Golden Autumns of Anchorite Hearts
Exposition of the Almanach system
Alas, soon enough, it will be winter here: The Great Canadian Winter. As I must have explained, I am a painter and I always begin my new Production-Year I call it, at the beginning of the Autumn season. That means that I am currently half-way through the first season of production for the current production season that began at the start of this past Autumn, at the end of the Summer season.
Granted, this will only really make sense to someone using a similar system of calendar-based reckoning, the four-season calendar reckoning, for I live in a temperate climate technically in a Nordic region, though still quite a ways below the tree line. That too will not make sense to a lot a people, the concept of a tree line.
In fact, this entire Almanach, The Painter’s Almanach won’t make sense to anyone who isn’t living here locally, or otherwise living in a similar kind of climate. What I mean is that it might still have meaning, may even be an entertaining read, but it might not be practical. That is, it might not be practical as an Almanach.
With that being said, I am happy to report that the current production season has surpassed all expectations. You see, I have been working this way for as long as I can remember, but over the course of the last several years, I have begun planning long in advance. That is in fact what led to the conception of the Almanach.
Originally, I was starting almost anything serious in the Fall in any case. School started in the Fall, all the television shows I liked to watch started in the Fall, and most of the big holidays my family observed were in that general part of the year. But much more recently, I began starting my production-year in the Fall, but in an official manner.
That means that when I sign or authenticate a painting, or otherwise document or annotate it in some manner, I will use the current Year, i.e. we are currently in the year 2013. But if the date is today’s date, November 19th, 2013, then officially it is in the first season of the production year, meaning that it might be in the fourth quarter (Q4) of the calendar year but that my Production-Year is a separate calendar.
This is not meant to confuse anyone. I myself was already confused enough by such uses of different calendars, seasons, and years. For instance, in Canada, we had the calendar year but also the school calendar, the broadcast calendar, and at least two kinds of fiscal or financial years, one for individuals and one for the government. In this sense, my Almanach is based on a seasonal year, from Autumn of one year to the Autumn of the next.
Here’s the thing, though. Over the course of time, I began my preparations for the coming production year in the seasonal calendar of the Painter’s Almanach earlier and earlier. And that’s just the calendar for the Almanach; there are other calendars. This year, I started last December, began planning in December and January, though the Almanach had already been written for all of 2013-2014.
Not every season is equal either. Winter stands apart from the other seasons, because in Canada winter tends to be the most severe, meteorologically speaking. There is a discrepancy between the actual winter season from the beginning of the winter solstice to the spring equinox, and the actual meteorological winter based on sensible weather patterns. The meteorological winter tends to be much longer. But wait, it gets worse!
If you haven’t figured it out, I tend to take a more ecological view of things, generally, at least as far as seasons are concerned. And, being an artist, seasons are of extreme importance to me. Being a visual artist, the length of the day matters a great deal, as does the color of the light, its hue, or the effect it has on the physical environment.
Migration patterns matter as well, for I happen to love birds. And of course, last but not least, there is the Lunar calendar, which is perhaps of prime importance for me, as I am a lunatic. And I am a Catholic as well, using the Gregorian solar calendar as civil calendar and then what is perhaps even more important than anything else as far as the Painter’s Almanach is concerned: I necessarily follow the liturgical year, following the cycle of liturgical seasons of the Catholic Church!
Why would liturgy matter to a Painter? It isn’t merely because I am Catholic that I observe the liturgical calender, but also because I am a painter, but more importantly, because I am a painter falling into the Quebecois tradition of painters going back many generations. The Quebecois nation has historically been predominantly of a French Roman Catholic character, at least until recently. Since that is the cultural tradition that I find myself falling into, something as seemingly insignificant as a Feast day, to me, the painter, it becomes of such significance that something stronger than devotion and piousness drives me to observe them. My religion will forgive me if I skip a Feast day, but my art will never forgive me if I miss even one second of my existence, which happens to fall into a complex system of calendars.
Also, what might suddenly make all of this make a great deal more sense to you, dear and patient Reader: I was born in the Fall. My existence started in the Fall, and so for me that’s the only calendar that truly matters, everything else, civil calendars, fiscal calendars, religious calendars, being secondary. And so that is how the Painter’s Almanach was born, with the birth of a new painter in the tradition.
As for my choice of spelling for the term Almanac, I chose to spell it with an ‘h’, because it is both the archaic spelling, as well as the spelling of the word in French. Since I am bilingual, am fluent in both English and French, and tend to write in both languages on-line, it is quite useful for me to have a special term be spelled the same in both languages. When it is possible, I always try to go with the spelling that is the most universal. Almanach was available, so I secured the name.
An almanac (also archaically spelled almanack and almanach) is an annual publication that includes information such as weather forecasts, farmers’ planting dates, tide tables, and tabular information often arranged according to the calendar. Astronomical data and various statistics are found in almanacs, such as the times of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, eclipses, hours of full tide, stated festivals of churches, and so on. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almanac]
