Kurbanov "Time of Memories"

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

Here is a painting that reminds me of some one I know. I will leave it to her to figure it out and comment. Ohh… The mystery and suspense.

My pointy elbowed father (who paints with paintbrushes regardless of how long his eyebrows grow) gets very excited about things. It is perhaps possible that he only gets excited about being excited about things but I will leave that. It is enough to say that when I was growing up (I still am so says I), he would often say to me (in a way that let me know that his demeanour alone should change my ways and put me on the narrow path)that I should be excited about things. I should find something that really impressed me and embrace it and let my excitement for it rule my temperament. This excitement (with some other mysterious potion called ‘practice’) would lead to my happiness.

Well to a greater or lesser degree I did what I could considering the barriers to entry. Still I see what the old man is able to do with his excitement and I am glad for him. This painting is not by him. It is by Kurbanov and it was poached from a website sent to me by the geezer himself.

So, who do you think it is?

Todays Effort by Richard Tomkinson

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

Well, Ok , so he is not famous in Estonia, but he is still my dad. So here is the painting and the poem.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Edmund Spenser

Maroochidor Dawn

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

Maroochidor is an Australian Beach town north of Brisbane. It is close to where I asked Briana to marry me. Here, my dad captures the East Australian Sunrise.

Here is a poem:

Parcel of Rogues

Fareweel to all our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name,
Sae fam’d in martial story.
Now Sark rins over Solway sands,
An’ Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England’s province stands-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation !

What force or guile could not subdue,
Thro’ many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
For hireling traitor’s wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation !

O would, ere I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay
Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace !
But pith and power, till my last hour,
I’ll mak this declaration;
We’re bought and sold for English gold-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation !

Robert Burns

Untitled by Richard Tomkinson

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

He should probably just call it “Lighthouse”. Another oil painting by my Dad Richard Tomkinson. I really like this one. Perhaps I will steal it. I am perhaps the world’s best art thief. I walk out of my parent’s house several times a year laden with priceless canvases. I have quite the collection of my dad’s work.

Here is a poem:

Early Morning

Something that never was,
that now is
and that again will not be­­

of which I am the observer
(who will also not be)
but who observes as from an eternity
of no time
the moment now,

the salesman who made a deal,
the young woman who paid him,
the red-lipped college girls, bold, a bit shy,
the counter girls on a coffee break,
the macho men,

all milling about unconscious
of one another
unconscious of the hand of time

that makes all things vanish, all fade,
all suffer change.
And they live today as if they were forever,
when they are here only for a day.

And I observe, and I am like them
only for a day

Louis Dudek

Mona Lisa by Richard Tomkinson

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

This is a treatment of the Mona Lisa by my father Richard Tomkinson. I am not sure about the seam on the girl’s forehead. Bree says it is thus on Da Vinci’s also.

I have not yet talked to Dad about this one but I am guessing it was a project for a class or something like this. If you are reading Dad, comment and explain.

Enjoy!

DonaldFlatherPointnoPoint

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

I am a fan of the Group of Seven. Also I like Emily Carr. This artist has some of this spirit. He passed away in 1990 but Donald Flather could really capture some of the West Coast ethos. I see the possibility of calling him derrivative but I see here a little of the Japanese influence not seen in Carr and a sharper more modern treatment of the paint itself. “Point No Point”

Menorah

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

Surfing off the Awake to Dream blog, I have come across a Faith and Theology Blog. I am not a God Blog haunter usually but there were some stunning pieces of art on this blog here and here. This one is Menorah by Roger Wagner. More evocative of a modern Galgotha I cannot imagine.

Virgin Spanking the Christ Child Before Three Witnesses

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

This painting here is great. I love the take on all Madonna and Child works and the halo dingling in the corner.

The title “Virgin Spanking the Christ Child Before Three Witnesses” evokes all it is meant to and the Witness themselves lend to the reality of the scene. By Max Ernst. (I bet this one fed him for a year).

vessels

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

Reversing the chronology of the scrolled blog for a moment I present a Cultural Interlude to show case some of the work of my dad, Richard Tomkinson recently of Skagit Cty. WA.

Added to fill the space and to provide for a ‘multi -media’ experience, are poems by Marlow, T.S. Eliot and one of my favorite poems by Wilfred Owen, a soldier in WWI. Did you know British Columbia just lost its last WWI veteran? He was 101 years old. William “Duke” Procter.