"Two By Two"

 

 

8 x 10"

oil on panel

sold

In 1890, in a letter to his sister, Vincent van Gogh described his joy of painting multiple versions sunflowers.  He wrote the paintings were “almost a cry of anguish while symbolizing gratitude in the rustic sunflower.”  It brought him comfort and familiarity and raised his spirits, he continued to write.

A couple stands between van Gogh's Sunflowers and Still Life: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers exhibited together in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Three's Company"

 

 

6 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

This study was a test for me - wanting to take on a larger painting with David Hockney's Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy.  As simplistic as Hockney's composition is, it's the reproduction that just ain't as easy as I thought.  But I've always been intrigued with his painting.

The two were Hockney's friends in London - Ossie Clark, a dress designer and Celia Birtwell, a fabric designer.  Hockney portrayed couples in several very large paintings.  The difference here is notably the two are looking at the viewer, other paintings have at least one looking off to the side.  He painted them in their flat in Notting Hill Gate, in their bedroom where the light was favorable to Hockney.  The tough part, the artist said, was the couple was against the light which darkens the figures indoors.  He did many studies and experiments to get the composition, the lighting and the couple's expressions right - going against the standard portrait of a couple where the woman is seated and the man stands next to her.

 

Percy was one of the Clarks' cats who symbolizes a libertine and somebody who disregards rules and does what he pleases. Sounds right.  The vase of lilies to the left of Celia are a symbol of the Annunciation and feminine purity.

 

Hockney was best man at the Clarks' wedding.  The space between them in his painting is said to be prophetic - the marriage didn't last.

 

"Portrait Sitting"

 

 

6 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

I saw this painting on Instagram by Diego Velazquez, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria in Hunting Dress and fell in love with the dog. Not Cardinal Ferdinand, but his dog. He obediently sat for the portrait. What a good boy.

From the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.

 

~ Stay safe, stay healthy and wear a mask.

"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.

"Freeze"

6 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

I've written about Andy Warhol, the famous Pop artist, and his fascination with idols like Marilyn Monroe, Jackie O, Mao Zedong and yes, Elvis Presley.  With movie stars, he was enamored with the oversize posters promoting the films, selling these celebrities like Campbell Soup labels sold soup. Warhol produced multiple silkscreens of Elvis, in many different ways - this one being two color silkscreens next to two grey-scale screens titled Elvis I & II.

Speaking of the King of Rock n' Roll, the image Warhol used was from the western Flaming Star that came out in December 1960.  His first "serious actor" role was void of any musical numbers.  A month, a month before, G.I. Blues came out and diehard Elvis fans LOVED it.  Plenty of music in that film satisfied audiences but the comparison was inevitable when Flaming Star premiered - proving his fans didn't share his dream of becoming a serious actor.  Another western was in the works, but the Colonel made sure he wouldn't attempt that again.

"Taking a Shine to Magritte"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

Brett's comment to my finished painting was "The shine on the apple looks like the shine on the man's bald head."  Such a great observation and it didn't occur to me. 

Rene Magritte's The Son of Man is widely known and endlessly satirized.  Magritte painted this surrealist self-portrait in 1964.  It's simplistic.  It's ambiguous.  Left to interpretation like most Surrealism-style works of art.  

Rene Magritte started his artistic career as an Impressionist but his wit took over, wanting to paint more thought-provoking subject matters.  His first gallery exhibition in 1927 left the art critics puzzled and expressing a thumbs-down review so he moved to Paris meeting up with fellow surrealist artist - Joan Miro and Salvador Dali notably.  Although he tried, the critics in Paris weren't much different so he moved back to Brussels jumping back on the Impressionist bandwagon for a time in 1930.  It wasn't until the late 40's did Magritte revert back to Surrealism and the time, after the war, critics and patrons seemed to click with his work for the first time.

