I Paint With Pigments that look like Crayons

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NeocolorsII by Caren D’ache

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I begin painting by choosing a bright white sheet of Archival Paper that is Hot Press which is smooth to the eye and touch unlike cold press which has bumps or texture on the surface.

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The 140 pound paper weight provides enough thickness for the needed layers to begin the basic structure of the piece.

If the paper is too thin, it simply won’t absorb the pigments correctly.  

Playing with the foreground and surface color adds dimension and saturation to the surface which means that the colors that come forward are a different hue then the ones that recede

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I often use black and white as a sort of yin and yang struggle in my work seeking to balance the play between dark and light. 

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Each swirl and arc is a process of painstaking baby steps.

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To understand that it has been and that it has arrived is the very nature of the creating artist.

 

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It is not a stagnant moment from one completed piece to the next. It is

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News From The Couch …. GOLD

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A little bit of Egypt today and the reminder of the deep impact this culture has on our world.  The symbols, people and art work are always a good way to explore ideas again and again.

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The use of gold in a painting really dramatically changes the impact of color on the total piece and like the one above, I am really enjoying the process of learning and having fun with it’s added dimension to my world.

How’s Your Day Going?

Friday’s Famous Artist is …. Jackson Pollock

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Imagine if you will a world filled with post renaissance work, Madonna and child, an eloquent Victorian lady in a scene  perhaps the illuminating painting of Monet or Van Gogh to seize upon.

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Fresh out of the war and into a new idea of American Importance comes Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell to name a few.    Flash forward here we are in American in the 1940’s fresh out of the depression to end all depressions and World War 2.    Enter Peggy Guggenheim.

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This is New York in 1942  where Peggy Guggenheim established the Museum of Modern Art named after her Uncle.  With a thrill for the unusual and a absolute passion for abstract art, New York became the entreated hub for the New form of work called Abstract Impressionism.

Jackson Pollock

“They worked large and they worked messily, recklessly. Pollock “broke the ice,” de Kooning would say.”

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In fact Pollack was given supreme prestige for his work, a position garnered without the intense presence or nod from “the old school.”  America/Pollack, were creating their own identity and staking a claim on art that no other place in the world could. For This Pollock earned a supreme and undeniable place in history.

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The great mystery of unlocking a door no person had ever unlocked in the art world … that honor went not only to his friends but also to Pollack who seized the essence of this unique form of expression and laid it down on the canvas.  In this process his friends and colleagues also imparted their own vision in the wake of knowledge unknown to artists before.

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Notorious for his drinking problem and his struggle with alcoholism, Pollock crashed his car August 11, 1956 and died near his New York home.

“Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was.” Jackson Pollock

Fridays Famous Artist Is …..

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Robert Motherwell …..

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Robert Motherwell born Jan 1915 and living until July of 1991 was an American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker.  He was one of the youngest of the New York School which included Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Willem De Kooning and Phillip Guston.

Robert’s gift for rhetoric and easy comfortable feeling around people is credited with placing him on the map.  Though others in his group who later became as famous, might not have been had Motherwell not been so engaging with groups.

His writing and three published books:

  • The Dada Painters and Poets, R. Motherwell, New York, 1951.
  • Robert Motherwell, The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell, University of California Press, 1999.
  • Robert Motherwell translated to English Paul Signac‘s book, D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, 1938.

are all considered a credit to his ability to engage the average reader and not just the art critic.

To me his gift as a printmaker served him very well as a painter and he was able to glean techniques and improvise on the canvas creating almost cinamographic images with his paint.  His work is beautifully fluid and yet eloquently simple and moving at the same time.

News From The Couch … Kitten Sneak …

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So here I am in my studio, working on a a piece that is unlike anything I’ve done before and along comes my amazing kitten … climbing on top of the cupboards and then into the cabinets all by his little self.  I couldn’t believe it.  He opened every cupboard with his paws and worked his way through 4 cupboards and kept going even after I grabbed the camera.  Guess he doesn’t mind the attention.

That’s the News from the Couch … How’s your day going.