The Poetry of Latvia

Spring is bursting throughout Latvia. Miles of rose bushes lining the boulevards are in full bloom, perfuming the humid air of the Baltic sea encompassing the city. Little seeds dressed in fluffy dandelion like fur are flying around almost as thick as light snow, seeking a places to pollinate. It's quiet and beautiful, and the sun is bright and soft. We've been here for a day after an exhausting train ride, and have a lot to do and see.

Ivan successfully hunted down some Latvian Literature, and managed to find some writers from the period of Latvian independence who interest him, and will begin some translations of their work. Initially, he wanted a novel to teach himself Latvian with, but he discovered a poet and playwright…we started last night reading Latvian poetry in Latvian.

After receiving no response from everyone we asked to recommend some example of classic Latvian literature; not finding anything at the big bookstore which contained mostly Russian books, and coming up empty after visiting the ethnographic museum, we felt frustrated, and a little defeated. We started walking across town to another recommended big bookstore in hopes of finding what we wanted. On the way, we noticed a small one, and although it looked almost empty went in anyway just to see if they might have a map. As we were looking around, I found a teachers aid to teaching Latvian Literature, which included a hundred names I’ve never heard of, with little explanations, dates, and brief bios on each one; and an entire room with books dedicated to Latvian Language teaching, and Latvian Literature. Everything happened to be on sale for embarrassingly low prices, (which makes me wonder, are they trying to get rid of these books b/c of the influx of Russians in the govornment now who don’t celebrate Latvian independence holidays, and rather have parades for Russian war victories down the boulevard of Latvian Freedom? Its sad and scary, and the people here are VERY concerned.) As Ivan looked through the books, he was on the verge of spontaneous combustion, and we got as many as we could carry.

The book hunting escapade began after a day at the open air ethnographic museum, a large piece of land dedicated to the preservation of artifacts and ancient structures people from this area once lived among. It consists of a series of buildings; houses, churches, barns, bath houses, and everything that would have occupied the structures from an earlier time…looms for weaving the beautiful Baltic linens and patterned wool decorated with ancient symbols once used to communicate as an early form of a written language, medicine huts-basically a sauna with an added contraption for placing medicinal herbs to steam while the sick would breath in the vapors, and an endless display of implements and tools used in daily life during a time when people respected the land, water and sky as their god and religion. Bread baking was considered a holy act, even before Christianity…and each house had a separate area or oven dedicated to the lengthy difficult work of making the many variations of Baltic Rye, which through traveling I’ve learned is sought after by all other Eastern Europeans. The early proto-Baltic tribes who are now the people of Latvia and Lithuania and what was once Prussia, were the first to establish agricultural settlements in northern Europe while most others were still nomadic, allowing them the luxury of certain things others didn’t enjoy yet. This includes a certain manner of the development of language (which early design in this area is directly tied to) pre-dating all other languages and permanent settlements in the indo-europoean family.

The difficulty in Christianizing this area led to much bloodshed. Prominent Lithuanian and Prussian families converted to Christianity in attempt to save important family lines, and were rewarded by the pope with European titles. Latvia was the last to submit to the gory troops, and was punished accordingly by invading Germans seeking titles and who built the early churches on top of ancient holy sites. There are some interesting legends regarding the last Latvian prince, recognizable by the design in his ring, and his search for his people.

I’m going to start a painting of one of the Churches near the Daugava River...

Leaving for Latvia

One of my great uncles was in school at the University in St. Petersburg when the war hit. Because of the turbulent times, he had to walk home to Latvia sneaking through the mountains and woods. He died of exhaustion after arriving at the family house.

We will be making that same trip the day after tomorrow, only by train. Through the forests of birch trees, wildflowers, lakes, coastal swamps, and then back into the Latvian woods of ancient oaks on the Baltic coast, then back into the 12^th century city of Riga. Wobbling back and forth on the train for 14 hours, viewing the landscape through the safety of a window.

Again, I feel lucky to have grown up in a time and place where the disasters of war never introduced themselves to me personally. However I am also grateful to know first hand stories from surviving family, as they can sometimes put my own self indulgent worries into perspective.

This month in St. Petersburg was plain wonderful. The architecture, the art, the music, the spectacle of performance in productions of theatre, poetry, opera, the peoples love for and pride in their legacy of cultural contributions, the sky, the light, the Neva River….I am sad to leave, and hope to come back to see the things we didn’t have time to explore this time….

Our "thank you" party for some of the people we've met took place last night. We arranged a table of hors doevres including some Russian zakustas, (little bites, I think, including things like pickles and herring, and caviar that people have a bite of after they drink a glass of vodka) and maizites in Latvian (small toasts with everything from gravlax to thinly sliced vegetables sprinkled with herbs. We also served some standard items like cheese and fruit, and enjoyed a true cultural exchange on a number of levels.

Trying to tie up this series of landscapes before leaving has been almost as hectic as shipping a new body of work for a show….Of course its not exactly the same, but knowing that I will not be able to work on these paintings again after we leave, adds a sense of frantic obligation to right now, and to figuring out and re-arranging motifs that lead the eye through the picture based on what I’d like to express so that I remember what made a particular subject interesting to me other than just the way it looked. Saying goodbye in this way slightly eases the pain of catharsis.

I hope to return and expand the series.

Honey Seeker

I found out that the old word for bear translates literally as honey seeker. This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and makes me wonder if the bears love for honey (a natural “aid“ for insomnia which I was given spoons and spoons of in the middle of the night as a child,) has anything to do with it’s ability to hibernate. I also found out that pancakes were traditionally eaten on an ancient pagan holiday in this area adopted by orthodoxy, yet originally something akin to an old version of carnival. The pancakes represented the sun because of their round shape.

Russian food consists of the expected variations on potatos, beets, pickles, cabbage and fish; piroshki stuffed with variations of different things including vegetables, which I hate to admit I like , because the Latvian version called piragi I grew up making with my Latvian grandmother contain a mixture of ground ham with seasonings and onions, never the mushroom or cabbage variations I’ve found here. The dough is also really different, the Russian version is sort of flimsy and weak, while the Latvian dough is a hearty white sour cream based dough.

