"Up Close"

 

 

10 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

Your Moment of Zen today featuring Claude Monet's landscapes.

 

I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art years ago but I do remember this gentleman.  He stood inches from each and every painting, seemingly captivated by Monet's layered and impressionistic brush strokes in this case.  And for good reason. The gist of impressionism is those layered, tiny, angled brush strokes.  It results in life.  Movement.  Light.  

The painting on the left is Bend in the Epte River Near Giverny and to the right is Morning at Antibes - both by the Impressionist painter Claude Monet.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Chill Factor"

 

 

6 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

Every winter I obsess about wanting snow fall here in Atlanta.  I scroll through the Twitter posts of photos during snowstorms with deep envy.  Hence my inspiration for this new painting - bringing to mind one of my favorite landscapes by Claude Monet, The Magpie.

The low level sun behind the fence. The shadows of icy-blues and lavenders. You can imagine how quiet it was when Monet worked on this winter landscape.  The tiny hint of life of the magpie, perched on the gate completely in its element.  It is a perfect painting.

From the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. 

" Connoisseur"

6 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

I had started a smaller study for Penguin Zen and decided to finish it because you have to find joy wherever you can.  Painting an animal does it for me.

Someone let me know the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri also invited some penguins as guests to browse their galleries during their shutdown, like the Art Institute of Chicago had.  The most charming result is these penguins stopped and seemingly took in many of the works of art, much like this little guy.  Claude Monet's Water Lilies spoke to him.  Or her.

"Dream a Dream"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

The most enthusiastic audiences for Edgar Degas' ballerinas are little girls.  Especially popular is the bronze sculpture you'll find in several art museums The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer - it's real to those young girls in a way that one-dimensional paintings are not.  It's one of those moments that art impacts a human being at an early age.

An art historian wrote an interesting article for Vanity Fair and claimed Degas was "a bona fide misogynist".  He apparently took pleasure in watching his dancer/models contort in agony and even referred to them as his "little monkey girls".  Degas never married, known to be anti-Semitic - a result from the Dreyfus Affair when a French military officer, who was Jewish, was wrongfully accused of treason.  He blamed his family's business difficulties on Jewish competitors and grew more and more resentful. His bitter prejudice cost him many friends and certainly the respect of his more-tolerant Parisian artists friends and peers.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a little girl is mesmerized while viewing Dega's Dancers Practicing at the Barre, with the sculpture The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer next to her.

"Back to Nature" (study)

4 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

Another study with a taller, slimmer format - which I really like, to center on the figure with a backdrop of color.  

The painting featured is Irises by Claude Monet, a nearly 7 x 7' treasure acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1956.

"Soft Approach" (study)

4 x 10"

oil on panel
sold

I've been working on elongated compositions that are either vertical or horizontal and this was intended to be a much looser study for a larger panel - but I got carried away with details.  

Who can blame me, the featured painting is the fabulous Paris Street, Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte.  The painting is the star of the Art Institute of Chicago.  It measures nearly 10' wide by 7' tall and that doesn't even include the frame.  Caillebotte's masterpiece dominated the widely popular Impressionist exhibition of 1877 in Paris, largely organized by the artist himself.

"Matching Set"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

This new painting is a smaller study of one I'm thinking of doing larger.  I wanted to test out the woman's skirt.  I like her skirt.

She stands in front of a crowd-pleasure in the Art Institute of Chicago - Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Two Sisters (On the Terrace) which hangs in the French Impressionism gallery.  Renoir named the painting Two Sisters, the first owner of the painting titled it On the Terrace.

Like Renoir's famous Luncheon of the Boating Party, the setting for Two Sisters was at a restaurant with outdoor seating.  In 1925, it was sold to a woman from Chicago for $100,000.  She requested the Renoir be donated to the Art Institute after her death where it has hung since 1932.

You may remember Donald Trump had a reproduction hung in his jet, before he ran for President.  The New York Times reporter Timothy O'Brien interviewing Trump was told it was the real thing.  O'Brien replied "Donald, it's not.  I grew up in Chicago, that Renoir is called Two Sisters (on the Terrace) and it's hanging on a wall at the Art Institute of Chicago. That's not an original."

"Rain Delay"

8 x 10"

oil on panel
sold

Anyone who has been in the Art Institute of Chicago knows when you walk through the lobby and up the marble stairs, you walk straight into the large, open French Impressionism gallery and see the huge painting by Gustave Caillebotte Paris Street, Rainy Day front and center.  Most likely, there's already a dozen people standing in front of it.  It's one of the museum's prized possessions.

Gustave Caillebotte was a French painter and member of the Impressionists, distinctly different from the others with his more realistic manner of painting.  He was also known for having an early interest in photography as an art form.  Notably, he was a generous contributor of his fellow artists and friends - paying their rent if they needed and purchasing their work in support, largely due to his large inheritance after his father and mother's death when he was in his 20's.  Caillebotte also used his wealth to pay for various hobbies - stamp collecting, growing orchids, yacht building and textile design.  

