"In the Buff"

 

 

6 x 8"

oil on panel

 

 

I broke from my larger painting marathon and loosened up with one of my mom's favorite Picasso pieces - Two Nudes, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Like my mom, Picasso had a fascination with African sculpture and modeled women's figures similar to the thick bodies and chiseled features found in those sculptures.  Two Nudes hangs next to Picasso's famous Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and noticably the figures on the left of both paintings closely resemble each other.

You may think it never happens, but in 2014, a visitor in MOMA bumped up against the Picasso painting, leaving it unhinged.  No damage done.

 

Please click here to the auction page.  This link will engage at 9 pm ET this evening.

"Facing the Music"

 

 

9 x 12"

oil on panel

sold

When I reproduce masters' works of art, I learn more about color, mixing paints, edging, brush strokes and composition than any class or book could possibly teach me.  My mom swore by it, which is why I spent a large chunk of my early years in museums.

Picasso's work is a whole other thing.  Three Musicians is defined as a Synthetic Cubist style - meaning the compositions are made up of jigsaw-puzzle-like shapes, flat planes and solid colors.  You don't look at it and think 'look at those brush strokes'.  But I look at every shape and try to figure out where it fits, which I probably shouldn't obsess about but that's the jigsaw-puzzle solver in me.

The recurring characters - the masked Pierrot playing the clarinet, the Harlequin strumming a guitar and the singing monk holding sheet music represents the then-popular Italian comic theater that Picasso and his friends were involved in.  

From the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Face the Music"

 

 

6 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

 

 

Personally, I have a love/hate for Picasso's art.  I favor most of his Cubist style, top of the list being Guernica and the featured painting Three Musicians.  They are jigsaw-puzzle-like, flat planes of solid colors, overlapping like cutout paper making sense in the end.  

Three Musicians is a complicated composition, so much so, this study may have convinced me to not tackle a larger painting.  Don't know yet.  I find Picasso's painting just plain fun.  You see a recurring figures, a Harlequin and a masked Pierrot - both familiar characters in the old Italian theater stories. You see sheet music on a stand, a clarinet and guitar and even a dog's paws stretched out on the bottom left corner.  

When I paint these reproductions of artworks, there's always a deeper understanding of each piece - a valuable lesson every time.  

From the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

~ Stay healthy, stay safe and wear your mask.

"Painted Ladies"

12 x 12"

oil on panel
sold

Another painting for my upcoming solo show The Ladies - featuring the very famous Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso.

The painting's original title was Le Bordel d'Avignon or The Brothel of Avignon, depicting five nude prostitutes from a brothel on Avignon Street in Barcelona, Spain, a city where Picasso spent part of his time. The title was changed during an exhibition in 1916, when an art critic referred to its present title in order to hide the shocking subject matter from the public - despite objections from the artist.

Picasso completed the painting ten years prior to the exhibition, inviting fellow artists over to his studio to view it.  There were mixed reactions, notably Matisse hated it, saying it mocked the modern art movement.  Important to mention that a rivalry between Picasso and Matisse had been building for quite some time, so maybe a tinge of jealousy was involved.

Why Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is so significant in 20th Century art is that Picasso painted it on the heels of his African Period and on the cusp of Cubism.  You can see the influence of African masks and abstraction in shapes.  The painting was eventually sold eight years after the exhibition to a private collector who promised Picasso he would donate it to the Louvre when he died - although his will said otherwise.  The Museum of Modern Art in New York City bought the painting in 1937 from the collector's estate for - wait for it - $24,000.

Please click here for a larger view.

"See and Be Seen"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

There is a dual result in Rene Magritte's The False Mirror.  The viewer looks through the iris of this large eye, passed the black pupil and into a blue sky with floating clouds - and yet, this eye is looking at the viewer.  How totally surreal.

Part of me, as an artist, generally loves surrealism in art for its representation/realistic quality and the other part of me feels like I'm always asked 'the meaning'.  Frankly, that annoys me.  I'm more inclined to relish the vision in front of me that a painter found interesting or particularly beautiful and had to paint it.  Magritte thought the opposite.  Surrealism as an art form was what he most enjoyed.

