Astonishing Artwork

THE DREAM has re-united me with my daughter Sarah in Italy. I had not planned to return here so soon, but the currents of life and affection have brought me to Florence, and now, the Amalfi coast as I drive her and her friend to Brindisi where they will catch a ferry to Greece.

Florence is simply saturated with astonishing artwork of the past. Two major museums are the Uffizi and Accademia. I am now quite familiar with them both, and always thrill at seeing special masterpieces, such as Michelangelo’s spectacular sculpture David in the Accademia, and paintings by Bottecelli, Da Vinci, Caravaggio and others at the Uffizi. Another artist, Artemesia Gentilleschi has a tremendous painting of Judith, severing the head of Holofernes while he is in bed sleeping. The sword is just passing into the flesh and blood is squirting all over the place. She has his hair clasped in one hand and the sword firmly in the other. He has a look of horror and she is determined. In the same room always are Caravaggio paintings. One is of a snarling Medusa with writhing snakes coming out her head, and another is a relaxed partially nude Bacchus, holding up a cup of wine. Imagine all these paintings together and you have a real Italian experience.

The Amalfi coast is simply stupendous. The drama of mountains and ancient villages spilling abruptly down to the sea is scenery at its best. We have spent a night in hotel called Le Terrazze that is high up on a mountainside, overlooking the Mediterranean.

After dropping the girls off in Brindisi this evening, I will go to Bari and stay with friends for several days. Eventually, a new tooth awaits me in Florence.

I Love My Body, It Has Been So Good To Me

Written Saturday, July 5th, posted Sunday
Several years ago, after a dental checkup, my dentist, an excellent physician, told me he discovered two teeth that had slight cracks. They were next to each other in my upper right molars. He told me I should have crowns placed on both of them, and then gave me a price that I knew was high, and I backed away from the procedure. He said “it is better to have it done now than have them fracture and have to make a more expensive bridge later.” I went to another dentist who told me the teeth did not seem in danger.
Yesterday, I drove with Carol down from the mountains to have my tooth pulled out because the fracture had spread to the root and the area had become infected. As I lay in the chair and the dentist was pulling my molar out, I felt a passing sadness to lose a part of myself, even if a tooth.
Today, I have dull pain, and my tongue often goes to feel the hole left in my gum where my tooth was. I realize something else about this day. It is the anniversary of Naomi’s death, nine years ago (See the website for my book, A Heart Traced in Sand.) Whenever I have pain or discomfort, I remember her, and think that whatever happens to me is not as bad as what happened to her, and she never complained. As I pondered about her last moments, I thought about how she died. Cancer had spread over most of her body, one leg was swollen almost twice as big as the other, and she could not walk. She had lost so much weight as to be almost a skeleton, with eyes like gleaming orbs in hollow sockets. Overwhelming pain had plagued her for over a year, robbing her of rest. Her lungs slowly weakened from disease until she suffocated. Incredibly, some of her last words before she died at the age of nineteen, were, “I love my body, it has been so good to me.” Naomi practiced loving with such conviction and ardor that she overcame all negativity, and this is a lesson that I will always carry inside my heart.
I go to Florence, Italy on Wednesday, 9 July to meet Sarah. I will need to get a temporary tooth put in, so the way things are playing out, a Spanish doctor pulls my tooth out, an Italian puts a temporary in, and one from India implants a permanent false tooth. How is that for international cooperation?

