A bloody mary for breakfast?

I woke up to a winter wonderland today. We’re snowed in got about 8″ of snow over night expecting 12″ by the end of the day. Schools are closed and there are cars stuck or in the ditch everywhere. It’s a mess out there very thankful we still have power. I’m not going to work I have plenty to do here like finding my cross country ski’s.

In front of me sits a bloody mary, a bagel with cream cheese with a hint of almond and on the side an omelette with cheese, green peppers. Another bloody mary might be due or at least a beer chaser. This is a treat for us not a normal thing.
I’m checking my eBay and had a pretty successful week. I diversified a little and made some good choices aside from my usual postcards.

I was reading from a local newspaper called “Freedom Weekly” free news for free people. It has our national debt of 16,432,519,875,802.97 and it says under it…

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie (marxist term for the middle and upper class) is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
Vladimir Illich Lenin

Do we ever learn from history? The president now says the sequester is going to devastate our economy, but George wills who I believe says 44 billion is less than 2% of the GDP budget. We’ll see what happens this week in Washington.

Painting wise…

I find myself vacillating between feeling that it’s really great and really horrible. One moment, I’m a genius creating masterpieces and the next I’m thinking I haven’t any talent, the work is vapid and I’m a complete idiot. It’s a constant process of doubt and assurance that drives you to do better.
John Alexander

Taking a break from painting the figure.

Image

Painted today. Taking a seriously needed break from painting the figure. There’s freedom in not having any pencil marks or guidelines to follow on the canvas. The pure artistic desire to just paint. Taking the time to figure out on your own where everything belongs, how it visually looks and how it all relates.

I always start with the under painting. I use raw sienna and prussian blue and a little white for a change basically establishing my value study as I covered the whole canvas with paint.

I am working from a photograph I took some time ago in North Carolina while we staying at the Hilton. It was a summer night and we would stroll down the boardwalk. The evening lights and water reflections were a delight to be around while we would watch the sun set and then stop at a nearby bistro for a local beer and southern platter. Our little get away from the party at hand. The ocean breeze was so warm.

“The boardwalk in Charlotte” I have a few other photo’s so this could turn into a series. When I finish this one I’m hoping to bring it down to the local coffee shop called Smith Bros located right along Lake Michigan/one of the great lakes. Some very interesting array of artwork is on display there and some by a couple of friends I have unexpectedly come to know by chance. My work is not on display at this time because I had a piece disappear with the owner from another coffee shop that closed it doors unexpected. Stolen in other words…we take our chances as artists not like it’s worth a million dollars yet. There are a couple of other galleries that have pop up in Port Washington lately I need to inquire.

The creative process is alive and well.

The new year has started and it’s already been a month into it leaving me only eleven months to go. My outlook for this year looks good. The creative process is alive and well. My mind has been actively slipping back and forth on a number of different ideas But I am taking time to really think them through before I dive into any one. Preparing the ground work consumes a lot of my time so I want to make sure I’m in it for the long hall because without me nothing gets done.

I scraped off my artist palette. It was full of thick dried paint that had been sitting for at least a year. It was excruciating painful as I removed it in thick increments leaving thin shaving and dust everywhere. I dread cleaning my palette but this was ridiculous. I usually clean it more regularly but under the circumstances its been a rough and neglected year. although just the act of cleaning it is very promising and warrants a bit of quiet excitement.

I thought about doing a 365 day project but my mind and life does not work that way. I admire all those that can and do art everyday it is only beneficial to the artist and the creative process. Unfortunately I’m still working on a couple of paintings that I started 3 years ago definitely is on my bucket list.

To show my most honest interpretation of me as an artist I have to not only show my work which is the end result but my thought process. This may require me going shopping sometimes for some creative inspiration, maybe going out for a specialty beer and conversation, a touch of photography my never-ending love and my accounts about the process as a whole. In the end little excerpt from what I digest on a weekly basis from what I hear and read in a magazine, a book, the newspaper and or the internet. My thoughts come when I can identify and pull out the things that have some relevance or impact on me as an artist. At the end of the day giving me some commonality with the world in which I live.

I’d like to leave you with a favorite that keeps me inspired.

“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with words and notion, but as they are apprehended directly and unconditionally by mind at large-this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone.”

