Markham Street Art Gallery

The photo's on exhibit in the left margin under Markham Street Gallery are all works of Jack Vettriano, a self-taught artist. The Singing Butler, Elegy for the Dead Admiral, Lazy-Hazy days, and Dance with me to the end of Love are among my favorites. Jack Vettriano has been snubbed by the art world, although his painting were very popular. Many people believed that he wasn't a real artist and only copied his work from a guide book.
An article from the British Times Online follows:

October 04, 2005
The truth behind the Singing ButlerBy David
Lister, Scotland Correspondent

IT IS the bestselling print in Europe, more popular than Monet’s Water Lillies or
Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and
has helped to amass a multimillion-pound fortune for the man
who painted it.

But Jack Vettriano, the self-taught artist whose
stylised depictions of lovers, butlers and

girls in polkadot dresses
are reproduced on everything from cards to mouse mats,
admitted

yesterday that his most iconic
picture, The Singing Butler, was inspired by a cheap artist’s

manual.

For years the art establishment has shunned
Vettriano, triggering accusations of

snobbishness by claiming that the
former miner cannot paint, but just colours in.
To the
glee of the art elite, Vettriano’s agent has had to admit that some of his most
famous

pictures were based on pictures in a
£16.99 reference book.
Tom Hewlett, the director of the
Portland Gallery, which acts for Vettriano, did not even

attempt to deny the obvious
similarities between images in The Illustrator’s Figure

Reference Manual and Vettriano’s
paintings after a Scottish newspaper announced that it

had uncovered “Jack’s
secret”.
Mr Hewlett said: “It is widely known that Jack
is a self-taught artist and it seems

unsurprising that as, in his early
painting years he had neither time nor the money at his

disposal to work with real-life models,
that he should use a teaching manual such as this.”

He added: “Vettriano’s skill lies in his ability to create narrative paintings
with which the

viewer becomes involved.
“He is a master of generating atmosphere in his paintings
and bringing to life the characters

within them. In this way he transforms
mundane characters into extraordinary ones and

everyday scenes into special
occasions.”
The Singing Butler, the original of
which sold for nearly £750,000 at auction last year, bears

a surprising likeness to a
series of figures in The Illustrator’s Figure Reference Manual,

which cost £16.99 in 1987, the year
Vettriano took up painting.
The manual also
contains several other images, published in the Daily Record yesterday,

that bear an uncanny resemblance
to Vettriano’s paintings Dance Me To The End of Love,

Waltzers and Elegy for the Dead
Admiral.
Vettriano’s work has been bought by a
range of celebrities including the Hollywood star Jack

Nicholson, the Scottish comedian
and actor Robbie Coltrane and Sir Alex Ferguson, the

Manchester United manager.
His images are so popular that he has been dubbed
“the people’s painter”.
He started to dabble with
art after his girlfriend bought him a painting set in the 1980s and

has been studiously ignored by
the major galleries and exhibitions, even in his native

Scotland, where the Kirkcaldy Museum
and Art Gallery in Fife is the only one to own his

work.

In an interview last year Vettriano, 53, who makes about £500,000 per year
from

royalties, said of The
Singing Butler: “It was one of these paintings I ought not to have

been able to do.
“It was like I cheated. It was 1992, I was hardly
in the back door of the art world when I did

it. Now we all get fed up seeing
it.”
Richard Demarco, a fellow Scottish artist and
an honorary member of the Royal Scottish

Academy, said that it was
irrelevant whether Vettriano used the book or not.

He said: “The figures in the book are not art. He has used that useful
information to turn a

lady in a
dress into a maid, two figures dancing into two lovers. He has given them emotion.”

I hope you enjoy the photo's and look for more photo's by other artist in the future at Markham Street Gallery.

Organize '08

I am starting off the new year with some ideas about organizing and downsizing my life. The first one starts with my photo's. I have photo's everywhere. Not only that, I have undeveloped film from years past that need developing. I use to have a 35 mm SLR. I loved taking the photo, but was terrible about developing them. So this year, I am getting them all developed and getting them organized.

Yesterday I made a trip to Hobby Lobby just to look around and I ran across this bargin.

They are photo & video storage boxes. They were regularly $3.99, but were on for half price yesterday. They had several cute designs, but I like these best. I think they would look really nice on a shelf with other items neatly placed beside them. I am thinking of a celtic cross, a rustic skeleton key statue, and a couple of vintage photo's that I have. So with such cute storage boxes, who wouldn't want to get started organizing right away?

Another blast from the past...

This is a photo of Andrew and I on our wedding day, August 27, 1988!

The song, "I will Always Love You" by Taylor Dane that is playing was our wedding song. So I had to add it to my playlist.

Blast from the Past

This is a photo taken of Andrew and I over 14 years ago. It was taken by our oldest daughter, Lauren, who was all of 4 years old at the time. She has continued to love taking photo's and now that she has a nice SLR digital camera, she is starting to take photo's as a side line business.
Boy, photo technology has come a long way since this photo was taken.

New Year's Day Festivities

How did you spend New Year's Eve?

How are you spending New Year's Day?

Well we celebrated the turn of the new year in Greenland! Not physically, but in our imagination. We knew we wouldn't make it until midnight, so we decided to celebrate the new year at 9:00 with GREENLAND. So we looked up info and photo's of Greenland on the computer and used our imagination. We toasted the new year with R.W. Knudsen. We had the organic Pear and the kosher Grape. They were both quite good, chilled in chilled glasses.

After toasting the new year and viewing beautiful photo's of Greenland, Andrew and I went to bed and Lauren went to a friends house, and Megan stayed up to greet the actual new year at midnight. Noah didn't make it until 9:00 he fell asleep at about 8:00 or a little after.

