Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: Cezanne


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To the mountain.

I see the Sainte Victoire mountain every day. It always catches my breath. On the halfway point of my daily walk I get the best view. I try to drink it in slowly. It is the latte I order extra hot to make it last longer. It is the tentative first sip of familiar and spectacular against my lips. Delicious.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have noticed it. Would I have just gulped it in and moved on? It was Cezanne who led me to it. Painting by painting. Image by image. In books and museums. Telling me again how worthy it was. How beautiful. And I believed it before I stood beneath it. Before I climbed it. Before I painted it. 

That’s what we can do for each other. It’s why I love a latte, I suppose. Because of each one shared with my mother, with my friends. Each sip an experience. Of laughter and tears. An extension of a meal. A way to make the afternoon last longer. A gathering of love, sip by sip. 

And the thing is, we can do it with everything. When we share what we love. The things we find important. When we show each other the view from our hearts, it can be the familiar turned spectacular. I mean it’s just a rock, a giant rock, this Sainte Victoire. So if we can turn that into a “breath-taker” — just imagine what else love can do! 

It’s time to show our hearts. Look at things differently. Open our minds. And just see!!!!

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Being there.

I think my heart recognized it even before my brain. I was certain you could see it beating through my dress as I stood before Cezanne’s painting. I told Dominique, “It feels like there’s so much blood in my heart — or love…”

“You’ve been there,” he said, smiling. And indeed we had, just a short time ago. We stood in the very place that Cezanne painted. The exact position. The same view. Others were in the museum, but for a few moments, we were inside the painting.

I don’t suppose it’s enough to just live it. It’s so important to share our experiences. Because somewhere, someone needs to hear it. They need to hear it from someone who has been there, been through it. (And oh, how I, we, you, have been through it!)

Being interviewed the other day, for the first time since her passing, I was able to speak about my mother deeply without falling apart. I could feel it – so much emotion – but in this moment, it was love, still, so much love.

It may not sound like much, this moment, but I know, today, someone needs to hear it. Someone needs to step aside from the exquisite pain of love lost, even for just a moment. Someone needs to step inside my painting and feel the hope. Feel the love. And I say to this someone, possibly you, nothing is going to be easy, but everything is going to be ok.

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An apple a day…

The apple used to be a symbol of a job well done at Washington Elementary. It was all I thought about as I handed in my paper of work. Spelling. Math. Telling time. Passing it up through the row of desked children, I crossed fingers and toes hoping that Mrs. Strand would take out her ink pad, press the rubber stamp deeply into the red and rock it over the top of my paper, marking it forever with a beautiful apple. Seeing the apple in the upper right corner of my returned paper, the red moved from hand to heart to cheeks. (Maybe that’s why they call them apple cheeks.)

I lingered in the classroom one day as all the other five and six year olds went out for recess. I saw that she had our papers on her desk. Ink pad resting beside. My chubby fingers rested on the side of her wooden desk. My eyes peeking just above. “You like the apple, don’t you…” she smiled. I shook my head yes. “Do you want to try it?” she asked. I shook my head briskly. She handed me my paper. “Go ahead,” she said, “You deserve it.” I gripped the handle of the stamp, pressing it into the rouge stained sponge. Pulled it up slowly, then pressed it down onto my paper, slowly rocking it back and forth, as I had seen her do a million times. I pulled up the stamp, and there it was. I gasped. So beautiful!

My lips were much more shy than my heart when I was five. I didn’t have the words to ask for what I needed. But she must have seen the apple panic on my face. (I pray teachers still have the time and inclination to look.) “Do you want the others to have one?” I shook my head yes. “Go ahead then.” She refilled the pad with ink, and the rest was, as I remember, just a glorious red blur. Perhaps I remember this day so well, not only because of what she gave to me, but what she allowed me to give to everyone else. My first lesson in humanity.

Maybe it’s why I love to paint the apples now. I live in the land of Cezanne. He once proclaimed, “I will astonish Paris with an apple.” I have often thought this is why I paint them. And it’s probably true. Partially. But looking back, maybe it was Mrs. Strand who first astonished me. Who showed me the power of something so simple. Rosy-cheeked still, I sit before the canvas and paint another. Hoping you can feel the magic, and pass it on, through hand, heart and cheeks. An apple a day… go ahead, you deserve it.

