Evening Grandstand Show

In the midst of ducking rainstorms while showing my Stampede guests around Calgary and area, I’m catching up on my Stampede reading at Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers.

This week’s Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers makes me hungry.

Once in awhile I’m intrigued by a book simply because of its perfect title. One of those books is Once They Were Hats, about the history of the Canadian beaver. This week’s Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers features this book by Frances Backhouse, with an emphasis on the Calgary cowboy hat.  

For the first 18 years that I lived in Calgary, every June was rainy. I considered this the one consistent aspect of Calgary weather. So I was surprised when last year’s June turned out to be mostly sunny, warm and dry. Friends who visited from Australia, Britain and Ontario lucked out with their trips through the Rockies.

Despite rain forecast for this weekend, this June is shaping up to be on the dryer side. But who knows when we will once again experience the big one, as portrayed in this week’s Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers?

I’m back from my recent holiday in France and have finally found the time to catch up on Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers. While I was away, Calgary readers of this fine blog have travelled to:

the old Woodwards Department store, Chinook Mall, with Miji Campbell

Rouleauville aka Mission with Rona Altrows

Inglewood with Shirley Black

Heritage Park with Clem and Olivier Martini

Bowness with Anne Sorbie

and downtown Calgary during a not-so-unusual May snowstorm with Marina Endicott.

What a great tour of Calgary locations!

To research my  journey to Provence, France — Van Gogh land — I read The Complete Van Gogh by Jan Hulsker, Director General Emeritus of Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Culture of The Netherlands.

Read isn’t the precise word. This is a coffee table book with plates of the painter’s entire works along with a fair amount of text, including excerpts from Van Gogh’s letters. Some of the text I read, other parts I skimmed or skipped, such as the author’s discussions on why he dates X sketch for June and not August, or for Van Gogh’s Arles rather than his St. Remy period.

The book’s presentation of the plates in chronological order made it interesting to follow Van Gogh’s evolution as an artist. He began with sketches of hands and people and gradually developed his techniques and style.

The vast number of drawings and paintings shows that Van Gogh worked hard. In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. I have no doubt Van Gogh put in his 10,000 hours before creating his masterpieces.

The Complete Van Gogh also reminded me of the writing rule: Write What You Know. While many writers question this rule, Van Gogh certainly applied it.

He painted and sketched people he knew. His landscapes, for which he became famous, were done of his immediate surroundings. He painted his bedroom in Arles. During his self-imposed confinement to a mental asylum in St. Remy, he painted the view from his barred window. His famous sunflowers abounded in Provence, where he spent many of his most productive years.

It shows that genius can create wonders of anything.