"A Sunday With Georges"

12 x 12"
oil on masonite
sold

I'd been working on this piece for several days - the painting within, Georges Seurat's 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte', is sooooo complex, sooooo detailed - I have to go slow. I have to pay attention to everything Seurat methodically included. It's an amazing work of art.

To quote my favorite art critic, Sister Wendy, "Seurat spent two years painting this picture, concentrating painstakingly on the landscape of the park before focusing on the people: always their shapes, never their personalities. Individuals did not interest him, only their formal elegance. There is no untidiness in Seurat: all is beautifully balanced. The park was quite a noisy place: a man blows his bugle, children run around, there are dogs. Yet the impression we receive is of silence, of control, of nothing disordered. Even if the people in the park are pairs or groups, they seem alone in their concision of form - alone but not lonely. No figure encroaches on another's space: all coexist in peace."

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Wishing you a Happy 4th ~

"A Word In Edgewise"

9 x 12"

oil on masonite

sold

Happy Halloween everyone.

A memorable scene for me as a grandmother and her two attentive granddaughters discuss the painting before them, Georges Seurat's "A Sunday at La Grande Jatte", which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. The two young girls seemed to really soak in a lot of the art in the museum. I enjoyed watching that.

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"Lots of Dots"

9 x 12"

oil on masonite

sold

One more to wrap up my busy week - one of those perfect moments (I swear it really lined up this way) where mom and daughter and her stuffed elephant, all wearing polka dots, were zeroing in on Seurat's multitude of dots.

This new painting will be included in my July show at 16 Patton, in Asheville.

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"Points of Interest"

12 x 12"

oil on masonite

sold

I've worked hard this week, trying to use available days to get in some painting on larger pieces for the galleries. That usually means the small, daily paintings get the shaft, but that's okay - it's good for me to keep a happy balance. I promise I'll get back to the little squares very soon.

This new painting was a challenge, to say the least. "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" is an incredible task to depict - and no, I did not do it with little, tiny dots of paint like Georges Seurat. If you've been to the Art Institute of Chicago, it's one of the premiere works of art. It's absolutely mind-blowing, considering the artist's technique and the size of his canvas. It always makes me think of "Ferris Beuller's Day Off" - when Cameron stands, transfixed on the thousands of dots on top of dots. I also took liberty in portraying the painting in another frame - truth is I hate how the original is displayed in the museum.

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