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…and then the beauty comes.

My grandfather was perhaps the first to teach me about color. Each year he planted in the black dirt. He worked under blue skies. Prayed under gray. And with the daily stroke of his hands turned the field from green to gold. It was the most beautiful canvas I had ever seen. Were it not for him, would I have seen it? I can’t be sure.

I often speak of the Sainte Victoire mountain. It rests in our daily view. Cezanne was perhaps the first to point it out to the world. Painting it again and again. Showing its beauty in every light. Dominique was the first to point it out to me as he drove me from the airport. Would I have seen it? Would I have felt it? Would I have painted it without either of them? Probably not.

Georgia O’Keeffe had her own mountain. Her own “Sainte Victoire.” She painted the big mountain (as she called it) again and again. Braving the heat and the cold. The solitude. The doubters of women. All to show us the beauty of what was around her. The beauty of what she saw.

I suppose all of it was unlikely. Seemingly almost impossible at times. But this is what gives me hope. This is what enables me to put my grandfather, Rueben Hvezda, alongside Paul Cezanne. Alongside Georgia O’keeffe. To write about him. To write about my grandmother making kolaches and quilts. My mother dressing in the crispiest of whites, even on her most crumbling days. OH, my beautiful mother! Were they artists? (…a rose by any other name…) They took what was in front of them, inside of them and made it beautiful. Not only showing me, but showing me how.

So I make the pictures with paint and words. Each daily stroke, with brushes of Rueben and Elsie and Ivy — my open fields, my sturdy mountains. What are we here for, if not to show each other the beauty? The beauty of living.

You have something. Right here. Right now. Live it. Something beautiful will come. The world is waiting to see.

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Potluck

Slipping and clinging to the silky nyloned leg of my mother, slowly navigating table by table of no doubt excellent food in this potluck feast, still searching, longing, hoping to pass somewhere near the comfort of my mother’s dish — this is perhaps the best way I can explain what it’s like to begin navigation in another country.

In so many ways, you become a child again. Everything is new. You struggle to form grade-school sentences at the grown-ups table. Some will speak slowly, loudly, like your handicap isn’t limited to just the language. You’ll hear the dreaded, “It can’t be translated…” — the equivalent of “one day you’ll understand…” And you wish for the speed of this understanding. And within that wish, without your childish knowledge or permission, time passes in a blur. And suddenly your new wish is that it all slows down.

I continue to learn the language. Set the table. And I taste the food. Even make the food. And I can see it now, not as a handicap, but a gift. I get to be a child again. It is not out of fear, but joy, that I get to say, “Everything is new!”

We visited the Sainte Victoire Mountain again the other day. Climbing to Cezanne’s viewpoint, complaining about the noise of the nearby weed wackers, step by step the park didn’t seem all that special, and I turned around to say something to Dominique, but the words were sucked away by wonder as I saw it, again and for the first time, this beautiful view! The Sainte Victoire! Not only was it so very special, but I felt special, because I got to, get to, see it as a child. The struggle is the gift. And for one slow and glorious second, time had no hold, no power, I breathed, blinked, and I thought, “Look, Mommy, I’m here!”

Once again, I stand in the feast.

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Still life of Elsie.



I’ve often wondered if Cezanne hadn’t seen the beauty in fruit, in the mountain, would I have seen it?

My grandma didn’t have matching dishes. I don’t remember the table ever being “set.” We knew the contents of the cupboards, and we grabbed what was needed. A plate. A fork. A glass. As children we drank out of these multi-colored aluminum tumblers. They were indestructible. You could dig a hole with it in the dirt to bury a treasure, wash it out with the garden hose, then fill it with milk and Nesquik – chunky style because you didn’t have the patience to keep stirring. The color of tumbler chosen worked as our first “mood rings.” Blue was sad. Red, you had a temper. Green was kind. Gold, surely a winner! They could be swapped, dropped, thrown, and fit perfectly into our sweaty, chubby hands. So much adventure. So much beauty.

