Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Cows

oil on canvas
10 x 10"
available

I have been going through my work getting pieces ready for the Fall Fresh Art tour - www.freshart.org. A friend came over this morning to help, and we came upon this piece I had done during my last southwest trip. It is a piece I hadn't thought much about, but she really liked it - it is interesting to look through someone else's eyes - so I will include it in the show.

I have also been looking at Gerhard Richter's work and reading his words. He is an artist who I think very successfully straddles doing work that is sensual and beautiful, yet also has a conceptual component, however subliminal.

"One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is total idiocy."
- Gerhard Richter

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Fawn

sold

I have been working on an ongoing series of animal studies. This work is influenced by the photos of Edward Curtis, a photographer known for his sepia prints of Native Americans and The West as it was before and during the big move of "civilization" westward.

This quote by poet Mark Doty really struck me:

"Seeing and feeling are not contradictory things; It's through the surface that we get to the core. Looking outward and looking inward can happen at once. A painting, like a poem, is a meeting ground between the interiority of the artist and the surface of the world..."

Monday, August 2, 2010

Hosta Interior IX

oil on canvas
10 x 10
available

I painted this hosta in the spring when they were still unfurling in their young greenness. I look out the window now and see the green of late summer, tinged with ochre, kaki, lilac.

I keep coming upon references to this guy's writings in other books I'm reading. I think I need to dig into his work and see what's there...

"The desire to keep learning so that we can dispel old mysteries while giving birth to new mysteries that draw us forward - a quiet passion burns, not for total control, but for the sensation of constant advance."
E.O. Wilson