Art For The Love Of IT

When I finally got my studio together, I wanted a large studio easel which would hold a large canvas and not wiggle or move around when I am dabbing with my brush. All the heavy duty easels in the stores were over 300 dollars, to more than 1000 dollars. As a starving artist, food seems to be a better option for my budget, on the web I checked into building my own easel. Like the three bears I found the following just right design at http://bengrosser.com/easel/gallery/index.html. I am glad I did, the design has worked out great. We have made two easels with some minor changes.

With my limited help a good friend made the first 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 using 2x6’s, only because we had them already on the farm. Out of pocket expenses were only about $20.00, plus beer for Orland my good friend.

As you can see our easel is quite tall about 8 feet, our larger design is to enable using very large canvas’s with ease. It is very solid and no movement, for when I get carried away during painting. For the same reason we did not put wheels on the easel, but we can always

add wheels. 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

I will as soon as possible update the photos showing the different easels.

As the Holidays near, those of us fortunate enough to have family and loved ones should reflect on the good fortune we have as others may not.

Solstice can mean many things to the artist, the colors change with the seasons and the shadows get longer in the winter. On the solstice the shadows should be the longest of long. Toast to longer days this year.

It will be fun and challenging to do a work depicting the long shadows of the solstice. I had better get started.

When I went to Hawaii January 2006, I had a great time, I could love living in Hawaii. As an artist I found many subjects to paint, but the sunsets really caught my eye. Really beautiful sunsets and very dramatic. Painting from my minds eye can be much more funthen plen air or from photos. Expression from the mind is very fullfilling and challenging in different ways.

I have done another sunset taken from a photo when in Hawaii, Wikiki, but I eliminated the palm trees. Dramatic sunsets are limited were I live because of the mountains to the west.

Water in this painting was done mostly with a pallet knife.

Painting is oil on canvas 16 X 20.

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.

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.

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. For me the analogy speaks of our society’s propensity to be couch potato’s fed programed reality. Some troops returning home from Iraq have stated they felt like they left Plato’s Cave and are seeing light for the first time. Plato’s cave has survived many years of speculation as to what it really means.

Private Collection,
Oil on Wood 24x36

Artist rendition of Pieter Bruegel’s “The Harvesters”

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