And then there’s the caviar, which comes on toast or in a blini (rolled up pancake,) and which I could be happy having for lunch everyday for the rest of my life.

We tried something called kvaas, a mildly alcoholic drink made from stale rye bread, sort of like very weak beer. They make a hangover soup out of it including pickles and sausage which I haven’t been brave enough to try yet. I usually order the borcht, which so far has been made differently in every restaurant we’ve been to.

We walked to an area called “New Holland,” around midnight last night. It was constructed like a Dutch castle, with a series of canals running through it, and surrounding it. It was under construction/restoration, so we couldn’t go in and walk around. Sometimes I feel like I’m walking around Disney land, because of the huge number of buildings here built with reference to particular western European countries. The sky never got completely dark, and when it did, it was just a deep blue only slightly darker than middle value on the grey scale, with clouds still evident in the glory of their full form and not relegated to the silhouette like shapes we’re used to seeing at night.

On our way back home, we stopped in somewhere for a bit with 2 friends, and when we came out it was completely light, the sky transforming and twisting into sunrise. Again, after arriving home in the bright clear morning light, finding sleep felt counter intuitive and treacherous.

The Russian Disco

Yesterday we set out to find a series of antique shops in hopes of finding something authentic and expressive of Russia. We found out the first three didn’t exist after we arrived at their respective and defunct addresses, and, spent the rainy afternoon that prevented me from painting looking through piles of dusty European non-Russian antiques and miles of stacks of moldy canvases by Russian artists.  We explained to the hopeful sellers that we were looking for something Russian, and they all just said sadly that they were too.

On our walk back it was still raining, and evening time (although its impossible to ever know what time it is here, b/c its always light,) and ran down some stairs into what we thought would be a café to take shelter. We practically fell into a very small poorly lit room filled with short dark haired men with slicked back hair glaring up at us from tables. One jumped up and led us into another room where we could sit and order something. My first instinct was to turn around immedietly and walk back up the slippery stairs, but we were ushered into sitting down in the least relaxing atmosphere imaginable. This was a Russian disco bar. No windows, lit only by the huge disco ball turning and reflecting a series of colored spotlights and Christmas tree lights blinking in sync with the blaring Russian techno and bad American pop. If Ivan were a dog, all the hair on the back of his neck would have been standing straight up, and he would have been in I’m getting ready pounce posture.  We ordered something small, got out of there.

Continuing our walk home, we saw a store specializing in exotic honey. We went in, tasted an entire row of honey made from every imaginable flower from things that only grow a few months at certain times of year in Siberia, to ones made from more common flowers from forest grasses. I couldn’t believe how different they all were...equally delicious but in different ways and with different homeopathic properties. ...

So Ivan told me the disco bar was run by Armenians.  We went to an Armenian/Georgian restaurant a few weeks ago, and I must say the food is out of this world. It seems to be the only kind of exotic/ spicy food you can find here. It’s very different, and reminded me of a combination of Indian and Italian food, with soups almost as rich and thick as gumbo, and beautiful delicate flavors balanced with an unfamiliar peppery flare. We each had a different soup, and shared chicken in a pureed walnut sauce, and some kind of Armenian ratatoulle, both served over rice and with a huge piece of soft naan like bread filled with salty melted cheese and topped with a baked egg.

A huge amount of St. Petersburg is under construction, and the work being done is covered from street view by awnings and makeshift walls painted to look like the building when it was in peak form. We peeked through one of these, and saw that EVERY workman was a clean cut well groomed 4 foot tall asian.

I learned that many formerly Russian occupied provinces in the south and east are in the midst of crisis and the people come to areas like St. Petersburg seeking work. Many people in St. Petersburg are not happy about how many of them there are, and worry that the culture here will change as a result of the new population and the languages they speak.

A little ironic isn’t it?

 

Street Musicians

Today I set up at a table at a café to work on the Cathedral of the Spilt Blood, and enjoyed the most comfortable painting experience yet. The awning provided shade, and I could still see beyond it up to the Cathedral, because we were at the very end of the wooden porch/platform.  Ivan set up all of his papers across the table from me, and worked on the Bronze Horeseman. The street musicians across the little canal provided an interesting soundtrack for the day on accordian and violin including the toccata and fugue in d-minor over and over again. It was all very dramatic, and before we got sick of it, the choice seemed the perfect thing to go along with the story of the murdered czar and his “spilt blood” the cathedral is built on top of.

After painting, we started to hunt for souvenirs with no luck.  Everything we found for sale is either made in china, or out of our price range. The flea markets Ivan described to me that he went to 12 years ago riddled with starving people selling their family treasures for nothing are gone. We have one week left here before we begin our week in Riga, and the list of things to do before departing gets bigger everyday. Finish paintings, go shopping, plan a thank you party for the people we’ve met, go see the imperial academy of fine arts, contemporary galleries, a medieval monastary, back to the coast, hunt for books……..

Before returning home for the evening, we had to trek out to the middle of nowhere to pick up a manuscript Ivan needed. He told me that during soviet times people would get arrested for doing such things, and many of the older intellectuals still feel the need to stand in a corner in the shade in obscure areas before slyly handing over their life’s work. …We are so lucky to have the freedom to express ourselves creatively. Things are certainly far from ideal in the u.s. regarding artists and intellectuals, and the govornment’s inability to comprehend how difficult it is to survive as either in this economy…but at least we don’t have to fear fatal punishment for sharing ideas.

Culture Shock

Yesterday we saw the Vladimir cathedral. I worked on Peter-Paul fortress in the morning (beautiful sunny crisp day !! the only difficulties were the people stopping every 5 minutes and wanting to take a picture standing right in my view with their friends of me painting, ) and then walked to meet Ivan at a café. A scholar/professor who attended Ivan’s lecture, and who we’ve seen a few times since, offered to show us around a little bit, and also met us at the café after enough time for me to unwind from painting and eat and drink something.

