FRENCH BLUE

"French Blue" 

36 x 24 inches
oil on linen

This is a double portrait of the Daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Janet Solomon of French Blue. 

The Solomon family are among our favorite creative, loving and beautiful (inside and out) people Melissa and I know. The painting was delivered just in time for Mother's Day today. I used Cerulean French Blue paint in the background in Janet's honor.

Le Grand Cirque De Ballet

Napa Valley Ballet requested a playful sketch in a week to promote their upcoming performance Le Grand Cirque De Ballet on Sunday June 3rd, 2012. The original hand drawing is a combination of white and black charcoal accented by red pastel on Canson paper made in France.

Onegin

Melissa and I were recently were invited to attend the San Francisco Ballet and participate in the Allegro Circle pre-dinner and post show toast where we had the honor of hearing Helgi Tómasson, Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer of San Francisco Ballet, give a toast to all involved in the evening's Premiere. 

We also had the opportunity to meet many of the principal dancers including Prima Ballerina's Yuan Yuan Tan and Maria Kochetkova.  Maria and I had a good chance to talk about art and ballet (given she is Russian her heritage appreciates the deep connection with art and ballet) and she appreciated the drawing I did of her in December.

I recently completed this painting of Yuan Yuan Tan in Onegin, a  ballet based on a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin and a classic of Russian literature. Onegin was a theme also painted by Russian Master Ilya Repin. Aside from seeing the moving performance, I referenced photographs of Onegin taken by the talented Erik Tómasson, son of Helgi and resident photographer at the ballet.

After the painting appropriately dries then varnished and framed, we will showing next year and upon future sale donating 50% of proceeds to Allegro Circle of the San Francisco Ballet in honor of friend and great patron of the arts who invited us. 

Impactful Encounters

In life a seemingly small impact of an encounter can grow like a seed if nourished. The past few months have been full of chance encounters leading to some immediate appreciation and new friendships while others will sit in the fertile soil until the seed is ready to grow. 

This weekend Melissa, Gaia and I spent the weekend admiring art. On Friday night, we attended an art reception to support a group of realist artists at John Pence Gallery. On Saturday, we went to the DeYoung Museum to view the Masters of Venice Exhibition. 

Within the past few weeks we have had some of those impactful encounters, some were planned, some were serendipitous, and others were just amusing.

Regarding the amusing, while at the Masters of Venice Exhibition, I was filling up my notebook with museum notes on the great Venetian renaissance painters Titian, Giorgione, Veronese, Tintoretto, and Mantegna. In an exhibition like this, the museum security often must remind me not to get to close to the paintings during viewing, but I was consciously on good behavior this trip. Then I heard museum security ask someone to step back from an Andrea Mantegna Grisaille (term for painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of grey). Knowing I was not that close, I turned to the perpetrator and noticed it was Juliette Aristides who exhibited the night before at John Pence Gallery and also wrote the book Classical Painting Atelier. I was pleased that someone other than me was under surveillance. Juliette Aristides and I haven't seen each other since BACAA about two years ago, so we compared notes on the Venetian Masters technique as we cautiously viewed the rest of the exhibition. While I studied in Vicenza Italy in the past, I learned a tremendous amount at the exhibition.

Regarding the serendipitous, we have met some incredible people recently including sculptor Alicia Ponzio and fine artist Justin Hess who both recently moved to San Francisco from attending and teaching at the Florence Academy of Art. Jamen Graves, Board Member of Florence Academy of Art, fine artist Sadie Valleri who recently opened an new Atelier in San Francisco, Eric Rhoads publisher of Fine Art Connoisseur, Vincent Xeus who painted a portrait of Gaia and I'm sure the greater art world will know about soon, and Stephanie Fine who is a generous volunteer and asked me to teach plein air painting for a day to grade school children in Sonoma. 

While Melissa and I are interested in nourishing our daughter Gaia's interest in art, ballet and life she is actually introducing us to friendships we would not have known. While I cannot name them all, we recently met Jason Moore, and his family, an artisan of wine making . He wrote a nice blog post about our meeting, so I thought I would share the post and his quote which deeply resonates with me.

"For some, determining one's true purpose in life is accomplished thru following the path of least resistance, and thus relinquishing to passion."

Lapis Lazuli

My sister spent some time in Afghanistan on a government forensics contract. Knowing she was there in turbulent times, I merely suggested she keep an eye out for some genuine Lapis Lazuli.  Although I’ve been known to put her in harms way when we were children, luckily she returned home safe and gifted me a small hand carved wood vessel filled with the semiprecious blue stone.  

