Painting at Ceago Vinegarden

For a year and a half I have been painting a series at Ceago Vinegarden on Clear Lake. Completed six years ago the vineyards, gardens and winery were designed, planted and built by Jim Fetzer with the help of his son Barney, as well as a contractor and four or five workers. The buildings are Jim's  interpretation of Mission architecture. Substantial and  beautiful they give the impression of having stood here for generations. The Mission flavor of the buildings and gardens is tempered by an imaginative but natural eclecticism that evokes memories of Provence and Italy. Walking from the main courtyard to the long dock on the the lake one passes through a large field of lavender which is bounded by a stands of hundred year old olive trees. The vertical accents of cypress trees are used to great effect throughout the property. Behind the vineyards the cypress are interspersed with the blue-green whorls of agave. This bio-dynamically farmed property sets a standard of beauty that makes me wish the whole shoreline of Clear Lake were subject to such mindful development. I've included a couple of excerpts from my diary to give you a sense of what it was like working here .

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Holdsworth painting Ceago vineyard tree and mountains

1.28.09

This morning I was painting a view through an opening that overlooks the entrance to Ceago when Jim called me over. He indicated the white head of a bald eagle glinting from the crown of a tall oak. Jim says they come in winter to fish the lake. He thinks they are nesting around here somewhere.

In the fields this afternoon I could hear the beat of 'banda' music on a pruner's radio. I couldn't see them through the vines. They're still half a field away. I'm set up in the same location I worked a year and a half ago when I painted the grape harvest. It's a different scene in winter. In place of the exuberant foliage and bunches of grapes there's a delicate tracery of reddish vines among rank on rank of poles and guy wires. The two paintings will make an interesting contrast at the exhibition.

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Ceago vineyards during pruning holdsworth painting

1.30.09

The pruners have reached the rows where I'm painting. There's a strange twanging sound. It's the sound of them pulling cut vines free from the metal guy wires as they advance up the rows from the direction of the lake.

Ramon, the supervisor, has agreed to pose as a pruner so I can put a figure in the painting. The other workers joke with him. There is something surreal about his standing so still while they move quickly from vine to vine. After he's posed he brings over the orange water container and hangs it in my view.

'That's so everyone can see we give our workers water."

The full series of paintings will number about twenty-two. They will be exhibited at Ceago Vinegarden next September. Until then none of them are for sale.

For further information about Ceago Vinegarden log on to: http://www.ceago.com

On the Abolition of Torture and War.

When Barack Obama, on his first day in office, moved to close Guantanamo Bay and to ban all  internationally recognized forms of torture, he signaled a return of this country to the world community. This community has greeted his election with overwhelming joy. The last time the people of the world showed such unity was in  the months leading up to our invasion of Iraq. These months were notable for the sudden coalescence of a global peace movement. It was the first time in history, that the people of the world had raised their voices in a united plea for peace in advance of  a war.The editor of  the German magazine, Der Speigal recently called Barack Obama  the “world 's president”. Perceived as such, he is in an opportune position to move beyond the banning of  torture, and to begin the process of  banning war itself. I invite you to view these three paintings which I created before and during the Irag war. They were intended to cause us  to think more deeply about this archaic form of behavior which breeds violence and threatens our ability as a global community to  resolve the pressing issues of economic and environmental collapse.

The Dogs of War, oil on canvas, 38"x79", March 2003

I completed this painting in the weeks leading up to the war.  I was expressing my personal sense of dislocation. War has ruptured the walls of  my studio. My model holds the pose of Eve in Michelangelos 'expulsion' on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, except that she is viewed from a different angle. The other  imagery was suggested by art I had observed in Mexico and Cuba.

Regime Change Comes to Oakland, o/c, 40"x68", August 2004

This picture appeared in my mind's eye while I was painting at 8th and Clay in Oakland. I was hearing accounts of thousands of innocent civilians killed by our forces. Particularly upsetting were those slain because they blundered  into unexpected checkpoints. I imagined what it would be like if  our army invaded Oakland.

The last  of this series is the most prosaic and repellent.

Collateral Damage, oil/canvas, 40" x 54", December 2004

The term 'collateral damage'  is an antiseptic  buzzword for 'civilian casualties' . In Iraq this phrase may well represent 800,000 innocent civilians. In Gaza the current death toll among Palestinians  is in excess of 1,300. In both instances the discrepancy between the number of troops  and the number of civilians slain is instructive: In  Iraq it may be two hundred to one. In Palestine it is a hundred to one. How is slaughter on this scale conducive to peace? Every civilian unjustly killed represents a family, or a  community, that will hate us.

