triptych # 18 (civilized ku # 2740-42 / single women # 28) civilized ku # 2739 ~ Eleanor gets it

Our Canadian hosts ~ Chaffey's Lock, Ontario / CA • click to embiggen
breakfast remains ~ Chaffey's Lock, Ontario / CA • click to embiggen

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for. ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated. ~ Paul Rand

While in Canada, the wife and I had the pleasure of meeting Raymond, Eleanor Pinsonneault and their dog, Foxy. They were our hosts in Chaffey's Lock where we stayed in the cottage behind their house. Eleanor and Raymond, advanced septuagenarians if not octogenarians, were very friendly, warm-hearted, and gracious. We felt quite comfortable and at home from the first to the last moments of our stay.

Eleanor is a rather accomplished artist who now works primarily on commission. And, if her website bio is current (I believe it is), she is also currently finishing a Fine Arts program at St. Lawrence College in Brockville, Ontario.

While we were her guests, I was amazed by her seemingly boundless energy - despite her age and physical limitations - as is evidenced in the picture of her garden tending (take note of the walker she uses to get about). Her work pace in her gardens is very slow but methodical. She does not appear to be able to bend down or squat but she just keeps plugging away.

All of that written, and more to the point of this entry, I showed Eleanor - on my iPad - a few of the pictures I had been making around the grounds of her house to include the breakfast remains picture in this entry. Her response to that picture (and others) was spot on the money, my picturing intent wise.

To wit: her first response was a delightful smile and a chuckle. The smile and chuckle were instigated by the depicted referents but that reaction was immediately followed by a statement to the effect of how the color and the arrangement of shapes and lines all came together to create rather "delightful" impression of such mundane subject matter. To write that I immeasurably pleased by that response from another artist is a vast understatement.

She gets it. She understands. And I can't explain the joy I felt to connect with another artist on that level.

All of that written, I must also write that I fell in love with Eleanor (to the wife, platonic wise). Her dignity, grace, artistic acumen, energy, and all around joie de vivre are an absolute inspiration and an outstanding example of a full life well lived. She will be forever in my memory. Although ....

.... I will be adding to that memory during our return trip to her Chaffey's Lock cottage next month (for my birthday). The retinue for that trip will be the wife, my son (the Cinemascapist), his the wife, Hugo, and hopefully my good friend from NYC. Should be fun and I hope to spend some time with Eleanor in her studio sharing art stuff.