Mines in Afghanistan have been worked for Lapis Lazuli for several thousand years and are among the oldest continually worked set of mines in the world. The mines in the Badakshan area of Afghanistan, still operating today, supplied the sought-after stone to the Pharaohs. The earliest finds of Lapis Lazuli connected with art were found in a Sumerian mosaic dating from the third millennium B.C. Other examples were found in the treasury of Ramses II (1290-1223 B.C.). Lapis Lazuli was mentioned by the Greeks and Romans in early antiquity and in the Bible.

Its use as a painting pigment is first reliably recorded by Marco Polo in 1271. The semiprecious stone was mined in Afghanistan, purified into the pigment Ultramarine Blue “from beyond the sea”, and imported via Persia to the Mediterranean.  About 1390, Cennino Cennini gives very detailed instructions about the process of extracting the speckled yellow-gold color Pyrite and white streaks of Calcite. This resulting pigment was used from 1271 until it almost ceased to exist around 1840s. Its price has always been extremely high, equaling or exceeding that of gold.  It is so expensive that painters usually used to invoice their clients for it separately or ask them to supply it.  A privilege enjoyed solely by the wealthy, painters used it for the most important character of their paintings. Leonardo used it for the sky in his Mona Lisa.

In France, a prize was offered for the manufacture of synthetic ultramarine which was awarded to B. Guimet in 1824. This rapidly reduced to a minimum the supply of natural Ultramarine Blue. The artificial Ultramarine Blue is made by calcination of sulfur, sodium carbonate, and kaolin by the so-called soda process. The manufacturing process is quite complicated and is still carried out in pot kilns, experiments with other types of kilns have proved unsuccessful.

Luckily for us, artificial Ultramarine Blue is one of the best glazing pigments available and far less expensive than natural Ultramarine Blue. While I'm glad we do not have to use Cennini's formula for extracting the Pyrite and Calcite from the Lapis Lazuli, I do prefer to grind my own paints giving me a deeper appreciation for the pigment and oil for my paintings.    

Reference: The Material and Techniques of Painting Kurt Wehlte

Ballet Russe

Drawing of Maria Kochetkova, Principal Dancer, San Francisco Ballet. 

Inspired by her performance at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. (Instagram @balletrusse)

Black and white charcoal and pastel on Ingress Steel Grey paper by Canson made in France.

Legion of Honor | Gala

Last night, my beautiful Melissa and I attended An Elegant Evening in the Court of Honor at the Legion of Honor hosted Honorary Chairman, philanthropist, art collector, and champion-for-the-Arts Diane “Dede” Wilsey and Chairman and Mrs. Newton A. Cope. We were graciously invited by Dave Spencer, Art Enthusiast, Entrepreneur, Board of Trustees member of the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, Board of Trustees member of Florence Academy of Art and most important an overall great gentleman.

As we arrived at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the façade lit up the night sky giving a glimpse of the evening to unfold. Upon arrival. we viewed the current exhibition Pissarro's People. Camille Pissarro had a unique and lifelong interest in the human figure. From his earliest years in the Caribbean and Venezuela until his death in Paris in 1903, Pissarro drew, painted, and made prints featuring human subjects from every walk of life. Pissarro’s People celebrates the painter’s humanism in all its aspects and brings together nearly 100 works of art, including some 37 paintings and numerous works on paper made over the course of his entire career. 

After cocktails in the main rotunda among Rodin sculptures, we entered the tented Court of Honor for dinner, music and dancing. Need I say it was a perfect evening?..

The Contemporary Realist Movement

The Contemporary Realist Movement | The Epoch Times by Kara Lysandra Ross

The term, “Contemporary Art,” has long been associated with the Modernist and Post Modernist Movements because at the time they were created the words “contemporary art” or “modern art” also meant the art of today. However, these movements started several decades ago and today the terms have become deceptive as a new movement of living artists is taking back the word contemporary and associating it with the traditional techniques of the old masters applied to the human experience as well as important subjects of the times.  The general public is growing tired of art that needs long explanations and justifications and more and more people want to recognize what they are looking at and respond to it on a humanist level rather than a purely conceptual one.

The Contemporary Realist movement first started as a reaction to the Modernist and Post-Modernists, who still dominate the art market today. When one can take a found object, put it in a museum and call it art, the general feeling among this growing movement is that the definition of art has become so broad that the word “art”, as defined by the current art establishment, ceases to have meaning.  The modernist movement originated in the early 1900s and the critics of that time noted “the avowed purpose of art has been tampered with by introducing the elements of a missing-word composition… Many friends of art expect that it will meet its fate, but a few champions see a revolution in progress.[1]” The Modernist underdogs quickly took hold of the art world, completely dominating it by the end of the 1940’s. After the tragedy of two world wars and the Great Depression, humanity was left with a heart of cynicism and a mind filled with existentialist thoughts; two qualities Modern and Post-Modern art took to its core. In reaction to this negative view on humanity and its accomplishments, the Contemporary Realists felt mankind was best served by depicting through art, the qualities in life that unite us as people rather than the debasement of civilization. Nothing says more about a culture then the art it idolizes. It represents what it values, what it thinks about, and essentially what it deems worth remembering. Art is the representation of a people, encapsulating its essence on every level, and these artists believe there is more to great art then Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which is really nothing more than a toilet, or Jackson Pollack’s oeuvre, which is nothing more than splattered paint. Contemporary Realists looked back at the art that pre-dated these global catastrophes, to the old masters, and especially the classical artists of the 19^th century, whose works reached their zenith directly before the onset of Modernism and was a Renaissance of new themes encapsulating freedom of speech through visual storytelling.

The internet has become, as with so many fields, the most important tool for the Realist Movement.  It allowed the movement to gain serious traction about 10 years ago by linking those like minded parties together, enabling them to find each other and promote their thoughts to others. Through groups such as GoodArt, the Art Renewal Center (A.R.C.), was founded as a center for realism. It became the largest online museum and the only one at that time dedicated to traditional art. They searched out the remaining few atelier schools that still used the training methods of the old masters.  Being able to find only 14 in existence at that time with less than 200 students, A.R.C. advertised them to the public. Since that time the atelier schools have grown dramatically with more and more created every year. On the Art Renewal website 72 Atelier Schools and workshops are now listed, with many times the number of students and more are out there that are not listed as well.  Other alliances also formed such as the American Society of Classical Realism, International Guild of Realism, American Society of Portrait Artists, Oil Painters of America, Chinese International Figure Painting, and the California Arts Club among many others. Magazines now exist that are dedicated to realism such as Fine Art Connoisseur, Plein Air magazine,  Artist Advocate, American arts Quarterly, Art of the West, and others. Head instructor of the Ani Art Academy Waichulis, Anthony Waichulis states, “Over the past few years I have found that applications and program inquiries have increased tenfold.  It seems that this ever-growing resurgence in Realism is encouraging new aspiring artists to enthusiastically pursue fundamental skill building on a scale I have not seen before.  This is truly a wonderful thing as I believe that effective education is one of the most powerful tools we have to shape the future.”[2] These groups are all united if not literally then figuratively in their goal to bring realist painting, drawing, and sculpture back to the forefront of modern day art.

The Atelier Schools are the foundation of the movement, they are the source of the proper training that is denied in most university and college art curriculums. For Example, when I was getting my B.A. at Drew University, which has a reputable arts program in New Jersey, I took a sculpture course. When I got to the class I learned that it did not involve clay, but it did involve found objects. When I asked what level of sculpture started work with clay, I was told that I would need to take a ceramics course if I wanted to make pots. As most realist artists know, clay is a foundational tool in learning how to sculpt the human figure, something the college program did not teach. Although this is one example, it is not uncommon, but the norm. At the Art Renewal Center, letters are received almost daily from artists and art lovers who have reported similar experiences. Julian Halsby writes “I am writing from Britain to say how much I support your movement for the restoration of traditional values in art. There are many of us here in the UK who believe that modern art is in many ways a confidence trick and that traditional values must be restored in art schools. We have a magazine called The Jackdaw in which David Lee attacks the Art Establishment and… I write for The Artist magazine and often express views similar to yours.”[3] James Oliver writes “I am an artist who has been disenchanted with the art world to such a degree that I have pursued a science education instead. I think this site is the first real indication that the madness is beginning to clear as humankind rediscovers the beautiful.”[4] Jean Corbeil writes “As an artist and teacher, I believe that the future will only be possible if we infuse the arts back where they always belonged, at the heart of human education”[5] These are only a small taste of the over 400 letters posted on the A.R.C. website which have come in from all over the world and which all express similar views and experiences. 

Unlike “normal” art schools, atelier schools focus entirely on representational art. Their strict training curriculums often require an artist to take one or two years of drawing before being told they can move to paint. In the head Instructor of the Aristides Classical Atelier’s book, Lessons in Classical Drawing, Juliette Aristides writes, “Your work, whether drawing, painting, or sculpture will stand only if it is constructed on a solid foundation…Drawing is the most basic passageway through which you can access the power of art to express profound universal ideas, feelings, beliefs, and truths” At the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, John Angel utilizes methods that have been developed over the last six centuries, not allowing them to die out. Over the years he has watched his school grow and is convinced “The twenty-first century is seeing a renaissance in Humanism, in the concern for a human way of life and in the figurative-art forms which echo that very thing”.

Atelier schools, organizations, magazines and websites are not the only tell signs for the re-insurgence of traditional art. Auction prices  for realist paintings and sculpture have increased dramatically in the last 35 years, especially for the 19^th century, with artist such as William Bouguereau’s paintings going up in some cases 1000 times or 100,000%. Other artists’ prices,  such as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, have shown a similar trend. Tadema’s  Finding of Moses sold for £273 10 shillings in 1942 and $35,922,500  in 2010. It does not seem possible that the skyrocketing auction prices of 19^th paintings and the continual spread of the Contemporary Realist Movement are unrelated or isolated in the trend of a global move towards realism. Galleries, including important ones like Hirschl and Adler, NYC, are selling and doing shows for realist artists again. Museums are  accepting realist pieces into their collections, including those by living artists. John Angel recently had his portrait entitled  Annigoni 1954, included in the museum Villa Peyron in Florence, Italy. The painting is of Pietro Annigoni, a rare realist from the mid 20^th century quoted for saying “Impulse alone does not make a work of art.” and “I am convinced that the works of today’s avant-garde are the poisoned fruit of a spiritual decadence, with all the consequences that arise from a tragic loss of love for life.” Living master and sculptor, Richard MacDonald, is currently working on a massive multi-piece installation for the Royal Ballet, England.  James Childs was commissioned to create a five meter frieze for The Cultural Organization of the City of Athens during the Olympic Games of 2004, Cody Swanson’s sculpture of Eve is displayed in the courtyard at the Springville Museum of Art, Utah and Duffy Sheridan just finished a large landscape commission for the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel. These are only a few examples of a growing trend and desirability for this type of work.

In reaction to more and more people re-appreciating traditional art, people are not afraid to say they don’t like modernism.  Something that was shocking to hear when ARC Chairman Fred Ross stated in his 2001 speech addressing a crowd of over 700 portrait artists, gallery owners and members of the press at the Metropolitan Museum in New York saying, “Since most people aren’t devoted to or educated in fine art, they have successfully intimidated the bulk of humanity into cowering away in silence, feeling foolish for their inability to understand. The average person shrinks away from believing the reality of his or her own senses … what tends to happen to people who have allowed themselves to be convinced that the emperor is wearing beautiful clothes, is that they have become ego invested due to years of having parroted the same falsehoods  and the associated humiliation that goes with acknowledging that one has been had… If we don’t speak up and tell the world that the Emperor’s naked, nobody else will.”[6]  Ross received a standing ovation. Today, more and more people are speaking out. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported that there recently has been public backlash to a national law in South Korea which was enacted 16 years ago and requires builders of large commercial projects to commission an adjoining piece of art that equals 1% of the overall cost of the project. Since the law was enacted, 10,684 public art works were erected at a cost of more than $546 million. Some in South Korea were going as far as to say “the law had created a monster” with ugly and objectionable contemporary works being placed all over the country.  The National Council was quoted as saying, “Current public art pieces haven’t been serving the public…In fact, the understanding of public art is lost because of this.”  This conclusion was made at an international conference they held to examine both domestic and international public art policies.[7] This is yet one more symptom of a global change away from modernism, where traditional art is starting to capture a larger and larger portion of international hearts.

History has once again taken us full circle with the Contemporary Realists as the underdogs trying to rise up and war against the tightly held modern art establishment which has tried to suppress realism for 100 years through its devaluation, both as an expression of the human spirit and as a legitimate form of contemporary art.  Realism is still a small portion of the work being done in the art world, but has found solid roots which continue to grow and flourish in a world desperate for art they can look at, recognize, and relate to without requiring long explanations or justifications. Using traditional methods of narrative storytelling, technical prowess, accurate depictions of reality, beauty, balanced compositions, dramatic lighting, and most importantly, subjects relating to and expressing mankind’s shared humanity, The Contemporary Realist movement has become representative of a fast growing global shift in the art world today.

Kara Lysandra Ross is the director of Operations for the Art Renewal Center and an expert in 19th century European painting.