We walked toward the Peter-Paul fortress, and across a bridge on a branch of the Neva River, called the “Little Neva.” The view from the Bridge was spectacular, the wind blowing, the sound of the water below, and the perfect sunlit sky illuminating the river going in three directions. We continued on, and stopped at the Vladimir Cathedral, an example of typically Russian architecture according to this professor. He explained with eerie calm that some of the cathedrals in St. Petersburg were modeled after much older ones built in Moscow, but that the majority of the historic Moscow architecture was destroyed in the 20^th century by the communists who chose Moscow for their headquarters. The sad irony of these “very young,” only 300 year old structures, built as partial copies in an artificially produced city (there was literally nothing here but swamp until Peter the great decided to plop down an entire community of people moved from elsewhere, and brand new buildings,) now occupying a position of reference for what much older architecture in other older cities should have is overwhelming.

I do need to say, however, that St. Petersburg fared VERY well compared to the fate of many other non-russian communist occupied communities, which were often COMPLETELY destroyed-burned to the ground, bombed beyond recognition, genocide attempted of entire cultures of people occupying these "terretories,"and project style concrete apartment buildings constructed to house the people who were not killed because they didn't pose any threat to overthrowing the new govornment and would make a good solid "work force." How could people not see the communists just wanted he opposite of what they claimed....they created slave labour of all the peoples in all the terretories they occupied, the officials reaping the rewards, destroyed not only churches but every thing they perceived as culturally signifigant to a people, including the outlawing any language other than russian. We saw a man walking down the street wearing a shirt that said "I survived the U.S.S.R." I want to find one for some for my family back home in the u.s....as well as finally read my grandfathers memoirs, which although written in Latvian and challenging for me to pick through,  offers a full account of what happened to my family while ecsaping the communist attack.

As we stood, listened, and looked up, I asked about the symbolism of the colors the Cathedrals are painted, and was secretely planning a composition. At first, I was very frustrated at all the light posts and electrical wires from the trolleys literally putting a grid like fence between me and the steeples and the sky. I paced around looking for any unobstructed view, and then remembered a passage in a book Ivan lent me when we first met…I had been trying to explain to him why I like working with natural light while painting, and he wanted me to read a description by a philospher/linguist/writer persecuted by communists description of why its beautiful. It’s the most perfect description of the function of natural light I have ever read, and could’nt believe this man wasn’t a painter. What he was doing however, was publishing scathing criticism on communism and their campaign for electric light everywhere.  So as I remembered this, staring upward, I realized that all those annoying wires actually offer a good deal of conceptual contrast visually, and actually represent what they look like….the barricading of the people from their religion.

….The Hermitage was originally pink, now its light green. It was red at one point, but nobody liked that. The churches are usually brightly painted and decorated because of the dreary weather most of the year (they only have a few months of sun, ) I asked about why so many were in tints of yellow and blue…

We kept walking, got on an underground train, went to another little island for a view of the Gulf of Finland.  This was once a place where some of the nobility had their dachas, and would go for evening walks on the paths scattered throughout. He told us Dostoevsky wrote a little story about a chance meeting between a couple that could have taken place in just this area, and that a period when many stories like this were written was called the Golden Age of Russian Literature, which followed the Silver Age of Russian Literature. We walked through beautiful undeveloped countryside on dirt paths shaded by oaks, pines and willows; looked at those pretty little fluorescent green bubbles of new growth on the tips of every tree and shrub (which I learned as a child you can eat for vitamin c,) I asked about all the flowers and plants…and finally stopped asking. They were just so interesting, all slightly similar to things I’ve seen before, but different in really unusual ways. For me, an important part of exploring a new area and culture, is walking through an untouched landscape, imagining how the people saw the world before civilization took its current form, and literally, smelling the flowers.

When we arrived at the coast there was not time for me to start a painting.  It was now 6pm  (but the sun doesn’t set till midnight, so there were still five or six hours of painting time left! ) and Ivan and the professor had a meeting to get to which somehow got lost in translation as far as my understanding of the day was concerned. Back down the path, back over the footbridge, back through the woods, back to the station with what probably was witty banter in Russian. I had no idea what they were talking about….and then finally…it got to me. There was just no way I could withstand another five hour conversation with Russian academics speaking Russian about Russian literature. So in a poof of anxiety, I said just I had to go home, and did. Ivan told me that this is culture shock setting in… and that things can start to frustrate like… not understandinganything anyone says and politely smiling and pretending to be part of the conversation...not being able to order from a menu, not being able to read the menu, being scared of the terrifying subway, potatoes, pickles, beets, coming home with caviar I thought was such a good deal and Ivan laughing and telling me its imitation caviar, being sunburned, tourists taking my picture while i'm painting with their friends standing next to me , not being able to use the european washing machine with russian letters, that electrifies me every time  I try to take wet clothes out, and which now I'm not allowed to touch or plug in, the weirdly shaped electric plugs, the light switches being 3 inches higher than I expect them to be every time I turn on a light, the itchy wool blankets, and the bolshevik mosquitos…..

Ivan returned having met a new academic contact over blinis and black tea in an apartment he said was stacked to the ceiling in piles of books and papers; and full of enthusiasm about prospective projects. We discussed the days events, he offered consolation and then faith that I will know the language better befor we come back, had a glass of wine and went to bed.

 

Looking at Pictures

My trips to the museums here have helped in translating the landscape in innumerable ways. I start painting, get frustrated, look at how one of the painters from this area did it, then try to bring aspects of what I learned looking at their pictures into my own, while looking at the same sky and terrain they looked at before me.

My Dutch grandmother took me to see the Vermeer retrospective while it was at the Mauritshuis in Holland for similar reasons. She said that we had to see it in Holland, and seeing it at any of the American museums the exhibition traveled to just wouldn’t be the same.  We stayed with my great aunt, (my grandmother’s sister,) whose house my sisters, cousins, and I had spent some summers in while growing up learning about our Dutch heritage. Our great aunt lived in the house that she, along with my grandmother and their siblings grew up in. The entrance of the house had a marble floor and a staircase decorated with a series of portraits of our ancestors dressed in finery of their day, alongside exotic breeds of dogs, and either landscapes or interiors of settings most conducive to expressing their character. The surrounding grounds consisted of an old fashioned paved stone tennis court, terraces surrounded with lavender and one encircling a fountain, a flower garden with a path for walks, and three expansive lawns perfect for cartwheels and games of chase, a segment of woods with cool soft green moss underneath, and a swimming pool with water so cold your body would go into convulsions when you dove in.