Rene Magritte was in his 50's before he realized fame and recognition.  Born in Belgium at the end of the 19th century, not a whole lot is known about his youth.  Magritte worked in an advertising agency for a time then involved himself in several exhibitions with like-minded artists such as Salvador Dali, Juan Miro, Picasso - all stunning the art world with Cubism and Surrealism.  When his gallery closed, he returned to advertising for a stable income - the influence is more than evident in his paintings, notably This Is Not a Pipe which could easily have been an ad for a tobacco shop.

The False Mirror hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

"Sweet"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

I was in the De Young Museum in San Francisco and a boy shrieked when he saw the painting of Superman by Mel Ramos - hardly able to contain himself.  When I saw, in person, Wayne Thiebaud's painting Dessert Tray in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City,  I didn't shriek but I felt the same excitement.  I l-u-r-v-e this painting.  I love every painting Wayne Thiebaud has done.

And it must be said, it was a total joy doing this new painting.

"Christina"

8 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

Today I just chose to feature one of my personal favorite paintings, by Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World.  It is moving. It represents human dignity.  In a word, it is perfect.

"Forty-Eight"

8 x 10"

oil on panel
sold

Jasper Johns was one of the most influential American painters of the 20th century who produced over 40 versions of the American flag.  Johns created the first, Flag, in 1954 at the age of 24, two years after he was discharged from the Army.  

To give you some context, the US flag was often the news headline in 1954 - then President Dwight Eisenhower signed an amendment to the pledge of allegiance on Flag Day to add the words 'under God',  the McCarthy hearings took place three days after Flag Day, the year was the 175th anniversary of the birthday of Francis Scott Key,  who composed The Star Spangled Banner.  The Iowa Jima Marine Memorial was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.  Johns and his father were both named after Sgt. William Jasper who saved the fallen flag of the Americans in the Revolutionary War.  And in 1954, our country had 48 states - the 49th and 50th, Alaska and Hawaii, would join the United States of America in 1959.

To appreciate Johns' Flag, you must get close up.  It is made using oil paints, encaustic (wax mixed with pigment) and newsprint, which is visible under the red and white stripes.  There is no hidden meaning in the texts of the newsprint, purposely Johns selected non-political or national news.  Jasper Johns aimed to paint 'things the mind already knows', relieving him of creating new design and focusing on the execution instead. 

The painting was exhibited in Johns' first solo show in 1958 where the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred Barr, wanted to buy it but was worried how it may look so he persuaded a friend to buy it instead, and he donated it to the museum in honor of Barr when he retired.

Please click here for a larger view.

"It's That Way"

8 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

The woman here is seemingly taking a cue from Pointing Man by Alberto Giacometti in the Museum of Modern Art.  My mom, who was a painter, printmaker and occasional sculptor,  L-O-V-E-D Giacometti.  I was introduced to this artist at a very young age, by my mom, who taped up dozens of his works on the wall of her studio.

Giacometti was born in Switzerland in 1901, took on formal training in the arts during the era of Cubism and the craze of tribal art - much like Pablo Picasso.  He dabbled in Surrealism for a while, broke off from that to the emergence of Existentialism.  He created small, thin figurative sculptures which took off because of the overall dismal, suffering atmosphere from World War II, and he became quite the popular artist of that time.

His works evolved all through the 50's and 60's, during which time he painted numerous portraits, which my mom was crazy over.  I am too.

"Color My World"

8 x 10"

oil on panel
sold

We are the fortunate ones here in the United States.  We can see Vincent van Gogh's iconic The Starry Night in person in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  We're lucky that way.

In 1888, Vincent van Gogh was hospitalized at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, an asylum for the mentally ill, after a breakdown. During his stay, he was encouraged to paint - and although he rarely ventured far from the building, he painted landscapes from his view through a window in his private room.  The Starry Night was an amalgamation of church spires and cypress trees and small villages and night sky constellations he drew from his memory of paintings done in the past.

His brother Theo thought the painting to be too stylized, too exaggerated but it has become one of the most recognized van Gogh masterpieces for decades.  Seeing a van Gogh in person is special - the colors are vivid and saturated, the thickness of the paint, the swirls and movement of pigments all give it motion and life.  There's nothing like it.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Hip To"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

A woman stands in front of Mark Rothko's No. 3/No. 13 in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

"Love Is In The Air"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

The artist Marc Chagall called 'love' the primary color of his paintings.  They are rich with Russian culture.  You hear the music.  You feel the love.