 

[1] Yockney, Alfred. The Art Annual: The Art of E. Blair Leighton, London Virtue & Co, Christmas 1913, introduction

[2] E-maill from Anthony Waichulis to Kara Ross November 2, 2011

[3] Letter from Julian Halsby to Fred Ross, Chairman of the Art Renewal Center, March 11, 2002

[4] Letter from James Oliver to Art Renewal Center, March 26, 2002

[5] Letter from Jeanne Corbeil to Fred Ross, Chairman of the Art Renewal Center, January 14, 2008

[6] Fred Ross, Good Art Bad Art: Pulling Back the Curtain, June 7^th 2001

[7] Jung-yoon Choi, Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2011

 URL to article: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/the-contemporary-realist-movement-156836.html

A Trek into the Wild

Last weekend, a friend asked for help with building a deck at his grandfather's cabin. Aside from him advising me on the essential gear, I did not ask too may questions prior to departure. On Thursday, we drove 390 miles North to the Marble Mountain Wilderness in California near Oregon boarder. We arrived around midnight, slept and waited for the horses to arrive in the morning then loaded and balanced the four horses with 150lbs each of food, camping gear, building supplies and fire water of our choosing. We then set off on a 6.5 mile hike over mountain passes and through streams to his grandfather's cabin.

 

Evidently, my friend's grandfather was an avid fisherman; hence, the reason he and some friends had a log cabin built in the remote wilderness in the 1930s. The following day, we milled a 150-year old Douglas Fir (which had fallen in a 2008 fire) into new deck planks. Luckily, we had chainsaws unlike the two poor chaps who had a hand saw and a mule in 1930s. 

Among my favorite moments was sleeping outside every night under an extended roof-line with the stars and a full moon overhead and one evening's soothing downpour. The last day, we rewarded ourselves with a personal activity of our choosing, mine was a plein air watercolor study of the river in my favorite travel journal. 

 

While I was painting, my labor camp mates explored the old care takers cabin upriver and found a fairly old Grumbacher oil artists' oil color set no. 320 - they signed and gave it to me as my parting gift. As we trekked back the 6.5 miles and returned the horses to their owner, the horse's owner turned to me and said; "that hat your wearing is the most disco cowboy hat I've ever seen...you guys have a safe trip home to the city." 

Gaia with Seeds

Gaia with Seeds - oil on linen - 40 x 36 inches 

This is a recent painting which is currently on display in the masterfully designed residence mentioned in my last entry. The natural light in the space is exceptional for displaying paintings.

Art + Architecture

Architects such as Mies van der Rohe found architectural inspiration in works of art while Le Corbusier produced his own paintings and sculptures to work out complex ideas. Leonardo da Vinci was a draftsman, Painter, Sculptor, Architect and Engineer whose genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.

As a trained architect and fine artist, I believe Art and Architecture share the abilities to expand our consciousness and when paired together become very powerful.

I'm honored to have a one-man-show in this masterfully designed residence.

  

 

Fountain of Bacchi, muses

Earlier this year I attended a humorous lecture “Bacchus the Rascal, A Bacchanalian history of wine seen through 4,000 Years of Art.” It is a vibrant, humorous presentation by Jan Shrem, founder of Clos Pegase Winery.

Amused by the presentation, I later visited the winery to view his art collection, have a glass of wine and do a little plein air sketch of this beautiful Fountain of Bacchi, nymphs and muses  - made of bronze, 17th century Italy. 

The paper is a handmade drawing paper from Ruscombe Paper Mill and a Terra Cotta colored Prismacolor Verithin pencil.

Classic Art Wins Against Modern in an Experiment

The Epoch Times - Members of the public don’t seem to like looking at modern art or installations and prefer the classics, according to an experiment conducted at the Tate Britain by Philip Hensher.

Instead of conducting a survey, Hensher and eight other observers recorded museumgoers’ genuine reactions. The investigation put modern artists Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin, and Rachel Whiteread, and historic great masters such as Whistler, Hogarth, and Sargent to the test of time.

The article, published in March, ran with the provocative headline “We know what we like, and it’s not modern art!”

The observers spent a day recording how people reacted to four classic paintings versus works by the four famous contemporary British artists, explained the MailOnline article, a British publication. The observers counted how long visitors viewed the paintings and what kind of visitor each work attracted.

“Surprisingly, despite all the controversy and the public promotion of new British artists, they did less well in this test than the 18th and 19th century artists,” according to the report.

For example, the average viewing time of 379 visitors for a Damien Hirst painting, consisting of a large square with small colored dots, was five seconds, while the longest was 30 seconds. The observers noted that most people just walked past the piece….

“Ophelia” by Sir John Everett Millais was a favorite. It depicts Shakespeare’s tragic heroine who slipped into a stream and let herself drown.

“Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” by John Singer Sargent was another favorite, with an average viewing time of 59 seconds and the longest at 3 minutes, according to the experiment. The painting is a beautiful image of two girls in a garden surrounded by blossoms. They are holding lanterns in what seems to be the light of dusk. Viewers openly expressed their love of the work.
 
