Gennady Spirin

Gennady Spirin

Two illustrations for Philipok

circa 2000

    Such a determined child. Eager to learn and to prove himself as big a boy as his elder brother, Philipok deviously makes his way into the depths of winter towards the school house while his grandmother sleeps, unaware. He trudges along the familiar snowy road winding through his village, confident and bundled warmly in thickly-wrapped boots and coat and his father’s big fur hat, only to be deterred by a snarling, relentless pack of territorial dogs blocking his path. Feeling small and powerless he succumbs to fear, falling into the snow with a sudden weakness in his little legs and large cumbersome feet, his alphabet book clutched still more firmly under his arm. But he knows, in a way, that in order to fall one must first learn to walk, and to walk again little Philipok shall in order to reach his wish. With the help of a kind old man he again finds himself bracing the tireless winds, only to finally reach the school doors now crippled by his own doubt - will he be scolded and sent away by the teacher, or be embarrassed and teased by those more clever than he? But events are sure to repeat themselves.

     Spirin’s hand shows care in each scene he illustrates. Not only in the types of people and animals is there a familiar warmth drawn from the artist’s own Russian upbringing, but in the boy, too, there resonates a fondness, a detailed closeness, which defines Philipok as more than just the main character of Leo Tolstoi’s tale. Modelled from life, Philipok takes the shape of Spirin’s own young son, imbued with an equal sense of rosy-cheeked wonder and awe. Both boys bring the qualities of the fictional and the real out in the other, making both story and fact coexist within the readers’ minds. It is a story for children, and for the child within every adult. It is Philipok’s story, and it is our story.

Léon de Smet

Léon de Smet

Vase de Fleurs

circa 1916

     A magnificent red consumes the canvas. A vast parade of people, fish and flowers, or whatever one makes them to be, jig and swim in the shallow fiery waters surging around the explosion of feather-like buds, each blooming so passionately out from the depths of the orange clay bowl. Cupping this, the fluted vase - blue and cool and ravishing - acts to silence the riot swelling around it. Like a pillar of power it tries not only to contain the erupting flowers, but to calm the surrounding sea threatening to weaken its flowers, to drown them. It wants to own its pride of purpose, to support its every stem; it wants to prove itself a vase unlike any other. Ripples ensue from the table itself, dark and textured like nutritious soil. Danger approaches, or at least the warning of war. Things begin to tremble. Too many forces have now pooled into the same field of expression. Soon the vase and its cradled jewel will become one with the enemy, both lost in one big wave of pushing and tugging and bragging, comparing whose red is the reddest and whose strength is the strongest. Haughty and immature, each will think less of the other, convinced that its supremacy of colour will reign in the end, over all. But which will meet its end first: the sheet of paper, the ephemeral flowers or the brittle ceramic?

Sir George Clausen

Sir George Clausen

The Gleaners Returning

circa 1908

    A fresh shower of sunlight filtered through a canvas of branches. The women’s feet fall down wearily on the sandy path, step by step. They breathe deeply: they inhale the goodness of the air and the birdsong floating with it, each weighed down by a light evening heat. The soft rustles and swishes of their skirts add an extra melody to that which already surrounds them; and though tired, they dance with each footstep and gesture to the sound of the trees and the gossiping insects. 
     They are alive from tip to tip. Their skin is moist with the cooling sweat of a day’s worth of bending and heaving, their backs now tingling and sore. Strands of hair whip their cheeks as gently as their shadows drown the light, and their fingers are red and worn, but tough. Notice how one thing imitates another - how the trunks swoon as the dresses sway; how the leaves shimmer as the baskets of grain shudder; and how the air swims about lazily as the women smile and sigh, however slightly, with a satisfaction only known to those who work hard and honestly. This is a picture of celebration. Into a rectangular frame of time it paints the stories of three nameless women, perhaps a mother and her daughters, who are shown sharing the rewards after long hours of physical labour. Unburdened by expensive things and endless leisures these people are those who understand best the meaning of freedom, even if they feel it for only a short while, because of the value they place in the leisure of simplicity. They are returning from fields of monotonous gleaning - returning to the roots of the little things that keep them alive and aware of where true happiness may be found.