Seeing Vermeer’s complete works in person, in the noble setting of the once residence of the Prince of Holland, (now the Mairitshuis Museum,) near the landscape Vermeer painted in, moved  me in a number of ways regarding the experience of looking at pictures.

Being party to certain cultural aspects that were the same during the time the artist painted when seeing a work offers a potentially enlightened relationship concerning context for the viewer. Of course a great work of art will stand on its own, in any environment, but personally, I didn’t begin to understand Vermeer’s painting until I went to Delft and saw the sky. The clouds really do float in those articulate self-contained masses of ethereal eruption. The canals really do reflect the heavenly blue, and the city of orange brick really does offer just the perfect structural contrast. I hadn’t believed the skies could REALLY be that beautiful, yet they are. I got to sit in furniture made during the time Vermeer painted in my families house…all the dark warm walnut, (visible in the paintings,) the contrasting light freshness of sun pouring through windows (like the liquid in the milk pourer painting,) illuminating further texture and color evident in brightly patterned oriental rugs, and vases of fresh flowers everywhere. Experiencing the Enlightenment in Holland through the golden age of Dutch painting informed all my future hopes when looking at pictures.

I went back to Europe a few years later while in art school on a three month travelling scholarship to see the great art of the world. I travelled alone, and brought a painbox, doing little sketches as I moved from country to country. I had the good fortune to experience first hand the manner of looking at pictures my grandmother held dear, as well as a point of view informed by my own exploration and a lifetime of heated art talk growing up as the child of an artist.

Now, years later, I am still seeing new things, new places, and new art. Travelling is a learning experience and adventure I will always be grateful for and every time is different. This trip is informed by the great age of Russian poetry through my brilliant scholar of a husband, and I am learning more than I thought possible.

 

A Better View

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I don’t know why I still try to make plans. I should have resigned myself weeks ago to only plan on stepping out of the apartment and enjoying the day, with whatever it brings. Yesterday morning the first sunlight in three days appeared, and we had planned to go to the Gulf of Finland when the rain stopped. However, Ivan got a call from some of his colleagues, and needed to meet with them to discuss an article, so we decided to pick one of my in town painting spots and they would meet at a café nearby. After packing everything up, we left and headed down to Nevsky street, to wait ½ hour for a bus that wasn’t running that day. We started walking toward the river where the Hermitage is situated. I’m painting just on the other side of the river, viewing 1.) St. Isaacs, a little to the left of the Hermitage, and 2.) The Peter-Paul Fortress, on a little Island slightly to the right of the Hermitage.

As we walked, worried about being late, we noticed the streets were especially crowded…and then a tightly packed group of about 15 kids on roller skates flying huge Russian flags sailed by. Then, another similar group of people wielding flags, but this time on bouncing stilts, hopped by doing acrobatics complete with running front flips in the middle of the huge street, which at the next block was completely barricaded. It was the 307^th anniversary of the building of St. Petersburg, and as we continued, the streets got more and more crowded, bandstands started appearing, (two per block,) people with costumes and facepaint, hundreds of little stands selling food, and huge army tanks with police monitoring the goings on. I felt as ridiculous as a tourist planning to paint in New Orleans on Mardi Gras day wondering why the streetcars aren’t running.

So we made it across the river, I found my first spot, said goodbye to Ivan and began setting up. I took my brush out, and just as I noticed one of my towers was way too high, and was in the process of trying to correct it, the rain came. At first a drizzle, which I worked through, then stunning darkness and downpour, soaking my brushes so thoroughly with water that I could not even get the oil paint to stick to them, much less deal with the forest of water beads covering my painting. I packed up as fast as I could and went walking to a nearby park to look for a tree, which might shelter me from the rain, but with no luck. I walked drenched and frustrated to the café and met Ivan. His friends hadn’t shown up yet, as they were also held up due to the celebration. I sat in silence under the awning waiting for the rain to subside.

When it finally did, I ran across the street and marked my territory with my bottles of medium, turpentine, palatte, and two soaked and half finished paintings. I set everything up in record time, and worked for 4 hours amidst flag sellers who set up right next to me about 10 minutes after I got there.

The sky after a storm is my favorite. The heavy grey storm clouds still hovering, and small windows of light peeking through the darkness revealing distant blues and closer whites, the dramatic lighting of the architecture, almost spotlighted by the first streams of sunlight ending the storm….

YES ! This is what I saw at Museum the other day that impressed me so much about the Russian landscape paintings.  Just exactly this lighting situation….only I thought it had been exaggerated for the sake of expression, but NO ! The sky REALLY behaves that way here for prolonged periods of time, long enough to record…..

When I was finally painted out, we all walked to an academic bookstore nearby, and on the way the elder scholar offered to take us to an island he knows on the Gulf so I could paint, because the view would be better than where we had initially planned to go.

 

Three days of Russian Rain

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Its been raining relentlessly for the past three days. Russian rain is cold, prickly, and enveloped with endless gray purgatory.  Since rain makes painting on site next to impossible, we’ve been visiting museums and working at home; me correcting disorganized perspective on paintings, and Ivan working on translation with the one computer we brought. I’ve finished all my books and haven’t been able to find anything in English, so I’ve resorted to reading the weighty Pushkin biography Ivan brought which so far is not the dry punishment I anticipated.

Today we went back to Luba Kostenko’s studio to brainstorm on an exhibition for her in Boston. The four hours we spent in her penthouse skylit studio bubbled with intensity from both the conversation and surroundings. The environment completely transformed itself back into studio complete with stacks of old paintings and works in progress… the table now full of watercolours and pastels instead of vodka, herring, and sausage, but with the sunflowers I brought her for the party still on the piano, yet half wilted and drunk from the nearly empty water level.  A friend of hers from the Hermitage dropped by, and we all indulged in beautiful art talk on everything from techniques to the importance of expression in painting, works in the Hermitage, Russian art, Ivan’s in progress Pushkin translation (which both Russian women began to recite by heart in Russian), how Lolita is the worst book Nabakov ever wrote, the importance of language in beginning to understand a culture through the words they hold dear, and the degenerating state of education everywhere; including Russia, as apparently they just adopted an American based system incorporating multiple choice fill in the bubble no creative thinking allowed entrance exams which everyone hates. We discussed the works in her studio, then moved into the kitchen for strong black tea and French cheese. Her balcony gave us a view of just about every steeple I’m painting.

