Art For The Love Of IT

So many blogs go unattended such as this one. My love of art prompted me to set up and not follow through with updates, not a very good reference to me self. For me the biggest problem is not the writing but downloading the pictures. Seem to have trouble getting the JPG under the max requirement of the site for downloads. It was becoming a hair puller for me so I just backed off.

Well I am back. Now if I can become consistent with my updates then I can feel better at night.

Some things in the works are trying to make a worthy studio easal maybe even for sale. Updates and pictures will be fouthcoming.

Been painting with Acrylics for the past 6 months and sort of like it because of the fast drying time, only as I get used to it. My biggest problem seems to be emulating oil paint dry brushing technique with acrylics, still not happy with the outcome. Painting on door skins and Masonite have been interesting, the smooth surface of the Masonite was much more pleasant.

Acrylics force me to work quickly, which places me in the zone and I go with the flow, which is what it is all about.

When I paint I need and love to have music going in my studio. Music is my friend, and helps me obtain the important zone, so necessary for doing my art helping with creativity. I become one with the music and sort of zone in on my art. All kinds of music works for me, blues to jazz and of course classical music like Beethoven or Mozart work very well for me. A little side note, some artists demand only classical music be used, I really do not believe the music has to be classical, even though I like classical music too. After some dissertation, with another artist, it was my feeling music from Booker T’s “Green Onions” would not be a good sound, but now I have to try it.

Connecting color to sounds is defined by the word Synesthesia, but I will defer the subject to the experts, you may want to research Synesthesia on the web. My simple approach is to have the sounds envelope my being, guiding me, nudging me into the zone aspiring to creative inspiration. Musicians elude to the zone when really grooving, so one could say the relationship between music and painting is symbiotic, so far we have discussed the visual artist using music for inspiration.

How about the opposite, writing music to go with the finished work, I recently requested a friend musician if he was inclined, to write a piece for my painting of Plato’s Cave, if he does it will be so much fun to see the connection. Let’s see if we can connect the dots in our the visual and the auditory parts of our brains.

Music is art, art is music.

Artist Coop in the beginning

After attending several meetings, I am glad to be a charter member in a new artist coop. Our group of serious artists, who support the arts and will start by showing and providing art and workshops for the community.
Looking at other art coops, and using their examples and ideas about how they work, we feel the need to open one in our community. Tonight was a turning point, the stake was pounded into the ground. For this to develop and succeed, a core group of like minded and visionary people will enable this to be a success.

Next week we should decided many ground braking issues. Since we already have a beautiful building in a good location downtown. Plenty of work needs to be done, from setting up a rental contract, electing officers, committees and setting up new ideas. It will be an evolving process.

We seem to have a great core charter group of artists with visions for the future.

Meeting on Monday 19th,

Well the following update is not so much a vision of the future, things may be moving forward, but not in the way I had expected. Revelations of mind numbing proportions were instituted, we now have assigned temporary officers for 3 months, it has been decided that we will pay a $200.00 sign up fee on Decmeber 15, 2007 and will open the Gallery some time in February 2008. Coming up with the extra $200 dollars for this starving artist will require some fancy book work, something like the federal budget I suppose now all I have to do is paint my own money.

It will be up the officers as to what is decided on and how it will be handled.

After a meeting from hell, where the defensive aggressive posturing was instilled and people labeled as splinter groups, by other people assigning themselves as something called a core group and mentioning a business plan is one big no no, I have found out being assigned as one member of a splinter group, I am now excluded from the coop and in fact not a vanguard member, in any faith at all.

So my experience with the coop has fizzled into a not so fond memory.

When I finally got my studio together, I started looking for a large studio easel which could hold a large canvas and not move around land shake when I am dabbing with my brush. All the heavy duty easels in the stores were over 300 dollars, all the way to over a grand plus. Instead of spending that much money since I am a starving artist, food seems to be a better option, I decided to check into building my own. Checking around the web, I found http://bengrosser.com/easel/gallery/index.html. I am glad I did, the design worked out great.

With my limited help a good friend made a real nice studio easel, using Ben Grosser’s plans. Ben Grossers plans are really comprehensive and easy at the same time, with plenty of photos to guide you. Adjustments or modifications are easy to make. We ended up wanting to make a heaver easel. It would be fun to try making an easel out 2x4’s instead of what we ended up using 2x6’s, only because we had them already on the ranch. Out of pocket expenses were only about $20.00, plus lunch for my friend.

As you can see our easel is quite tall about 8 feet, our larger design will take very large canvas’s with ease, and very solid and no movement, for when I get carried away painting. For the same reason we did not put wheels on, but can later if need be. I store my new canvas’s behind the easel, which means if I want to tilt it, I have to take care not to damage them. Anyway I love this easel, it seems to be a great design, plus you can modify the design any way you want. Thanks Ben Grosser

My rendition of Lady Godiva will take me some time to finish, this will be my first painting on linen with oil gesso, I can already feel the difference in the brush’s flowing on linin with the oil. It feels very close to the smoothness of white flake. Well the under painting looks good, now all I have to do is add the colors.
Lady Godiva is a good choice because I have always wanted to do a painting of a horse. My use of underpainting is just the way I sketch and compose my paintings.
My painting will be not the ride but instead Lady Godiva standing next to here trusty steed.