“I was taken by the light and the texture of grass around their feet. I prefer the more traditional works. There is something about the modern pieces which are less hopeful.”

Museum and gallery curators may want to think twice about what they are embracing on the public’s behalf.

Art Renewal Center Chairman Fred Ross said in his speech “Good Art, Bad Art: Pulling Back the Curtain” at a 2001 conference at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York: “Modernism is art about art. It endlessly asks the question, ad nauseam, What is art? What is art? Only those things that expand the boundaries of art are good; all else is bad [in Modernism]. It is art about art. Whereas all the great art in history, my friends, is art about life.”

Inspiring Creativity

Imagination is the great spring of creative activity ~ the fountain of artistic fantasies which are the daydreams of children grown up.  Paradoxical as it may seem, the right way to conceive and practice art, regardless of the degree of efficiency, is with the viewpoint of a child.

 ~ Edgar Payne Composition of Outdoor Painting

A few weeks ago we attended the Catalan Festival where my daughter, Gaia (3 1/2), painted Sol Flamenco dance troupe.  Gaia has her own journal, paintbrush, and watercolors always at the ready for when she feels inspired to paint. As all artists know, its the most difficult of subjects to capture movement and soul of a dance. I thought I was teaching my daughter technique but she reminded me to just paint from your soul when inspired.

La Rose

 La Rose 

28 x 40 inches oil on linen

As I wrote in my last post, on June 11^th I had the opportunity to show some of my ballerina paintings at Napa Valley Ballet's premieres of JEUX D'ENFANTS ("Child's Play"), NAPA VALLEY ROMANZA and THE FIREBIRD. 

Since the visually inspiring evening, I painted this work titled “La Rose” of the Principal Ballerina of ROMANZA, Emmee LaRose.  

First Ballet Slippers

On Sunday, I have the opportunity to show some of my ballerina paintings at Napa Valley Ballet's premieres of JEUX D'ENFANTS ("Child's Play") based on popular children's games and NAPA VALLEY ROMANZA, with its beautiful score written by Napa Valley composer Louise Canepa. To climax the evening, San Francisco guest artist Joseph Copely will be performing in Stravinsky's THE FIREBIRD set by award-winning choreographer Milissa Bradley. 

I would like to thank the ever inspirational promoter of the arts, Judith Caldwell, Chairwoman of the Yountville Arts Committee and Julie Robertson, Creative Director of Napa Valley Ballet. 

Blonde Gypsy

Blonde Gypsy - oil on linen - 30 x 40 inches

Throughout the year I will be adding more paintings and drawings to my new website. Here on the blog I will continue to share my interest in a painting style historically influenced by artists in the Atelier education system in Paris in the mid-late 1800s. They in turn where influenced by technical achievements of 17th Century Spanish painting where bold, gestural application of paint was born. In the Ateliers in Paris, artists blended this influence with the rigid traditions of Academic Realism to create a new form of Expressive Realism that was broad, painterly and dramatic. 

These artists created the bridge from Academic Realism to Impressionism which came later. I like the view from this bridge and I hope you will join me on my painting journey.

En Plein Air

Micaiah Hardison, an artist friend, and his family spent the week with us. We seized the opportunity to paint en plein air together again. Last time we were together we spent a week in Arcos de la Frontera, a small hill town in the province of Cádiz in southern Spain. I couldn't resist this plein air moment capturing a magnificent 300+ year-old olive tree.

Urbane Impressionist

On a recent trip to Carmel, CA. my wife and I stopped in to visit with Patrick Kraft, Gallery Director at William A. Karges Fine Art specializing in Early California paintings. Patrick showed us this little jewel of an oil on board painting signed - William Henry Clapp 1917, Cuba.

William Henry Clapp (1879-1954) was a notable California Impressionist Painter with Canadian roots who studied in Paris from 1904-08 at Académies Julian, Colarossi, and Grande Chaumière. 

Clapp was taken by the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism he found in France. Most of the original Impressionists artists were alive and active, and the next generation was coming on the scene. He was particularly influenced by the work of Seurat and Signac. After his studies he returned to Canada where he appeared as 'a new voice' for Canadian painting, invigorating and inspiring younger painters. His membership in the Royal Canadian Academy was proof that his fellow painters accepted him. The public found him harder to take.

In 1915 Clapp sailed for Cuba, where his father managed a plantation on the Isle of Pines. For two years he painted swampy waterways overhung with palms and hot country roads, sometimes in soft diffused mists, sometimes with sharp, short, piercing glazes that turned paintings into vibrating jewels like this one.

