Painting From a Distance

Lights In the Distance 

A fragment of pure joy describes this link of a flash mob concert of Peer Gynt. It brought happy thoughts of distant travels in "the old country" and tears to my eyes as I watched the happy faces of the listeners.

Navigating today's ever-changing unsavory political and economic climate  with a smile on our faces may be the best we can do for ourselves. Snippets of distant events flood the news as we go about our everyday lives and ease into daily routines.

This link of a Belgian flash mob in a do re mi performance will make your day and guarantees you a big smile. If you get the political ad up front, listen or not.

I found this quote to be apropos to my own distant thoughts: Ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.
Elizabeth Gilbert

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/distant.html#ysJlwWUxJlz28Pc4.99

Clear Skies in the Distance

Painting from a distance, figuratively and literally, is my plan for the next month.

 

Pulling back from my perch on the beach while re-imagining many shore and mountain knife paintings as larger more developed works is a task I've looked forward to for a while. 

 

Minimalist tendencies will remain in fleshing-out the memories of places nearby and distant from "some distant and unknowable source."

European classical music has given way to the awesome salsa and Latin beat often heard on Picnic Island on weekends as one group practices or another records performance CDs on the beach. 

 

Mountains are now low clouds in the distance that become heavy summer rain clouds. 

 

It's all in the distance, waiting to be painted, regardless of the source.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings

Hilton Kramer is Gone, Reimagine Modernism

Hilton Kramer, most influential art critic of his day, and of my early adult years, has died. He was a champion of modernism and I read him in most publications in which his articles on many topics appeared, until he began to lean way far to the right. Hilton Kramer Obit

Adom

Modernism rejected traditional realism of the past and enlightened thinking of the future as industrialization changed our lives. A more creative divergent expression in art was afoot. Poet Ezra Pound's approach to modernism was summarized as "make it new," but new in a different way: take the obsolete and re-express it. Perhaps we would say re-imagine it. Though I never created in the genre, I appreciate so many of the artists of this movement. This work from my Five Books series is the closest I ever came to modernism.

Hans Hofmann  modernism work

Hofmann work from Cincinnati Art Museum is a true image of modernism as a comparison to my Adom painting. The difference is obvious, but my first home away from home being Chicago, modernism is an influence in my work.
I learned early that only my traditional works would be appreciated. As a high-school art student, I submitted my original work to the Hallmark Competition only to have it rejected. Reason: too stylized to be original. Carried that baggage for years and painted traditional.

Yesterday I learned a new application of the chemistry term hysteresis. As used in a MarketWatch broadcast on employment (unemployment), it meant that the past can affect present, and present can affect future. In other words, something is path-dependent. I don't believe that. We may be on a trajectory, but I believe we can change direction when we choose. 

Hysteresis is now the course of modern art, modernism in general. We seem not to know what to make of our new digitized, monetized, recognized world in the creative realms. Visual artists across the web mislabel their genres of art from modernism movements or go for trendy works. We need to incorporate our modern tools of today, I think, and move beyond the modernism Hilton Kramer knew so well. It's time to re-imagine modernism imagery. And long past time for me to pick up the pace toward my abstract works. Thank you Hilton Kramer.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Richard Diebenkorn Ocean View Series

http://www.sfmoma.org/images/
artwork/medium/72.59_01_b02.jpg

Richard Diebenkorn's art is indescribably beautiful and simple, especially his Ocean View series currently on exhibition at OCMA Diebenkorn Exhibition

Ocean Park #54 is one of my new favorites for the colors and because Diebenkorn left the trail of his thought processes as he scraped away layers to add new paint for a different effect. Pride doesn't allow most of us don't leave that trail.

I'd love to line up all the images from this series for you - just google Richard Diebenkorn Ocean View Series images for a visual treat.

How often we see feeble attempts of imitation in these representational bands of color. They are mesmerizing to me as I live on the coast, daily painting my own bands of color, and could easily step right into one of his images. Everyday, I work in my own seaside environment of angular industrial lines, bright interior angles, and open expanses of blue sky meets green water or green sky meets blue water.