Luba is in a show at the museum in Pskov, an area whose monastary is famous for a particular kind of icon painting, and which has a beautiful cathedral I might like to paint. She invited us to drive there with her to see the show, spend the night, and do a painting. I hope we go.

I also really hope it stops raining soon. I have to finish my own paintings in time enough to put them dry stacked on top of one another in the suitcase before returning to Riga, and I’m hoping to go to the coast tomorrow to start a new one of the Gulf of Finland.

 

Museum of Russian Art

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The Russian Museum occupies yet another former palace, smaller and in walking distance from the Hermitage.  I was blown away by all of it, and felt tragically cheated in my art education for not having been exposed to any of it earlier. The scope and power of these works in all genres from all centuries is overwhelming, and these artists deserve places in art history next to the Rembrandts and Michealangelos in every art history book. I have never encountered figurative painting with such consistent and unique expressive quality ever. It's worth the trip to Russia just to see these works in person.

The first exhibition space displays russian icon painting from the 13th-17th centuries.  The works seem to request reverence, and beckon attention with serenely divided spaces and compositions devoted to meditation and quiet contemplation. The wooden panels illustrate bible scenes and figures surrounded with gold, little  unfamiliar foreign creatures and landscapes,  delicately rendered decorative elements and sometimes a progression of narratives all painted in a way so as not to suggest competition with space as we understand it in our reality.

I also wonder about the relationship the tradition of icon painting has with the more modern depictions of space in Russian figurative painting, and how the use of the figure in icons could have paved the way for a visually literate culture of people who appreciate painting.

The modern compositions soared with movement, turbulence, outrage, tragedy, the frozen darkness of winter, and the millions of wars russia has inflicted on neighboring countries and cultures with a haunting and stylistically unique nordic perspective. The brushwork combines the frantic expressive quality of a pollock or the abstract modelling of one of Rembrandts collars with careful David like organization.

There are so many good painters I can not list them all now, but every one is worth knowing.

I was most impressed with the Realist Period of Russian painting. Ilya Repins barefoot portrait of Tolstoy....How similar in tone to Eakins' portrait of Walt Whitman...The Barge Haulers on the Volga; his portrait of Rubenstein and Glazunov; his 80 FIGURE COMPOSITION of the ceremonial state council, which is displayed with portrait sketches from life of all the figures that would make Sargent drool with jealousy...

The dramatic light and distance and atmosphere in the landscapes of Fyodor Vasilev...The landscape studies of Isaac Levitan who never travelled to France or America but paints similarly to Corot with a little Twachtman thrown in...and was friends with Chekov and illustrated Pushkin's first complete works....

The museum also contains hundreds of what I consider museum filler; boring poorly done paintings imitative of 18th century french painting. Every museum has them, but here they are especially frustrationg because russian painting is at its best when its NOT trying to be "European". The europe envy Peter the great seems to have instilled makes finding painting that explores and celebrate what makes the area unique sometimes challenging....

 

Gypsies

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The Russian Museum was closed, so I packed up my paints and panels, and Ivan his books, and we started out to find a Cathedral he remembered on the outer edges of St' Petersburg. We had our painting clothes on, (things we got in a thrift store the day after we arrived to wear on days just like this so as not to attract attention to ourselves, ) and headed toward moscow station.

The subways here go deep into the ground, 4 or 5 stories before you get to the first train. A few feet after entering, there is a series of escalators which take you straight down the entire distance, underneath the swamp the city is built on. I get vertigo every time we use these, can't look down, and hold on for dear life despite the people running down the right side of the narrow moving stairway. The descent seems endless, and the sound bouncing around the arched stone ceilings echoes with an eerie bluntness as you finally step back on to flat ground.

We took a series of subways and then LOTS of walking around in an obviously residential very non-touristy area, and managed to find the cathedral. Another 5 steepled structure with gold points and crosses on top of each dome, and the entire thing painted in red and white stripes.  Any angle would make a superb composition, and I wanted to begin immedietly.

Ivan adamently insists that I not sit on the ground and paint, even at a park in front of a cathedral.  Because of this, picking painting spots now includes the added challenge of finding a ledge or bench to put my legless (but lighter, smaller + easier to carry ! ) box on while I paint.

After an hour or so of circling the cathedral, there was still no where appropriate (and by appropriate I mean so that I won't be mistaken for a russian prostitute) for me to set up. The next few hours we spent going into random shops and cafes asking if we could borrow a chair for me to paint in, taking a bus into a neighborhood made entirely of cement to go to a store where we were told we could buy a little folding stool, and looking for more distant views of the cathedral. All attempts unsuccesful, and we got back on the subway to find the next church which kindly had a bench for me to sit on within painting distance.

It was early evening, and after walking and lugging around my painting stuff ALL day I was not in the mood to paint anymore. Ivan similarly lugged his big heavy leatherbound Russian books, b/c he thought while I was painting he would get to work on his Gypsies translation.

We did get to see some really beautiful things not every one can find, so I felt happy but tired.  We went to a cafe, then home. I plan to do that painting, and will figure out a way to make it work.

 

Navigating the Landscape

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I hadn't painted a landscape in a year and a half before beginning this trip. The exercise is frustrating, uncomfortable, and difficult.

I usually prefer to paint in the controlled environment of a studio-a still life set up on the table at eye level perpendicular to the north facing window, with me in front of it. The only real temporal issue is finishing the painting in a few days before the fruit rots or the flowers wilt. Working from the live model is my favorite. The challenge of finding the form with paint of a living breathing subject; the transluscence of flesh, the exhausted model fighting to keep the pose; and the investigation of symbolism in a model's particular body language...so I just finished a series of figures , The Seven Deadly Sins, before we left for our trip. The show opened the day before our flight out of the U.S.  at Artist's House Gallery in Philadelphia. Now that that project is officially over, I'm concentrating on landscape while travelling.

