"Bird Sighting"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I saw this exquisite painting at the Delaware Art Museum a few years back.  I felt .... lucky.  There haven't been many chances in my life to see those Pre-Raphaelite portraits of women in their luxurious clothes and settings.  They're so yummy.

The painting in my painting is 'Veronica Veronese' by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, done in 1872 - first sold to a frequent collector, a rich shipping magnate Frederick Leyland, changed hands a few times then it was donated to the Delaware Art Museum in 1935.

Rossetti's painting is filled with symbolism - the uncaged bird, the daffodils, the camomile in the cage.  Rossetti was English, a co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of artists and poets, which evolved through the years.

Out to Lunch

On this Easter holiday weekend, I want to say I've completely lost my mind.

I've had a long time desire to paint Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party since the day I saw it in person about seven years ago.  I tackled it once.  It was much looser.  And there was a crowd in the way.  I was saner back then.

Now I'm zeroing in on Renoir's incredible attention to detail, seeing things I've never noticed before.  Here's my slow progress...

I really should go dye some eggs.

I also wanted to mention Senator John McCain wrote an article in the New York Times today - about a recent obituary, the death of a U.S. soldier Delmer Berg.  He was 100 years old.  

The reason I bring this up?  Picasso's painting Guernica, which I recently featured in my painting War Paint.  

Mr. Berg was the last known veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.  One of about 3,000 mostly-American volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, in defense of the leftist government of Spain, against the Nationalists, led by Franco.  I never knew about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.  It was part of the International Brigade, which included tens of thousands of foreign volunteers that fought against the bombings and destruction of many little hamlets in Spain.  Guernica being one of them.

So coming to the aid of a foreign land and people, people that these volunteers never knew - is quite profound.  

~  Happy Easter

"Mystic" (study)

6 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

And now for peace....

The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC is home to this beautiful, wooden sculpture 'Saint John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz)' - commissioned in 1675 by a convent near Seville, Spain to a 21-year-old artist named Francisco Antonio Gijon.  The contract survived all these years, stating the work was to be made of cypress supplied by the monks and be finished in less than two months time.

Yikes.

Saint John of the Cross was a 16th century Spanish mystic, imprisoned for pushing reform of his Carmelite order - his imprisonment inspired some of the most admired poetry and spiritual verses ever written in Spanish.  The mystic figure holds a quill on one hand and a book with a model of a mountain surmounted by a cross in the other - referring to his 'The Ascent of Mount Carmel'.

This 6-1/2' sculpture will bring you to your knees.

~ Happy Spring

"War Paint" (study)

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

Considered Pablo Picasso's most famous painting, Guernica, was a powerful political statement depicting the horrors and devastation of the Nazi's bombing of the town Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.   The size of Picasso's painting is 25 1/2' x 11' which effectively awes any viewer.

Picasso was working on a mural at the time of the bombing, commissioned by the Spanish Republican government for the upcoming Paris exhibition but scrapped his original idea and began planning his composition of Guernica.  News of the massacre reached Paris and protests erupted all over the city - newspaper pages covered with stark black & white photographs of the devastation - which inspired Picasso to start working on Guernica in black and white and blue-grey tones.

Picasso finished three months later, delivered to the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris Exposition already in progress.  Initial reaction was overwhelming critical - the German guide described the painting as 'a hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted' and dismissed it as the 'dream of a madman'.  Even Russia, who sided with the Spanish government, criticized it, saying a more-realistic painting would have impacted the social or political future.

After the Paris tour, Guernica made its rounds in Europe and North America raising atttention to the threat of fascism.  During WWII until 1981, it hung in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, traveling back and forth to other countries - but never Spain.  Picasso refused it go to Spain 'until the country enjoys public liberties and democratic institutions' - which in 1981, after the death of Franco and the movement towards democracy, Guernica was put in its final home, the Reina Sofia in Madrid.

"Unwrapped"

5 x 5"

oil on panel
sold

My appreciation for the multitudes of colors in a fish.

"Giving Pause"

5 x 7"

oil on panel
sold

My ongoing attention to James McNeill Whistler inspired this new painting - a woman pausing before Whistler's 'Harmony in Green and Rose: The Music Room', which hangs in the Freer Gallery of Art - a commonly missed museum in Washington, DC.