The Son of Man features a bowler hat, a prop that appears constantly in Magritte's work.  They say the hat hinted at his political leaning to the Communist party.  It's the shiny green apple, hiding most of Magritte's face, that's most curious.  There is a theory it refers to Christianity, as a symbol of the common man surrendering to temptation like Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Another interpretation is the apple simply hides a man's true self from society.  That is Surrealism.  We see what we want to see.

~ Stay safe. Stay healthy. Wear a mask.

"The Light of Day"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

If you venture out much of what you'll see resembles an Edward Hopper painting.  Isolated streets, quiet neighborhood scenes.  No artist has portrayed isolation like Hopper.  Keep in mind, he lived in New York City.

Hopper once said about his paintings "What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." and spent his lifetime pursuing light in his resonant paintings.  Morning Sun captures that beam of sunlight coming through the window, onto the woman on the bed - his wife, Jo, was often his model for his work.

What Morning Sun means to me, especially now in the midst of this pandemic, is even in isolation and darkness, look for the light.

Hopper's painting resides in the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio and at one time traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago for a Hopper exhibition, which is where I had the pleasure of seeing it in person.

"Mother Figure"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

Pablo Picasso's Mother and Child in the Art Institute of Chicago does seem to affect many visitors.  It moves them.  It's majestic. It's relatable.  It's a mother holding her child, surrounded by a serene background of sand, water and sky.  It's sweet.

Picasso painted this in 1921, the year his son Paolo was born.  In the following two years, he painted over a dozen works on the subject of mothers and children.  He had painted this theme during his Blue Period, depicting figures that were frail and in despair but this mother and child are noticeably more solid and happy - showing Picasso's general feelings of stability and sentimentality with the birth of his own child.

~ On a personal note, please take good care of yourself during these scary days.  Look out for your friends and family.  Be kind to strangers.  We'll get through this.

"Self Interest"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I loved this man I spotted in the National Gallery of Art.  First glance, I assumed he was dragged to the museum but he stopped at every single painting during the five or ten minutes I watched him.  He seemed truly interested in any artist, any subject, and in any room.  He spent more time with Vincent van Gogh's work - most visitors do because they know who van Gogh is.

Vincent van Gogh painted 36 self-portraits in his short career of a mere 10 years.  Early on, he concentrated on landscapes and still life and a few portraits but after he admitted himself into the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, still painting the fields nearby and surrounding landscapes, he suffered a severe breakdown.  Many believe his demise resembled the symptoms of epilepsy, but the disease was not understood at the time.  Vincent was incapacitated for five weeks and retreated to his studio, during which he painted the Self-Portrait you see in my painting.

This self-portrait is a standout - done in a single sitting - the artist dressed in his smock holding his palette and brushes.  His face is somewhat haunting, his awareness of his gaunt, pale face is painted with stark greenish/blue tones, the brush strokes are thick with paint.  Most of all, it feels intense as if van Gogh's anxiety was portrayed so honestly.  Within a year, in 1890, the artist was dead at the age of 37.  

The astounding legacy Vincent van Gogh left, in just a decade, was about 2,100 artworks including 860 oil paintings.  A fact I still can't comprehend.

"Feast Your Eyes"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

There are some artists who don't have much in the way of biographies, especially those who practiced their craft in the early 1800's.  Henri Lehmann is one of those artists.

Henri Lehmann was a German-born French painter and at the age of 17, Lehmann's father sent him to Paris to study under the well-known classical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.  The portrait in my painting, The Girl, could very well be mistaken for an Ingres piece.  Very precise, classical pose, elaborate garb.  In fact, this painting shares the same room in the National Gallery of Art with his tutor Ingres.

Lehmann went on to teach at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris and taught notable artists such as George Seurat and Pierre Bonnard and you'll find many works of art in museums by those and other alumni.

