“Horse of Different Colors”, Ronald Kok, markers, 2018
Inspired by indigenous art, following a mosaic horse I did many months ago, and an excuse to play with markers.
A Horse of Different Colors
Uprising Up North
Today I’m simply sharing a photo, a song and some lyrics.
I went to see the Sam Roberts Band at the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival last night. Sam Roberts is the kind of artist that inspires you to “kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight”, to quote another Canadian musician (Bruce Cockburn).
He chose to honor Indigenous Day by singing his song “Uprising Down Under”. Below is posted a link to that song, with lyrics.
I hope, if the darkness threatens to swallow up the light you have left, these words and music can be an encouragement, and a reminder that you are never alone.
Making Sunshine Out of Night
Making Sunshine, Ronald Kok, 2018, Acrylic on canvas
28 years seems like a long time to be with one person. But 28 years also goes by in a beat of the heart.
It is my 28th Anniversary today. On May 26, 1990 we were two young people who didn’t have a clue what was ahead, as is the case with every other couple walking to that altar and saying their “I Do’s”. Those years have sped by but they are also jammed packed with memories, many good ones, some painful ones, others that need some reflection to draw back into the mind. At present, Monique and I are in a season that can seem dark on certain days. Yet it is amazing how often light continues to peek through.
Monique is an avid gardener and fills our house all year ’round with plants and flowers. So much of who she is in my mind is green and growing, colorful and alive. So it was fitting that I give her the above painting as an anniversary gift. It is a tulip as seen from above. Those of you who know flowers know that tulips do this in the late stages of their blooming. In the traditional view of the tulip, not the best time for a photo opp. But seen from above, like the angle of this painting, there is an entirely fresh and new perspective on the beauty of this flower.
There was something so apropos about that image as related to our marriage after 28 years. It inspired a small poem that I wrote on the back of the above canvas. I share it with you here with the hope that you’ll see some beauty in your own life from a new perspective; perhaps that will help create sunshine to dispel your particular night as well.
Making Sunshine out of Night
Over time we’ve opened up
More and more to the light
As one we are displaying
A myriad of colors bright
The years extract their toll
Day-to-Day can take all our might
But you and I we’re a fire
Making sunshine out of night
– Ronald Kok, May 25, 2018
Fowl Fotos
During lunch time on the banks of the Rideau River in Ottawa in Springtime, you find out who your friends are. In my case today, my friends were fowl; waterfowl to be exact. These “friends” were of the mooching variety, of course, floating around waiting for a hand-out. But instead of taking offense at their self-serving attention, I took photos instead. Then I arted them up to share on my blog!
Here are my fotos most (water) fowl from a beautiful May day:
Just a Tulip Today
Yellow Tulip, Ronald Kok, Chalk Pastels, 2018
Just a tulip today.
That’s all I got.
But if you got a tulip a day
You got alot.
Divinity with Talons
Divinity With Talons, Ronald Kok, pen and pencil crayons, 2018
The Eagle: Symbol of courage, strength, and immortality; “the kind of the skies”; symbol of Rome; connected with Zeus, Odin and the God of the Jewish-Christian scriptures; in Gospel symbolism, the image of Jesus as God from the gospel written by John the Revelator.
A few months ago I did a commissioned work of art for someone in which an eagle-like bird was descending on a female figure drowning in abstract waters, reaching out its talons to grab her hand pushed just above the waves. At the time, I was using the eagle as a symbol of God. The image I drew from for the eagle was fascinating and I wanted to explore it further. Recently I finished the above sketch as a study for a potential mosaic I have in mind. It got me thinking of the eagle again, and the many and varied ways it could be connected with the divine. So, between sitting on a city bus for my commute and hanging out at a coffee shop soaking up some sun, I composed the following poem:
Divinity with Talons
Divinity with talons
Grace with bite
Soaring
Hunting
Among the clouds angelic
You bring pain to earth
Wings spread wide
Awe follows your flight
Swooping
Gazing
Vision piercing disguise
None can hide from you
Fierce and beautiful in One
You fly above all of us
Waiting
Enduring
Wild King of the Wild Blue
Dive into our flesh
From soil to stratified air
You lift up, up and away
Striving
Rising
Rending blood, skin and bone
Piercing hearts, minds, eyes
Your wings uphold all things
All love, all death, all life, all
Gripping
Carrying
Your aerie fouled with our mess
Earth taints Heaven, your home
Powerful, fast, truly free
Peerless majesty on the wing
Stooping
Bending
Choosing the worst on purpose
Everything becoming nothing
Divinity with talons
Grace with bite
Rising
Rising
You take us along in flight
And take our breath away
Ronald Kok, April 27-28, 2018
Silvia’s Sunflowers
Ronald Kok, “Silvia’s Sunflowers”, mixed media mosaic on board, 2018
It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, my latest artwork isn’t so much imitation as it is edification in the purest sense of the word. I took another artist’s work and built my own work on top of it, quite literally.
