St Therese of Lisieux at the Tea For Priests

It was my honor to dontate one of the Artist's Proofs of my portrait of St Therese of Lisieux at a silent auction at today's Tea For Priests to support the Notre Dame Seminary of New Orleans. 

If you have read my previous blog you will know that St Therese is one of my favorite saints.  Her teachings of "The Little Way" have been inspirational to so many, her secrets of how to achieve a better and more spiritual life.  I pictured St Therese scattering the roses from heaven which she does to bring the graces of God to the world.

St Therese - The Little Flower of Jesus

I have nearly finished my painting of St Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus. 

Why did I choose to paint her?  Because reading her biography "The Story of a Soul" so inspired me with her wonderful vision of her life after death and her holy concept of "The Little Way" that I couldn't rest or think of anything else until I could put on canvas the picture that she put in my mind.

St Therese has made sense of so many things about my life that have puzzled me and helped me to understand why I have been blessed with the constant desire to paint the little things of this beautiful world so I can share my love for them with others.

Two of my favorite things that St Therese said are "after death I will let fall a shower of roses" and "I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth".

Thoughts From the Studio

In the evenings I spend a lot of time reading my favorite books about the Old Masters' painting techniques.  There are so many ways you can get wonderful effects quickly and easily - if you know how.  But when you read of the struggle they all had trying out different oils - sometimes with disastrous results, trying to find the perfect medium, the perfect varnish, I can only say "Thank you Winsor and Newton!" for giving me such a wonderful selection of trustworthy products... Van Dyke would have loved you!

A Jackdaw Called Corky

Why do we have such especial love for birds?

We love their brightness and bravery, the way they look after their babies; we are enchanted by watching young birds learning to fly.

As we sit in our warm houses in the winter we feel so sorry for these little creatures huddling in bushes, many of them bound to starve if we don't feed them.

I have loved birds all my life.  Living in the country we were surrounded by birdsong and, very early on, my mother taught me to recognize their calls.

We watched the flocks of rooks returning to their rookery in the tall elm trees every evening at sunset; we hung peanuts and coconut halves in the lilac tree for the blue tits, we listened every spring for the first cuckoo returning from Africa and, in the fields, we stopped to listen to the nightingale's beautiful song.

One spring we had an extraordinary experience... we heard desperate bird calls in the garden and, running out, we found a young jackdaw, too young to feed itself or fly properly, standing on the grass and calling out to be fed.  We quickly fetched some softened bread and popped it in his mouth - he became part of our family from that moment on.

As he learned to fly better, he slept in the cherry tree and flew into my mother's bedroom every morning when she opened the window.

He followed me around the house flapping gently alongside me.  He sat on my shoulder when I was painting, he liked to peck my paintbrushes.

Sometimes we would find things were missing - little shiny objects like small silver spoons and earrings.  One day I followed him and found him hiding them in a dressing table drawer in the spare bedroom!

His name was Corky and he stayed with us all the summer until he was strong enough to fly with the rooks.

I was very sad when he left us... I used to call to the rooks and sometimes he would leave them and dive down to land on my shoulder to say hello before flying back to join them again.

I shall never forget him...

Greek Myths and Golden Goddesses...

Did you read "Tanglewood Tales"  by the American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, when you were a child?

I was obsessed with this book of Greek Myths, especially the terrifying picture of the chimera, that dreadful 3-headed monster, attacking Bellerophon on his winged horse, Pegasus.  And the picture of Odysseus with his magic flower which protected him so Circe couldn't change him into an animal.  All these stories sunk into my soul just like the fairy tales we learn when we are little.

Later, as an adult, as well as painting, I studied sculpture, architecture and ancient pottery.  All this was Greek and Roman, of course, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I had an inspirational experience and all the stories really came alive to me!

The British Museum in London put on a very important exhibition of Greek gold jewelry from the Classical Period, 2500 year ago.  There were 200 pieces of these marvellous treasures on show from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British Museum.  The first time they had ever been shown altogether like this.

I went to it expecting it to be interesting... I left absolutely stunned!
It was so beautiful... so fresh... so exquisite.
Before my eyes my goddesses came to life!
I couldn't wait to paint them in their jewelry, their diadems, their earrings, their armbands, with bracelets, necklaces and rings.  I use lots of 22 carat gold leaf in these paintings and I embellish many of the giclees with gold leaf too.

So I started with Artemis the Goddess of Hunting and the Moon who the Romans called Diana.
She was a most important goddess, being the guardian and protector of forests, woodlands and all the little wild creatures within them.   

click here to see Artemis on Brenda's website

I wanted my paintings of goddesses to be a little mystical, different from a painting of a model sitting in front of me - and I also wanted the jewelry to really sparkle!  So, I evolved a special technique...

First, having primed a large canvas with glowing white, I floated pools of paint across it, 2 or 3 subtle colors, tilting the canvas so the colors flowed and mixed as I wished; yellow ochres, venetian red, burnt umbers.  Then I left it to dry.
Next I drew my goddess and her bow in a strong line.  I had made sure when I made my first sketch that I had good top-lighting so that she would come alive, just by painting the light as it fell on her figure.  This is very much how Caravaggio would have worked, although he usually had a black background.

