EPIHANIES OF A SENIOR NONCONFORMIST GARDENER

OR

APPRECIATION OF 

GARDENING AND NATURE 

THROUGH LANDSCAPING 

PAINTING PRINCIPLES

Yesterday, I refused to listen to Leo the retard next door, thinking of himself as a musician or able to play drums. Has been featured in youtube more than once               (http://youtu.be/0mEMMiQej44). 

I hit the road to visit the library of Sagrado Corazon University, enemy of the community, also featured  3/4 times here or elsewhere (http://puertorikenhadasinmostaza.blogspot.com/2011/12/universidad-sagrado-corazon.html).  Looking for books worthy of merit on horticulture, landscaping design,  without any luck, I found instead a few on landscaping painters/painting.

There is a vacuum about horticulture, landscape design, set trends, for the tropics, particularly in this side of the continent. I have to figure out or imagine what happened in Puerto Rico one hundred years ago, considering the crap created by landscape architects without our subject, aesthetics.

There are a few books with pertinent  information for those with an  interest, even a job in the field.  ONE in particular, is out of orbit, if you are gardening beyond the hole, digging, pruning and  the beauty of flowers out of context.

THE ARTISTIC ANATOMY OF TREES

Rex  Vicat   Cole

London

Seely, Service & Co. LTD 

1915

pages 18-19 

Since an artist appeals to the intelligence and to the emotions, his work can only give real pleasure to those in whom it arouses a consciousness of beauty similar to his own perception.  For this reason a picture may give intense pleasure to some, while others are unable to receive the meaning, and want of understanding, are kept to dub it a worthless performance.  The feeling for beauty in its best sense is conveyed in so many ways--by colour , by light and shade, by line, by pattern, and by technique; and any or all of these become the painter.

One or a combination of these cannot atract everyone equally, but only those whose perceptions are most keenly excited by the particular means selected.  Even to those means to which we are sensitive we can give credit, if not love, if they are well employed.

OOf the various means at the disposal of a painter, colour seems to have the greatest power of attraction. As children  we are interested by colours rather than by forms, and we retain this impulse through out life--only we temper it by a new desire for a pleasing arrangement of colours.

Our instinct for colour becomes acuter, even though we have learned to see the dignity in masses of light and shade, or to appreciate the rendering or suggestion of forms by lines. I fancy our minds are interested in form, but our nature is excited by colour.

How few people, however, really appreciate good colour!  The majority are content with any colour, so long as a picture resembles the obvious in nature or tells a tale; and for this they can even tolerate colours that are lifeless or discordant.  Colour seems so much more elusive than form.

Fine colour can only be felt, though  fine shape can be described.  Artists are conscious of very definite laws that govern good colouring, and yet colour is so subtle that the introduction of a new element upsets any scheme, and nearly every picture pressents a new colour problem.

editors note

If you change some words such as artist for gardener,

the message above still applies and is pertinent.

The book with impressive black and white illustrations, covers about 200 years of landscape painting in Europe. It is available in your favorite web site...

Finally, reading a few pages, has allowed me to accept with resignation and understanding the total indifference of most people to nature, and even more, flora and fauna. The way I see it, perception determines the existence of whatever for society or the individual.

that is that