Tim Marsters

Tim Marsters is a retired architect who now has the opportunity to pursue his life-long passion for art. Over the past four years, he has begun to focus primarily on portraiture in pencil, charcoal, acrylics, and oils. 

While preferring to work when from life, he can work from photographs he takes of the subject or that are given to him by friends. He also works from photographs he finds in any number of places including old books, antique stores, and family albums. 

While working toward an accurate likeness, he aims to bring out what he sees as the essence of character and mood and the unique qualities of the individual. 

Cigarettes

From a time that advertising for cigarettes was omnipresent (like it still is in Germany). 

Smoking and berets have a bit of a relationship; the stereotypical Frenchman wearing a beret, glass of Bordeaux in the hand (if not a baguette) and a cigarette hanging from the lip. 

So typical it was that there are even many beret labels depicting (and reinforcing) this picture and often berets (embroidered with Big Tobacco's logo's) were handed out at festivals. motor races and similar events. 

Different times...

Helge Thiis

Helge Thiis (1897 - 1972) was a Norwegian architect. He is most noted for being the architect of Nidaros Cathedral.

Thiis was head of the Nidaros domkirkes restaureringsarbeider (Nidaros Cathedral Restoration Work). In 1929, he had won the competition for the reconstruction of the design of the west front and central tower of the Nidaros Cathedral. It included the redesign of the main octagon tower, the helmet and the completion of the Nidaros Cathedral West Front.

Most of it was covered with recesses for statues in the French Gothic style. The reconstruction of Nidaros Cathedral thus became an important arena for many of the leading Norwegian sculptors. Many of Norway’s leading sculptors joined in creating the western façade, working for several decades. Thiis was appointed as the cathedral architect, a position he held from 1930 until his death in 1972.

Gâteau à la broche

The Gâteau à la broche, or cake on a spit, was first brought to France by Napoleon’s soldiers retreating from battle in Russia.

As a reminder that losing isn’t always bad, the soldiers carried the recipe with them after their defeat. Two hundred years later, the French cake tradition keeps on spinning.

Although the cake is considered rare, according to Slow Food, the tradition is alive and well in two French regions: Hautes-Pyrénées and Aveyron.

Bastille Day (in South Africa)

Franschhoek is a small town in the Western Cape Province and one of the oldest towns of the Republic of South Africa.

It is about 75 kilometers from Cape Town and has a population of slightly over 15,000 people. Franschhoek's original inhabitants were the Bushmen.

In 1688 French Huguenot refugees began populating the valley establishing farms and businesses bringing with them their experience in agriculture. The name of the area soon changed to le Coin Français ("the French Corner"), and later to Franschhoek (Dutch for "French Corner"), with many of the settlers naming their new farms after the areas in France from which they came.

This heritage is shown today by the Huguenot Monument which stands at the end of the town. The Cape Dutch architecture in much of the village is unspoiled.

Franschhoek's weekend Bastille Festival has been celebrated every July since 1994, the year of the first South African general election with universal adult suffrage marking the end of the apartheid era.

Coffee2Go Berets!

ReHats from Berlin (Germany) is a new, young company that's shaking up the traditional hatters industry.

ReHats creates headgear from upcycled burlap coffee bags and unique colourfully printed material for linings; all are Oekotex100 certified.

ReHats creates headgear that is sustainable, made in Germany and at a fair price.

Adding to their range of fedora’s, trilby’s and flat caps, ReHats has now created a line of berets exclusively for South Pacific Berets.

The berets measure 25cm in diameter and are all handmade; no one model the same as another! Presently available in sizes 57 - 60 @ $64.50.

Valentin Vega #4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Valentin Vega #3

 

 

Valentin Vega #2

More of the work of Valentin Vega (see yesterday's post):

 
 

Valentin Vega #1

Valentín Vega Fernández (1912 - 1997) was a renowned photographer from Asturias.

He grew up and trained in Gijón. His parents were very interested in photography and his brothers ended up also dedicating themselves to photography by setting up their own studios. During the Civil War he was secretary of the UGT in Gijón. He was imprisoned for three years because of his political affiliation.

By 1941 he began visiting the Asturian mining basins, especially the Nalón, as a traveling photographer or "street photographer". In 1951 he moved to El Entregowith, where he opened a photo studio. Here he also worked as a teacher of physical education and athletics since the 60s.

Valentín Vega is especially known for his portraits of the daily life of the mining towns of Asturias in the 40s and 50s: shops, miners, charcoal women, fairs, parks, etc.

Despite his prolific work, only part of his work was saved from the 1941-1951 period (more than 70,000 negatives) by the Asturian People's Museum of Gijón, where it is preserved. Between January and March 2017, the National Museum of Anthropology (Spain) has dedicated an exhibition to him: "Valentín Vega: La Vida por delante".

Georg Baselitz’s Heroes

They are monumental paintings, aggressive and defiant in their execution. At the same time, they possess a quality of ambivalence, fatefulness and vulnerability to this day – Georg Baselitz’s dramatic and contradictory “Heroes”. 

Georg Baselitz - Ein Roter

Georg Baselitz (1938) is one of the most influential painters and sculptors of our time. In 1965/66, in a virtually explosive spurt of productivity, he developed his dramatic and paradoxical Hero paintings. 

The forceful workgroup of the Heroes and New Types is today regarded worldwide as a key example of the German art of the 1960s. 

Georg Baselitz - Bonjour Monsieur Courbet

His monumental “Heroes” in their tattered battle dress, figures marked as much by failure as they are by resignation, possess an accordingly contradictory character.