Chagall's Birthday depicts the artist floating and swooping over his wife, Bella, to kiss her on her birthday.  Or his birthday - different accounts claim one or the other.  The couple met in their hometown of Vitebsk, Belarus in 1909 - he was twenty-two and she was fourteen.  Chagall was the son of a working-class Hasidic Jewish family - Bella was born to one of the town's richest Jewish families.  Despite her family's misgivings about the union, Marc and Bella married in 1915, had a daughter, moved to rural France, fled from the Nazi regime to Lisbon and then to the United States and remained happily married until Bella's death in 1944.

In her memoirs, Bella recounts how she worked at finding Marc's birth date and visited him on that day, carrying flowers as he began the paint.  "Spurts of red, white, black.  Suddenly you tear me from the earth, you yourself take off from one foot.  You rise, you stretch your limbs, you float up to the ceiling.  Your head turns about and you make mine turn.  You brush my ear and murmur."

How sweet is that?

From the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, a woman leans in to admire Chagall's Birthday.

"For Your Viewing Pleasure"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

Pardon my absence - I've been working on several paintings for a Small Works Auction taking place in July.  I've got one more to go and I'll post all of them.

This new painting is of a woman viewing Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  It's HUGE - 96" x 92", which effectively feels like the women in the painting are life-size and on display for all eyes to see.  

The painting portrays five prostitutes from a brother in Barcelona - it has a distinctive primitive style and is really the beginning of cubism and Modern Art.  First exhibited in 1916, it was quickly deemed as immoral.  Years later, exhibited in a gallery in New York City, MOMA bought the painting for a mere $24,000.

Crazy cheap.

"Bored Certified"

8 x 10"

oil on panel
sold

As you may know, I will have a small solo show titled 'Museum Hours', opening February 28th at the Anne Irwin Fine Art Gallery here in Atlanta.  I got the okay to begin revealing the paintings, starting with this new piece, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City - a mother viewing Pablo Picasso's 'Girl Before a Mirror' while her seemingly bored daughter sits beside her.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Lean To"

7-1/2 x 14"
oil on masonite
sold

Oh my...... this was a tough one, unexpectedly so. To paint a Picasso should be fairly easy, but not 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'. It's a complex, colorful, geometric masterpiece. Very fun, hard, but very fun.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Horsemen"

9 x 12"
oil on masonite
sold

A gentleman standing before the enormous painting 'Agrarian Leader Zapata' by Diego Rivera, one of my favorite works of art, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

detail

Please click here for a larger view.

"It's Subjective"

9 x 12"
oil on masonite
sold

A new piece - taken from New York's Museum of Modern Art, a couple looking at Mark Rothko's 'No. 2/No. 13'.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Feast For the Eyes"

8 x 12"
oil on masonite
sold

At my shop, I have framed prints and posters of Diego Rivera's work for years - but nothing comes close to seeing the paintings in person. They are marvelous.

From the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a visitor pours over Rivera's 'Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita' - a massive, colorful, brilliantly-composed feast for the eyes.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Star Gazers"

9 x 12"

oil on masonite

sold

What I should be doing is finding something to wear at the opening Saturday night - but I wanted to paint instead. My way of staying calm. This new piece is a couple standing close to Vincent Van Gogh's masterpiece "The Starry Night", which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City.

I'll be gone for a few days, thanks to all who wished me a great opening. I'm very excited and I'll let you know how it all went as soon as I get back home. Have a good weekend.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Busy Body"

8 x 10"

oil on masonite

sold

I've been expanding my studio this past week, painting a little bit in the evenings, and instead of doing a couple of small pieces I kept on working on this new painting. It is a bit larger than the usual sizes I offer on eBay, and I wanted to experiment with how this composition would look - the figure close up to a huge piece of artwork that pretty much takes over the entire space. I thought it might be too busy, but really I like how the figure is slightly hidden in the scene. The painting that the woman is looking closely at is Henri Matisse's "The Moroccans", which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.