to Germany the same year and returned to Bern in Switzerland.

Red balloon 1922

While Paul Klee coped with the rarest and most severe form of Scleroderma, ‘diffuse systemic sclerosis (dss)’, I have ‘limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis’ (lcSSc). At the age of fourteen, I was diagnosed with the circulatory condition Raynaud’s Phenomenon, which in rare cases can be an indicator of a propensity to develop the far more complicated Scleroderma, as it was in my case. At twenty-one, soon after I had left drama school, the thrilling diagnosis was amended to C.R.E.S.T. Syndrome, as lcSSc was then known. Many of the symptoms are common to all forms.

Klee’s illness first became apparent — persistent bronchial catarrh — in 1935. He was constantly tired and that is one of the less painful things I have to contend with; a lack of energy has a serious affect on one’s life, especially if you’re in your twenties or thirties and expected to be as bright as a button. This is not so marked now that I’m in my late fifties!

Tale à la Hoffmann 1921

Changes to the Klee’s skin and underlying tissue all over the body followed. Where he and I differ is that his hands were apparently unaffected. He had no problem painting and drawing. I, on the other hand (no pun intended!) have major problems with my fingers, which have become curled and distorted so that while I have always been able to touch-type, I can now only use two fingers on my left hand, three on my right, and my thumbs. This varies depending on swelling and infection, as well as the time of year.

Ad Parnassum 1932

Whatever else Klee might have endured previously, living in Germany in the late 1920s and early ’30s would have been terrifying and shows just how the body can be adversely affected. I have decades of experience to show the direct correlation between life events, my reactions to them, not to mention the cruel reactions of others, and the consequent changes to my entire body. In other words, both physical and emotional pressure exacerbates all types of Scleroderma.

Paul Klee and His Illness: Bowed But Not Broken by Suffering and Adversity
by Hans Suter

In the introduction to his book (above) about Paul Klee and Scleroderma, Hans Suter writes:

‘This star teaches bending’ is the telling title of a work on paper which Paul Klee completed in the year of his death. This brilliant artist lived the last few years of his life in Bern, but they were years which were overshadowed by a dark star. In 1935 Klee suffered a variety of setbacks and became seriously ill. Although he never recovered from this illness, he always maintained his love of life, facing his suffering with a trenchant ‘so what?’ But by 1940 he had to accept that there was no hope of a cure or any improvement in his health. The star had taught him to bend to the blows of fate.’

Klee’s grandson, Alexander Klee, who is now patron of The World Scleroderma Foundation, has this to say in the preface to Suter‘s book:

‘His later work, which was not only influenced by his illness, but which was done in defiance of that illness, is surely one of the most brilliant demonstrations of how suffering and sadness can be overcome through art and imagery, and in which, despite everything, irony can still shine through.’

Untitled 1940

The World Scleroderma Foundation writes:

‘Although human suffering is universal, not all of us are gifted with the creative talent to express such emotions; we are therefore grateful to Hans Suter for this splendid book in which we share this anguish through the eyes of a creative genius, Paul Klee. In one of his last pictures, ‘Tod und Feuer’ (Death and fire), one sees the tight, ashen face of the scleroderma sufferer facing his imminent demise.’

Death and Fire 1940

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‘If only the enigma of death were not so ambiguous! No less so is the enigma of life, for one has to wonder what beauty and splendour can be found in the torments of recent times.’ Paul Klee, 1938

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Related

• • Raynaud’s & Scleroderma Association

• World Scleroderma Foundation

Take care and keep laughing!

French Impressionist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir ~ Short Film in Studio

Originally posted on Country Woman Paints 

Auguste Renoir

I discover so many fascinating things from the bloggers I follow in my reader. And from the ones they link to. Blogger “oawritingspoemspaintings” (a new blog to follow!) shared short films of the artists Renoir, Monet and Rodin, live in their studios, that were amazing. I plan to post each of them, beginning with Renoir. He is my favorite artist of the three and I’ve now watched it a dozen times.