I got my first landscape easel as a gift from my father for my 19th birthday.  I was in the height of my few years of extreme rebellion and self destructive behavior, and somehow got wrangled into a family vacation in Florida. Because my father is a painter, every trip we ever went on growing up included at least a day of preparing the paintbox for travel, and 5am treks (as children we would watch and swim or have a picnic,) with the heavy old-fashioned jullian easel with multiple canvases to set up BEFORE sunrise in order to be prepared to paint at "first light." I am not this hardcore...but my first painting with that new easel on this trip was an experience to make all other landscape experiences pale and shrink in comparison.

It just so happened to be hurricane season, and as we were driving in to Florida, there was the familiar line of slow moving bumper to bumper cars driving in the opposite direction. The radio in the car warned of an incoming storm, and an evacuation order was in place. We kept driving, and found the condominium, parked, unpacked the car, and despite requests from the guards, went right up to where we were staying disregarding their best efforts. They didn't understand...the next morning we planned to paint.

We got up the next morning and it was gently raining, the view of the surf from the window was only slightly choppy. On the way out the door, the rain started falling hard enough to soak/shrink the unprimed side of the cotton/ linen canvases we planned to work on, so we stayed in. I set up on the covered balcony opposite the sliding doors to the sitting area. The wind was blowing pretty hard, so rather than unfold the legs of the easel, I set it flat on the cement floor, and unpacked and arranged all my paints, jars of medium, and brushes, and started painting. I had brought some wooden panels (indestructable scrap wood I would find laying around the neighborhoods I used to live in) which I had gessoed both sides of, and they would be fine in the rain.

So as I was painting, the wind got stronger and stronger, the rain heavier and heavier, and began blowing sideways, directly into my open eyeballs stinging with salt. I turned around and looked through the glass door, and the expert landscape painter slid it open a crack, offered some helpful criticism, and told me to finish what I had started. So I tried. the paint would'nt stick to the panel, and water was dripping and rolling off of it. Water pooled imbetween the neatly arranged piles of paint on my palatte, chased by the strength of the wind into stripes, then splattered with a machine gun like spray of saltwater. I changed position, and seated on the cement, I put one leg on either side of the brand new easel, and held it in place with my knees. Just when I thought I might be able to withstand the situation, the metal railing flew off the balcony, my sisters screamed inside, and I was paralyzed with fear, crouching on the 11th floor balcony, trying to grasp my paintbox and the slippery wet window for dear life. They reached their arms out and pulled me in. All my brushes blew away, but I still had my new easel. My father made rum and tonics for us all, and congratulated me on breaking in my new easel.

So, although the idea of landscape makes me cringe a little bit b/c of the unpredictable elements, the annoying people that stop and want to talk every 5 minutes or take your picture painting, the 50 thousand little leaves on the trees, the 50 million little blades of grass, the constantly moving clouds blowing across the sky and not sitting still, and the shadows which move around like kinetic sculpture because of the twirl of the earth,  the practice is still a good one, because it forces you to work quickly, and to figure out ways to simplify and abstract really complicated forms in order to make a legible visual arrangement.

I am going to the Museum of Russian Art today to look at how landscape painters here in Russia dealt with this complicated architecture, the color of the air here, and the whatever else I can find out.

 

Painting St. Petersburg

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Yesterday I went back to the Bank of the Neva and walked in the opposite direction from where I was painting the Peter -Paul Fortress, and found the perfect place to paint St. Isaacs Cathedral. I set up my little paint box right on the stone wall facing the river, and sat on some kind of  utility box the perfect height for me. There was less wind than the day before, so painting was a little easier as I didn't have to actually hold my paintbox from blowing into the river.  The sun was extremely bright, and when I started the painting, I was looking directly into it. By the time I was finished blocking in the major shapes, the sun had moved to an ideal angle. I'll make sure the next session on that painting is later in the afternoon in order to avoid the blinding afterimages looking straight into the sun for two hours will cause. I worked for about three hours, and met Ivan at a cafe within sight where he was working on a translation.

Funny about these Russian cafes, we have been invited for "tea" in  both cafes and homes a number of times, and regardless of the fact that there exist myriad arrangements of teacups and shiny antique samovars, "tea" seems to mean an actual drink.

So Ivan and I had tea, and then walked back across the river to find the sculpture of the bronze horseman which Pushkin wrote about in his famous poem. The peice is by the french sculptor Falconet, whose work I noticed for the first time walking through the Hermitage.  ( two absolutely powerhouse figures-one fighting, the other layed out by an angry lion.) The gestures in both of the small figure peices in the Hermitage seem to actually move....This larger outside peice seems a little stiff in comparison. Ivan told me it was a comission from Catherine the Great-maybe Falconet was working under the stress of her deadline, and didn't have the chance to work it as he would have liked....or maybe this effect is intentional based on the narrative....I really need to read the the story, which might offer a little insight, and am waiting for Ivan to finish an English translation.

So I set up in the grass about 5:30 pm, and blocked in the structure for the bronze horseman. The sun was so strong, I could barely see, and am completely sunburned everywhere my skin was uncovered. I counted eight dead mosquitos in my jar of linseed oil.

Today it's raining, and my paintings are scattered throughout the kitchen of the apartment near the stove drying before I go back out to put on the second layer of paint.

 

The Night Train

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So St. Petersburg is VERY beautiful, but one of the most ineficient frustrating place i've ever been. In addition to being half Latvian, I am also half Dutch....and this place is definantly not ship shape, and as my grandmother's houskeeper used to say, "gets on my last nerve."

We spent 7 hours standing in line at the post office after we arrived, attempting to register. You have three days to do this, and if its not done in time, when your visa is checked at the boarder in customs leaving Russia, you can be taken off the train for questioning/searched/or deported depending on the mood of the conductor. After standing in line for the first two hours, we were told there were no forms, and had to trek across town to another post office, and wait in line again... fill them out, wait in line yet again. We got in line 5 or six times, and each time we got to the front, we were told we needed one more item that they were required to supply., (they never gave us a list stating exactly what we needed) Additionaly, Ivan had to fill out the forms three times because of ink blots (from their pens) which were unacceptable on a" Russian" form.

