Fun with Zodiac Signs, Colour and Music

 

Fun with Zodiac Signs, Colour and Music

In 1986 Rupert van Woerkom, the very creative Editor of the Dutch women's magazine Elegance, commissioned me to make twelve paintings (approx. 60 x 50 cm.) inspired by the Zodiac Sign of each month. That was a very good year! I decided to use watercolour and oil crayons on paper and to scribble in some characteristics of women I knew, with their Sign. How did they behave, what colours belonged to their personalities? Which music did they like and how would that influence my choice of colours and design? I found it all great fun - the female readers lapped it up, bought most of the paintings or commissioned more. Of course if you male sceptics find this nonsense, don't bother to read on. 

Here they are:

Aries: March 21-April 19

Bach. Anything he can do, she can do better; action woman; temperamental; independent. The planet Mars. 

Taurus: April 20-May 20

Tower of strength. Nature lover. Don't rush me. 

Aimez-vous Brahms? Sensual. Déjeuner sur l'herbe.

Gemini: May 21-June 20

Words, words; quicksilver; communication; looking both ways at once. 

Schumann. Stravinsky.

Cancer: June 21-July 22

Claire de Lune; Home sweet home; Money, money, money; Nocturne; Debussy or Dvorák?

Leo: July 23-August 22

Sun Queen, Apollo, Hercules, Hair, hair, hair

Madonna?

                    Note: this one is still for sale. 59 x 51 cm.

Virgo: August 23-September 22.

Cool, cool; You got a problem? Intelligence service;

 Spic and span; Impeccable; Dvorák?

Libra: Sept. 23-October 22.

Decisions, decisions; Up and down; common sense; 

charmer; Saint-Saëns, maybe?

Note: this one is still for sale. 60 x 47 cm.

Scorpio: October 23 - November 21

Pluto; complete control; passionate; hypnotic; loyalty;

Tchaikovsky; Paganini.

Note: this one is still for sale. 64 x 52 cm.

Saggitarius: November 22 - December 21.

The sky's the limit; applause please; where did I put my keys? Painfully honest; Jupiter; Berlioz; Beethoven.

Capricorn: December 22 - January 19; 

Queen of the winter; Saturn; control: quiet social climber; artistic; hidden feelings.

Scriabin?

Aquarius: January 20 - February 18

Quick thinking; so many friends; intuitive; gone with the wind; marry - are you crazy? Mendelssohn, Mozart.

 

Pisces: February 19 - March 20

Oh, am I late? Elusive; enigmatic; sense of humour; 

Neptune; Chopin.

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Contact: normanperryman@gmail.com

Dancing rhythms in landscape

Now winter is upon us, how many of us are old enough to remember the winter of 1962/63? It went down in history as the coldest European winter of the twentieth century. I was twenty-nine and crazy enough to stand outside in the snow sketching the Dutch landscape! Pale landscapes assisted me in my search for lines or groups of people, trees, buildings or windmills that would form dark shapes to dance across my canvas. I wanted to emphasise those shapes, bundled up, twisting and turning in space, balancing strategically in the composition as it were on a rope stretched from side to side. They revived memories of my hobby as an art-student, balancing on a slack-rope, relishing the space all around me. 

 

The windmills of a frozen Zaandijk in the winter of 1962, 

oil on canvas, approx. 80 x 60 cm.

When I moved to Switzerland a few years later, my fascination with the arrangement of forms in space continued. As I look back at these early works, I still hear the musical rhythms and tempi of these seemingly kinetic forms, forceful sounds fading to a whisper on the horizon or escaping off the canvas. The clatter of skis being put on, skiers climbing sideways with staccato edges in the snow, then rhythmic rasping sounds, fading away as they disappeared quietly over the edge of the mountain. Every skier knows those sounds.

Skiers, oil on canvas, approx. 80 x 60 cm.1966. 

 

Below, my woodcutters in the snow were making modern music like percussionists, with the sounds of irregular chopping and sawing, with two very quiet final notes provided by a couple of tourists, standing still, perhaps hypnotised.

Woodcutters in the snow, Blatten, near Zermatt, Switzerland,1963.

Below, the quiet adagio of a Jeu de Boules in Carpentras, Provence - minimal music, with only the rustle of plane trees, the crunch of gravel, murmured commentaries and occasionally a sudden clack! No snow here - I've faded out the background to focus on the elongated dark shape of the group, something that became characteristic of my early works.

Jeu de  Boules in Provence, oil on canvas, approx. 80 x 60 cm.1963.

But, you might ask, where is colour in this young artist's life? It was playing a waiting game, perhaps hidden by an inner struggle, inhibited by an unhappy relationship. It was waiting to explode (and it did), impelled by the inspiration of music and the realisation, long ago, that painting and music were meant to be partners in my life. Here's a link to that early blog from 2012: 

Musician with a paintbrush

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(This is an edited version of an earlier blog)