Bert's Travels

Friday, November 22, 2013

SOME BIRDS

Scarlet Tanager
an American song bird
(not to be confused with Ella Fitzgerald)
recently re-classified into the Cardinal family.

Red headed wood pecker
This tri-coloured bird is found in Southern Canada
and the Eastern Central United States.

Red winged blackbird
lives in North and Central America,
breeds from Alaska to Newfoundland,
South to Florida, Mexico and Guatemala

Thursday, November 14, 2013

FRANZ BRANDL ( some of his work )

"Dialog ended"
this work commemorates one of many
failed discussions between
the Slovenian and the German speaking
populations in and around Bleiburg.

I started this Blog, egged on by my daughter, Lianne, on the 19th day of June 2008. Just about 2000 days ago.
During this time I posted 1100 entries and had, by the built in counter, exactly 27971 views. That is almost 14 views per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.
There were, of course, stretches of time during which I posted nothing, just like now, when I note that I last posted anything on the 4th day of November. Before that there was a hiatus of 5 weeks, during which time I was in Canada.
The strange thing about this is, that, once started, such a Blog becomes almost an obligation. I feel a sense of betrayal of my faithful viewers and readers and I imagine them opening this site and finding the same pictures and the same comments. I think that it would be the very same if I were to open a book, to read from it a little every night, only to find the same page staring at me. Very soon I wouldn't bother opening this book anymore. I would just put it aside, because it no longer gives me any joy.
The disappointment about it for me also is, that none of my viewers wrote a comment on the Blog, nor wrote me an e-mail urging me to continue ... come on Lianne, Scio, Anton, don't let me hang there, thinking that you don't care, because it wasn't challenging enough. For a little while I got e-mails when I talked about my opinions concerning Religion, The Bible and Roman Catholicism... some people wrote whom I did not know.
How did they get my e-mail?? and don't they know how easy it is to put a comment directly on the Blog?
Maybe I have to start talking about the above again. It is a subject about which I could go on for quite a little while.
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A few days ago I was asked to contribute a show I had done about three years ago about Franz Brandl, a local artist painter. Franz died at the age of 84 last year. He had become a friend of ours and I felt his loss more than I cared to admit.
One day, during my photographing him at his work and many of his completed paintings, we talked about "the Creative Process". He told me something quite interesting:
He said:
"I just get the urge to paint... paint something.. then I sit down in front of my easel and start.When I feel that it's ready, I get a very unreal feeling and I inevitably ask myself: 'did I really do that?'
If I do not get this urge, but paint something because I think I ought to, I am never very satisfied with the outcome. I have to feel "the Urge" to create something with which I am happy."

Now Franz Brandl is dead and the local Art Gallery is putting on a "Franz Brandl Retrospective" to celebrate what would have been his 85th birthday.
The show, I was asked to contribute and which I had done about two years before his death, is to be shown during this exhibition via a 'beamer' on a large screen. In the meantime I had photographed many more of his paintings and I enlarged and improved this show. I hope I can do justice to Franz's memory.