Over the last year I’ve stumbled upon a mosaic style that has resonated with me. Most of my mosaic creations have been done on what I call “Wal-Mart art” canvases; that is, I purchase an art print that I find at a second-hand store, something originally sold via a store like Wal-Mart or Ikea or Homesense, gesso over it and resuse it as the base for a new mosaic. The “original” print disappears and my new creation appears.
I had purchased an art print on a board at my local Value Village a few months ago. It was an interesting work of sunflowers in a vase:
I really liked the image on this print and had intended to somehow incorporate another artwork into it. However, it ended up setting around in my basement until some inspiration struck: Why not use the image as a template and build a mosaic over top? So that’s what I did.
In the process, I discovered that the artist of the original is Silvia Vassileva, a Bulgarian-born painter who has been incredibly prolific in her lifetime. I scrolled through literally thousands of art prints of hers on sale online, searching for these sunflowers. Finally, I just searched “Vassileva sunflowers” and got the image immediately. It is titled “Sunflowers in a Bronze Vase”. My title? I thought “Silvia’s Sunflowers” was appropriate, considering what I owe her in my edification of her work. If you want to see more of what Silvia Vassileva has done, check out her work on Art.com.
Below are images of the process the artwork went through to go from Siliva’s print to my mosaic:
Nearly Spring Haiku
Most likely I am guilty of slaughtering a venerable form of Japanese poetry. But I must admit to loving the simplicity, the challenge and the possibilities for humor and juxtaposition that Haiku provides.
It is Nearly Spring here in my little part of Canada, that aching time of seasonal limbo when we hover between the lingering cold and the coming green. A lot of snow has melted, yes, but certainly not all. The ground that has appeared again isn’t green but grey. The trees still look bare except if you examine them closely, then they reveal their humble bud beginnings.
These Haiku poems I share today are a form of therapy for me during Nearly Spring. I confess to eagerly awaiting True Spring with only tiny shreds of patience. These humble lines of five syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables help me cope.
Nearly Spring Haiku 2018
Spring ready to leap
But winter will not release
Its icy talons
Have you every thought
Spring sprung in February?
Poor befuddled fool
Snow post March twenty
Feels like a wet soggy slap
Across your bare cheek
Brownish greyish gunk
Never looked so beautiful
As on a thaw day
The snow blanket goes
Revealing the plows scrappings
Suburb detritus
Melted mini-lakes
Make some of the sidewalks seem
The place for canoes
Tiny buds appear
At the tree branch fingertips
Peeking at the sun
Spring surprise party
As things hidden for long months
Grin at us again
Green will soon o’er take
Winter’s ice-blue dominance
Time guarantees it
by Ronald Kok, March 24, 2018
Florence + the Bunny
A simple post from me – pen and ink drawing of Florence Welch, one of my favorite voices in the music world today. The photo I drew from comes from the little booklet in a Florence + the Machine CD on my rack. I didn’t do any pencil work on this first but jumped right in with the ink – always a challenge when you can’t erase. The bunny in her lap looks like some other kind of creature but…
That’s why it’s called sketching, I suppose.
Blasted Birch
Ronald Kok, Blasted Birch, 2018, chalk pastels on paper
Part of my week is tending to a small art studio in the day program where I work. Once in awhile, I’ll pull out a different kind of medium as a challenge. I know that it is easy to get too comfortable with one medium. You get used to it and suddenly feel that you have to cling to that all the time, almost like a security blanket. The problem with that is it can stifle new forms of expression. So I will personally use different media to keep myself fresh and will use the same approach with the artists I help guide in their creativity.
This week I pulled out the chalk pastels and encouraged a couple of my artists to use them. I showed them how cool they can be to blend and displayed some of the different effects you can get with them. Then, as they were drawing, I started doodling myself with the pastels on a piece of brown paper, blending colors and making layers. I ended up with the drawing above.
I always find it fascinating to begin with no clear end in mind. That is kind of counter intuitive to all the seminars we attend and books we read on paths to success and having a purpose-filled life, etc., etc. The concept of goals and setting out your path to achieve them has always rubbed against the grain for me. There is nothing inherently wrong with making goals, of course. But it can, at times, stifle the serendipitous.
As I drew, a stand of birch trees emerged. I was simply trying to get an impressionistic feel of a forest in late fall/early winter. But after I was done, I realized there was a melancholy feel to this, and it reminded me of photos I’ve seen from World War I, after a copse of trees has been blasted apart by artillery; or of the remains of a woods after a forest fire has marched a path of destruction. How did I get there? I’m not sure. Certainly, as I look at this drawing I can’t help but feel I’ve made something reflective of my state of mind, my perspective on my life as a whole right now. There is a part of me that feels blasted, kind of torn up and scorched. In some ways, I think I made a self-portrait here. Maybe that happens more freely when you begin with no clear end in mind.
The good news? You can blast a bunch of birch – either through war or fire or change of seasons – and it will come back. There will be green again. Buds will form, life returns, and hope appears.
That is something I need to be reminded of when I am feeling shredded, when things look grey all around me. An image like this captures a moment in time but never, ever the full picture.
Not a bad thing to keep in mind if you, like me, are not where you want to be right now.
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