Posted: July 31

On vacation with a paintbrush

(Bruges, Belgium) Today is the feast of St. Ignatius which I am celebrating with the small community of Jesuits who live in this picturesque Flemish town near the Belgian coast. They call the community «Jesuitenhuis Inigo» and they have been very hospitable with me—patient as well, since I do not speak Flemish and few of them speak English. But I feel welcomed and do not mind not being part of the conversation since I am on vacation after all.

The weather has been typical, which is to say, variable : light rain gives way to clear skies which cloud over, clear up—over and over all day long. When the sun does shine, the countryside is lustrously green. The light has a soft, filtered look which explains why Vermeer saw the way he did. On Friday I planned to visit Lessewege, a small town noted for being even older than most others in an area of old towns. A steady rain when I woke up almost made me cancel my plans, but then I remembered the ‘variable’ part of the local weather. Armed with an umbrella I set out by train for the 20-minute train ride. By the time I arrived in Lessewege, clouds lifted and the white-washed cottages stretched along the one street gleamed in the diffuse light. I walked through town and out into the farmland where I found an open field of ripening wheat (the yellow-gold appealed to me after several days of painting Bruges’ canals). I set up my easel under the shade of a tree and began painting. Then the sun shone full strength. I loved it—this is what I had hoped for, just standing outside enjoying nature, with a picnic lunch when I got hungry .

Painting in public is very much a spectator sport, although folks in Lessewege were more circumspect than those in Bruges. I did not expect much the next day when I decided to paint a scene from the flower garden the Jesuits have developed in the space enclosed by the three houses that form Jesuitenhuis Inigo. (One of the houses dates back to the 1500’s.) The challenge in painting a garden is the complexity of small forms (the plants) and the variety in hue and color temperature of the greens. So I focused on the challenge, as the weather remained variable.

You enter the garden through a large door that opens from the street into a passageway through one of the houses. The Jesuits put a sign saying ‘Welkom’ where curious passersby can see it if they pause at the door. A surprising number take the invitation. I enjoyed their presence, especially the three older people who sat in some chairs behind me. One of the three invited me to sit down and listen to his friend who was going to tell a story of the Long-ago Times. He delivered the invitation in halting English, and I knew I would not be able to understand one word of the Flemish, so I declined. But I listened to the throaty cadences of the Flemish , and realized that the narrator took her story very seriously and delivered the narration in a solemn tone. It felt very right to be attemting to capture the ephemeral beauty of flowers blossoming in front of 500-year-old walls while listening to a story of the Long-ago Times. This is even better than the countryside.