If you are interested in the story you can find a good accounting at
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/070377.html An interesting added bit of information is the painting on the Harvardmagazine post shows Lady Godiva waving her way though town and “peeping Tom” watching from a window. My question is how can he be a"Peeping Tom” when Lady Godiva is riding through the middle of town during rush hour, really high noon who is she waving to, the painter? I do not buy the Peeping Tom theory, but it is fun anyway. Check it out.
Almost seems like a rehash with variation of Susanna and the Elders.

Redwoods,
The coast redwoods is a most noble and beautiful tree, so majestic, being among the noble giants, One almost feels the need to whisper least we disturbed them. In less traveled sections of redwood forests, noise from others can intrude on the tranquility and even worse cigarette smoke can drift or collect and sit, bringing us back to stark reality. Attempting to capture the restful beauty of the redwoods, is most fulfilling, all though quite challenging.

Redwood paintings seen on the web, at least paintings labeled redwoods, some seem to have been mislabeled. One I remember quite well, thought labeled redwoods, it looked more like a ban-yon tree, now I may be mislabeling, but I would never attempt to paint something like a tree unless I was looking at one and at least a photo, though I may helpful to know the specific variety.

The image below of redwoods, really does not do my painting justice, the post does not show the real mood. It is oil on canvas 18x24.

Redwoods are an ongoing project for me, I love the peace and comfort they provide, a unique feeling of serenity, so the gentle giants are one of my favorites for painting. As of December 2007, I have done 3 works on redwoods and plan on doing some more. Will post them asap.

One of my favorites paintings is “Black Rock” by John Singer Sargent. Looking from above, down upon a girl sitting on a rock by a stream. Sargent’s use of light and dark is inspiring and especially in this painting, my prejudices may be showing a bit, I love his technique and style, great use of color.

Orr Springs was painted in late summer, so the creek was finding it’s path in the low spots. Light and dark shadows were really beautiful. Tried to capture light filtered through making colors most beautiful. Intensity and contrasts were really happening, My painting below is 24x36 oil canvas.

My rendition of Plato’s Cave was a lot of fun to paint. Plato’s analogy can mean so many different things. From Religion to Politics, my take on the analogy is our society’s propensity to be couch potato’s fed programed reality. If you listen to audio link below you will realize the prisoners are supposed to have chains around their necks so they cannot turn their heads, I did not paint them in, we can call it artists license.
oil on wood 24x36

You can listen to a full audio of Platos cave at: http://www.google.com/search?q=Platos+cave&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&start=20&sa=N

When I went to Hawaii last January, I had a great time. As an artist I found some subjects to paint, but the sunsets really caught me eye, really beautiful and dramatic, I painted this from my minds eye. Sometimes painting from memory is more fun than plen air or from photos.

Artist rendition of Pieter Bruegel’s “The Harvest”

Oil painting can be most gratifying, copying a master is a refreshing change of pace and can be quit a challenge, real enlightening to emulate or provide a personal artists rendition of a masters work. Many paintings created by the masters provide interest to me, but “The Harvest” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1565, for me peaks much interest. “The Harvest” is one of my favorites, it has much going on, plus the simple fact “The Harvest” was produced 442 years ago, viewing people in Bruegel’s painting stops time for me.
Oil on canvas 18x24

Oil on wood, 30x30

“Susanna and the Elders” is one rendition that I have wanted to create for a long time, and may try to do a different one again.

A biblical story painted over the years by many masters, my favorite rendition is at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, by Thomas Hart Benton, he painted his version in 1938 which created a lot of controversy, which Benton found quite amusing. Over the years artists have created many different renditions, the most famous may be the one by Rembrandt.

The biblical story goes something like this; Susana the beautiful daughter of a well to do bigwig in the village, was doing her daily or weekly bathing, she asked her ladies in waiting to leave her while she bathed. Well two eiders of the village spied on Susanna and approached her with a blackmail intent to gain favors. They told Susanna that if she did not let them have their way with her, they would tell everyone in the village that she seduced them instead. The story goes on, but I stop here because my painting attempts to show simple hypocrisy only.

This story inspired artists over the years, who painted mostly the regular religious paintings, so Susanna’s story allowed them an opportunity to dip into the realm of painting a nude with a saucy story which makes it even more interesting.

Above is my first rendition of Susanna and the Elders, other ideas are in the works, since a saucy story can be quite amusing.

You can see Rembrant’s painting at: http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/complete_catalogue/storia/susanna_and_elders.htm

Art shows, fairs, and other public events can be helpful, but seem a waste of time to this artist, most people are not out looking for paintings or other kinds of artwork. Tourist towns may be an exception.

Reason bing for example when people are on a vacation, they sometimes want to purchase something for memories of trips and travels. Paintings can be a nice option, I would suppose they should be relative to the vacation area. Seems tourist locations are better than local haunts for showing work, in our town which is a very hard crowd to sell art to, some of the local artists are trying to develop a coop gallery, which may be a nice thing for showing art and enlightening the public at the same time.

Recently I attended a local street fair to display some of my paintings, will have more later. A local art show, which is great for networking, and comparing different styles of painting. As I suspected street fairs are not a healthy environment for showing art. Talking to our pottery neighbors in the booth next to us they said going the bigger events in the city was not even a break even for them. Their products were quite nice and I hope to link their site to my blog in the near future. the

Hi folks out there in blogland, this is a new blog for artists and people who love art. My intention is to use this site to promote art, all different kinds of fine art as they appear. In my case I will start with Oil painting and ceramics my first art loves, writing is third.

So be it! Since we all have other lives, this is to be done in time alloted.

Feel free to comment on what you see and how you feel about it

Leefeller Guy