Though meeting with criticism, Diebenkorn stayed the course with his thoughts, with his application of colors to convey his surroundings. In this brief video you hear his response to early criticism. Diebenkorn on his Method

I'm off to the beach now to create new works after spending a little time with Diebenkorn's paintings. Hopefully, I'll work under inspiration, not influence. A few of my own images will show my affinity for the sea's translucent linear colors. If you arrive on the shoreline on a foggy morning, you will be greeted, on rare occasion, by a low tide horizon similar to this Morning Low Tide
This print is currently included in Fine Art America's Sales Favorites







 A rainy seaside morning will greet you with brilliant colors as storm clouds dissipate and you begin a new painting to capture the moment from shoreline. Living on the Central Florida Gulf Coast, I get an extra long season of these images during our six-months-long hurricane season.  Skies are Clearing
(I'm right there with the wind and waves when we experience the melodrama of a good storm.)

And then we have Winter on the coast in the Tampa Bay area. This cold windy day of crisp clear blues was captured while trying to hold everything down. It was an awesome blue bay on that frigid day.Winter Morning. This print is currently getting a lot of FAA activity. I've seen several somewhat similar images pop up recently on other sites. Some never learn that if you weren't there, you probably can't capture the essence--we're going to see a lot of Diebenkorn influence coming.




Enjoy your visit to Diebenkorn online you won't be able to catch the exhibit. I did.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

 

Lucian Freud, Renoir, and Pretty People Portraits

Figure Class Pastel Sketch - 1990

Number one rule for an artist's website blog is make it beautiful

 Pretty counts far more than content if you want to capture visitors who linger. There are many art magazines and books in my home, most filled with pretty people and pretty places. I'm guilty of appreciating pretty images and avoiding ugly in my art. Today, I dug through a dusty old portfolio to find a few pretty faces for this post. This lovely image created over 2 decades ago is still a contemporary work of a very pretty and intriguing face.

Little Skater Acrylic Sketch - 1979

This little Pretty Face image, now  over 3 decades old and well-travelled without a portfolio to protect it, doesn't even show the face. It's a pretty image, though. The image is captivating because of the colors, movement, and what we read into it. I asked the model today whose big baggy yellow jacket she was wearing. She replied "Mom, it was a red jacket, you painted it yellow." I'll take her word for it.




Lucian Freud's portraits will not make your website blog beautiful

I've been thinking about how to structure this post about two exciting portrait exhibitions for a week or so. Shock and Awe with Lucian Freud's work above the fold, or pretty first and last to ease the shock? Pretty won. I'm inserting 2 links in the post to share Freud's images Lucian Freud Portraits Video and a review that is text with only one picture. Lucian Freud Review  These links are adult and should not be opened at work. Not that you would read art blogs at work unless you're in your studio.

As most of the images in these two links are extreme in the reality of aging anatomy and posing, I've elected not to include any of the works in my post images. For a comprehensive understanding of why Freud painted primarily not-in-the-least pretty people, I highly recommend the second link from Prospect Magazine. Freud's paintings included in the video are incredible and they are magnificently executed. I do recommend staying with the video beginning to end.


Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Portraits were of Fashionably Beautiful People

http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/renoir/

Beautiful, full-length portraits, but, as with fashion of any period, the costumes date these gorgeous images. Renoir at the Frick I've always loved Renoir's art for his skill in execution, for the colors in impressionism, it's French, I could go on with accolades. Would I hang such art in my home? Probably not. My taste is  too contemporary to be surrounded with those old pretty people living their pretty lives. I much prefer studying Freud's every brush stroke to Renoir's.

Two marvelous portrait exhibitions to visit and appreciate the differences in how the artists rendered the human form. I wouldn't want to spend my days surrounded by either of these master painter's works, but brief visits are wonderful.

Comments are always encouraged. 
Portraits as Fine Art are again "Trending" Are you marketing portraits?

If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 


All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios