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I was spending some time actually working with different ideas I had for presenting my work online. Here is one of them. Does the layout make you curious to see more … or is it just annoying? Leave me a comment and let me know.
That’s the news from the Couch … how’s your day going?
“A line is a dot that went for a walk.” Paul Klee
Paul Klee 1879 – 1940 was born in Munchenbuchsee, Switzerland. Credited with inspiration in the impressionist and cubism movement, here again we see an artist moved by symbols and the primitive essence. Finding words and color could move together to form a thought or sentence, Klee was inspired to paint symbols as a code in his work. Each piece representing an entire experience.
He is credited with writing the book “The Thinking Eye” which details an obsession with spiritual concepts and exactness. The book is considered the most detailed manual on the science of design ever written. This book is as valuable as Da Vinci’s journal and notes on A Treatise on Painting.
Paul Klee was a man who un spun the wheel and detached from the need to create limp realistic, stilted images. He was more impressed with the impression of time upon a person’s consciousness and deformed objects and related them back to the place they “belonged.”
His works take great leaps of change throughout his career, none staying exactly in any one direction, but there is a pattern to the evolution of his work in his artist’s eye. It is color and pattern, color sometimes more important and at other times pattern or symbols more important in the progression of his work. Shapes are expressive and speak, then pattern is expressive and speaks. In yet another work, a face or a figure are expressive and speak all returning to …. and then a release from that structure.
Playful, humorous, emphatic, brilliant and majestic are all words to be found in his pieces. He is at once, demanding an attention to our human past, present and future. Time stops in one work and begins again in another. Moments are captured and released to return again. All of his work speaks the language of the human spirit.
“Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none as all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.” Paul Klee
I have seen beautiful pictures in magazines of stunning living rooms and nooks and bookcases and, and and. I also didn’t have the resources and or just the product available in my area to buy. What to do? Well we punt.
I’m eclectic with an eye for the best. I love rich fabrics and good couches and quality where I can afford it. After that …. well sometimes it’s a can of paint, some ingenuity and a few “what ifs.” Decorating is an unique as you are.
Beloved pieces can make any house a home. Make sure your have some. Have an original piece of artwork on you walls, not a print, not a copy, not a piece of cardboard with color on it. An original, made by an artist. That’s what artists are there for, to give you an authentic, real piece of work to add to your home.
This piece is titled mother n child and is for sale at http://agapistudios.blogspot.com or contact the artist Beth Simpson at agapistudios@hotmail.com. THANKS!
I was wondering through my notes on who to pick for Friday’s Famous Artist and It occurred to me perhaps going forward is as good as going back. So I chose Egypt. It’s art is a fixed mythology in most people’s lives. So incredible is it’s reach into our conscious mind, I doubt I could find a person who doesn’t know it. That says a lot.
From reading about the previous Famous Artists (Kandinsky, Picasso, De Kooning) I can also say that Egypt’s art has also had an impact on those artists as well. Many have studied their mythology and symbolism.
Egypt’s art and heritage was as close to me as the the large coffee table book my mother had of Egypt. It mesmerized me. All through my childhood I also knew of Egypt because our local museum had a really nice section dedicated to it with artifacts and renditions of temples; one of which was commissioned by my great grandfather and mother in the early 1900’s. It’s still there to this day.
I also had the opportunity to travel to Chicago and see the Tutankhamen exhibit there. That is where I saw the incredible funeral mask pictured above. It is breath taking.
The Pigments used to paint these incredible fresco’s are made of crushed bone, chalk, charcoal, lapis lazuli, malachite, vegtables and plant material. Before heading off to make them yourself be aware that many of the pigments they used were highly toxic and contained cadium (orange), sulpher (yellow), oxides of copper (green) naturally oxidized iron and red ocher(red), chalk and gypsum(white), soot, burnt animal bones(black).
Interestingly enough, you will notice as you view Egyptian art that there exists a uniformity to it throughout it’s 5000 plus year history. That was done on purpose. Most figures are painted with the torso facing forward and the face sideways with both feet on the ground. Also Gods and pharaohs are painted much larger then a slave or subject to represent their importance in society.
