Time to turn up the collar on that overcoat and break out the Robert Frost poems, kiddies! Sit 'round the smouldering fire in an old-timey New England fashion and think about the holes in your stockings, everyone!! Seriously though, I have such a soft spot for fall but I can't say just why because I'm not entirely sure myself. It's just so cold and damp and everything sinks down into hollows and it smells so secretive and... fall has the best NIGHTTIME AND GLOAMING!
↑ "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" Grant Wood (1931)
↑ "In the Golden Gloaming" John Atkinson Grimshaw (1881)
↑ "A Manor House In Fall" John Atkinson Grimshaw
↑ "The Magic Circle" John William Waterhouse (1886)
↑ "The Mystic Wood" John William Waterhouse (1914-1917?)
↑ "Autumn Landscape at Dusk" Vincent Van Gogh (1885)
My interests always seem to influence my life aesthetically:
Reading a James Herriot book = wearing wellingtons, can-do attitude Watching RuPaul's Drag Race = extra 15 minutes of makeup 1982 Iron Maiden= EDDIE THE HEAD, EYELINER Nancy Nova's The Force = increased wear of high-waisted pants Adriaen van der Speld & Frans van Mieris = wearing silks, moisturizing Shaun the Sheep = drinking tea regularly, using jam spreads
Get your daily dose of Hedgepig here: Hedgehog in the Fog [Ёжик в тумане] by Yuri Norstein (1975)
One of my favorite stories of all time is "The Overcoat" (1842) by Nikolai Gogol. This lovely little tale of woe follows a humble bureaucratic drudge by the name of Akaky Akakievich as he scrimps and saves for a new overcoat. I just got myself an overcoat. It's thick and black and warm - and rather than consult my zealous tailor, Petrovich, I bought one ready-to-wear.
Yuri Norstein is one of my best-loved animators. Not only does he have an appreciation for hedgehogs, owls, and bears, he has also been working on a film adaptation of "The Overcoat"! Norstein started work on this feature-length magnum-opus in 1981 but there's still no end in sight... Since its inception, the project has suffered many setbacks, including the loss of the project's cinematographer and Norstein's close friend Alexsandr Zhukovskiy. Dear Yuri, how sad. You can take a little glimpse of Norstein's process in this little tour of his studio. I hope that someday the world will be able to experience a full telling of this Russian classic through the eyes of one of Russia's finest visual storytellers.
↑ Still frame of Akaky Akakievich from Yuri Norstein's yet-unfinished "The Overcoat"
This week I went squid fishin. We caught a baby tuna and two little pollocks. Tuna was very angry and burped and squirmed a lot, and the Pollocks got caught in the eyeballs and became floaters. We set out, bushy tailed for some squids, but just ended up eating/chumming the water with a bag of cool ranch Doritos.
.jpg "\"Autumn Landscape at Dusk\" Vincent Van Gogh (1885) an autumn walk, woman, girl, cloak, fine art, gloaming, dusk, sunset")
