Latest in the Genesis Series of Egg Temperas

Genesis: Peach............. Egg Tempera..................... $450

People are now asking: "When are you going to stop?" This is number 16 in the series and I have no plans to stop. But who knows when the energy and obsession will peter out.

check them all out at http://www.gainor.biz/genesis%20series.htm

Portrait Commission Completed

Anne Pastel on Paper Commission

Articles Section on my Website

I have posted an "Articles" section. The first article that I added to the section is a 15-page essay on Impressionism. I call it a "Little Essay on Impressionsm", the "Little" emphasized because most art writings are neither little nor very informative. I know mine is little, but I'll leave the "informative" part for you to decide.

My aim was to give my students an overview of the Impressionist movement and to trace my own Impressionist "heritage". I felt it was also important to know what was happening in the world at the time of the first Impressionist show so I added a section that picks various inventions, political events, and discoveries that helped form the climate of the times.

www.gainor.biz/articles.htm

Celebrating George G. Cranston

George was my soulmate, friend, confidante, pal, and artcritic. He died May 21st, 2009. My life will never be the same; he was funny, bright, opinionated, and passionate about life, sobriety, art, music, food, friends. I did this pastel of him in 2003 during a rare time in the past 10 years that he did not have an oxygen hose in his nose. He will be missed by everyone, especially me. Many will remember him fondly as they have had life changing stories of him impacting their lives. More about George is on http://www.georgecranston.com/

An Interesting Blog

Exactly two months have passed and I have not posted anything on my blog. I keep thinking that I need to finish the five or six paintings and drawings in my studio so I can get them on my blog and website. I have been very involved in a totally absorbing non-art project that used up most of my creative juices. I'll be back soon.

In the meantime I want to share with you a blog I have found and enjoy very much.

http://artinconnu.blogspot.com/

This blog celebrates the little known and under appreciated artists through the ages. It's wonderful to see how many unsung genius artists there are out there.

Stress Relief

According to an article on page 22 of the latest issue of AARP magazine, there is evidence that people's stress hormone, cortisol, dropped when they visited an art gallery during lunch. The article also tells people to chew bubble gum instead of stress eating. I like the art gallery idea better than the bubble gum, but that's me.

So how about it, friends and neighbors....are you visiting your local art gallery to relieve the stress of not being able to pay your mortgage and car loan?

While you are there, forget about that stupid loan and buy a smashing painting to help out a starving artist.

Remember that art is always a good investment in hard economic times....or so they say.

Andrew Wyeth

All week I have wanted to say something about Andrew Wyeth.

I have read blog posts, magazine and newspaper articles, reviews, catalog entries, and so on since it was announced that he was dead at 91 years old.

His images are part of the collective unconscious I think....even the most unaware know about that painting of the crippled girl in the field, even if they don't know the name of the artist or the painting. Sadly the only thing many remember about him is the Helga series of paintings; the aura of the eccentric painter holed up with his naked blonde beauty is nirvana-land to many who can fantasize plenty about such a life of luxury.

I have always adored Andrew Wyeth's work. I confess to a fascination with the entire Wyeth clan, from NC to Jamie and the work of Henriette and Peter Hurd, as well some paintings I have seen by Carolyn (I think that is the correct spelling of her name), who spent much of her life in mental health facilities. I recall a particular painting by Carolyn that I could not get out of my mind for months after I saw it.

My great-great aunt, Ellen Wetherald Ahrens, was part of the group of artist/illustrators who studied with Howard Pyle and she knew NC Wyeth, according to unsubstantiated stories told to me as a child by my grandmother and mother. The name Wyeth was known to me through the magnificent illustrations in countless books that peppered my youth. A trip to the Brandywine Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, is like a reunion with old friends; an incredible collection of Wyeth paintings, illustrations, drawings, are on display, some resonating familiarity through the stories I vaguely remember, but the images are embedded in my brain cells for my lifetime.

And it is the same for all of the Wyeth paintings and illustrations; etched on my brain cells as icons that represent the best of the best in painting and illustration. These paintings are technically immaculate and remarkably conceived; a throwback to the 19th century realists and a throwforward to the most sophisticated contemporary visionaries.

An article many years ago in American Artist Magazine inspired me to try to use egg tempera. I started out by using my watercolors in the manner described in the article, making small cross-hatched strokes, over and over until the white was gone and the pigment was layered and layered, something that is not typical of watercolors. After many years of trying to make watercolors behave I finally arrived at a technique that worked. I had Andrew Wyeth to thank for that and finally I took the plunge into raw pigment and egg yolks, and every time I crack an egg I think of him.