Aldous Huxley

The Doors of Perception

Picasso’s Genius Revealed: He Used Common House Paint

I thought this was an interesting article about Picasso the artist we all love and/or hate.

By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com – Fri, Feb 8, 2013Email0Share558Share24PrintRelated ContentView PhotoAmong the Picasso paintings in …

Pablo Picasso, famous for pushing the boundaries of art with cubism, also broke with convention when it came to paint, new research shows. X-ray analysis of some of the painter’s masterworks solves a long-standing mystery about the type of paint the artist used on his canvases, revealing it to be basic house paint.

Art scholars had long suspected Picasso was one of the first master artists to employ house paint, rather than traditional artists’ paint, to achieve a glossy style that hid brush marks. There was no absolute confirmation of this, however, until now.

Physicists at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., trained their hard X-ray nanoprobe at Picasso’s painting “The Red Armchair,” completed in 1931, which they borrowed from the Art Institute of Chicago. The nanoprobe instrument can “see” details down to the level of individual pigment particles, revealing the arrangement of particular chemical elements in the paint.

The analysis showed that Picasso used enamel paint that matches the precise chemical composition of the first brand of commercial house paint, called Ripolin. The researchers were able to compare the painting’s pigment with those of paints available at the time by analyzing decades-old paint samples bought on eBay. [9 Famous Art Forgers]

What’s more, the detailed study, which used X-rays to probe the painting’s pigmentdown to the scale of 30 nanometers (a sheet of copier paper is 100,000 nanometers thick), was able to pinpoint the manufacturing region where the paint was made by studying its particular impurities.

“The nanoprobe at the [Advanced Photon Source X-ray facility and the Center for Nanoscale Materials] allowed unprecedented visualization of information about chemical composition within a singe grain of paint pigment, significantly reducing doubt that Picasso used common house paint in some of his most famous works,” one of the research leaders, Argonne’s Volker Rose, said in a statement.

Art scholars think Picasso experimented with Ripolin to achieve a different effect than would’ve been possible with traditional oil paints, which dry slowly and can be heavily blended. In contrast, house paint dries quickly and leaves effects like marbling, muted edges, and even drips of paint. Still, experts couldn’t be sure house paint was the key to Picasso’s look without proof.

“Appearances can deceive, so this is where art can benefit from scientific research,” said Francesca Casadio, senior conservator scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago. “We needed to reverse-engineer the paint so that we could figure out if there was a fingerprint that we could then go look for in the pictures around the world that are suspected to be painted with Ripolin, the first commercial brand of house paint.”

The scientists detailed their findings in a paper published last month in the journal Applied Physics A: Materials Science & Processing.

http://news.yahoo.com/picassos-genius-revealed-used-common-house-paint-155124899.html;_ylt=Ap0DcsWQgEwSGIHvhxzBPm3zWed_;_ylu=X3oDMTJtcTZjYXRiBG1pdANIQ01PTCBvbiBhcnRpY2xlIHJpZ2h0IHJhaWwEcGtnA2lkLTMwNDY2NTcEcG9zAzYEc2VjA01lZGlhQkNhcm91c2VsTWl4ZWRIQ00EdmVyAzE2;_ylg=X3oDMTNqb3BsYjNuBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMmI5YjFjMDItYTZmNC0zNzcwLWIzOWQtMDQxOTI3NTg2NmM1BHBzdGNhdAN1LXMEcHQDc3RvcnlwYWdlBHRlc3QDaXB0Y19za3lzY3JhcGVyX3JlbGF0ZWQ-;_ylv=3

Galleries set the stage with food, wine and music.

Galleries set the stage with food, wine and music. Inviting the public to participate as special guests as they mingle, engage in conversations and share ideas. And of course…meet the artist.
It’s a funny thing all the time and work it takes for artists to line up a show that when it comes down to attending the opening reception it’s a sudden…dreaded obligation. Personally I could never get comfortable with just hanging around and mingling with my family much less with a bunch strangers and I consider myself seasoned. The questions? Like what does one say at these things? What does one do? How does one look? If I dress modern I should have dressed more retro and if I dressed retro I should have played it safe with contemporary. At my last show I saw that we had some commonality of wearing tweed referring to the other artist that shared my show so I was thinking I was safe.  