Leaving Cuba in 1917 the year of this painting, he settled permanently in Oakland where he was destined to make an enduring mark on California art. His painting was so far in advance of what was being done that he became a radical pioneer. Clapp and Selden Gile gathered four other painters and constituted The Society of Six, to whom Clapp brought the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist visions that he had learned in France, the only one of the group who had actually been there. Clapp also served as director and curator of the now Oakland Museum for 31 years from 1918-49. 

A biographer Lawrence Jeppson is compiling a book on Clapp titled The Joy of Vision!. In Jeppson’s introduction he calls Clapp an "Urbane Impressionist", a title I’m drawn to like this painting.

Image: William Henry Clapp 1917, Cuba. complements of William A. Karges Fine Art

Study of Frank Duveneck's The Guard of the Harem

Frank Duveneck painted the original in 1879, and it is now part of San Francisco's DeYoung Museum permanent collection. The eyes of this Guard just seem to draw you into his world of power, intrigue, betrayal, and longing.

I sought permission from the DeYoung Museum for an on-site study of this particular Duveneck piece. After finally working my way through the proper chains of command, I was given a few disheartening answers of NO. The reason being was because oil paint mediums fall into a "hazardous solvent" category established by San Francisco's Health and Safety Commission. (However, I was more than welcome to use other drawing/painting materials such as pencils, color pencils, oil crayons or water colors.)

The Louvre and Prado as well as most other European museums have promoted this form of study for centuries and it has proven invaluable to artists.

This obstacle required me get a little more creative making several trips to the DeYoung in order to capture the secrets of this painting (for example, only 5 colors were used in this entire painting). I'm sure Duveneck would not have minded a respectful study of his work. Here is a link to a book a book on Frank Duveneck: Unsuspected Genius: The Art and Life of Frank Duveneck.

 [Detail of Sean Patrick McArdle's Study of Frank Duveneck's Guard of the Harem]

Casey Baugh Workshop

In March I traveled to Casey Baugh’s studio in Chattanooga, TN for a 5-day portrait/figure painting workshop. The workshop focused on creating a painting from a live model while Casey masterfully demonstrated his entire process from preparation to the finishing strokes. Daily discussions included the importance of value, drawing, edge and color as well as compositional theory and design.  Casey has Video Tutorials on his website which provides an inspiring look at the layers of his process.

I have attended several other advanced portrait and figure workshops and in comparison I came away from this workshop ranking it the best I have attended. Everyone left inspired with no questions left unanswered. Casey Baugh is a Master and one to watch.

My Girl

This is a drawing I did for my daughter's third birthday earlier this month. The drawing is done with charcoal, a range of warm to cool grey pastel pencils and chalks and white.

The paper is a handmade drawing paper from Ruscombe Paper Mill. Essential properties of a good drawing paper include the ability to erase and alter without damage to the surface. The blending of cotton, linen and hemp fibers provides the necessary strength and stability. 

Happy Birthday Gaia.

To ALL who wield the Brush and Pencil

While doing some research I found this Dedication page from the 1902 book Master Paintings of the World, edited by Dupont Vicars. The scan of this rare book was part of a touching tribute to the website owners mother and grandmother and for "all of us who learned to love art at a parents' knee." 

Happy 3rd Birthday to my daughter Gaia. 

The Museums of the World are our playground.

¡Carmencita!

The second of two exhibitions from the Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay is on display at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

The Orsay’s collection includes a diverse collection of paintings from the Pont-Aven school to pointillist paintings. As you enter into the exhibit, Carmencita by John Singer Sargent is center stage. Obviously, the painting was placed there to show the shifting of painting styles. In the late 19th century the painting world was suddenly confronted with impressionism. Much is made today of the harsh reception that the Impressionists received at the hand of the Academy. That did happen. But not for very long. Many of the Impressionists became very successful. The Post-Impressionist’s exhibition celebrates the many "isms" that followed.

I have gone back four times for one reason, to visit ¡Carmencita! - John Singer Sargent synthesized some of the lessons of the impressionists while still retaining his foundational academic training. You wouldn't call Sargent an Impressionist or Post-Impressionist, but he did paint alongside Claude Monet who he admired, and he was influenced by the great "eye"of Giverny who had a few landscape paintings hanging along side Carmencita.

Sargent finagled a live Carmencita performance at William Merritt Chase’s New York 10th Street Atelier, and Chase and Sargent both produced an 1890 portrait of Carmencita. Energetically petite, she wears a coppery-gold costume. Sargent had met Carmencita in Paris before her American debut and when he persuaded her to dance at Chase’s Atelier in 1890, he included his patron Mrs. Elizabeth Gardner among the select and fascinated audience.