I had a wonderful time building up the jewelry with impasto and applying gold leaf and then painting the delicate detail into the gold with burnt umber - a very satisfying experience.
I painted her with a superb armband, bracelets, a swinging gold tie necklace and lion-headed earrings, and I showed her with her bow, proud and beautiful...

click here to see Aphrodite on Brenda's website

Then I painted Aphrodite - the Goddess of Love, who the Romans called Venus.  I wanted to give a magical quality to the birth of Aphrodite as she rises from the foam of the gold-leafed waves.

I shaded my canvas with ultramarine, cobalt and cerulean blues and built up the decorative waves and foam with impasto and delicately enhanced and gilded them with golds and platinum.  I painted the goddess herself very freshly, with no alterations to keep the feeling of spontaneity - to do this I had to do lots of preliminary studies so I knew exactly what I was going to do on the canvas.

Then came the most delicate part; her gauze scarf and the golden jewelry.  As the Goddess of Beauty and Love she is wearing some of the most exquisite designs that the ancient Greeks and Italians ever created.  Her necklace with tiny hanging seed-like pendants is matched by bracelets and earrings.  The earrings are especially intricate from their shell-like bejeweled centers hang a golden boat shaped pendant with tiny chains dangling from tiny flowers ending in seed pendants, to follow the necklace.

Finally, I gave her diaphanous scarf golden classical decorations and let it float up into the sunshine.

click here to see Circe on Brenda's website

I next painted Circe, standing by her golden gates on her magical island.  Of course, Circe isn't really a goddess, she's an enchantress, and her story is a haunting tale of spell-binding love.

Visually there are several important points in this painting - the ornate wrought-iron gates, the shadows and her eyes.

I have always had a special interest in wrought-iron.  As a teenager I would get up extra early and bicycle over to the blacksmith's forge to draw the horses waiting to be shod.

There were plenty of equine candidates for my sketch book as the milk was still brought by horse-drawn carts in that part of England then, and all those horses had to be shod every two weeks.

There were enormous shire horses that pulled the ploughs standing patiently waiting for their huge hooves to picked up by the brave blacksmith!  Not to mention the elegant thoroughbreds that the local Colonels rode out with the hunt and all the little girls' ponies too.

I would watch the blacksmith make horseshoes and intricate wrought-ironwork for balustrades, balconies and gates while I sat on the half-door sketching, well out the way of all those restless hooves.  He taught me some of his skills and helped me make a garden table with pretty scrollwork decorating it.

Although I became a painter, not a blacksmith!, I have always loved beautiful ironwork and am spoiled living in New Orleans surrounded by the wonderful examples of wrought and cast ironwork decorating the French Quarter and the Garden District.

The image of Circe seeing Odysseus for the first time gave me a great opportunity to design these rather mysterious gates, based on the ones outside my home, but with added details and an enigmatic little golden face guarding Circe's domain.  My model waited by those gates for a very long time indeed, until the sun was just right in the sky to cast the shadows that I had in my vision for the painting.

Circe's jewelry is rather simpler than the goddesses.  The square glass beads in the bracelet would have been cast and finished with fine hand grinding - a technique often used in the ancient world.

Sketch in Charcoal for the painting of Eros and Psyche

The next painting in my Greek Myths and Goddesses series is going to be "Eros and Psyche".

A wonderful legend where the hero and heroine rescue each other at the end - a little bit like the scene at the end of "Pretty Woman" but set 2500 years ago.

It is the first of these stories and has inspired many others, such as the fairy-tale of Cinderella.  Eros is the God of Love and Psyche whose name means "Soul" becomes immortal when they eventually reach their happy ending together.

I am painting Psyche in Eros' embrace, his arms around her, her face turned up to him, his great wings encircling her.  Here is my first charcoal sketch - I'll let you know when the finished painting is ready...

Nation Saves Titian

Today, Titian’s painting “Diana and Actaeon” goes on show at London’s National Gallery after being saved for the nation for the sum of $80 million.

Titian’s big paintings are always spectacular and I can’t wait to see it.

Titian’s “Diana and Actaeon”

As I mention in my Top 10 Tips, Titian’s skill in composition is very exciting... 

and “Diana and Actaeon” is a very clever arrangement. 

The shock of the moment is seen from two different points of view. You can look at the moment through Actaeon’s horrified eyes, or from Diana’s outraged perspective. The female figures form an arrowhead pointing at Actaeon, the lighting is like lightning pointing back to the naked Goddess.

Did he deserve his fate?
Was he hiding in the bushes to watch her or was it just an unfortunate encounter?
We know what Diana thought as she turned him into a stag and his dogs set upon him with fatal consequences...
Strangely, this ghoulish story has always been very popular, but when I painted Diana, (or Artemis as the original Greek myths called her), I saw her in her true role as a Goddess. A huntress, yes, but the protector of the forest and woodland, the carer of all small animals and our green environment.
How could you not love her?

"Artemis"  by Brenda Burke