Muy Tranquilo

I have once again found my way to the remote mountain village of Darrical, ( see my blog of May, 2007 ) where my friends Carol and Rolf live. Carol says that sometimes during the year, as few as 15 people reside here. It is on the opposite side of the Spanish social and cultural spectrum from Madrid: no fashions, stores, telephone lines or Internet, no commerce except goat cheese from the goat herders wife.
In big cities, all the noises tend to blend into a cacophony of clatter. Here in Darrical, I notice and appreciate every sound, such as the rooster crowing, wind blowing in the trees, birds singing, a child’s laughter, or the goats passing by with their bells jangling. These months, it becomes hot during the midday, so people stop work and take siesta. Life is “muy tranquilo,” meaning, very peaceful.
I am painting landscapes, and also, going with my camera into the many abandoned and ruined homes that dot the hillsides. I like being in the midst of the crumbling remains of houses that once contained the lives of generations of villagers, and see how time and nature paints over the hand of man.
I am getting emergency dental work done in a nearby town, and find the dentist excellent and very inexpensive compared to the USA. I have a fractured tooth that became infected and now I am on antibiotics, waiting for my next appointment, when the tooth might be pulled out, depending on what the doctor decides.
Again, my plans are shifting away from my original vision of going eastward around the world. Since arriving in Egypt, I have been circling the Mediterranean Sea, and now I will backtrack and revisit Italy. My daughter Sarah is coming with a friend to Europe, and I will meet her in Florence on July 9, then on the 12th, drive them to a port on the Adriatic where they will catch a ferry to Greece. Afterwards, I might return to Florence and live for a while. In Madrid, the streets were exciting enough that I became quite happy going out everyday for photo shoots. Now, I am envisioning a book of street photography from around the world, and so I think I will go from Italy to Berlin, Germany. I have been told it is a wonderful, artistic city. I can go there, then Paris, before going into the hot climates of Africa. In the end, THE DREAM is what matters . . . and has its own life.
Late note: Spain has just won the European Cup soccer match against Germany, and there is pandemonium in the streets!

Common Humanity

The surface of the moon became a stage when the astronauts landed there, and Madrid became my stage when I landed here. I have taken to the streets with enthusiasm and enjoyed the wide avenues, fashions, museums, street performers, vagabonds, and café life. My apartment is in the midst of it all, so I am part of the pulse. The Indian consulate issued me a visa, Nikon fixed my lens, I took a thousand photographs, made a new “three hands” painting, and visited some of the best museums in the world. The weather has been perfect, and I have not had a bad day.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum houses an art collection that originally was collected by the Thyssen-Bornemisza family for over two generations. The largest and most important part, over 800 important masterpieces, was acquired by Spain in 1993. It is one of the finest and well-organized bodies of art I have seen, and kept in a palace originally built in the 18th century, and then expanded and remodeled. The artwork spans the ages from classical to modern. A fantastic, large, Caravaggio painting, called Saint Catherine of Alexandria caught my eye in a prominent position in a smaller room. I arrived at the same time as two other admiring people, and within minutes we began talking with each other excitedly. Francesco is Italian and Deniz is from Turkey. We all understood and appreciated art and could talk about it, and fortunately for me, the other two spoke good English. Deniz happens to be an art historian living in Berlin, but she lived in Venice for two years and speaks Italian. I am an artist and know quite a lot about art, so our conversation stayed elevated. Francesco became animated and took us around to other important Italian paintings in the collection, talking all the while. The paintings themselves offered us topics and thrilled our senses. This is what art does; speaks to our common humanity in a universal language. It breaks barriers between people and offers dialogue.
Click artistic photography to see photos by Steven Boone of the streets of Madrid.

In-depth Feeling Of Spain

Fate brought me to Madrid, and I am glad. It was not my intention to come here, but I need to repair my camera lens, and also, get a visa to India, since the Indian visa I received in the USA is expired. I have a nice apartment in the heart of the city, and I like the life. Every shop imaginable is nearby, the streets are vibrant, nearby subways take people anywhere they want to go, and the museums are fantastic.
I have been working on the next “three hands” painting. It is a landscape of a house in a village setting, with three hands intruding from top and bottom.
I went to the Indian Embassy, and was told to come back Friday, June 20th to pick up my visa (if it is granted.) My lens is being repaired, and meanwhile, since I have become so addicted to street photography, I bought another lens (50mm f/1.8D Nikkor) that is proving even better for shooting people and close-ups of buildings. Every day, I go out and “get in the zone,” a kind of trance where I am not particularly aware of myself or where I am, only textures, color and light. People too, are objects that are reflecting light . . . and I use my camera liberally. I don’t feel timid, or if so, I overcome the timidity quickly in order to get candid photos and be ready for the unexpected.
So far, I have been to two great museums of art: The Prado, and the Reina Sophia. These are two anchors of Spanish culture, and great ambassadors for Spain. As an artist, I am very thankful for the opportunity to see masterpieces of the past, carefully preserved and on display for the public, housed in grand buildings that are inviting. The great giants of Spanish art are well represented: El Greco, Murrillo, Goya, Velasquez, Dali, Picasso, Miro and Tapies. And there are more collections that I have not seen!
Madrid gives me an in-depth feeling of Spain and it’s heritage that is surprising. It feels as though I could live here.