The articles about him this week all mention his exclusion by many museum directors, critics and other wheelers and dealers of the art world, the part of the art world that I find totally objectionable. To say that Andrew Wyeth was trite and sentimental as an artist says much more about the critic than the artist. His major paintings represent the quintessential artform; transcendent and beautiful, evocative, mysterious, and somewhat disturbing....they get into you and don't leave.

But this week I have thought more of Betsy Wyeth than I did of Andrew. He was a lucky man, a lucky artist. At the age of 20 Andrew Wyeth had a show at McBeth's Gallery in New York City and sold out. You and I could not have been so lucky. We did not have a father like NC Wyeth. Nor are we lucky enough to have a Betsy running our lives, keeping he public at bay, while dealing with the wheeler/dealers and the collectors and auction houses. No, we have to do all the marketing and PR ourselves. I think of Betsy Wyeth when I feel sorry for myself, and long for a Betsy who could do all the nasty art stuff for me, protect and serve my muse and give me the biggest gift of all, privacy and time. Lucky Andrew! She said she didn't pry into his life, but run it she did!

One of his paintings that lingers in my memory banks was painted from the top of a lighthouse. I have not looked at the painting recently and so it is hazy, but the image is a powerful one for me, as it is the essence of simplicity, direct, and beautifully composed, and technically nearly perfect, as most of his paintings are. I would love to know the details of his pigments, his working methods, and would prefer to know about his favorite brushes rather than his favorite models. That lighthouse painting had a luminosity that was astounding....it glowed from within. So many iconic images, blowing gauzy curtains, spare winter landscapes, empty rooms and amazing portraits of people that are everyone's neighbors....Andrew Wyeth is my friend and mentor, although he doesn't know me, I know him, and my life and my art are enriched by the amazing art that he produced over his 91 years.

MY CARROLLWOOD CULTURAL CENTER CLASSES

MY CLASSES WILL BEGIN THE WEEK OF JANUARY 12th!
Call 813 269-1310 to register with a credit card
For more information go to the Course Catalog online here
(ignore a strange notice that you can't view Adobe files in your open browser window if it appears! Click OK or go to http://www.carrollwoodcenter.org/ and click on Programs and Schedules on the Navigation Bar then click the link to the classes for January/February)

Classes run for six weeks. Price for Carrollwood Cultural Center members is $90 and $100 for non-members

Here is the schedule:

Digital Photography
Monday Evening 6:00 - 7:30 pm

For beginners! We will examine the camera, how to get photographs out of the camera and onto a computer, tweaked in a photo editing program, printed and displayed. Bring your camera. You should have rudimentary computer skills.

Introduction to Computers
Tuesday Morning 9:00 - 10:30 am
Wednesday Afternoon 4:00 - 5:30 pm

Don't know how to turn the computer on? This one is for you! We try to keep it very low-tech and very basic. The class will cover many aspects of using a computer, especially how to navigate the Internet and send E-Mails. The class computers use Vista, but the class is designed for both Windows XP and Vista users.

Intermediate Computers
Tuesday Morning 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Wednesday Evening 6:30 - 8:00 pm

You should have basic computer skills for this class. This class is informally structured to try to answer your questions and problems using the computer. We will cover some of the common software applications from Microsoft and Adobe, as well as some of the features that come with your computer to create a variety of documents you might want such as letters, cards, spreadsheets, brochures and business cards. We examine some periphals and give an overview of routine maintainence and how to stay safe in today's cyberspace.

Oil Painting
Saturday Morning 9:30 - 11:30 am

The class will show you how to think like an Impressionist Painter. It will focus on building a canvas and how to develop a painting in 6 stages. We think first of design, then value, then color, then the details. We will paint from life in this class, using your props or mine. Materials are very basic and may be purchased locally from any art or crafts store. More details are available by contacting me, or looking in the back of the course catalog.

NOTE: An added bonus in most all of my classes are booklets or single sheet handouts which are designed to be either a guide when working at home, or an expansion on topics presented in class.

Christmas Greetings to Everyone

I wish you a

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

or the politically correct version

Happy Holidays

A Christmas Special!

The Red Shoes
Watercolor 13 x 15 (matted)
$45.00 plus shipping

Santa says he wants these shoes for his wife!

This Was A Very Difficult Month

My husband fell on Halloween weekend. I won't go into the gory details of this incident except to say that his injury was so severe he has been unable to walk for most of this month, requiring full time care from me and an occasional hired CNA when I had to be away from the house for long stretches.

I am a much better artist than I am a nurse!

But the only good news about this month is that I was able to spend time making two drawings. It occupied my mind which was a good thing, as I was engulfed in worry and anxiety for most of the month.

My supermarket orchid decided to bloom awhile ago. It failed and I was very disheartened to watch the bloom stalk wither and die. But months later it put out another shoot and it has been fun to watch it progress into full bloom. I think that had I not had the crisis with my husband ongoing I might not have spent the time making this drawing.

