"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.

"The Naked Eye"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

My oh my, I'm glad to be back to painting a few small pieces.  I've been working on several projects for future group shows which you'll see down the road.

Okay... about this new painting....

Thomas Eakins is best known for his paintings of athletic rowers on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and his extraordinary painting The Gross Clinic.  He taught at the Pennsylvania Academy and those paintings brought him fame and transformed the school into the leading art school in America.

Eakins found the study of anatomy to be essential in his teachings, however, it was frowned upon by the academy and Victorian Philadelphia in the 1880's.  After treading on ice, during one of his live model classes, he removed a loincloth from a male model to show the trace of a vital muscle and all hell broke loose.  Protests by students and parents forced Eakins to resign at the request of the Academy's board.

The Model by Thomas Eakins is part of the collection in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.  Get to this museum if you can.  It's so worth the trip.

"Uglow"

6 x 8"

oil on panel

sold

I absolutely love the figurative paintings by the British painter Euan Uglow - an easy choice for the letter U in my series ArtistZ.

Uglow's painting method involved a lot of measuring and mathematics, and those markings could often be seen on the finished paintings.  Taken from a biography of Uglow "his measuring process was laborious and time consuming to the point that Uglow himself joked that one model he began painting when she was engaged, was still painting when she got married and did not finish until she was divorced."

What I particularly love is how he painted color in blocks or areas, surprising any viewer with skin tones that include greens, violets, golds, reds, greys, etc.   He, like Lucian Freud,  has taught me so much about painting skin in a bold and realistic way. 

"Figure 1"

5 x 7"

oil on panel
sold

I absolutely love figure drawing and miss going to sessions with models - it's been years.  There are a couple of websites that provide figures in multitudes of poses, with clothes and without - it's a great means to practicing painting or drawing the human body.   Charley Parker has a good article about this on Lines & Colors if you're interested.  This study was done from one of the poses on this site - which is free for artists and survives on donations.  It's good exercise, I'd highly recommend it.

I don't have a clever title, I thought I'd do more in the future, starting with this new piece. 

"Barely Visible"

9 x 12"
oil on masonite

This new painting was huge fun to paint - I spent hours on the women in Bouguereau's 'The Bathers', which is a splendid masterpiece that always stops me in my tracks when I'm at the Art Institute of Chicago. I've framed posters & prints of his work for years at my shop, but there's nothing like seeing one in real-life. The skin tones are generally pale, mixtures of white, green, ochre and touches of red in all the right places - much like Sargent's skin. Equally so, I love painting interesting clothing - the long, gauzy sari fabric on the viewer.

Please click here for a larger view and purchase information.

Happy 4th to all. Hope you enjoy the holiday.

"French Dip"

12 x 12"
oil on masonite
sold

I revisited my photos from Philadelphia, a quick trip I took a couple of years ago - it was the Renoir that made this a choice - titled 'The Large Bathers'. Taken from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Torso in Teals and Reds"

approx. 6-1/4 x 6-1/4"

acrylic on heavy watercolor paper

sold

This is a piece I did, I think, around 4 years ago, when I first starting painting again. I had such a hunger to go back to figurative studies, so I tore up all of my old nude photography books and starting working. The human figure is something I really love to paint - clothed or unclothed.

"Woman To Woman"

16 x 8"

oil on masonite

sold

I let a perfect spring day pass by today - I really did want to paint. That's a good thing. There'll be plenty of those days ahead.

This is somewhat of a backed-up view of museum visitors and I like that. I found the women, as a group, more interesting than singling out anyone in particular. The room filled with French artworks is in the Legion of Honor, in San Francisco.

Click here if you'd like a larger view and purchase info.