Grand Confusion

What is the difference between our dreaming and wakened consciousness? Sleep is often maligned as the poorer cousin of wakened consciousness. There are phrases that describe common attitudes about sleep, such as, “it is only a dream,” or “you were only dreaming.” But during sleep and dreaming, incredibly lucid and illuminating episodes of our lives occur and are etched into our memories. Before leaving Santa Fe to begin my solo traveling around the world, I woke one morning remembering a sentence I had heard moments before. A voice had spoken to me, saying, “The vessel he entered was a grand confusion between his world and the world outside of him.” Immediately, I knew that the words referred to my soon to come journey. The description was in the past tense, as if it had already occurred. Who was speaking and from where? The voice was other than my own, and spoken for me to hear. Some people will say that everything I dreamed was merely my own invention, but I never speak of the future in the past tense, nor do I describe life experiences so obtusely and symbolically. I believe that in sleep and dreaming, I experienced a meeting with spirits that live outside of time. They comprehend mortal life easily, and even interact with us beings here on the physical plane. Unfortunately, our minds are troubled going outside time and space, so we call this sort of experience fantasy.
How delicious and wonderful are moments when they are not isolated entities like words by themselves on a page, and when we are conscious that they belong to sentences in the grandest of all novels, and are part of a magnificent story that began beyond the limits of our consciousness and extends forever.
As the spirit foretold, I have been experiencing life as a grand confusion between my inner and outer world; a captivating journey that is very real and nonetheless I call THE DREAM.
In two days I leave Granada, and go to Madrid.

Three Hands

Granada, Spain and I have mixed together so much that our boundaries are now obscure. Textures, winding cobbled streets, sounds of clapping hands and guitar chords, imaginative tagging and gritty ambience all have overwhelmed my consciousness and senses.
Frederique has been here a week and we have explored together. Her intellect is sharp and my enthusiasm great, and we both have deep passion for art. She claims to love observing me in my process of seeing, and she notices what I miss. When we first met, she objected to being photographed, but my persistence won out. I painted her portrait, and at her suggestion, will do a series of portrait paintings with three hands.
We have seen some good flamenco shows. Frederique is quite knowledgable about this dance form, since her sister is married with a world reknowned flamenco guitarist and composer; Jean Baptiste Marino. Fortunately, Sacromonte, where my apartment is located, is also the best neighborhood for flamenco establishments. The “caves” are intimate, and the vibrant music, mixed with the twirling and stomping dancers and plaintive bold notes of singers have maximum effect.

Bloom Where You Are Planted

At times in my present nomadic existence, I wonder, who am I now that I do not have a home? The thought might come as I am standing in a shopping line, and people around me are speaking in a language I do not entirely understand, and I realize I have no one but myself to turn to, or while on a bus as it is taking me somewhere in a city half a world away from my native land. Always, the answer comes back to me; I am comfortable in my own skin, and at home wherever I am. During my crazy teen-aged years, during the hippie revolution, I remember reading a slogan that a flower child had painted on a wall, and it has stayed in my consciousness all these years: Bloom where you are planted.

The combination of Frederique’s artistic encouragement and Granada’s creative atmosphere and bravado has resulted in my reaching for a new space in my painting. I am painting closer to my heart, and not thinking of marketability. My self-portrait came out with an edge to it: blurred borders, three hands, and an intense gaze. I have made three other paintings as well, and they all are different from my normal approach when I am painting landscapes.

As usual, I am walking a great deal. Thank God for my Clark shoes, which are holding up under brutal exercise from walking the streets and exploring. I remain intrigued by the graffiti I see splashed everywhere on the walls in Granada. The textures too, are like abstract paintings. I am amassing quite a collection of photographic images. So much, that my hard drive is becoming crowded. I have to burn pictures onto DVD’s for backup and then destroy most of them from off of my computer as I go along.

Frederique is coming to visit. We have such wonderful dialogue and I welcome her presence and willingness to share moments with a nomad, living in THE DREAM.