Most artists that I encountered defy the stereotype that we know as unsocial and are usually eager to talk about their work and themselves as they stand in the fore front. I am so stereotypical when it comes to talking about my art. I can talk about anything even the weather for hours but when it comes to my work which I’m passionate about I’m short, succinct and all preparedness is nowhere to be found.So I was reading about some artists that go to great lengths of being late, or not showing up at all and or last having someone else show up in place of them. My first thought was why didn’t I think of that. I have to admit I was a half  hour late for my show only because a bridge was out and the road was under construction so I had to take a detour in a city that I’m not too familiar with anymore. Did I mention it was also raining. The other artist was fashionably late an hour. 

Most importantly what I discovered was that no one buys anything unless they have an emotional connection to it and that I’m the one that needs to make that connection happen for them. So some where and some how? I need to work on getting my passion across to the viewer and forget about sounding esoteric or elite.More often than not people want to see the artist only a few want to talk to them.
I want to conclude by saying I must have done something right aside from showing up because in the end I had finalized a couple of sales during my Danceworks showing in october 09.

I always enjoy a good mystery.

       Okay I was procrastinating and painting up to the last-minute until I had to pick up my son from preschool finally as I’m flying out the door I realize I can’t find the car keys. Now I always keep my keys in my purse but today we switched cars and one of the two sets of keys that we made broke so we are sharing one key until we get another one made.  So the key is not in my purse or on the key rack…where it always is.  It’s not on the island, the peninsula, the computer table or my daughters detective drawer. Now this is a desk drawer that my daughter secretly store things from time to time I have found many things Wal-Mart cards, Q-tips, money, jewelry and empty candy wrappers I was thinking and hoping it was a sure place but not this time 

 So in a panic I call my husband at work and ask do you have the car keys? Do you know where they are? Knowing that if my husband had the keys it wouldn’t have helped the situation anyways because he was a bit of a trout away. In bewilderment I said okay I’ll let you go. What are you going to do he asks? Calculating it was too far to walk there the only thing I can do call Mom. Not a hard choice just an embarrassing one. 

So next I call Mom and her line is busy I call again and busy still. So I call my sister who is staying with Mom at this time. Is Mom on the phone? Yes. I’ll have her call you back. No… I need to talk to her right away.  So I can hear in the background and she’s trying to wrap it up but still keeps talking so I ask my sister to talk to this other person whom we both know just for a while so I can tell Mom of my predicament.  As I quickly tell my story she says that my niece is here too. Great! Can she go pick up my son at school for me? I don’t see why not.

I make the necessary phone calls arrange everything and a half hour later my son gets a ride home. Words and thoughts are exchanged and my niece explains why she is home and confesses of being under a lot of stress about something and so we talk for a while and I listen.  

Not long after my husband suddenly arrives home probably because of something I said. Together we search the whole house from top to bottom and as we are looking we are trying to recall who drove the car last, where did we go lately and basically trying to decide who’s at fault here. I know we’re terrible. Our search was futile no key found.

Although were befuddled we still have one last hope our daughter who is still at school. We pick her up and on the way home ask the proverbial question. Did you take the keys? She responds positively with yes I seen those keys. I’ve never seen her bee line to anything so fast and so sure. I was so relieved and silent all I could say was awesome. How they got there I didn’t care. What was important was the mystery was solved. I always enjoy a good mystery.

Looking back before taking that leaping forward.

    As a passionate or most times obsessed artist I always have to reflect back on what I painted in the past and relate it to what’s on my plate now.  I earnestly try to strive for a higher level of execution or thought. Having said that  I still believe that ‘ I myself do nothing the holy spirit accomplishes all through me.’ William Blake. I went back to 2010 in an earlier blog but felt the need to go back one more year to 2009. Great things happened that year sometimes it never hurts to relive and relearn. I started the year out working on some portraitures. My top 10 for 2009. 

1)   Oil painting portrait 24″ x 36″  ‘Deana and Reid’

2)   Oil painting portrait 24″ x 30″  ‘Jeff and Gloria’

3)   I lined up an art show at  ‘ The Dance Works gallery’ 

4)   Grava gallery: put on display “Layla” throughout the summer.


5)   Co-written and published 1st e-book.

6)   Finished a nude figure painting in oils 30″ x 40″ for sale $2,500.

