Still Life

Probably in the dim sooty light of those caves in France, a primitive man stared at bear skull and watched the firelight flicker and play across the white bone and suddenly knew he had to capture that image. It was after all the spirit of that bear and if he could hold on to it he could claim the powers of that great hunting beast as his own. He scooped up some ashes from the fire and mixed them with lard from the fat sizzling over the fire and with trembling hands marked out the edges of that skull on the cave walls.

Damn aren’t we lucky, no sizzling fat and if I had to do anything by firelight beyond reach for the remote the whole species would be in serious trouble. We get our colors from a tube and apply them to almost perfectly white canvas or paper. We have armatures to hang our clay on while we try to sort out just what it is we are doing, kilns to fire our pots, no weather delays while the clay waits by the dripping cliff for the rain to stop, wood cased pencils instead of charcoal snatched from the camp fire, steel tools to model the wood, stone, bone we use to hold our captured spirits, We’ve come a long way, Baby.

But the choice of things to serve as inspiration for art haven’t changed much since the cold and damp cave, we do people, landscapes, (Okay, Okay sea and skyscapes, picky, picky.), birds, animals and buildings, discarded trash and food.

The still life is one of the oldest forms of artistic study known to man. Remember we didn’t have mirrors until around 5000 BC, so the folks in those caves couldn’t see themselves unless they trekked down to the lake and that was a bit awkward trying to remember what expression you had when you got back to the cave.

So instead of starting the stone-aged Playboy the poor guy had to paint something that wasn’t on the move, because as you know woman’s work is never done. (Okay, so maybe one Cro-Magnon, talked his honey into standing around saber-tooth pelt-less, ‘cause you female lady type people are really a lot tougher than you look and going pelt-less can’t be any harder than being a cheerleader on the sidelines of a Green Bay Packer game in December in Wisconsin, but for the sake of my argument, we’ll say ya didn’t) And without a model, he turned to the left-overs from dinner.

Still life.

That’s the really great part about still life, its still. You can sketch it from one side and then change the light and do it from another angle. Change the light again and maybe you get a whole ‘nother spectrum of colors. There’s just no end to what you can do and until some busybody comes along and puts it in the fridge, you’ve got the prefect companion.

Which is why I am talking about this right now, Thanksgiving is a still life banquet just waiting for you. You remember those saber-tooth pelt wearing honeys? That’s the ones who want you to hear’em roar, well they are spending all week making things which will look just like Martha/Rachel/Paula brought them right out of the oven and if you stand still they’ll be gone in a twinkling and there’ll be nothing but people moaning and glasses of Alka-Seltzer to show for what was once an artist’s playground.

You aren’t going to let that happen are you? Not on you’re life, you are going to get out the pastels, oils, water colors and catch the baked yams right as they come from the oven, steam rising with maybe a golden turkey in the background? What about pies?

Now I know pumpkin can be a little plain before the whipped cream and there probably is one, who is on a restricted cholesterol diet, but he can have pie without the whipped cream and besides that ole saber-tooth gal has made enough pies to feed the entire Chinese ping-pong team visiting L.A for the world television premier of Pong World and they don’t eat all that much and make good pets so you can get in and get the pies before they get at’em and watch out for that dish towel!

Near miss, but in addition to looking good with or without saber-tooth they cam wield a dish towel like Zorro does a bullwhip and if you want to sit through the ball games on Friday better not make too much of a mess…

And don’t forget the camera! Take pictures, lots and lots of pictures. That way you and the saber-tooth one will stay on good terms and if you happen to wear the saber-tooth in your family, you’ll not only have something to spark your artistic impulses you’ll have a record of what that wonderful dinner looked like before the game.

Now aren’t you glad you slowed down enough to read my blog?