Please Have a Merry Christmas

Enjoy this season. The song O Holy Night, written by the French Maestro, Adolphe Adam, celebrates with proper glory the birth of Christ, The Savior. I wasn't moved to post a video with 2 old guys in tuxedos, but the children's choir was just the right touch. Well, I really do enjoy Pavarotti's pipes - he's a singer's singer, to my layman's mind. 

Best Wishes this holiday season, and Merry Christmas. 

Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo - O Holy Night / Cantique De Noel (Christmas-Vienna 1999).

Merry Christmas

In the Bleak Midwinter

These Cello Advent dailies you may follow on your own at You Tube, from Kjell Magne Robak, who is a Norwegian Cellist. I post this one because it's traditional here at The Colorist to post In the Bleak Midwinter at Christmastime.

Enjoy.

Merry Christmas (Cello)

Carols

It seems appropriate this year to post a long Christmas service. Blessings to you, kind reader.

Merry Christmas!

Best Wishes!

Merry Christmas. 2014.

Beato Angelico, Madonna of Humility, (1425).

 173 x 72 cm

Tempera painting on wood and gold leaf application

National Museum of St. Matthew, Pisa

Christmas Nativity

The Adoration of the Kings, 1564

43.7" x 32.68"

Oil on Board

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Click on the image to open full size.

Children's Games

Children's Games, 1560

46.5" × 63.4"

Oil on Panel

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Boy Drummer

OOO

White Christmas!

I get nostalgic, here.  It's snowing today.

We love Christmas movies at my house, and the wartime and post war movie White Christmas is no exception.  As a matter of fact, it's one of my favorites.  Those who know me best, know I have a soft spot in my heart for WW II G.I.s and everyone from that generation.  My father's army division, the TenthMountain Division, returned home and founded the American ski industry almost from scratch.  Rope tow and T-Bar hills became ski lift-served resorts.  Those were the salad days for the ski industry, but it came on the heels of K ration days at the battlefront.

You see the parallel to my father's experiences in the movie White Christmas.  It is a vehicle, really, for Bing Crosby's wartime hit song by the same name.  I read this year about how Bing was visiting a UK airbase during the war, but was too emotional to go on stage after witnessing the bombing deaths of children.  You think he was an elite Hollywood star, but he saw some things.  The movie is sappy to some, but there was a reason for spreading some peace and harmony for my parent's cohort.  

Plus, my dad was overseas at Christmas in 1944.  Reason enough to remember the season and to cherish the good times we live in now.  If you dig the Olive Drab version, like me, these first 2 short videos have that.  I added the glorious version from the end of the movie, because that's the way the old timers wanted to experience it.  The clip dialogue is dubbed auf Deutsch, and the song remains as recorded - it is wonderful to watch at high resolution.

O Holy Night

Boston MFA
THE LOFT SESSIONS

Little Town

The Census at Bethlehem, 1566

Peter Bruegel The Elder, 152?-1569

Color on Panel

Link

This post was first published in 2011.

Contemporary Christmas Chorale

***

We stood on the hills, Lady,

Our day’s work done,

Watching the frosted meadows

That winter had won.

The evening was calm, Lady, 

The air so still, 

Silence more lovely than music 

Folded the hill.

There was a star, Lady,

Shone in the night,

Larger than Venus it was

And bright, so bright.

Oh, a voice from the sky, Lady,

It seemed to us then

Telling of God being born

In the world of men.

And so we have come, Lady,

Our day’s work done,

Our love, our hopes, ourselves,

We give to your Son.

Bob Chilcott.

Goes Like This: Ho Ho Ho!

OOO

Make It New

OOO

Yes, It Is The Bleak Midwinter, Now That You Mention It

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In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; 

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, 

In the bleak midwinter, long ago. 

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign. 

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed 

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ. 

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay; 

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before, 

The ox and ass and camel which adore. 

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air; 

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss, 

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss. 

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; 

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; 

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart. 

Verses: Rossetti; Music: Cranham, Holst.

As Dewe in Aprille

I Sing of a Maiden

Studio News, Ruth Andre, Videos, and Merry Christmas!

This Christmas card to you was waiting for the right day to post, and today is it.  Merry Christmas and happy holidays to my readers!   

A holiday greeting: Christmas colors of my barn's interior.  Appropriate for the birth of the Savior, who was placed in the crib, or the trough where the animals fed.

I've been meaning to make another painting of the barn interior, but artist Ruth Andre, of Sutter Creek, California, beat me to it.  It will influence me next time, no doubt, as I am amazed at the accuracy of feeling, texture and effect she achieves. Thanks for doing this strong abstract, Ruth!

Casey's Barn 

6" x 6"

oil on canvas 

Ruth Andre

Many new artworks have been posted here over the past month, and since we took those photos, I have been in the studio daily creating more works of all sizes.  In other studio news, I have been fielding lots of workshop requests, and will be forced to do some administrative work to sort all of the paperwork out, and will be planning for these.  

The subject of Elements of Art has been the hot topic at my other blog, Pastel Workshop.  I haven't finished all of the posts, yet, but did post When Artists Unify this past week.  Thanks to my readers for the nice reception of this article, and since the series has been so well received  I am thinking about making it into a book.  It will be available in ebook form (if I can crack the code on that task) and I am looking around for the right publishing choice for the proposed hard copy.  What do you suggest?

The following video is my list of the elements of art and the dynamics of design.  In more studio news, there is an interview or studio session video in the plans for me at a professional film studio.  More on that as events progress.

I also found this following longer version of Matisse in his studio, filmed in 1946.  He lived near Nice, and it was the Hollywood of France.  His models were typically actresses and extras from that industry, and so the production of this film short was inevitable.  I wish it were longer.

A Painting Day, Ruth Andre.
Matisse film from Christie's.

Christmas Card