This whole system seems designed to make the general public feel completely powerless and out of control. By the time we were finished, Ivan had practically incited a riot against the ONE woman working there. I am SO grateful Ivan speaks Russian so well, and that they accept him... I have been keeping my mouth closed untill it's absolutely necessary to speak for fear of revealing my american-ness. So, that situation being what it was, we missed our concert that evening, and the reception following.

The train ride from Riga to Petersburg was unbeleivable. 18 hours in extreme heat (we had very warm clothes on, b/c we thought the night train leaving at 7pm would be cold-it was about 38 degrees f. in the evening in Riga. ) Yet NONE of the windows opened and the train was packed with people speaking Russian or Latvian. The stench inside the train was indescribable-the least offensive way to describe it is as something like fermented sweat. Our little section included an intersting group of people.  A british man who asked us directions in the train station, followed us b/c he couldnt speak russian or latvian, and ended up having a seat next to us; an old Latvian man with a 1940's mustache just like both of my grandfathers with  a fur lined hat who made fun of the british man the whole time, and a linguist who taught at the university in st. petersburg and who proudly offered a communist point of view during all hours of conversation.  Anyway, we made friends with everyone, b/c Ivan brought chocalate and vodka to share in case of emergency, (he said he always does this on trains, and it can get you out of practically any situation) and I made some sandwhiches on half a loaf of salsdscab maize (which we got at the store ! this is latvian bread which including the natural fermentation of a starter from buttermilk, yogurt, and rye flour, takes up to a week to make,) and shared. The latvian man was very happy, and I don't think he had anything of his own to eat. The british man opened his own tub of shrimp packed in water which he spilled all over the train, and then proceeded to eat what was left out of the container with the dirtyest fingers I've ever seen on someone claiming to be a lawyer. He also had a huge mess of hair in a ball on one side of his head which he never fixed the whole time we were on the train.

We arrived at the train station in St. Petersburg, and the woman who rented us our apartment met us there. We took the subway( a bizarre mix of imperial Russian decorative elements, jungnstijl, and russian graffiti ) to her apartment. She inherited the apartment from her grandmother, and rents it out. There is actually an old fashioned iron, made of solid iron in the closet.  It's about a 3 block  walk to the main drag, the St. Petersburg equivalent of 5th avenue-called nevsky prospect, which the hermitage is on the other end of. We are getting tons of exercise, as we're walking everywhere, and the apartment is up nine flights of stairs with no elevator.

St Petersburg is basically a swamp (I didn't know this...just like my hometown New Orleans! ) with marsh grasses and mosquitos which attack relentlessly all night. You can see them buzzing around walking through the city.

The next day we went to see the Amber Room at Catherine's Summer Palace, which holds special signifigance for me since my middle name means amber in Latvian, ( the word unpronouncable to just about anyone other than a Latvian.) The space was beeautiful, fully restored, and pulsing from the electricity amber conducts. ( Someone of greek descent told me that the word electricity actually comes from the Greek word for amber- because of its ability to generate energy.  My sisters and I sure had fun while growing up taking my grandmothers amber necklaces and rubbing them for static electricity, then watching thin cotton and paper attach themselves magically to it.)

Anyway,  the grounds of the palace were beautiful, with sculpture everywhere, and both formal and wild gardens which echoed the architectual proportions of the palace. Afterword we were invited to a dacha for a meal which could have been Latvian. We ate outside at a table, some people took saunas, and the men gathered in a group to drink all the alcohol  in the house. Meanwhile the women sat at a table drinking black tea. Ivan was sick for days, from either this experience, lyme disease from our few days in Connecticut visiting my sister on our way out of town, or a bug from the water crisis happening in Boston the week we left. He has however recoverd fully, and is back in top form ripping through the intellectualista of St. Petersburg.

 

The Language of Art

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Yesterday I painted on the Neva River-the Peter Paul Fortress where Dostoevsky was imprisoned. The day was perfect. Full sunlit blue sky, large swollen clouds, a nice cool breeze to temper the heat from the sun, and got almost chilly after an hour of standing and painting in the wind...combined with the smell of the water and  the movement of passing boats, and the bass like rythm of the words tumbling out of passersby makes painting on site the most gratifying experience of cultural interaction.

Standing on the bank of the river was pure joy compared to being on the little canal in front of the Cathedral of the Spilt Blood, painting only imbetween endless sessions of harassment from every man that walked by. Not knowing the language adds an extreme amount of anxiety to every encounter, and for me, there is no more helpless feeling than that of the complete inability to communicate. I have since decided that I will learn Russian. I am working on the alphabet (confusing ! familiar letters from our alphabet have completely different characteristics in the russian alphabet,) I am picking out letters in street and shop signs, and sounding them out like a two year old on our walks everyday. The sounds are pretty similar to Latvian, accept for a few z sound combinations which I still don't have down. The few simple phrases I can say, I have written down in Latvian letters, (b/c of similar sounds coming from different russian characters,) with the russian and english versions below. I am trying, and look forward to Ivan keeping his promise of learning Latvian in return.

After painting, I met Ivan at a cafe, scoped out painting spots for the next day, then we made our way back to the apartment via a stumbled upon art supply/used book and print shop to get ready for the Ostrovsky performance.

As I previously mentioned, I don't know Russian, and I think that watching this play in a language I don't understand, I fully realized for the first time the scope of the power of art. The acting was so good, the story so strong, that I was moved almost to tears by intermission.

I'm not very familiar with Ostrovsky, but I plan to find some english translations now, as I found out that although he's a playwrite, he's a contemporary of Tolstoy and Dosteovsky, dealing with issues of realism in literature, and as a realist painter I'm noticing idealogical relationships between russian realist literature and american realist painting. My reading list is growing exponentially every day.

Today I'm off to paint the Bronze Horseman, from Pushkin's poem...

 

A Latvian American in Russia

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Our tickets to and from the United States go in and out of Riga, so we arrived in Riga, spent one night, and got on the train for St. Petersburg the next day. We will be spending more time in Latvia with my family before returning home on the way back.