"The Man in Black"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

When I was in high school some 40 years ago, I was obsessed with figure drawing.  I'd cut school, take the train to downtown Chicago, with sketchbooks and pens in hand, and spend mornings in the Amtrak lounge in Union Station then afternoons at the Art Institute of Chicago.  I drew hundreds of people sitting, eating, standing or lounging until I had to head back home.  

So if anyone wonders where this subject matter of painting people looking at art - I started it years ago.  And sometimes, like with this new painting, it's all about the people.  I credit my mom, an artist herself, with the great pastime, people watching.  

This gentleman caught my eye immediately.  His tall, slender figure was striking.  Especially clad in all black and topped with his handsome felt hat.  I live for figures like his.  

Although minor here, the artwork the man in black is viewing is a relief sculpture of Alexander the Great, done in 1485 by the artist Andrea del Verrocchio, in the National Gallery of Art in DC.

"Authority Figure"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

This image is one I've wanted to paint for a long time and getting my feet wet with my recently-painted Envoy,  I took what I learned and went ahead with it.

A view from above, in the Reagan National Airport, a gentleman of authority walks thru the sunlit floor.

"Yesterday's News"

  

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

If you're familiar with Paul Cezanne's paintings, you think of landscapes and still lifes, like the small painting hanging on the wall behind the man's chair.  So it may surprise some, and myself included, this painting the gentleman is viewing is by Cezanne.

The painting The Artist's Father, Reading "L'Evenement" hangs in our National Gallery of Art in DC, and it is a personal favorite of mine.  I love any image of someone reading a newspaper, something you see less and less of these days.  More interesting is the story behind Cezanne's portrayal of his father, Louis-Auguste, a banker, who pushed his son to follow his career in financing and banking, but much to his dismay, Paul wanted to study art and painting, something his father considered grossly impractical.  The result was an emotionally charged relationship which lasted a lifetime.

The clues are in the painting - Cezanne used a palette knife with expressive, bold strokes of paint. You can almost feel the frustration.  He included his own painting on the wall and the newspaper L'Evenement refers to the writer Emile Zola, a friend of Cezanne's who encouraged him to pursue his study of art in Paris and later became the art critic for that very paper.  Paul's father notably read the news and financial section exclusively.

- a thanks to Stefan Draschan for permission to use part of his photo for reference.

"Envoy"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

No paintings to feature here but you can argue that architecture is a form of art.  It can produce atmosphere and ambience, it's a variety of form and function and light can transform the space that results in temporary patterns - like on this floor in a terminal of Reagan National in Washington DC. I stood on the balcony above this floor and obsessed at the shadows from people and the skylights above.  I could have photographed there all afternoon.  

No art history today but here's a brief history of this airport.  It was built on a site once known as Gravelly Point, where Captain John Alexander built his home in 1746. His son donated most of the land named after his father and now known as Alexandria.  In the early 20th century, Washington DC had a seriously inadequate airport located near the present site of the Pentagon - obstructed by a smokestack, electrical wires and just one runway that intersected with a busy street with a guard directing traffic between takeoffs and landings and cars.  That's nuts.

In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt was so tired of Congress dragging its feet on a selection of a new site to build an airport, he announced it would be located on mudflats on a bend of the Potomac at Gravelly Point. The new facility was opened for business in 1941 with Pan American Airlines christening the National Airport. The following years, more hangars, more terminals and air cargo buildings went up - the Metrorail connected in 1977, a parking garage opened in 1991 (better late than never) and in 1998, President Bill Clinton signed into law the bill that changed the name to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, commonly referred to as Reagan National.

So there, you learned something new today.  Why title it Envoy?  It's not unusual to spot U.S. Senators or Representatives, or familiar reporters and national news faces in Reagan National. And I like the word 'envoy'.

"All in the Family"

3-3/4 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

Lucky me, I got to visit the National Gallery of Art in DC last weekend - the same weekend the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros were in town for the World Series.  At a minimum of $1,000 a ticket, I could only opt for an afternoon at a free art museum but hey, it was great being there again.

