I should probably do this in reverse order as the memory seems to be stacked to favor more recent events. If family history is applicable, it will not always be that way.
We, the two Barbaras and I, went down to the DeYoung museum to see the Monet exhibit. It was the last weekend for the exhibit. The paintings were from Monet's latter days. He had an estate in Germany where he altered a river to create a pond to grow water lilies. That worked until he found that there was dust coming in from the dirt roads near the estate and he was unhappy about how it settled on the lilies. He would clean them every day. Not being shy and apparently of enough coin, he had the local roads paved to put a stop to that.
He used to tend to the lilies himself but as the task grew, he turned it over to gardeners and eventually had eight of them in his employ.
In this period of his painting career, he spent endless canvases on images of the lilies and of a Japanese bridge. He worked in larger canvases and we might presume, used larger brushes. The works displayed were pretty big, mostly done in a vibrant green color. There were some tans and such tossed in, but to my eye, it would have been a good time to have stocked up on green paint.
I usually find museum trips to be quite inspirational and I return home with visions of breaking out brushes, or stone chisels and such, but this exhibit left me quite cold. One of the "features" of the art was that there was a lack of details. Very little draftsmanship there. Oh, you could tell it was a tree and some plants and the occasional tree and some bushes, but that was about all. You were not going to learn anything about the objects themselves. Now, it maybe that this style of painting was selling in those days. A bit more on that later as we discuss the Gauguin exhibit. But sadly, the works looked too messy to me and not exciting.
As it happened the museum had an exhibit by Gauguin in the building too and we wanted to spend enough time to justify the travel time and parking fee -- note to self, get there early and park on the street, that will pay for lunch. They had paintings of course, but they also has some wooden relief carvings and some pottery. I liked the pottery. They were of faces and highly decorated vessels. They appealed in their forms and shapes and subjects. A lot of the pottery didn't survive as it was not considered valuable at the time.
Gauguin started out as a stock broker and got married and started to have kids. But then he fell under the spell of the smell of oil paints and pretty soon he was a full time artist. This left the wive and five kids pretty much abandoned. He wandered off to Tahiti a couple of times and then returned and sought to sell his stuff and that didn't work well. Meanwhile the wife raised the kids and helped out a bit and worked, but he had little to do with the family. It might have been interesting to see how the kids viewed all of this.
What was clear from the explanations of his life, is that the image of the starving artist was true in his case. His stuff didn't sell. He spent a lot of time trying to become accepted as an important artist. If he was such, then the paintings would sell and until they sold he wouldn't become an important artist! Seems tough to break through that barrier. Of course only a tiny number of artists ever make it. I think this is true of any product. If you are not producing what people want, you are in real trouble. Frequently artists will petition cities and states and governments to support their life style. I don't have a lot of sympathy for these folks. The market for music, art, literature, etc., is a harsh one. I don't think it's valid that taxpayers ought to kick in to "make it happen" for them. This is all probably worthy of a few posts down the road, but now is not the time!
We retired to the Dim Sum Tea House for lunch. It was crowded and we shared a table with a couple of gals. I tried to spill hot tea in their laps. They were quick and I only caught the table and floor. One of the gals had seen the Monet and Gauguin exhibits and was somewhat derogatory towards Gauguin's family attentions. But, looking at the larger picture, sure he was pretty mean to six folks, the wife and kids, but provided the world with paintings and art works that have inspired and delighted folks for a hundred years. Might be a good trade off -- certainly the question has more than one side. If he had remained a stock broker, would the world be better off?
Ok, enough of that art stuff... Let's get back to the things that matter and we are talking the long iron out of a fairway bunker.
I played a few times over last week and there were somethings that I found interesting and encouraging.
My goal was to keep my head still while swinging. A simple goal you might think, but it's hard to do these things at speed. "Well, slow down then!" I hear you say. That's actually pretty good advice and working on hitting the ball well and not "hard" is an excellent goal.
There were a couple of shots that stuck in my mind. I've decided that my short putts are a problem. Not enough speed for the most part and I have a tendency to pull them. Pulling seems to be caused by my shoulders getting too active and then my head is involved and then the putt goes left. I will try not rocking the shoulders and short putts and getting more handsy with them.
I hit some long drives, one close to 250, which would really be useful to my scoring if I could do it consistently. If I can do it once, then the ability is there, and good things might be down the road.
I also hit a number of shots that got close to the pins from long distances. I managed to hit a five iron 180 out of a trap. That put me over a difficult green, but I would have expected to be 20 yards short of that result usually. I see this as a good thing as the strike was so pure.
I've come to the conclusion that my backswing needs some work. If it is good, then the downswing will be simpler and easier and more frequently effective. I ran across a video by Athletic Motion Golf on Youtube. They went into some detail about what you want. I jotted down some notes to capture the essence, which is to keep things on the elbow plane. The club will join this plane and will walk back out to the ball on the down swing. Getting off this plane will result in an over the top move or an early extension. But stay on it and all is golden. Well, assuming that you keep the spine in its place too!
For the next round I'm going to work on the take away. On the whole I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing and the results I've had. My short game is getting more nuanced and I've got more shots. I picked up something from a Phil Mickelson video on chipping and that has been incorporated for long shots that don't require pitching the ball. But I'm hitting more greens, so the short game is not used as much as it was.
That's about the wrap for the moment. This is getting too long. I'll be playing every day this week and I should have some feedback on my current view of things.
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