Today we got up early, of course Noah is an early riser everyday. But by 6:00 we were up and going. I cooked bacon and bisquits and we ate breakfast then I started the greens and black-eyed peas. Are you eating greens and black-eyed peas today? I don't know if everyone does that on New Year's Day, but it has always been a tradition for us and I suppose most southern people. I know I saw a lot of people buying black-eyed peas at the store yesterday.

I found this interesting information at http://www.paulfite.com/2007/12/new-years-food-traditions.html

New Years Day Food Traditions

1. Eating noodles at midnight is customary at Buddhist temples in Japan.
   
2. A German/Pennsylvania Dutch tradition is to eat pork and sauerkraut
3. on New Year's day for good luck.
   
4. It is the tradition of Bosnia & Croatia (both of former Yugoslavia) to eat what is called "Sarma" or beef wrapped tightly in cabbage to bring good luck in health and wealth for the upcoming year.
   
5. It is a Cuban tradition to eat 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight.
6. The 12 grapes signify the last twelve months of the year.
   
7. German folklore says that eating herring at the stroke of midnight will bring luck for the next year. Herring Salad recipe.
   Eating pickled herring as the first bite of the New Year brings good luck to those of Polish descent.
   
8. In the southern United States, it is believed eating black eyed peas on New Year's eve will bring luck for the coming year.
   Also from the south comes the custom of eating greens such as cabbage, collard greens, mustard greens, kale or spinach to bring money.
   One more from the Southerners: eating cornbread will bring wealth.
   
9. The Southern custom of eating greens can be found in other cultures as well, although the cabbage can take many forms, such as sauerkraut or even Kimchi.
   
10. In the Philippines, it is important to have food on the table at midnight in order to insure an abundance of food in the upcoming year.
    
11. Boiled Cod is a New Year's Eve must in Denmark.
    OlieBollen a donut-like fritter is popular in Holland for New Year.
    Black-eyed peas, fish, apples, and beets are eaten for luck at the Jewish New Year's celebration (not celebrated on Jan 1).
    
12. Another tradition from the Philippines is to collect 7 different types of round fruits. The round shape of the fruits signify money and seven is believed to be a lucky number. Set on the dinner table on New Year's eve, the fruits are believed to bring prosperity and sound financial status for the coming year.

Well I have number 8 covered. We are having collards, mustards, black-eyed peas, and cornbread. Yum! Yum! So we should be lucky and wealthy this year!

Wisdom for the New Year

We will open the book.

Its pages are blank.

We are going to put words on them ourselves.

The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce

New Year!

How do you celebrate the new year? Do you go out and celebrate until after midnight? Do you have friends over and celebrate at home? What are some unique ways of sending the old year out and welcoming the new year in?

We aren't late nighters anymore. Of course our girls are. But we also get up very early in the morning, and the girls usually don't. Lauren will be going to church with her "guy" friend. I say that because when asked if they are dating, she always replies, "we are talking". How ever he bought her a pair of Coach shoes for Christmas. And although he is working in Jackson, Miss for a little while, he made a special trip home last night to stay until Tuesday morning early so they could spend New years eve together. His church is having a special New Years Eve service, so she is going with him to that and then to a friends for a get together, so that leaves Megan, Noah, Andrew and I. Megan will insist on staying up past midnight. Noah is clueless and will be asleep by 9:00 at the latest. Andrew and I have been up since before 5:00 this morning, so we will be tired.

I was looking for different ways to celebrate without staying up half the night. I was thinking maybe we could celebrate with Italy. Italy is six hours ahead of us, so that means at 6:00 our time it is midnight there. So we could have a meal and some *Christian Champagne*(see below), toast in the new year at 6:00 and pretend we are in ITALY!! Which is somewhere I would love to visit anyway.

Of course, tomorrow, we will be having the traditional Black eyed peas cooked with ham hocks and greens. I don't like cooked cabbage so we always substute with greens. I will make a pan of cornbread and we will feast on the meal of the gods, or at least Andrew and I will, maybe Noah will try it also, but the girls wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. What can I say, they don't know what is good. I grew up eating this way, not just on the new year, but every week. We had beans and peas and greens and other fresh veggies for the garden. In fact, I lived on that kind of thing. Meat was never a big thing for me until I married and Andrew wanted to eat meat. Don't get me wrong, we had meat, but I preferred veggies.

Other than that, we will probably sit around and relax and enjoy the day. We may get out for a little bit and let me take some photo's with my new camera. I am going to try to start a photo journal of the kids, taking a photo of them every day of the year. Then at the end of the year, putting them together in a book for them, entitled Noah 2008, Megan 2008, and Lauren 2008. That way they can have something to look back on in the years to come.

If you have any suggestions of how to ring in the new year or spend new years day. Please share with me, either in a comment or a link to your post where you tell about how you will spend the new couple of days.

Today's Inspiration

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. ~Ellen Goodman

My New Years Blessing for each of us

May the New Year bring each of us peace, prosperity, happiness, and love.

May we accomplish all we set out to accomplish, and become everything that we dream of becoming.

May we find contentment and fulfillment in the areas God has gifted us.

May we learn from the failures of our past, and move forward with a new determination, passion and inspiration, toward the goal of becoming the best that each of us can be.

God bless each of you!!

*Christian Champagne*

1-2 liter Ginger Ale

1- jug White Grape Juice

The mix is almost a 1:1 ratio, you can adjust it to your taste

The white grape juice offers the non-alcoholic "champaign" and the ginger ale gives it the bubbles of champagne.

100 Mile Diet

Have you seen THIS? It is so awesome! I would love to be able to do this. I am hoping to get the book this week. I heard them on a podcast (follow this link to listen) talking about it and their experience. I love the website and all the content. Check out your 100 miles.