Tag: artist

Virtuosity has it’s limits.

“No one paints likes this today because no one can paint like this today.”

Frank Wright

A quote from The Artist Magazine in 2007 “Never the less, we can study and emulate an artist of such great technical ability and power.” Madame Moitessier. completed in 1856 by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

This comment has hit me hard. I can’t disagree with it but I don’t agree. Some part of me as an artist has woken up.

In 1844 Ingres was approached through an intermediary with the idea of painting her portrait. Reluctant at this stage in his career to accept portrait commissions—he considered portraiture to be a lower form of art than history-painting—he initially refused Sigisbert’s request. However, when Ingres met Madame Moitessier, he was struck by her Junoesque beauty and agreed to produce a portrait.

The weather proclamation after Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow is six more weeks of winter.

Oh yeah!

In a speech in Wisconsin on Thursday, President Barack Obama insulted perhaps the most fervent members of his political base: art history majors. “But I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree,” Obama declared. “Now, nothing wrong with an art history degree — I love art history,” he then swore.

It is Sunday we go out for donuts if we can. You know it takes time to pick out the right ones even though it’s the usual. When we were done and came around I didn’t realize there was someone waiting in line and gave a short apology. They looked on and laughed as my son who stood right behind them carried the box of donuts and on top a can of fancy feast for the cat. We can’t forget the cat.

I’m sitting here contemplating my painting from a distance. The painting looks good for a moment. Little needs to be done and completion is not so far away. I learned some stuff from what I’ve been reading lately and I am better for it. They say artists make the mistake of painting everything in sharp focus. And that our eyes can not see everything in focus all at once.

Simply said.

So now I’m trying to understand the main focal point. I’m adding detail to the foreground where I want to add light and attention but some of that other stuff can stay as paint interesting enough as is.

Painting is problem solving once I solve all the problems I stop.

He was a dandy, an eccentric, and argumentative.

I like reading about artists especially when the writer can kind of reveal their unique sort of personalities. This is an excerpts from an old paperback book I fell upon called Sargent, Whistler and Mary Cassatt by Frederick A. Sweet.

John Singer Sargent was a great raconteur and always delighted his sitters as well as his dinner hostesses with his charming manner and ingratiating conversation.

James McNeill Whistler was equally fond of dining out but drove his hostess to distraction by arriving an hour late or engaging in a near brawl with a fellow guest. He was a wit with the sharpest of tongues, a dandy, an eccentric, an argumentative, impractical, conceited and clever sort of genius.

Mary Cassatt was also a brilliant talker, in fact talked incessantly, loved to argue, was very opinionated, stubborn, quick to anger but soon forgot what she had been angry about. She liked the company of men and discussion of politics. She did not care for formal society even though she herself belong to it and maintained all the appurtenances fo gracious living. She had strong opinions about art, artists and collectors and expressed herself freely and often violently on the subject.

These sound like some people I know artists and non artists. stereotypical or is it just our human nature?
Reminds me of a saying…

Beware of artists

They mix with all classes
of society and are therefore
the most dangerous.

13 Things I learned in 2013

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1)I love doing something quiet that the brain can focus on.

2)Pulling a deer out of the woods is a lot of work.

3)What POTUS means.

4)#1 U.S. export to China is scrap and trash.

5)When to use a pitching wedge.

6)How proud I was to see my kids on cross-country skis.

7)50% of the world population is illiterate.

8)It is always the red wire that they cut.

9)80% of Muslim do not speak Arabic.

10)Obama care consists of 2,700 pages both sides.

11)The Bible will be translated in every language in 2016.

12)The Packers still have a chance at the Super bowl.

13)why I call work Ninevah sometimes.

There is no work of art so big or so small

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She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from the speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window-or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so small  that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.

Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

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Inspiration comes when it wants. The secret is to sit and wait for it or bore yourself silly. When it does come it is fleeting and it’s brilliant. The moment is more real than any other moment.

I love the early stages of a painting. It’s muddy, sloppy and wet. It’s just a  bunch of ground work that makes no sense to anyone and not even me sometimes.

Almostfinnish current news;

Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.                                                                                                             
Ron Paul

Apples make me smile

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“Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.”

                                                                                         Oscar Wilde

I don’t cook but I’ve been buying cookbooks lately.

Yes odd…but I did find that they do have some fun and intriguing facts. I’m all for new ideas these days. They have interesting ways to add fun and food to your next get together with family or friends or even just at home with the fam. My family would be very surprised if I showed up with a dish. I do have a bit of quiet adventure stirring inside of me these days with a touch of spontaneity and humor so this might be the change we have all been looking for. 

The latest book that I bought is called the Complete Party Planner (yes it is a cookbook) by Annabel Karmel and this is where I began. The above picture is just a snack I threw together with apples and marshmallows. Called ‘Apple Smiles’. Simple and easy I like that. This book has over 120 ideas.

I’d like to mention another book that caught my attention the first purchase and my catalyst to this whole cooking endeavor called ‘Apples’  by Robert Berkley. Ever since I have been in search for the  perfect apple. I can’t  believe there are so many different names for so many different apples. This will be a delight. I guess you can compare apple to apples.

Awaken to my first robin(s)

It is definitely spring here I saw my first robin this year well actually I saw my first eight or nine it was a whole migration of robins and a very hearty bunch of birds at that. I never seen so many before.

My life as an artist has been so minimal these days that I haven’t been able to write about anything. I don’t want to write about a bunch of stuff that doesn’t pertain to the creative process which I know. Athough I am doing a disservice to myself and what wakens me as an artist to not speak. Knowing sometimes it is the struggles in between that create great art.

The United States is at a very interesting time…and the media here is not reporting much. The world has a lot of goings on and their plans are already in the making. I read…and I am not surprised more fascinated as it all makes perfect sense as it is slowly unveiled like a novel. I love a good book! Murder, mystery, deceit, scandals, protagonists and antagonist the whole ca-bash.

A must read…The U.S. military shift comes as the so-called BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – seek to create a monetary system to rival and even surpass the West. While it received little U.S. media attention, last week at its fifth annual summit the BRICS group unveiled what it said was a new development bank aimed at breaking the monopoly held by Western-backed institutions. Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/is-this-why-obamas-responding-to-north-korea/#EPYJ4WbVGo2Rh1XH.99

Another article about Cyprus-Style “Bail-Ins” Are Proposed In The New 2013 Canadian Government Budget!
read more http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/cyprus-style-bank-account-confiscation-is-in-the-new-canadian-government-budget

So life goes on and I know that God/Jesus Christ is in control and his plan is playing out. whatever happens to the United State will be nothing that I can stop delay maybe…but not stop.