There was a certain amount of guilt in the prospect of visiting Russia as someone of Latvian descent, not to mention travel anxiety. My father was born in Latvia, and escaped with my aunt and grandparents as a young child during world war II. They were some of the few lucky Latvians that made it out of the country alive, escaping murder by the communists of all educated landowners. As a result of the communist occupation, only a third of the population in Latvia is actually Latvian. This is a tragic truth, and the reason teaching the language and culture to young children is held in such high regard as a necessity that will save the Latvian culture from extinction.

I was brought up to regard Russia and communism in the same way a Jew might regard Nazis and Germany.

I need to say now, that after being in Russia for a little over a week, that I have learned that not all Russians are/ were communist Latvian killers. Most of the Russian artists and intellectuals were similarly persecuted and/or killed for the work they were doing. Since we have been here, I have met a brillant collection of true original thinkers, artists, and scholars, and it has been eye opening.

 

The Hermitage

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Catherine the Great's vision with the Hermitage is truly one of the best things about Russia. The original collection occupied a small building named for the experience of quietly contemplating great works of art in seclusion, or hermitage, away from any distracting hustle and bustle of everyday life. I wonder what she would think about the hoards of tourists in shorts and neon running shoes, spending the amount of time it takes to snap one photo in front of each painting, and moving on. How can they not realize that seeing a work of art in person with your own eyes and mind is endlessly more gratifying than looking a t a photo of it after leaving the museum ? Why even go !!? Just by the catalogue....

My experience in front of Leonardo's Litta Madonna included waiting in a line full of flashbulbs moving toward the picture like an uncontrollable tide of fireworks. When there was finally nothing between me and the painting, I sunk desperately into the softness of the paint, the folds of drapery, the grace of the connected figures, the distant landscape, then back to the modelling of the forms--how did he do that ??? The flesh is so oppulently painted, so tender.....the shadows in the eyes of the child so deep.....where are his brush strokes-did he move from light to dark, or dark to light---is there a second light source to help illuminate certain aspects of the child ? The composition is central-yet dynamic beyond description....wait, trying to think how a byzantine painter would have treated the same thing, not as succesfully...they would have only been one or two generations befor Leonardo.....

My thoughts were interrupted by some angry american tourists YELLING that I should get out of the way, and just take a picture...for god's sake, what is she doing looking at a picture that long....trying to memorize it.....

The concept of the modern day museum benefits the public by allowing us access to certain pictures we would'nt otherwise have the oppurtunity to see....yet there are so many problems. People no longer respect art in the same way they once did. People don't know how to read images, how to look at things and take something valuble away. If art could just be brought back into elementary education as a normal part of the curriculum, many of these problems would lessen.

I've gone twice now, and still hav'nt made it to the spanish section. But at least I have three more weeks. I need to get to work on some of my own paintings....

  Ivan with Rembrandt's Scholar

 

Becoming Nocturnal

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The charm of live piano practice in the apartment next door wore thin by the 3rd night here, and now, at 7 am,  after yet another late evening absorbing the culture of Russia at functions begining at sunset, I'm practically crying for sleep.

Dusk here begins around 11pm, and the sun disapears entirely around midnight. The darkness only lasts a few hours, and from now until midsummer, the short period of rest will have diminished completely, drenching all of Russia in 24 hours of daylight, or White Nights 

From a painters perspective, the prospect of natural light available all day for working could'nt be more attractive. The light is slower to change, permitting more time for the study of light and shade, before the challenge of chasing shadows with a paint brush sets in.

This situation being what it is, I'm surprised by how few painters I've seen out working from nature. If they are set up at all, the're  on the sidewalk facing a wall painting a scene from a photograph taped to the top of an easel. I'm wondering where today's  Repins are...where to look for that singular expressive quality of russian art's screaming brush strokes.

I'm also wondering why there's not a section of Russian Art in the Hermitage....the incredibly comprehensive series of collections of the best examples of European painting,...but nothing from Russia after icons.

Also-The amount of hooplah about russian poets, composers, and musiscans....why don't they takethe same pride in the struggles and works of the painters that lived here ? 

 

The Salon Night at the Sologub House

The 19th century salon lives on in Russia. The night before last, after Ivan's lecture at the Herzen Institute (which went beautifully and included un-anticipated hour and 10 minutes of comments and questions from Russian professors and grad students,) we raced back across the Neva river in concert clothes because we thought we could make better time on foot than we would sitting in a cab in standstill rush hour traffic, to arrive late to "an evening of art and culture" at the house where Pushkin died.

We arrived sweaty and winded, feet covered in blisters, and were ushered immedietly into a beautiful 19th century  french rococco inspired room with parquet floors. The room was filled with Russians in gold or silver lame holding nearly empty glasses of champagne,tapping their feet and looking at their wrists.. Ivan's introduction on Pushkin's life went beautifully, delivered in both Russian and English so that everyone could understand. The evening progressed with live performances by an opera singer, a number of pianists, short breaks for toasts with vodka, ussian folk songs, and a recital of russian poetry by a famouse russian actor. Afterwards, we went for a drink with a professor and student had followed from the lecture, then to a going away part for some of the American musicians, then attempted to get back to the apartment. The subways  weren't running, so the grad student said he would get us a cab, and proceeded to HITCHHIKE a random old russian car driven by a middle aged bald man blaring techno music. We did make it home in record time, and I'm still in disbeleif that I didn't fly out the window with every turn.  ..Ivan and the student sat up toasting and discussing Pushkin over James Booker. I made some sandwhiches for them to help prevent the next day's impending sickness, and literally crawled into bed, leaving them to their undecipherable poetic discourse.

 

Salon night in Luba Kostenko's Studio

So, The next day, (last night) we were expected at Kostenko's studio, for another evening of piano performances, poetry readings, Singing, and Art. Again, a table of Vodka, and a hot room packed with people sitting and standing, and toasting, waiting to enjoy live performances by artists of all kinds. Luba Kostenko is a gracious hostess, talented painter, and all around beautiful creature. The artwork she had on display coordinated beautifully with the evening, as the subjectmatter of her paintings seemed devoted to concert performers. Again, we managed to not be anywhere near a bed for the two hours of night.

I am going back to the Hermitage today....in hopes of  navigating the vast collection a little less like a deer in headlights...