The United States, Israel and South Africa (under apartheid) are all examples of colonial cultures with a settler ethic.  In the United States we believed we were entitled to stolen lands because of our advanced technology , democratic' institutions and a God given manifest destiny. When the indigenous people struck out blindly at the highly organized invaders they were characterized in the New World as “savages”. In Palestine they are defined as 'terrorists'. In Iraq we were more interested in oil and geopolitical control than land but our attitude to the indigenous people was essentially the same. Non-governmental organizations have had to estimate the number of  Iraqis slain because our government did not consider them worth counting.

If  we are ever to achieve the dream of world peace, we must climb down from our hypocritical “high horse”, and, as the world's only superpower, take the first steps towards disarmament. There may never be a more opportune moment. If  President Barack Obama extends this hand of friendship,  I  believe most  nations  will meet us halfway. The few intransigents will eventually be compelled to join the process of disarmament, not by our military might, but by pressure from the world community.

None of these three paintings are currently for sale. They may be viewed in my studio.

Obama on Broadway

This is one one of my most successful downtown paintings and I owe part of its success to the election of Barack Obama. I've painted three pictures here. I enjoy the contrast of the modern buildings across Broadway with the old buildings which are reminiscent, as John Protopapas once remarked, of the towers of San Gimignano in Tuscany. But it's a difficult place to work. The bus stop and BART attract large crowds. And there are a smattering of extremely disturbed people who become belligerent for no particular reason except that I'm here and that I can't leave without abandoning my canvas.

The first two paintings suffered from these distractions but this painting was lifted by a tide of enthusiasm that began rising in the days before the election when crowds of students who would usually stop and pepper me with a staccato of questions and wisecracks instead marched in orderly ranks down Broadway campaigning for Obama.

As the election approached it seemed that a weight was being lifted off everyone's shoulders. Even the malcontents eased up. The day after the election the light in people's eyes was contagious. It seemed to spill over into my painting. Spontaneous exclamations of 'Obama!' rang out on Broadway as people were unable to contain their joy.

A couple of days later a big man in an Obama t-shirt asked if I'd like to put him in my painting. I said 'sure' and asked him to pose with the Tribune tower behind him. After I'd finished he told me he'd just got out of jail. "What were you in for?" I asked "Somethin stupid, but I won't make that mistake again. I'm gonna turn my life around." He smiled at me gently and I believed him.

www.anthonyholdsworth.com

Black Gold Meets California Gold: Point Richmond, California

I was ready today with my camera for the hawk which passes by between three and three forty in the afternoon. Today was the first time it didn’t appear. I was planning to photograph it for my painting, a quick sketch as well. But it never appeared. Which set me to wondering whether it had caught something earlier in the day. Or maybe it’s daily swing through this neighborhood on its north-south patrol isn’t as regular as I’d assumed.

I’m standing on the edge of a slope, almost a cliff. A dirt trail meanders steeply from the foreground. It is interrupted as the hill turns down, but its movement is picked up by a small segment of paved street that rises toward the foot of the bridge. I’m looking across a corner of the bay towards  Mt Tamalpais - The ‘Sleeping Lady’ ,  as two neighbors referred to it while they were talking to  me the other day. In the middle distance beyond the tawny slopes and roofs of a few homes there is the narrow, extended line  of a jetty that carries oil across the water to pipes on the hill. Which feed it into rust colored tanks. The tanks harmonize well with the color of the landscape. Floating at the end of the jetty are two or, sometimes, three oil tankers. This is the scene through which the hawk passes between 3 and 3:40 PM everyday. Or so I thought.

I consider the paradox of the lovely landscape, California golden, receiving an infusion of the black gold that powers our world. The energy that carried me here today, that enabled these houses to be built and supplied with gas and electricity, if only it didn’t have such a huge downside.

The hawk, which usually passes, ignores homes and roads and our arbitrary boundaries. Its senses are fixed upon the contours of the land which determine the updrafts. It rides these in search of its prey. It feels in its bones what we have trouble comprehending:  that air envelopes this planet.  The  toxic effluence which Chevron pours into the air does not stop at the boundaries of the city of Richmond. During calm days it gathers above the San Francisco Bay.  So why does one small city whose council is easily manipulated by the giant Chevron Corporation exercise jurisdiction over the health and well being of the Bay Area?