You are cordially invited to look in on my personal recollections as a child in war time. Sixty new illustrated pages featuring the movies I saw that year and the "literature" I read. Those were days of ascending peculiarity! Your comments and help in remembering these long ago days would be appreciated. Visit rodneymackay.com. Click link number 1 at right!
Ruth and I see the Picton Castle daily when she has been in port, and she has not moved from her berth since arriving home in May, 2007. As our home overlooks her Lunenburg port of call, we have an unusual advantage in taking pictures of her from an elevated place (our second storey Lunenburg Bump.
A modern embodiment of Father Christmas greets well-wishers on Main Street. This town has less than half the population of Lunenburg but totally outdoes the larger centre when it comes to co-operative projects meant to draw out-side visitors to the town.
In our seaport town Santa Claus comes to land on a scallop dragger abd is transported by firetruck to Santa's village at the Christkindlmarkt
CAILLEACH BHEUR OR GEAMIR
The ceiling of that Anglican Church mentioned below "shows how the sky would have appeared at sunset to a viewer at the latitude of Lunenburg who was facing east on December 24 — Christmas Eve — two millennia ago."
This tiny insert photo of St. John's Anglican Church in Lunenburg was taken late Christmas Eve, 2000 A.D. In the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, Lunenburg firefighters responded to what would be their 23rd, and final call on one of the most hectic Halloween nights in the town’s history. 
Some of the folk noted below as "professional artists" certainly earn their living from association with living, breathing artists, but teachers are professional art educators, and isn't it a caution, many of these art educators are also part-time art critics. There simply isn't enough money in that latter profession to work at it full-time, probably less return than poverty-stricken artists get from there work! Having a nine-to-five job is also a good move for feathering the nest against crass commercialism. "Art for art's sake" can be easy or a very hard concept to understand and appreciate.
The International Artists Association (IAA) defines a "professional artist" as one who fulfills at least one of the following criteria: earns a living through art making possesses a diploma in an area considered to be within the domain of the fine arts teaches art in a school of art or applied art whose work is often seen by the public or is frequently or regularly exhibited is recognized as an artist by consensus of opinion among professional artists.
Philip Evergood, who was a representational painter, opined that "Any art that has imagination has the "magic touch" and expresses universal truths, which man can feel and understand, is valid - is Art. Only people and time will decide what is great." Amen!
The Victorian artists were admittedly excessive in their devotion to the formal precepts of the academies of art, but twentieth century reactionaries were equally outre, going off in all directions,and sometimes tumbling into the chasm of chaos. Excess of any sort is always avant garde at the beginning but is rarely without precedent! "Art movements have a way of repeating themselves since artists are mortal and memory of the past is collectively short. "Outrageous" necessarily succumbs to "commonplace".
Fine Art was seen by our Victorian predecessors as the application of skill and taste following more or less rigid aesthetic principles. They knew that they liked! This variety of art aimed at the production of what those folk considered a thing of beauty. They spurned the decorative arts, noting that the tattooes of their savage ancestors were "decorative". The fine arts were were also termed design arts, The principles thought necessary successful design were considered to be: balance, contrast, dominance, gradation, harmony, repetition and unity.
There were more literate times in English-speaking lands when the meaning of words was less mutable than is now the case. Now they evolve with ascending peculiarities in the outcome:
In the Gaelic world October 31 marked the end of "samh" or "summer" and the beginning of winter. Every year I plan to paint in that last month before the country goes gray. This year I missed again, thanks to a protracted bout with the flu. I have rarely painted fall leaves and not just because of the fact that some of my teachers were antagonistic to this kind of natural exuberance. Colville didn't like sunsets either, although Pulford did paint them before he went bland.
The first snow of the year. As you will observe , the grass is still green and the white stuff could not persist. Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, was cold and windy which is how I remember it most years!
Acrylic paint is a fine art medium which was introduced and first retailed in North America during the 20th Century. It was heralded as a non-toxic, light-resistant substitute for oil paints or as a watercolour substitut, possessing waterproof characteristic on drying. The earliest adopters, including Rod Mackay, were frustrated by the fact that its unique characteristics went largely unrecognized. Many oil painters experimenting with the new medium criticized it for having unstable pigments and
defying subtle brushwork since it dried very rapidly. The confirmed watercolours who tried it usually railled at this same defect, and hated its tendency to darken rather than lighten upon drying. Many of these problems have been overcome in the past five decades since acrylics were introduced but the reputations of youth are a long time sloughing away!
The vibrant colours allowed by a plastic medium were especially suitable to the need of abstract expressionists who put them to good use in New York City. The Mexican muralists also found them attractive because of their non-toxic nature, resistance to sunlight and intensities of colour matching their country. In point of fact, the traditional media of oil and watercolour are better suited to the muted landscapes of Europe than those of North and South America. Any careful observer our our skies note that they can be naturally intense and best represented by this modern medium.
Interestingly, acrylics were imported from America into England and it was the Brits who first chafed at the fact that acrylics were seen as country cousins of oils and watercolours. "The National Acrylic Painters' Association evolved from the concept that acrylic paint is still largely unrecognized in its own right. Oil and watercolor paints started from the same premise, with the origin and the history of each giving them distinct characteristics and goals, as well as their own organizations and societies."
Ken Hodgson founded that group in 1985. Adrian Henri, an acclaimed international painter and poet, served as president from 1986 until 1991 and was succeeded by the present President, painter, writer and broadcaster, Alwyn Crawshaw. That particular socity spawned the International Acrylic Painters' Association, which is based in the United States. At that, there have not been many gains in the direction of anything resembling the "Royal Societies" organized on behalf of watercolourists and oil painters in times, which now seems far from the present realities of the art world.
Acrylic manufactures must have a growing market if one believes their propaganda. Winsor& Newton says that its use has "steadily increased" and that they now produce colours "specifically designed for acrylic painting." We suspect that acrylics remain under utilized EBay Canada is currently offering a lot of paintings for auction and these. Their statistics show that the medium is a little in advance of the watercolour but the oil painting medium is still king by a ratio of about 10:1. That was about the ratio for the painters in Domtar Agenda Show in Montreal and Toronto back in 1987. Twenty years ago, Rod had very little company in that horde of oil affectionados.
Art Educator David Pyle has this to say: "Early acrylics weren't without their problems. There were justifiable concerns with stabiliyty and color change. But, thanks to some very dedicated and skilled chemists in labs across the world, those issues have been all but eliminated. Modern acrylics offer great stability and clarity, and can be used with confidence that they're going to be around for the long haul."