I’ve seen them now, these tumblers, in antique stores. Over priced, surely, but never overvalued. I smile because I did see it. We saw it together — before anyone told us it was beautiful, that they were beautiful.

My grandma never went to France. I doubt that she knew of Cezanne. But make no mistake about it, long before I studied in school, she taught me about art appreciation. How to see the beauty of everything. My real education.

When I paint the most simple still life, (my long lost treasure uncovered) I think, yes, I would have seen it. Not because of Cezanne, but because of Elsie. My grandma Elsie. I hang the painting, my heart knowing, she did make it to France after all.

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The unobstructed view.

We pass by the Sainte Victoire mountain almost every day. I can see why artists like Cezanne painted it again and again. Every day it changes colors. The shapes are magnificent from every angle. I want to capture all the variations, but the problem I face is finding the unobstructed view.

There is an angle that is absolutely stunning on the road to Meyreuil. We have pulled over so many times, trying to capture it with different lenses, but something is always in the way. The freeway. The road. The poles – oh, the poles. The poles with their wires. If I want to create the image, I will have to paint it. See beyond the obstructions and paint what I love so dearly.

I’m willing to do that for my art. I hope I’m willing to do that for my life, for the lives of those around me — see beyond the obstructions. And there are many. It’s easy to get lost in the politics, the religion, the language, the color, the age, but I want to see beyond, into the hearts and minds of others, and even myself. Because look, just look at the view, beyond all those poles and wires, it’s pretty amazing! YOU are amazing! Can you see it?!

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Scribble.

I bought a postcard at MOMA in New York. It had been marked down twice. Two red stickers. Priced at one quarter. Twenty five cents for a postcard from Cezanne’s sketchbook. Nobody cared. I did. I stood in line and brought it back with me to his homeland. 

I draw and paint in my sketchbook every day. Does it matter? I suppose it’s all in how you define the word matter. Will people stand in line to buy it? No. But does it give me great joy? Yes! Does it improve my skills? I think so. So for me, it matters a great deal! 

The sketches on Cezanne’s postcard are of his young son. I can’t say why exactly, but the images reminded me of my cousin Brent. Not the likeness really, but the halt in the becoming. I will never know what became of that young boy on the postcard. Nor for my cousin. Brent’s life was cut short in a construction accident, when he was barely in his 20’s — just a baby really. When I think of myself at 20, I didn’t even know who I was – who I would become. What a thing it is to be cut short. What a blessing it is to live another day. And then another! 

To honor these days, I will stand in line for a twenty-five cent postcard. I will remember a cousin I barely got to know. I will paint images that most will not see. I will write words and act like it all matters – because it does! My life, your life, a scribbling on today’s page, forever a work of art.


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Nothing wasted.


“Inspire” is a tricky word. I think a lot of people want someone or something to inspire them. They want the “other” to do the work. But I’m not sure that can really ever happen. You have to want to be inspired. The receiver has to do the work. For example: living here in France, I can say that I receive a lot of inspiration from the Sainte Victoire mountain. Now, this giant rock isn’t really doing anything. It sits there. But if I watch it – watch it change colors in the different light, watch it turn black and gray under a cloud, turn so white that it’s almost lavender in the summer sun – if I do this, really see it then I am inspired. If I climb up its steep and rocky slope, breathe from my belly to my toes, rubber my legs, pump my arms, reach the summit, then really let it take my breath away – then I am inspired! If I paint it. Photograph it. Wave at it as we drive by – I receive all that it has to give. Inspiration is in the work of the receiver.


Cezanne painted the mountain countless times. He painted a simple apple again and again. He created his own inspiration. Some might look at my sketch book and ask, Why are you painting so many apples? Paint something different. But you see, I am. Every apple IS different. Every apple is unique in its shape and color. But you have to want to see it. And I do want to see it. I want to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. I want to find the inspiration in everything – every day. It is on me to find it. Feel it. Use it. Enjoy it.


Today’s yellow sun jumps from the sky into my hands and onto the page. Nothing wasted.

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