Spring

Spring is here; the garden is showing its brightest colors - daffodils, crocus and scilla are enjoying the sun's warming rays.  A pair of turtledoves has returned and are cooing devotedly to each other.  On my windowsill, even my amarylis has decided to blossom. . . a bit late, but all the more imposing with its deep red blooms.  It seems as though the whole world around me has suddenly woken up after the long winter.

And on the music front, the Figaro production I'm playing in Berlin has gotten off to a great start with a full house and really good reviews.  FUN!  On top of that, I'm rehearsing for a new production of "Tales of Hoffmann." Offenbach's melodies are so familiar and still so fresh;  this show will undoubtedly also be a crowdpleaser and fun to play. Relearning these old favorites is something like rereading a good book.  Even though you know the outcome of the story, you can "rediscover" the intricacies  written into the plot. There is always something new in a piece of art, whether it be music, painting or literature.

Rainer Maria Rilke has said this a bit more eloquently than I:

     Song, poem and painting are different from all else. . .
          They ARE not. 
               They BECOME something new each time [we visit them.]
    

Amarylis - a Late Showing

Fields

As I flew over Pennsylvania last weekend, I thoroughly enjoyed the view of changing landscapes - winter to spring and woods to fields to villages and cities.  From my windowseat I had a marvelous perspective of the state.  This is nature's patchwork;  an everchanging collage of colors and textures. Each single field has its own character and life - individual, but, yet related to its neighbor. Needless to say, observing this  on a fantastic (almost) spring afternoon, has inspired me again to paint.  The new ideas are still forming in my mind, so, for now I'll post two of my favorite field impressions in watercolor and ink.

Fields

My thought for today comes from Vincent vanGogh - my favorite painter of fields:

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."

Patchwork