Orchid Graphite on Bristol Plate $75

I was so happy with the results of this drawing I decided to keep on and dug out a drawing I started months ago of a guitar. I set it up in the same position but somehow it was very stale and I lost enthusiasm for it, so I decided to flip the paper and start over anew. It turned out to be much more difficult than the original drawing and I found myself able to really focus lots of good attention on it between visits to my husband's bedside.

The result:Guitar Graphite and Sewing Thread on Bristol Plate $75

What you can't see in this photograph are the strings of the guitar which I finally resolved by putting thread into a needle and literally sewing them into the drawing! It really is a fun piece.

These two, and six other drawings will be on display at the Hillsborough County Library, North Tampa Branch, for the month of December as the North Tampa Arts League Artist of the Month.

The Painting I Don't have to Paint

I dislike politics and I have despised our current administration from the start. I started counting the days till its end, and only feared that a McCain/Palin win would be so depressing I began to have fantasies of moving to Mexico. I would have liked to have been in Grant Park tonight to see this incredible moment in the history of our country, but it was enough to see it on TV and I do not ever remember being moved to tears by a presidential acceptance speech like I was tonight.

I have always wanted to paint some more political paintings. I did one many years ago, working on it as Nixon was resigning from his presidency in disgrace. What a low moment in our history!

This painting is called "Watergate" and it illustrates the president's house of cards which has tumbled down, the Joker landing on top of the pile.

I "see" paintings in my mind and then I have to figure out how to paint them. Some time after 911 I "saw" the painting I would have painted at the time. It has been an image that lingered in my mind ever since. Why didn't I paint it then? I ask myself that question often, and I think it had to do with many post 911 images that artists were moved to paint which I found rather sentimental and downright silly, many of which were based on some very moving photographs which didn't work when translated into paintings. The whole nightmare of what happened on 911 is still too fresh in me, and working on a painting with that intensity would evoke too many emotions that I'm not ready to deal with at this time in my life.

After the horror of the 2004 election I toyed with the idea of painting a "mourning" painting which has echoed in and out of my conscious mind very often, and recently I began to gear up to get ready to start on it after this election which I feared would be another horror show of Republican trickery and fiddling with the results. In fact I recently bought a tube of black paint which I knew was necessary for this painting. I was for Obama from the day he announced his candidacy and so tonight I am elated with this victory and feel that my "mourning" painting can now be put on the back burner for another time and place. I feel hope and excitement for a shift of energy that I hope touches every person in the world tonight.

The strong imagery was going to be very difficult to achieve for this painting, so I am relieved that I don't have to do it! It involved making a black see through flag which partially obscured a statue of liberty with her head cut off. Yeah, I know...say what you like! It would have been another painting that I could not sell or show in this section of the world in public places. Oh well....tonight I am very happy that I can keep on painting my fruits and vegetables!

Museums

I adore museums. I have vivid memories of the Philadelphia Museum of Art when I was a child, wandering among the mummies and Greek vases and statues of Egyptians, wondering how these things got to Philadelphia and who brought them here. I have never been a fan of mummies and feel creepy whenever I see them in dusty corridors of various museums around the Western World. But further on there are so many things to see and enjoy!

As a teen-ager I would borrow my mother's car and cut school and spend the day at the Philadelphia art museum wandering aimlessly through the collections: from the mummies, to the Renaissance, to contemporary paintings, to sculpture, to furniture and silver, back to paintings from the Baroque, to miniature portraits, and on to textiles, then onto art scrolls from China. A day like this is a very heady affair!

I was in Cincinnati, Ohio last week for an exhausting 3 day meeting for the non-profit I run (in my spare time!). I had hoped to have time to visit the museum before I had to leave for the airport and I had just enough time to visit the galleries. I saw there some wonderful "old friends" which is how I feel about certain paintings by favorite artists.

A Wyeth Egg Tempera was in very bad shape and I had a chance to look carefully at the surface that had bubbled and cracked. It was not one of his better paintings, in my opinion, but it is always a shame to see a painting that has not fared well.

There was a gorgeous little Egg Tempera painting by Botticelli that I looked at for a long time, and a huge painting by Corot (I think - after awhile these things tend to blend in the mind a bit!), which I asked permission to photograph for my students. It was unfinished and I always get a lot more out of the unfinished paintings than I do from the finished ones.

Here is a partial list of some other standout museums that I have visited....some a very long time ago, some more recently. They are not in any particular order...just a list of the one's I like.

