Favorite Things I've Made

This post is based off a fun idea Erika over at Foxtrot Press has put together.  So be sure to click on that link there and check out what else is going on over there!

Here are the six things I've settled on:

A group of drawings 

Painting of my brother Kevin from this Summer

An old vase, I probably made this somewhere around 2008? 

Some of the signs I'be been making at work.

My new tattoo that I collaborated on with my tattoo artist Dennis, from Providence Tattoo

A couple of simple and colorful dishes I've made this week... healthy and otherwise.

Go ahead and linkup if you like!

Sandpaper Factory

I've been back in the Sandpaper Factory for a month now thanks to Scott Ketcham's artistically generous spirit.  This is the third Summer he has given me rein over the space while he is away at the Vermont Studio Center (I MUST go there someday).

I've been getting tons of work done and am absolutely thrilled about it.  I am also currently thrilled about the opening I will be having in the space on July 21st.  My girl Zheyu will have some work up as well; she has been busy making gigantic things in there lately. Check that link I made through her name in that last sentence, her work is amazing.

 Lots of portraits have been happing.  Originally I started making them as practice for a piece I am doing for a friend, but I've been getting into them a lot more than I imagined.  I'm having a lot of fun working the oil pastels in with the paint and searching for a rhythmic balance back and forth between them.  This portrait above kinda looks like there is a swollen mouth situation going on, but I think I'm over it.  I suspect that my precision in portraiture will increase with more practice.  While I do care a lot about the growth of that precision, I am equally as invested in the compositional quality of each piece.  I want to add another sentence here figuring out that equation and what it means for my paintings, but this is all very new work for me and I am still working on those answers.

Been getting outside a bit too:

And what I feel to be an obligatory "Serious Painter" portrait.

I truly hope that if you are reading this you will be able to come to the exhibition.

"Summer 2012"

July 21, 2012

7p-9p, party to follow

83 East Water Street.

4th Floor

Rockland, MA

Degas and the Nude

Saw the Degas exhibit at the MFA a couple times and know what is awesome there? This piece:

After the Bath, Woman with a Towel

The show closed on February 5^th, but happily, this piece is owned by the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard so anybody in the Boston area can go and visit it there.

The drawing was done with pastel on blue-gray wove paper and is 27 7/8 x 22 9/16 inches.

There is so much color, it is hard to even get the full sense of it from just seeing the image, you really need to go and visit it.  Completed somewhere between 1893 and 1897, I was unprepared to see such vibrant colors used so long ago.  It really does feel like long ago, so much in art has happened since then, but really, it should be no surprise.  Wikipedia says that the first time the French word “pastel” was used was in 1662. It is so hard to get a true feeling of time over the course of history.  Anyway, bright color just seem like such a contemporary idea, what a refreshing thing to be wrong about.

I was also impressed by all of the vertical and horizontal lines going on in Degas’ drawings throughout his work.  So much structure, it aligns with the industrialization that was going on at the time I suppose, but it speaks to pixels now.    


Other pieces I loved:

After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Chest
Made around 1890
Pastel on tracing Paper
The Courtland Gallery, London

Woman at her Bath
Made around 1895
Oil on canvas
28 x 35 inches

Woman Seated on a Bathtub, Sponging her Neck
Made around 1895
Oil on paper
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

The show also had many pieces by other artists who served as both inspirations and peers to Degas.  One of the pieces that I just have not got enough of yet is a painting by Picasso.

Nude on a Red Background
Oil on canvas
Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris

Fall

Here is some of my work from this Fall. 

Click on images to enlarge.

Honeymoon Drawing

Charcoal on Paper

26 x 32.5"

Honeymoon

Oil Paint and Oil Pastel on Canvas

42 x 56"

Earth Slope

Oil Paint and Oil Pastel on Canvas

36 x 48"

Landscape on Paper 1

Oil Paint, Oil Pastel and Charcoal on Paper

18 x 18.5"