And the final moment or the first is this picture of the pyramids, enough inspiration perhaps for 5000 years plus of history.
I wake up in the morning and scramble to the coffee pot. The only hindrance to a direct b-line is my kitten, Gabriel. He’s not a hindrance really but if I’m not careful I will trip over him and he doesn’t like that so much.
So I get to the coffee pot with a kitten on my leg and a loud MEOW. Feed ME NOW. Ok, the coffee waits, Gabriel gets some food, happy Kitten = happy studio. The Day Begins. HURRAY! meow meow meow.
Ahh the famous trade between president Obama and Britains Prime Minister Cameron….begins here. First British Prime Minister Cameron gives Obama a painting by a well known Pop Artist Ben Eine and a while later President Obama returns the favor by gifting another Pop Art work by Ed Rusha. Who do you like better?
Ben Eine – Graffiti Artist
An Interview with Ben Eine http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jun/27/streetart
Or … Ed Rusha pop artist
An Interview with Ed Ruscha
http://www.lacma.org/art/BehindTheScenes14.aspx From the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts, Los Angeles, CA 90036
A little different then abstract art but no less important. They both follow the post modern movement of Art.
I’ve tweeted, linked and blogged and it’s not even 9am yet. This is the moment when I realize it’s time to reflect a little about the weeks events.
I just finished a show outside of San Antonio that was Hot, Dusty and I was set up accross from a guy selling Alligators on a stick. Not the best place for my art I am thinking then behold Sunday comes and a whole crowd of wonderful people emerge.
Never say never. That’s the news from the Couch, how’s your day going?
Wassily Kandinsky (Dec 1866 – Dec 1944) was a Russian painter and is credited with painting the first modern abstract works.
“In Kandinsky’s work, some characteristics are obvious while certain touches are more discrete and veiled; that is to say they reveal themselves only progressively to those who make the effort to deepen their connection with his work. He intended his forms, which he subtly harmonized and placed, to resonate with the observer's own soul.”
That is such a poignant statement to me. I have been mesmerized by Kandinsky’s works from the age of 12 and my first visit to the Art Museum in which hung 2 of his works. At that time I did not know who it was that offered such a unique view of the struggle between color, shape and definition.
That struggle I later found was with purpose. Long after I had started my own journey with paint and canvas and found myself working with many of the same ideas and concepts, I chanced upon an article about Kandinsky and was stunned to hear words put to thoughts and emotions I myself have had.
I find expressing with words what I am doing on the canvas far more difficult. For me the minute I pick up my paint brush I am in a totally in a different world. Putting words to the motions and interaction that occurs with my work has been far more difficult.
Kandinsky settled in Munich in 1886 and studied first in the private school of Anton Ažbe and then at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1914, after World War I started. He was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, and became a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.
It is amazing to me how circumstances at the time of his life greatly shaped his work and his reasoning. Kandinsky was deeply spiritual and studied symbols. He was also deeply moved by the biblical implications of the apocalypse. Many of his pieces were an attempt to translate the difficult metaphorical map that the Bible laid down.
Kandinsky is credited with providing a Rosetta stone on which the meaning of these mysterious figures is inscribed. He left a legacy and a primer of abstract art.
100 Hearts Series. This work measures 14 x 17 and costs $400.00. Part of the proceeds from this series are donated to a charitable cause every year. Please contact me at agapistudios@hotmail.com to purchase. All work is shipped unframed and is done on 100lb archival paper. Thanks!
Ok so here I am at my desk staring at the maze of statistics for my blog. My heart rate is going up and I feel this incredible urge to distract myself as if leaving the computer will somehow make all the information appear.
Imbedding codes is as far as I am concerned a way of layering paint on the canvas which takes years and years of practice. NO
Imbedded codes are the objects you need to place in your objects to make other objects work. YES
Right. Brain. Left. Color. Right. Correct. Left. A Little Darker. No you need to create your tags and then put them in a cloud.
K Done … Thanks. Do I pass?