Dig Deeper

Van Gogh, All Hung Up, oil on linen, 22 x 24 inches

Is it possible that only three months have passed in my year long odyssey? The last month has been so fantastic as to be almost unreal; beginning with my trip from Greece to Venice, the days and nights in that eloquent city and meeting Frederique, and then unexpectedly going to Provence in France, and now experiencing the bold flamenco flavors of Granada, Spain. Along the way, something great happened in France. The Foundation Vincent Van Gogh D’Arles is also a museum in Arles, devoted to artwork by famous artists who pay homage to Vincent Van Gogh, who lived his most famous years in Arles. Frederique and I visited the museum and came away impressed. I left a catalog of my Steven Boone Hang Ups for the director, and called back the next day. We had a delightful conversation and she said that yes, they would love having my painting “Van Gogh, All Hung Up,” for their collection. Soon, my artwork will be included in this world-class museum collection. Frederique agrees to be my French liaison.
I am in Granada because I was here a year ago and found I liked it. Frederique has boldly encouraged me to dig deeper in my art . . . and get my mind off the marketplace for landscapes that has influenced my painting. So now, I am doing a self portrait that is realistic, abstract, and surreal. I have determined to stay in the deeper flux of creativity as I work.
Granada is great as a backdrop. The city is old and young both, and has plenty of character. Flamenco music thrives here, and an artistic stream flows freely. Although graffitti and tagging is major nuisance in cities throughout the world, here the street art can be incredible.
My apartment is in the Sacromonte, an elevated area overlooking in a historical district. From the main road, a cobble road takes me to my door. There are two narrow levels, and veranda that has an incredible view, with the world-famous Alhambra on hilltop directly in front.

View from my patio

Intellect And Mystery

Now, when I wake in the morning, the sound of the Mediterranean Sea is present. It is directly in front of my eyes, churning outside the little breakfast room. There is almost always a fisherman perched by the shore, casting into the waves.
Frédérique is just next door in another apartment, and we wake each other in the morning with a knock on the door. I find so many surprises in her. She has told me we are opposite . . . and it is true. She is quite controlled, and lives in her intellect, while I am tactile and thrive in the realms of senses. Her opinions are frank, thoughtful and unequivocal, while I am more starry-eyed, in the land of mystery. We both share passion for art.
Fortunately, Frédérique is on holiday, so we spend all our time together. She is showing me the region of Provence in the vicinity of her home in Grande Motte. Her grasp of history is good, so I have an excellent guide as we stroll through streets in towns such as Montpellier and Nimes that began before the medieval age. Last night we went to Aigues Mortes, a small, nearby town within original fortified stone walls. We attempted to find seating at several restaurants but were turned away, even though they seemed half full. Frederique told me that France is not like in the United States, where patrons come and go all evening. A limited number of dinners are served, and a table is used once. If a table is reserved, it sits empty until the client arrives. When we found a restaurant that took us, to my astonishment, the elderly hostess was the owner, director, and also the only waitress. Frédérique explained that if there were more employees, then wages would be paid, but also an equal amount in social security taxes for the worker. 

The most memorable part of dinner was the une entrée, called “Tellimes.” They were fingernail size clams, baked in a tasty cream sauce and sprinkled with herbs. Simply put your hand in the bowl, pick one up and suck out the tender morsel of flesh. This is what the sea churns up, elaborated and made into food in the French way. Frederique said that there are over 7000 unique recipes in France. The next greatest number is Italy, with a little over 1700.

The Soul Of Venice

The soul of Venice has brought me together with Frédérique, a French doctor of letters. She teaches aesthetics in art at a university in Nimes, France. Her Italian is perfect, and she speaks enough English that we have been able to enjoy each other’s company and share observations and philosophy. She is on business but has mostly free time, and I am alone and want company. We have walked miles together, day and night, reveling in the grandness of this place that so remarkably arose from the sea, and just as remarkably is still keeping its head above water after 1500 years. Frédérique has authored a book exploring the ancient Greek principles of eros and Thanatos, or longing and death, in art. Venice is full of these feelings. The many splendid buildings and churches that dot the city are emblems of grand aspirations and have hosted countless magical moments, but there is a sadness hovering over them too. Crumbling walls, stained with time, and foundations precariously close to falling into the sea give a taste of death. It is bewitching, and for the creatively inclined, inspiring. That is why so many artists have gravitated here over the centuries.

I am mesmerized, and so far into THE DREAM that twice I have locked myself out of my apartment. It is as if I lose consciousness of borders, or arbitrary divisions such as walls, doors and locks. Possessions are meaningless. Only the unfolding DREAM and Spirit are real . . . until I reach for my house key and it is not in my pocket, then I am facing a night on the street or in a hotel.

Frédérique has invited me to visit her in Nimes. It is in the famous region of France called Provence, bordering the Mediterranean Sea. I will go, since it is on my way to Granada, Spain, where I will live for a month beginning May 14.