Category: grissale

Latest painting inspired very loosely by Chaucer’s  The Knight’s Tale ,the first yarn from the Canterbury Tales.

My reading group, the Agora Foundation, in enchanted Ojai California(https://www.agorafoundation.org/), has a Great Books focus and this reading season they selected works that consisted of narratives within a greater narrative, along with the Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Arabian Knights , Chaucer’s perennially relevant Tales were the reading offerings, all up for fascinating group discussion. By far Chaucer’s work was my favorite, the Decameron while bawdy and amusing was populated by characters a bit thin, I encountered  difficulty in differentiating one from another; Arabian Knights I found unreadable, the macho blood thirsty violence, the rock solid foundation of misogyny , xenophobia and racism was repulsive, it  sickened me, I wasn’t able to read more than a third. But The Canterbury Tales was a pure delight, and while The Knight’s Tale wasn’t really my favorite of the lot (that recognition would be for the Wife of Bath, most especially her rip-roaring Prologue) the Knight’s Tale was rich in chivalric detail masquerading in classical garb; low hanging fruit for a Neo-medievalist illuminator .

As much as I thoroughly enjoyed the book and was in fact eager to discuss it, digging deeper, when the time came to join the banter I was completely silent, my usual insecurities trumping any desire to participate. However during the discussion, which I did find illuminating, I once again turned to doodling my thoughts and responses. I’ve responded this way to social awkwardness since boyhood, very rarely would my voice be heard but my notebooks were packed with my feverish scrawling.

Below is an example from that day’s mute notebook:

A few more details follow:

Given the isolation and pangs of reflection during this Covid plague, this painting provided some timely  “content”:

 

That is it from here, hoping all, and this being global, truly all, that all stay sane, well and of good cheer.