All Souls
October 31, 2023
It is somehow emotionally appropriate that the end of October goes out with a bang: neighbours blowing off underperforming fireworks and shouting candy-crazed kids, their flashlights poking about wildly, take the night by force. Then the whole business collapses from exhaustion in order for the soundlessly-powerful, whispered entrance of that most ancient day of days–All Souls.
In The Philippines, where my husband was born, school is cancelled, work is paused, with families preparing food and going to the cemetery to eat and share beside the graves of those who have gone on before. It is what we here would call a superstitious nation, yet in reality just a place left on this planet where there is still room for honouring mystery–revering that which none can fully explain, finding ways to cherish that which links present souls with those of the ever-present departed. Prayers are made. And in the hush, the divine takes over.
Here in Canada, All Souls (All Saints falls on November 1st commemorating martyrs of the Faith, with All Souls the day after) is but a quaint throwback to another era, something found in books. Yet we remain a lonely country, so convinced that individuality is king, we’re instagramed personalities, famous to a few, dependent on likes, feeling a bit needy, less-than, craving attention.
November is that month of mystery where its biggest holiday is not a holiday at all, but rather an observance: minutes of silence, poppies pinned on overcoats, wreaths placed on memorials, a single bugle sending into the flurried air that mournful note for those of us left to remember those of us departed.
May your own All Souls be one of letting in that feeling of absence which is yet not an absence, but merely the silence of those who are no longer here, whose memory is anything but absent, whose laughter can–when we allow it room–yet still be heard in our heart of hearts. It is a day for pulling out photo albums, fingering over the images of the ones who take our individuality and give it the fullness of community, of family, of love, of that which we sometimes feel we lack.
Where Green Reigns Supreme
February 10, 2020
In watercolour-land much discussion takes place over how one goes about dealing with an abundance of greens in a given landscape. Summer landscapes abound with green, all of them different in hue and tone and degree. The old school adherents council the need to create greens from the various blues and yellows available on one’s pallet–that using those pre-mixed greens directly from tubes will only clash.
So if one is using Cobalt Blue for one’s sky, for example, using it with a Raw Sienna or New Gambodge for a foliage green will integrate it, anchor it and serve to unify the painting, as long as one then also uses the Raw Sienna and New Gambodge in other parts of the painting as well.
There are, however, such a huge variety of pre-mixed Greens being offered, it is almost too tempting not to use them, or at least borrow from them when mixing a blue and yellow, as was done in this little sketch of a Bulacan yard, Philippines. My spouse, Raul, is from there, and I stayed for a month each time over three years, a place so fresh and lush, it is a virtual and visual smorgasbord of every green there is.
watercolour sketch, 5″ x 7″ on ordinary card
by Lance Weisser
A Plaid Christmas
December 26, 2019
My partner and spouse Raul loves Christmas the way all Filipinos love Christmas: he LOVES Christmas. In The Philippines, the decorations start coming out at the beginning of September. With no Halloween and Thanksgiving interrupting things, Christmas prep can start as soon as summer is deemed to be finished. In our house there’s a rule where no Christmas trappings can come out from storage until Remembrance Day. This year, at 5 am on November 11th I awoke to hearing the Christmas trees being freed from their storage confines. My weak attempts to postpone all this until after the Remembrance Day observances at 11 am, went unheeded.
This year it was a plaid Christmas upstairs, and a gold and white Christmas in the front alcove/entry downstairs, with a purple and silver tree in the rec room. Next year? Apparently we’re having a pink Christmas–but, pastel pink and dove grey. He can’t wait–but has to, life being what it is, lol. And now you know what all our storage space is crammed with.
BTW, all those gorgeously wrapped gifts under the trees? Empty. Every. Single. One.
weisserwatercolours 