the art blog
|
At this point in time, these pastels (below) don't really work. But in the future I may look back on them and think - yes they do. Like I did yesterday. Searching for a Needle in a Haystack I was searching for a specific landscape photo, (which is like trying to find a needle in a haystack - amongst 20,000 photos - and I found it!), but along the way, saw some images of paintings from 2012. They were impressionist landscapes. (Which in 2012 I didn't realise consciously they were impressionist. Well, I wasn't trying to be impressionist. It was simply a response to the swedish landscape in summer. And if you've ever seen masses of birch and aspen trees in summer, you can see that they're already impressionist masterpieces themselves.) I was so surprised and happy to see them. The joy and the iridescent colour jumped out at me and I thought, gee they're better than I remembered. But at that time, I still hadn't shaken the overriding beliefs from my modernist education (ie. impressionism is from the 19th century so you're way, way out of fashion susie) and the painful words from people who said how passe and just plain bad my work was because it was IMPRESSIONIST shock horror. I painted them anyway but I tortured myself with doubt. So today I'm not going to, thanks very much. 2019 pastels above. And 2012 below.
0 Comments
The choice was - gallery or ride in nature on Good Friday. It was going to be sunny. So I chose a ride in nature. These days I most often choose not to go to a gallery and instead be outdoors. Cycling through the incredible twisted beauty of budding oak groves. And the huge grey herons putting their nests together up high in the pine trees of Djurgården. But another reason I didn't choose a gallery is because a lot of shows in Stockholm I find a bit uninspiring. Or boring to be not-so-polite.. At the premier modern art gallery, Moderna Museet, they tend to have shows of ‘cool’ artists. You know, like Andy Warhol. Artists with a clear cut 'concept'. Minimalists. Ironists. That sort of thing. I like to see PAINT. Used abundantly and non ironically. With sensitivity. Though, earlier this year, at the newly furbished National Gallery of Stockholm, an exhibition of the 19th century portrait painter, John Singer Sargent (US 1856-1925) was held. You think I would've been happy then. I’ve never seen his paintings in reality. And he’s a great technical painter. So I thought I might learn something. They look beautiful in the books anyway, so I should go, I thought. But I didn’t end up going. Why? Because in the end I find many portraits, no matter how perfectly they’re painted, pretty superficial. They are not about the inner life of the person – which is really the only thing that interests me. They’re about which peg they’re on in the particular social hierarchy they belong to. And the brilliant technique and design capabilities of the artist. Amongst other things. Not Rembrandt though. (Though this is a bit unfair to JSS.) Masters John Singer Sargent is a painter that’s constantly referenced on the internet as being a master. Along with his contemporary, Anders Zorn (1860-1920) – who’s swedish and probably Sweden’s most famous painter. Zorn’s the same for me. A bit superficial. He had fantastic technique like Singer Sargent but... Home Visit We actually visited his home and gallery in Mora, north of Stockholm, a few years ago. It’s well worth visiting. His house, studio and garden he designed and built with his wife Emma. And it is little changed. The museum has the latest tech in it though. After visiting his home you get a sense of Zorn as someone who created a kind of celebrity persona for the public, but his real personality was quite down to earth and private. His paintings accurately reflect the colour and light of Sweden most of the year. Muted and minimal. But I loved his Italian paintings - some of which are on display in the museum - which are full of colour. And blue makes an appearance. Here’s one of his watercolours (below left) before he started painting in a big way. I couldn’t live without blue. Zorn's portrait palette
I recently decided to use Zorn’s palette of painting a portrait. And there’s no blue in it. It’s only 4 colours. Really two. Titanium white, ivory black, vermillion and yellow ochre. Interestingly, when using black, you get these shadow tones that create the illusion of a kind of blue. His colour palette makes painting a portrait easier. As the colour is so unified. I will definitely be using it again. And this palette creates a lovely balance of warm and cool tones. It’s all in the tone. , downloadable sweden travel pdf at end I went to check on my blogs yesterday. I still get quite a bit of traffic to my Travels in C Minor blog, even though I deleted all the posts. So, I had an idea to create a pdf of some old posts and put it on the blog. So people can get something. I mean why not? It's easy enough. Well, not quite. Issues The first issue was merging the 14 selected files. Seems simple. It’s not. Many programs - paid and free - do not do this function, but often you have to install them on your computer to find out. Which takes a while. Believe it or not, I could not find one reasonably priced program that merged as well as edited a pdf file. A Somewhat Solution The solution I came to in the end was using SmallPDF program. It merges nicely but doesn’t edit the pdf and is free for 5 days. 1. First I merged in SmallPDF. 2. Then the merged file was converted into a word document, (which SmallPDF can do well). 3. Then the merged word document was uploaded to Google Docs. 4. The file was edited in Google Docs. 5. After finishing editing, the file was converted back into PDF format and then downloaded. Shivers. Yes it's long winded. As someone I know well says - the overwhelming complexity of modern life. Google docs is a seriously good program that made editing easy. (And I'm talking major formatting errors that are very difficult to fix in other programs.) And it’s free. I tested 3 other costly programs and the editing in them was so complicated compared to Google Docs. I wanted simple. Link to Sweden travel pdf below There’s a link below to the pdf I created, if you’re interested in checking it out. It’s a small collection of posts about travel (and other things) in Sweden. From quite a while ago now. There’s some nice photos but it was the beginning of my photography journey so the horizon line can be a bit all over the place. And the punctuation...is creative...and the formatting's not perfect but... they're great memories.
During the last 4/5 years I had mostly stopped oil painting, as the fumes from the oil painting affected me too much. My lungs felt like the bottom of a bird cage, (even though I used odour free turpentine). And the next days after painting, I was completely washed out. (a good side effect has been exploring new art materials though) Artists helping Artists But two things have changed that around. Both because of listening to Leslie Saeta's excellent podcast, Artists helping Artists on blog talk radio. Firstly, I discovered a new method of painting, (which was on old method) in a discussion with Robert Gamblin (the creator of Gamblin paints). Basically, you paint without using turpentine or toxic thinners to thin oil paint. That's good, but you still have to use turpentine to clean your brushes. My method was to swish around the turpentine as quick as possible, then wash brushes with soap. But the fumes still got me. No more turpentine Then a couple of years later I picked up the second crucial bit of info. In this podcast Leslie discusses with Symi Jackson of Rosemary and Co. (the artist brush manufacturer) about cleaning your brushes with oil. Not turpentine. Well I had never heard of it. Supposedly many old masters cleaned their brushes with oil. This method was not in any of the art books I've read over 40 years. I was reading a book yesterday about landscape painting and he suggested kerosene to clean your brushes. Shivers. I was a bit sceptical about this method working but I thought I'd give it a try. So I picked up some linseed oil from the local supermarket. And voila. It works. No more fumes. And it has the added bonus of conditioning your brushes ( just like your hair) to keep them all nice. Thankyou Leslie Saeta and thankyou Rosemary's daughter. You've got me painting with oils again. Artist helping Artists podcast A Conversation with Rosemary and Company Artist Brushes And with Robert Gamblin. |