Nelson Atkins Museum (Kansas City)
St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts (St. Pete, Florida)
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia)
Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota, Florida)
The Louvre (Paris, France)
The Dali Museum (St. Petersburg, Florida)
The Brandywine River Museum (Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania)
The High Museum (Atlanta, Georgia)
The Lyman Allyn Museum (New London, Connecticut)
National Cowboy Hall of Fame (Oklahoma City)
The Wheelwright Museum (Santa Fe, NM)
The Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
Whitney Gallery of Western Art (Cody, Wyoming)
The Göteborg Museum of Art (Gothenburg, Sweden)
Heard Museum, (Phoenix, Arizona)

to name only a few......

10/21/08 Here are a few more I love

The Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York)
The National Academy of Design Archives (New York City) (This was not open to the public and I was allowed in here to look at the work of Robert Brackman and while there browsed through many other academicians who are housed there)
The Barnes Foundation Museum (Merion, Pennsylvania)
Mystic Seaport Gallery of Maritime Art

The Rape of Europa

I heard about this 2006 film an ordered it from Blockbuster. We watched it tonight. The film was extremely well done, I thought even though I tend to avoid Nazi films and documentary accounts of the war and accounts of Nazi genocide. Done in documentary style with interviews and scholars as well as film clips from the war, it focused on the horrifying sub-plot of the Nazi's to not only acquire for the Third Reich, and their own personal art collections, the best of the best of the Culture of Europe and Russia, but the systematic plundering of the homes and apartments of Jews who had been deported. The trucks and train loads of furniture, artifacts, silver, and religious items shown in the film defy description. I knew nothing about this aspect of the Holocaust, although I did know that the Nazis stole artwork, and Hitler and Goering's art collections were legendary, the scale of the theft and plunder is unbelievable.

Of particular interest to me personally, had to do with the United States Army's "Monument Men" and film clips and interviews about Deane Keller, who was a professor of art at Yale University. He was assigned to help protect and recover as much art and treasure as he could from Italy and the cities that the allies were forced to bomb. He documented his activities and his writings are in the Yale Library where I found references online. His activities in Italy, and the return of thousands of artworks to cheering crowds in Florence did bring on a few tears.

His son, Deane G. Keller taught me to draw, or rather taught me to love to draw. I took several of his classes at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts and his teaching style was so low-key I barely remember his classes. In a most subtle way Deane Keller's incredible knowledge of anatomy and ability to draw seemed to come to me by osmosis.

This is a drawing I did in Deane Keller's Lyme Academy Class in 1990. I was very sad to learn tonight that he had passed away in 2005.

Silverpoint

Live Oak Silverpoint Drawing (work in progress)

I just ordered another bag of Silverpoint Ground and a new silverpoint tool. It reminded me of how many people have never heard of silverpoint and seem kind of bemused when I tell them that I make drawings using a real piece of silver. The more cynical of them reply "why not just use a pencil?" When I try to explain the difference between a real piece of silver and some graphite mixed with clay, I see them glaze over and when I say it is the difference between scratchy polyester and silk pajamas I often get the response "I don't like the feel of silk!" I must be getting old...shaking my head and wondering what the world is coming to.

Following this train of thought brought on a musing about when and how I learned about silverpoint in the first place. I seem to remember everything that interests me about art! During my high school years I used to drive to school using my mother's car (whenever I could finagle it from her) and check into first period and after attendance I would sneak out and drive myself to the Philadelphia Art Museum for the day, returning for the last period to drive my friends the few miles to the field hockey practice. I never did get caught!

Those Ingres drawings! I would wander the galleries and hallways of that museum marveling and studying harder than I ever did at school. I loved the idea of making drawings with a piece of silver and later it was Ralph Mayer in the "Artists' Handbook" that the directions for making silverpoint papers and tools inspired me to try it. I learned that the silver would not make a mark on many papers, and on some the marks would be very faint. Mayer's directions for making silverpoint papers used Chinese White Watercolor (Zinc White) mixed into a slurry and painted onto hot press watercolor paper. I have since learned that this method makes a very unsatisfactory paper, and it is much better to use a traditional gesso ground which I buy in powder form from http://www.silverpointweb.com/. This is not hard to do, but when I tell my friends that gesso has to be cooked, but must not get too hot, I get that glazed over look again.

This particular drawing is one of my "Red Light Drawings" which I keep in my car and work on it when stuck at red lights, highway construction and horrific accidents. I have worked on this one at other times, but it lives in the car, along with a silverpoint tool (a rod of silver inserted into a mechanical pencil holder), and kneaded eraser. Having a drawing to do, music on the radio, keeps me calm and serene when others are fuming under such circumstances, and one time after a two hour tie-up for an accident, I was sad to have to go again. I must admit that I have too much time invested in this drawing and I'll never be able to charge enough to cover those hours, but I don't care. I love to tilt the piece toward the light and watch the shiny silver surface reflecting the light.