Sargent smoothed down Carmencita’s then-fashionably “frizzled” hair to suit his own preference and minimized her heavy make-up. The results were Carmencita in a more formal pose. Aside from being immortalized on canvas, Carmencita and her dancing were captured on film in 1894—in fact, Carmencita is said to be the first woman to ever be filmed, this auspicious event taking place at Thomas Edison’s studios using the Edison-developed motion picture camera.

Great American Figurative Artists Exhibition

On Thursday, I had an opportunity to preview the Great American Figurative Artists Exhibition at the Waterhouse Gallery in Santa Barbara prior to the November 20th opening reception. I visited the impressive exhibition while Dianne and Ralph Waterhouse were busy hanging the nearly 100 original works.

Like the recent Weekend with the Masters I wrote about, Richard Schmid, his daughter Molly Schmid and some of his students Jeremy Lipking and Katie Swatland all had an impressive show. Southwest Art has a good article on the exhibition but I highly recommend visiting before all the work is purchased.

William Bouguereau Catalog Raissoné

The Art Renewal Center released the anticipated Catalog Raissoné on William Bouguereau, concluding a 30 year effort by a small group of scholars. Having paid in advance a few years ago, I received my copy this week in a heavy box containing the two-volume boxed set illustrating the complete oeuvre of paintings, as well as the entire 600 page biography written by Danien Bartoli with Fred Ross, ARC Chairman.

While I have just completed reading the Introduction of this 900 page catalog, I'm struck by the amount of effort and deep respect they have given to William Bouguereau . As Fred Ross states in his Introduction, Bouguereau is unquestionably one of history's greatest artistic geniuses. Damien Bartoli who dedicated much of his life to research of the life and art of William Bouguereau passed away in 2009 so close to publication.

Art Renewal Center is dedicated to creating the largest on-line Museum on the Internet as well as promoting a return of training, standards and excellence in the visual arts. They recognized the importance of providing information on ateliers, academies, schools and private instructors dedicated to the teaching of art in the traditional manner. For a complete list visit the ARC Approved Ateliers.

Weekend with the Masters | Scott Christensen

While attending American Artist's Weekend with the Masters, I had the opportunity to view a landscape painting demonstration by Scott Christensen. Christensen is a talented landscape artist who is also a gifted instructor. I also like Scott Christensen because he is a mutual admirer of Anders Zorn. After Christensen visited Zorn's atelier in Mora, Sweden, he simplified his palette which resulted in more harmonious landscapes.

Clear emphasis was placed on the writings of John F. Carlson's four basic value planes (Sky, Ground Plane, Sloped and Vertical planes) and John Singer Sargent’s five types of light (Light, Shadow, Mid-tone, Light Accent and Reflected Light).

Christensen currently resides in Victor, Idaho, where he holds two annual workshops in his craftsman-style atelier and elegant exhibition space. He also just released a new painting instruction video titled Solitary Profession.

Weekend with the Masters | Jeremy Lipking

Jeremy Lipking was one of the artist instructors at American Artist’s Weekend with the Masters workshop & conference. I participated in his full day figure demonstration which was held in a North-lit atelier at Laguna College of Art & Design.

I have painted with Lipking a few times in the past and he never fails to produce a fine demonstration sketch while imparting direct advice on how he selects and achieves his beautiful subtle relationships of color.
Jeremy Lipking has been influenced by Master Richard Schmid so it was fitting that Richard Schmid painted a portrait sketch of Lipking before the commencement of the conference at Alexey Steele's studio in Los Angeles. Alexey is a Russian born Realist painter now living and working in LA.
Alexey "broke into" Jeremy's hotel room at the Weekend of the Masters conference. click here to see the art thief in action.

Weekend with the Masters | Richard Schmid

We recently arrived home from the American Artist’s Weekend With the Masters Workshop & Conference in Dana Point, California. In attendance were some top representational painters of our time all coming together to share the principles, knowledge, and understanding that have been handed down from the masters of the past while interacting with the masters of the present who are passing this legacy on.

Exciting and still life demonstrations are not often used in the same sentence but on the first evening of the conference, keynote speaker Richard Schmid masterfully delivered his "secrets to still life painting" to a packed crowd. Schmid's "secrets" were words of encouragement for the artist to focus on painting from real life and second to remember the importance of the ascending act of painting while in front of his/her easel.

If your interested in Schmid's technique, one of the best books on painting is Alla Prima. I'll be sharing more images and details from other artists demonstartions in subsequent posts.