[ Content | Sidebar ]

Archives for working

Femme-fleur and the biographical

Even if you don’t care greatly about Picasso, I recommend the Charlie Rose interview with Françoise Gilot, who lived ten years with the man. A talented artist herself, and very independent-minded, Gilot frequently discussed art with Picasso. Much of what he said about how he worked has come to us through her. For example, regarding the rather complex, high cubist paintings, he said than in the “early stages” there were almost no “references to natural forms…I painted them in afterwards.” Braque had a similar working procedure. Rather than abstract from an initial representation of a scene, these cubists–at least for a time as their approach evolved–roughly laid out their abstract, faceted spaces and forms, then filled in enough clues to suggest the subject. Those clues could appear in rather disconnected spots. I believe it was the dealer Kahnweiler who said they had developed a way to free objects, showing that they existed without showing where they were located.
more… »

Running Free

Running Free by Angela Ferreira

Running Free by Angela Ferreira

Title: Running Free
Size: 102×127 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas

Two Tricky Concepts

A reference to a recent New Yorker Critic at Large (March 30th)  review suggests that a work of art is good if it rises out of necessity and if the artist is capable of carrying out the idea to its appropriate end. As a letter writer paraphrases:

“This matters; this has purpose” and “I can do this, I am able, I can carry out this task to its appropriate end” (correspondence from Joachim B. Lyon, Stanford, California, New Yorker, May 4, 2009).

I found these notions both bemusing and contra-indicated. What do you think?

(Oh, and here’s an image from Rhyolite Nevada ghost town. I don’t know if it has either purpose or, if I paint it, as I intend to do, if I am adequate to the chore.)

The Void: painting the desert

As Steve noted not long ago, perception — how, as well as what, we see and record — is prime territory for this group. Some weeks ago I wrote about painting in the desert, the Great Basin to be more precise, and, even more specifically,  the Amargosa Plain just outside of Death Valley.

After having spent 6 weeks in the desert, perceiving and painting, mostly plein air, I am now back in Portland reading about desert perception in William L. Fox’s The Void, the Grid, and the Sign.

Fox has spent most of his life in and around a variety of deserts and back-of-nowhere lands, but in The Void he’s primarily concerned with the Great Basin, that large space between the Rockies and the Sierras, where water flows in, but never out, where there is no river coursing to the sea.  He says that outside of Afghanistan, this area contains the most mountain ranges (316) in the world, but there are also 90 basins, places where what little water exists is captured between ranges and sinks or evaporates. The best known of these basins is perhaps Death Valley, although that lies outside Fox’s attention. The place I was painting, the Amargosa Plain, is also just outside his wide-ranging travels. However, much of what he says is apropos of the Amargosa and Death Valley.

Death Valley at the Beatty Cut-off, March, 2009

more… »

Happy Easter Everyone!

Rebirth Net

Tittle: Rebirth Net
Size: 76×61 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas

Green therapy, mud sketching on recycled paper!

The weather is been fantastically good, so in order to give an art lesson outdoors to the kids and enjoy the sunshine, I have taken them outside in the school playground/pound area for painting.

http://amadeo.blog.com/repository/98271/3990352.jpg

By dipping a paintbrush in the water pound, and mixing it with soil, you can create beautiful earthy shades, pretty much the same principle as watercolour.

By breaking grass and smudge it on paper you can make a shade of green, and by using a burned wood stick you can create some chalky black. Using only these natural pigmentations from nature you can create 100% organic art on recycled paper.

mud

mud2

I have made two organic sketches, one that I prepared at home in my back garden and another one I used for a quick demonstration how it works for the kids.

Here are some of the results:

mud3
Age 9

mud4
Age9

mud5
Age9

mud6
Age 10

For more school art lessons check out my blog at Life of a Mother Artist
More to come…

Duck Fun

Walking to work I came across these beautiful waves and snapped them with my new point-and-shoot camera. I bought this lovely little Leica when I started walking to my day job because carrying a heavy DSLR camera in addition to my laptop on this 4-mile round trip had made me feel like a pack-ass. more… »

css.php