Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears

Peter Carey's new novel, The Chemistry of Tears, is a delight. The story is filled with wonderful characters, as always. He has structured the book in a double helix twisting around a 19th century automaton. The first strand is the story of a grieving horologist, Catherine, who is a conservator at a London museum. She is given the task of restoring this extraordinary machine by her boss, who is ostensibly looking out for her well being after the death of her lover. As the story unfolds she learns how much he is directing the players, like the levers in an automaton. The second strand is the story of a 19th century father of a very ill child, who travels afar to commission the construction of this device, in hopes it will cheer his son to health. In both strands, the two protagonists encounter wildly eccentric characters who they must deal with to achieve their goals. Catherine is assigned a crazed, umm, enthusiastic, young assistant, who has ties to her boss & her former lover. Henry commissions a seemingly hallucinogenic clock maker, who launches them on a wild journey. First person chapters alternate between Catherine and the father, Henry. Catherine, while grieving, keeps us smiling with her irreverence. Henry, speaks to Catherine through a set of notebooks that he wrote on his journey, which she finds packed among the pieces of the automaton. In some chapters, the two voices are mixed together. Their goals and trials are linked over the distance of 150 years. Carey fills both stories with detail about complex automata, their construction and conservation, of course, all tied to the human beings involved. It's a lark of a fast read.

Hitchcock meets The Passenger in Denmark

I am finding that the best film making on the planet is being done in Denmark. One of my faves is director Susanne Bier, about whom I did a post recently. Today I watched an accomplished film by a less well known Danish director, Ole Bornedal. I strongly recommend his Just Another Love Story, from 2007. This is a great Hitchcockian tale & plot development: a fairly normal middle class family man goes sideways and gradually finds himself in deeper and deeper hot water. Anders Berthelsen plays this man who is unhappy with his happy life, and through some quirks of fate, assumes the identity of another man...in a big tip of the hat to Antonioni's The Passenger. In true Hitchcock style, he slowly gets more immersed in this stream of events, and loses more and more control. Likewise, the tension builds very slowly, from family dinners to white knuckle scenes. There is a plot twist towards the end that is absent in The Passenger and significantly adds  to the dramatic development. I won't say anything further, to avoid a spoiler. The bad guy is truly menacing, well played by the Danish character actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas. There is some wonderful cinematography by Dan Lausten, that supports the plot and is sometimes beautiful. Yes, you can stream a good copy on Netflix.

Where the Quantum Series Started

In January and February I was burnt out on the compositional complexity of my pieces done in 2011. So, I collapsed the elements down to something much more simple. Here are four paintings that I conceived as a set. Multiple coats of glaze give the layers of paint and images a greater sense of depth. The individual paintings were done on 8 X 8 inch panels, 1 5/8 inch deep.

New Palette for Quantum Series

Quantum Field #4, with a new palette and a different twist to the gold. 12 X 12 inch wood panel, 1 5/8 inches deep.

New Paintings Summer 2012

I started a new series of paintings using my recent elements in a new way. The backgrounds remain the same: spreadsheets, Tibetan script, Sanskrit and music. Is art autobiographical? I cover these with layers of acrylic paint which still reveal the underlying images. Small gold stripes float on top of this. They are translucent and sometimes reflective, depending on the light and your vantage point. So, these paintings are constantly changing as you move around them. What the heck, let's call them "Quantum Field". Here's Number 3, 10 X 10 inches on a wood panel, 1 5/8 inch deep. Number 1 and 2 are use a similar palette, 8X8 on panel. Number 4, in progress, has a different color scheme, stay tuned.