"Girlie Magazine"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I took a break from a larger painting and enjoyed a looser, more painterly scene in the Art Institute of Chicago.  Edouard Manet's Woman Reading is in the company of other French Impressionists in a very popular gallery at the museum - frequently mixed up with Claude Monet, another famous Impressionist.

Woman Reading was painted in Manet's later years, a very quick-brushstroke, almost plein-aire quality of a young, modern woman taking a break at a cafe with a magazine and a beer.  If you're ever standing in front of this painting, look close, the brushstrokes are numerous and somewhat frantic - as if he was trying to capture the woman before she gets up and leaves the cafe.  And multi, multi, colors layered on top of other colors - the definition of Impressionism.  I tried my best to let loose - loving the form of the woman viewing the painting.

"Repose"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

I spent a WEEK on a painting - yikes - then took a few days off and today I really, really enjoyed painting loose for a change.  I concentrated less on the art and more on the space.  

A woman resting on a bench in the French Impressionists gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

"Garden Variety"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

In need of a moment of Zen?  Spend some time in an art museum.  Put your phone on silent.  Step into another time.  That's what painting can be like.  A removal from the present.  Imagine painting a huge canvas with your garden surrounding you.  Nice thought.

Claude Monet was 74 years old when he began painting Irises in 1914.  He had gained financial and critical success in the late 1800's, he and his second wife and their combined family were living in Giverny where he frequently painted outdoors in the gardens he helped create.  In 1911, his wife Alice passed away, he had developed cataracts in one eye - yet he took on a large commission by the Orangerie des Tuileries museum in Paris to complete twelve waterlily paintings.  He wanted his pieces to serve as a 'haven of peaceful meditation' to soothe the 'overworked nerves' of the visitors.

Irises stands out as more painterly, with almost a stucco surface of thick, broad brushstrokes capturing the light and color Monet struggled to see clearly.  Stand in front of it and you can see his progressions and strokes as he works on layers upon layers.  

From the Art Institute of Chicago, where you can find many extraordinary works by Monet.

"Party Crasher"

10 x 10"

oil on panel
sold

The span of days you didn't hear from me recently was largely due to my working on this new painting.  It tires me to drag out a piece for days - I suffer from a short span of attention, paint for a few hours and seek out other things to do around the house.  I truly love starting a painting in the morning and finishing in the evening.  

But Renoir's masterpiece Luncheon of the Boating Party is complex - you have a landscape, still life and fifteen figures and a dog all in one.  Sixteen figures including the my viewer.  

The famed painting is in the Phillips Collection, one of the off-the-mall museums in Washington DC - and a must-go-to place.  Especially to soak in Renoir's painting.

The Boating Party is a very interesting anatomy of Renoir's friends -

- the woman on the bottom left, holding a dog, is Aline, who married Renoir and together they had three sons.

- the man on the bottom left wearing the boater's hat is Gustave Caillebotte, an accomplished artist who painted Paris Street, Rainy Day - a crowd favorite which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago.  Gustave was also an avid boatman.

- in the threesome in the upper right corner is the actress Jeanne Samary with two of Renoir's closest friends flirting with her.

- the man with the boating hat in the upper left and the woman in the boating hat leaning on the rail are brother and sister and children of the proprietor of the restaurant Maison Fournaise, where the scene takes place.

- the remainder are poets and critics and a wealthy art historian, collector and editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts.

Clearly the in-crowd.

Please click here for a larger view.

"For the Love of Monet"

10 x 10"

oil on panel
sold 

A woman reading the details of Claude Monet's 'Irises', from the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Please click here for a larger view.

"Back Support"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I'm on my 10th painting for a grouping in a small solo show opening at the end of February - with the same young woman and the same Flemish painting you see on the post below.  The last piece I finished took d-a-y-s.  It includes one of the most fabulous paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it was a doozie.  

I took a break today and loosened up with a new study of this young man resting his back next to a Monet in the French Impressionism gallery in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

"Hat Day"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

A patron enjoys some French Impressionism in the Art Institute of Chicago.  In full view is 'Young Girl With Hat' by Berthe Morisot.

"Come Rain or Shine"

14 x 9"
oil on masonite
sold

This painting sold before I had the chance to post it on my website - which is why I'm currently doing the happy dance.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Innocent Bystander"

12 x 12"
oil on masonite
sold

A sure bet - women and girls are mostly drawn to artworks depicting women and girls. It's what we know. Men on the other hand are drawn to structural objects, sculptures and dramatic scenes. These two are standing before Morisot's 'Woman at Her Toilette', while on the right is Renoir's 'Woman at the Piano'. Both paintings hang in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Please click here for a larger view.