If you breeze through the galleries, sometimes you'll miss out on the fun facts of a painting - like Francois-Hubert Drouais's Family Portrait, notably dated April 1, 1756.  You may guess it's Christmas Day because of the gifts and decorations in the scene but no, it was April Fool's Day as we know it now.  Before the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582, the medieval calendar marked New Year's Day as March 25th, the vernal equinox - and the 1st of April marked the beginning of spring.  Many people would, and still do, celebrate by exchanging springtime gifts on that day - this informal family portrait showing the little girl giving flowers to her mother, the husband reading a poem to his wife as she points to the daughter as a symbolic gift to her husband. Very sweet.

"Seeing Red"

5 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I thought this different view of a different one of Ellsworth Kelly's Chicago Panels made a potentially good companion piece to Umbrella Stand you see on the post before this one.

I love the subtle colorful reflections on the marble floor in both scenes.  And note what I mentioned in the post below, that Kelly's inspiration for the six Chicago Panels was observations of various birds, this red panel presumably from a cardinal.

From the second floor in the American Art Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Sitting Idly By"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I've shied away from painting artists set up in the museum, painting a chosen work of art.  I don't know why.  This gentleman's choice was a great one, a portrait by John Singer Sargent, Ellen Peabody Endicott (Mrs. William Crowninshield Endicott) - a daunting challenge for any artist studying Sargent's paintings.  

Ellen Peabody was born into a wealthy, Salem, Massachusetts shipping family - grew into a socialite in Boston, married William Crowninshield Endicott who served on the Massachusetts Supreme Court and became President Grover Cleveland's secretary of war.  Although it's not confirmed, at the time of the sitting, Ellen was possibly in mourning after her husband's recent death, explaining her black dress and somber expression. 

Sargent's portrait hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

"His Hunch"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

The Art Institute of Chicago has several paintings by Vincent van Gogh but his Self-Portrait is special.  The size is unusually modest and you'll notice he adopts George Seurat's pointillist technique - one he saw in Seurat's fabulous A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.  Every single stroke is slashed on in little bits, the background is speckled with blues, greens, oranges and reds on top of a teal/blue surface.  The face is intense with multitudes of flesh, teal, oranges, reds, ochers and whites.

It's a small painting but an enormous treat for visitors.

"Hat in Hand"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

It is always a pleasure to loosen up and enjoy a more-painterly approach to a painting.

A gentleman resting on a bench on the second floor in the American Art Galleries in the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Man and Wife"

9 x 12"

oil on panel
sold

My new painting features the iconic portrait American Gothic by one of my favorite painters, Grant Wood, in the Art Institute of Chicago

The viewer usually assumes the couple in the painting is man and wife although it was meant to depict a farmer and his spinster daughter.  The models were Wood's sister, Nan, and his dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby, both Iowans.

Fun facts about American Gothic ~

~ It was an instant success, entered into the 1930 exhibition at the Art Institute and purchased by the museum.

~ The little, white cottage still stands in Eldon, Iowa.  I've been there.  The second floor window is 'carpenter gothic' style, which Wood found pretentious for such a humble home.

~ The dentist, Byron McKeeby, felt obligated to pose for Wood as he was a worthy patient who enjoyed sugar on most everything.  Even lettuce.

~ Both models and the house were all painted in separate sessions.

~ Iowans weren't thrilled with how they were portrayed to the world, as this wasn't how they saw themselves. One farm wife was so mad, she threatened to bite Wood's ear off.  Wood insisted he was a loyal Iowan and meant no offense, only a homage.

~ The artist's signature is hidden in the farmer's overalls.

The importance of American Gothic is, in Wood's own words, to celebrate the nation's fortitude and spirit during tough times.  It brought rise to Regionalism, or American Scene painting, making fellow artists like Thomas Hart Benton and John Curry and Grant Wood famous.  Personally speaking, all three of these painters are favorites of mine.

Please click here for a larger view.