He didn’t notice I had a ‘fro.

We climbed mountains and explored forests.

I am posting these pictures for my friends’ entertainment. First, I want to introduce them to the young Croatian sportsman I met when he was 27 and I was 24. Here he is with his father, Joseppi (actually Joe, but his children always called him Joseppi).

This is a diptych I’ve had in the works for a long time, but have just completed.

It’s a humorous nod to the myth of Circe and Odysseus, but featuring a modern pairing.  A traveling salesman is making calls on farms in his territory and meets a bored farm wife.

In the story of Odysseus and Circe from Homer’s Odyssey, Book IX, where first Odysseus’ men, then Odysseus himself, become guests of an island enchantress.  Beginning with the words of Eurylochos, who reports to his captain, this is Richmond Lattimore’s translation of the adventure:

“We went, O glorious Odysseus, through the growth as you told us, and found a fine house in the glen.  It was in an open place, and put together from stones, well polished.  Someone, goddess or woman, was singing inside in a clear voice as she went up and down her loom, and they called her, and spoke to her, and at once she opened the shining doors, and came out and invited them in, and all in their innocence entered, only I waited for them outside, for I suspected treachery.  Then the whole lot of them vanished away together, nor did one single one come out, though I sat and watched for a long time….

“So he spoke, and I answered again in turn and said to him:  “Eurylochos, you may stay here eating and drinking, even where you are and beside the hollow black ship; only I shall go.  For there is a strong compulsion upon me.”

So I spoke and started up from the ship and the seahore.  But as I went up through the lonely glens, and was coming near to the great house of Circe, skilled in medicines, there as I came up to the house, Hermes, of the golden staff, met me on my way, in the likeness of a young man with beard new grown, which is the most graceful time of young manhood.  He took me by the hand and spoke to me and named me, saying: “Where are you going, unhappy man, all alone, through the hilltops, ignorant of the land-lay, and your friends are here in Circe’s place, in the shape of pigs and holed up…Do you come here meaning to set them free?  I do not think you will get back yourself, but must stay here with the others.  But see, I will find you a way out of your troubles, and save you.  Here, this is a good medicine, take it, and go into Circe’s house; it will give you power against the day of trouble.  And I will tell you all the malevolent guiles of Circe.  She will make you a potion, and put drugs in the food, but she will not even so be able to enchant you, for this good medicine which I give you now will prevent her.  I will tell you the details of what to do.  As soon as Circe with her long wand strikes you, then drawing from beside your thigh your sharp sword, rush forward against Circe, as if you were raging to kill her, and she will be afraid, and invite you to go to bed with her.  Do not then resist and refuse the bed of the goddess, for so she will set free your companions, and care for you also; but bid her swear the great oath of the blessed gods, that she has no other evil hurt that she is devising against you, so she will not make you weak and unmanned, once you are naked.”

Ah, it was a dangerous world out there for Greek men in the Bronze Age.

The Traveling Salesman, 12×24, Oil on Canvas

The Farm Wife, 12×24, Oil on Canvas

Matt’s stone, a line from Spencer, reads:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

I’ve been snowed under with my other job lately, so I haven’t blogged in a while. However, I have been gathering the photographic references for the Odysseus-inspired painting I want to do. It’s been a difficult summer weather-wise, hard to get together with my models in the right lighting conditions. Now it’s late autumn. The sun is low in the southern sky, whereas the photographs I took of the pig, Elroy, were taken at the height of the summer when the sun was many more degrees towards the zenith. Either I put the project off for another season or I use my imagination to harmonize the lighting.

The painting above is a revision of the one I originally blogged on May 21. I was never happy with the whipped cream, which melted and lost its contours too quickly for me to paint accurately. I tried several times. So, because the painted garnish was so thick, I ground it down with a cuttlebone, procured from PetSmart, repainted the top of the pie and drizzled chocolate over it instead. The plate and the doily are unchanged.

Here’s a poem by A.E. Housman from A Shropshire Lad. It seems fitting for a November day.

XXXII

From far, from eve and morning

And yon twelve-winded sky,

The stuff of life to knit me

Blew hither: here am I.

Now — for a breath I tarry

Nor yet disperse apart —

Take my hand quick and tell me,

What have you in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;

How shall I help you, say;

Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters

I take my endless way.

Chocolate Macaroon Pie, Oil on canvas panel, 5×7, $110.00 USD