"Zangle Cove, Winter", Oil, 9 x 9
 
Since I started this blog I have often wondered what is there, really, to say.  The older I get, the more I seem to live in a kind of dream time where nothing is certain and no idea can say any more than what has risen to the surface of the current moment.  The exhortations about the 10 things I must do to sell my art work still seem unutterably alien to me, but I can’t say that this feeling won’t change tomorrow. 

As the days are darker and the nights longer there is some tension building that can’t just be attributed to the ridiculousness of politics and television commercials, or the fact that the Christmas lights are still to be put up and the tree is still splendidly alive at Hunter Farms, or that having the family all together next week will bring its own terrifying confusion. No, it has something to do with the earth and it reminds me of the Gabriel Faure Requiem that I first sang when I was fifteen. I didn't know what the Latin words meant, but I knew the Agnus Dei, after all the other voices and building of the musical story, was the moment that brought release, grace and forgiveness.  

So now I sit here, with “A Cezanne Sketchbook: Figure, Portraits, Landscapes and Sill Lifes” by Paul Cezanne, as my companion, listening to old tracks of Joan Baez, knowing that at least for this moment, the past, present and future are all bundled into one and nothing else matters to my cat but that he be fed.

Grace be with you this holiday season.
Kathryn
P.S.  I'm actually surrounded by no less than six books on Cezanne, and if you are looking for a gift for the artist in your life or yourself, here they are:
"Cezanne: Landscape into Art" by Pavel Machotka.  I bought this book at Cezanne's house/museum in Aix. Incredible explanations of how Cezanne constructed his landscape paintings with photos of the original sites.
"Cezanne's Composition" by Erle Loran.  Another incredibly insightful book, mainly about how Cezanne constructed space, complete with diagrams.  If you want to study composition, buy these two books.
"Cezanne the Self-Portraits" by Steven Platzman.  Beautiful color reproductions of the self-portraits and other paintings.
"Cezanne" by Cahin, Cahn, Feichenfeldt, Loyrette and Rischel.  From the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Filled with paintings, drawings, watercolors--many works that you don't ordinarily see.  A huge cataloge.
"Paul Cezanne" by Philippe Cros.  A beautiful retrospective that I've looked at, but haven't read yet. 
"A Cezanne Sketchbook: Figures, Portraits, Landscapes and Still Lifes" by Paul Cezanne.  A reproduction of one of several of Cezanne's sketchbooks. A joy to look at and glimpse of the every day obsession to study and record the world around him. "His incisive studies are the backbone of all of his paintings." -- Carl Schniewind.