7)   Worked on series for up coming show: Started (2) large  paintings 24″ x 30″ called soul-searching and finished up the 11″ x 14″ smaller version of soul-searching.

8)   August/pool party at The lighthouse: Displayed and delivered portraitures.

9)   October: Gallery night opening at The Dance Works art gallery. 

10)  Flew to North Carolina for a wedding stayed at the Hilton. Took a lot of photographs plan to do a large painting of the boardwalk. I have new ideas about flying. Thank God it was only an hour flight! 

 

My top ten paintings a year in Review 2010

1)    The year started out with the sale of two paintings at The Dance Works art  gallery. The show started in October and ran through the beginning of January.

2)  Reworked ‘The Lilly’

   

3)   Started taking my photography to a higher level.

4)   I started preparing for my artist video. Release date will be in 2011.

5)   I scheduled to do a speaking engagement at the local elementary school on career day. It was very enlightening.

6)   Displayed art work at The Smith Brothers Coffee shop in Port Washington.

7)   Also had work on display at The Last Drop of Coffee in Shorewood.

8)   Worked on getting the Zazzle store up and running.

8)   MIAD had an Art Sale for alumni/faculty/and students.

9)   Most important completion and delivery of portrait called ‘GRANNY’.

10) Started preparing three new canvases.

Why you should frame your art.

There are two reasons why we have art frames on paintings. They can protect art, of course, but most importantly they can aid to their attractiveness on display.

Since the very early days of painting, frames have served to enhance the visual beauty of art. Pictures were hung on walls and they became furnishings. The first frames were often works of art themselves. They were large and elaborately carved and decorated wooden frames. There was a practical reason also. The frame framed the picture. In other words, it created a boundary that enclosed the image and separated it physically from the surrounding wall.

As the idea of paintings as furniture began to spread, the frame became such an essential element of the entire package that the art was not considered complete until it was framed. The frame often time was more art than the painting itself. The framer was an artist in his own right. One part of his art was the carving and decoration of the frame and another was the matching of frame and picture to create a harmonious whole.

Framing changed dramatically with the introduction of lithographs and prints. These were either original works or copies of works printed on paper rather than actual paintings on canvas. Little was understood about preservation at first and although the art prints were being framed in a similar fashion to oil paintings at first, it was soon realized that certain protection was needed. It also became common to use colored matting to frame the image inside the wooden external frame.

As the lithograph or print became more and more popular, the art of modern framing was developed. The external frame became more than just a frame for the image, but also the platform that allowed glass to cover and protect the image and matting to enhance and create an inner frame. The use of matting inside the outer frame became another art form. Colors in the mats themselves were matched to colors in the art work to create a unified visual image. The mats, the image, the glass, and even protective backing and mounting material was all held together by the frame.

Today, the major reason for the use of frames with art is still the original one. The frame isolates the art from the surrounding environment making it a unified piece. With prints, the frame still serves as a platform for the glass, backing, and matting. Of course, the major reason for a frame from a practical point of view is that we have become so used to them that no hanging picture would look natural without one.

Aazdak Alisimo writes about art framing for ArtFramingGalleries.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Aazdak_Alisimo

visit my website at http://www.cedarlodgeportraitstudio.com

Boo Radley lives across the street.

 

It’s that time of the year. When my daughter who will stand at the corner of the lot peering across the street for long periods of time according to my watch shivering and whispering to her little brother who  follows her around faithfully. It reminds me every time of the book To Kill a Mockingbird you know the part where Scout and Jem would wait to see if Boo Radley would come out of the house. Not that this house looked run down, overgrown or there were any rumors circulating about the neighbors that I care to mention, but instead the haunting decorum of Halloween that they displayed in their front yard religiously ever year antagonizing my daughter as she looks to see and not see at the same time. At night it only got brighter as she peaks through the curtains. I’m sure the neighbors were amused and look forward to her curiosity every year.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was a coming-of-age novel told from the point of view of an adult looking back at her childhood something I keep wanting to do myself.  Scout was 9 years old an age I remember very well and she was, as the saying goes, ‘wise beyond her years’. Another familiar line ‘Roaming freely all day, coming home only for meals or the bathroom.’ An era we will only remember as a child and never repeat.