French impressionist painter Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) painted despite partial paralysis and cruel rheumatoid arthritis until the end of his life. Painting with his brushes taped to his crippled hand, especially moves me.  To the end of his life, Renoir’s  three sons helped their ill father, who was wheelchair-bound later in life. His children often helped him in his painting, posing for him from the time they were small and later as he grew more disabled, binding his brush to his arthritic hand and with his paints, brushes and palette. Renoir’s wife passed away a few years before his death.

From an NPR interview linked here:

“Renoir had crippling rheumatoid arthritis — at the LACMA exhibit {Los Angeles County Museum of Art}, there’s a flickering black and white film that shows Renoir painting in 1915, despite his…

via French Impressionist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir ~ Short Film in Studio.

Disability and Creativity: Alexander Pope

A R T L▼R K

On the 21st of May 1688, English poet Alexander Pope was born in London, England. At twelve, Pope composed his earliest extant work, Ode to Solitude; the same year saw the onset of the debilitating bone deformity that would plague Pope until the end of his life. Originally attributed to the severity of his studies, the illness is now commonly accepted as Pott’s disease, a form of tuberculosis affecting the spine that stunted his growth—Pope’s height never exceeded four and a half feet—and rendered him hunchbacked, asthmatic, frail, and prone to violent headaches. His physical appearance would make him an easy target for his many literary enemies in later years, who would refer to the poet as a “hump-backed toad.” 

In The Life of Pope (1781), Samuel Johnson vividly described Pope’s ailments. “Dr. Johnson provides a poignant account of Pope’s efforts to make himself presentable in company. “His…

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SCOPE Art Show’s Year in Review: Voting Fingers at the Ready!

Time to get your voting fingers polished! I have entered the #SCOPE Art Show’s Year in Review.  Any and all votes gratefully received.

Dancing in Greek © First Night Design

What your votes could bring me:

• A trip around the world or a $2,500 cash grant
• An ‘exclusive feature’ on the See.Me blog
• A ‘gorgeous’ online portfolio
• A package of  ‘exclusive gifts and discounts’ from their sponsors ($75 value)

This is not to mention that the Early Entry Award  comes into play since all artists who enter their work by Friday, 29 November, 2013 at 11:59pm EST will be considered for this, which includes:

• $1,000 cash grant
• An online feature published by See.Me
• Printed feature in the SCOPE catalog

So what do we get in return, I hear you ask.

• The pleasure of selflessly supporting a starving, disabled artist!

My portfolio can be viewed and voted on by See.Me members and members of the public. That is where you come in…!

Click here to vote.

Bless you!

Dancing in Greek is available to buy at the following galleries:
RedBubble
Fine Art America
Saatchi Online
Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

Related articles

• How to Promote your Paintings (awapara.wordpress.com)

The Lady in the Big Hat Invites You…

The Lady in the Big Hat #1 Personalized Announcements by FirstNightDesign

I am delighted to tell you that I have just sold one hundred invitations of  The Lady in the Big Hat.

I often used to draw but over the years, it had became increasingly difficult  because of the way  Limited Cutaneous Systemic Sclerosis (LcSSc) affects dexterity.  I’m certainly not suggesting I was an extraordinarily talented illustrator but I could get by and I enjoyed it enormously.

A couple of years ago I discovered LiveBrush software from Adobe and realised I could start drawing once more and without the associated pain.  I was over the moon.  The problem is that my first attempt was The Lady in the Big Hat and it felt like an utter fluke, that I would never be able to create anything comparable.

I have let this stupid lack of confidence stop me in my tracks when I should simply dismiss it with a snap of the fingers – a painful activity! — and just keep ‘doing’ it, keep drawing, no matter what.

Saying is one thing and doing it another.  But this weekend I’m going to give myself a good talking to, lift up my LiveBrush ‘pen’ or ‘pencil’ and go for it.  Life is too short.  Carpe Diem!

Here’s wishing you all a joyous and productive March.

Take care and keep laughing!

 

*February is Raynaud’s Awareness Month

Related articles

• LiveBrush
• Raynaud’s & Scleroderma Association (RSA)
• RSA on Facebook
• RSA on Twitter
• Autoimmune Skin Disorders