Week 17 – Day 1 – Influences

by shellgren | Posted on April 26, 2015May 9, 2015

We went to the Tacoma Art Museum today to see an exhibit with some Georgia O’Keeffe paintings in it. The museum also has a new exhibit of America West art. Great day for art. We also stopped at an event all about letterpress and art at King’s bookstore. But today’s post is about O’Keeffe’s influence on what I do with my camera.

Tacoma Art Museum — Tacoma Art Museum. Last time we were here this area was full of multicolored glass balls.

I grabbed a quick shot of this card package of Georgia O’Keeffee’s painting. The four images on the cards reminded me of some of pictures I have taken in the past.

Georgia O'Keeffe's cards — Georgia O’Keeffe’s cards

My pictures — My pictures…

One of the exhibit rooms has a cute sculpture of a bear and an eagle. I grabbed a quick shot with a painting in the background.

There is a room near the entrance of the museum where you can play with paints and objects. I grabbed a few items and created a still life. I call it “Apple with Crayons.”

As we were walking toward the museum today I saw a few flowers that I had to get pictures of. Without thinking of the exhibit we were going to go see, I feel like I was getting into the spirit of the exhibit we were about to see.

04262015-11 One of my last pictures of the day is another older one of mine. A rose in our front yard. We have this on a 24″x30″ canvas…just waiting for an opening on the wall to go back up. There is a special movement of color in a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. I have loved her work. Perhaps some of it really has influenced what I like to capture with a camera.

White Rose at Sunset

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The Great Escarpment goes from the northeast of South Africa and swings in a wide semicircle down to the south and then back to the northwest corner of the country. It separates the high central plateau of South Africa from the coastal areas.

Wikipedia has a great image of this.

The Highveld is basically between 5,000 and 6,800 feet in elevation and is part of the central plateau in South Africa. The Lowveld is lower than about 500 meters (1,650 feet). It is basically to the east and northeast of the central plateau. And yes, if you are wondering, there is a middleveld. It is more often referred to as the Bushveld.

The Highveld is basically between 5,000 and 6,800 feet in elevation and is part of the central plateau in South Africa. The Lowveld is lower than about 500 meters (1,650 feet). It is basically to the east and northeast of the central plateau. And yes, if you are wondering, there is a middleveld. It is more often referred to as the Bushveld.

While the highveld is more like a prairie of grasses and the lowveld is grassland with scrubby brush and occasional trees, the bushveld is, amazingly, kind of between them. The bushveld is grassy lands with lots of patches of tall bushes and trees.

At least that is how I would describe them.

Daylin Paul is a fantastic photographer. A collection of his images is called Broken Land. From the October 6, 2019, Sunday Times:
“…the collection begins with aerial photographs of the seemingly legendary natural beauty of the province before Paul’s lens zooms ever closer in for a look at the realities on the ground.
“There pollution is rampant; those who are not lucky enough to find employment in the power industry are forced into dangerous subsistence mining for survival and many residents of towns and informal settlements that abut the power stations are without a proper water or electricity supply and suffer from diseases such as TB.”
Paul is quoted in the article as saying that the connection the indigenous people had to the land is broken. “Now the land is just a place where you put up a house or you dig for something.”
The article continues a bit later with this statement: “When Paul hears US President Donald Trump talking about ‘clean coal’, his experiences in Mpumalanga lead him to react with disdain and outrage because ‘there’s no such thing’.”
The whole article, and its images, was simply stunning. You can read it here, but you must be a subscriber to the paper first.
But better yet, you can see Paul’s own website to see the collection of images called Broken Land here: https://www.daylinpaul.com/broken-land

I had heard from people about the issues with the power industry in South Africa, but didn’t know how severe it was. As one person related to me, “the president has taken a lot of money from the coal power industry. The bribes were there to keep the industry free from too many regulations.” Or as one watchdog group there says, “Public procurement is particularly prone to corruption, and bribery thrives at the central government level.”

I am talking about South Africa, of course. I know nothing like that happens in the States.

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