Evening's Light Not Yet Gone
Yesterday I was watching a documentary on Georgia O'Keeffe. I enjoy renting artists' biographies from NetFlix, both artists I have never heard of before or don't know much about, and artists whose work I am very familiar with, as there is always something new to learn. For instance, I knew O'Keeffe's eyesight was failing, but I didn't realize she had no central vision, only peripheral vision, caused by macular degeneration, for almost the last twenty years of her life, but she managed to continue working. (She died in 1986 at the age of 98.)
The reason I thought of Georgia O'Keeffe is because I learned from this video that one of her teachers did not believe in the method of copying the old masters to learn how to paint. (I'm sure some art historian out there can tell this story better than I can...) To paraphrase really badly, he told her that to create artwork that anybody could paint, is not art... that REAL art comes from your own vision... from within. I couldn't agree more.
One standard for judging art that I hear over and over again is "Wow, what a great painting, it looks just like a photograph!" In my opinion this is not a compliment. If that's the case, why not hang the darn photograph on the wall and done with it! In 1609 painting a scene as if it was real life was a worthy ambition. But in 2009 we have things called cameras for that! I love landscapes but I really don't care about an artist's technical ability to draw or paint a plant or a mountain (unless it's done to illustrate a technical publication, then please, make it look as realistic as possible.)
When I look at a landscape painting (or any kind of artwork) I am looking for the artist's own interpretation. Georgia O'Keeffe was certainly a master at that.
Lately I've been following Katherine Keane's journey through landscape painting. To call her works landscapes is probably a misnomer. "Mystical-scapes" would be a better description. Of that ouevre, I believe her latest painting, "Evening's Light Not Yet Gone," is her best. Although I have liked all her paintings in this series, some in the past have been somewhat dark and mysterious. (Or perhaps I was going through a dark, mysterious patch in my own life, trying to figure out some things about myself, and that's how I interpreted them.... but to me, that's what art is all about, the artist's take on life and then the viewer's take on what the artist is conveying... oh, it gets complicated!). One of the reasons I like Katherine's paintings is that they always tell a story... for me, they bring to mind some of Ray Bradbury's tales like "The October Country."
Anyway, the bottom line is I really love this new painting. I had the opportunity to admire it at the TAG show last night (which runs through January 31). This is no "photographic" painting. Katherine's emotion and personal style come through loud and clear. In the painting, I see the storm clouds clearing away. What was a cold, rainy, turbulent day has become a calm, peaceful setting with the sun breaking through just in time to shed some light and warmth on the scene before it disappears into the dark night. I have no idea what the artist intended, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
As an ending note, I must mention that I always enjoy the shows at TAG (see links above for more info). There were several other pieces that caught my attention and I woke up this morning thinking about them. But you will have to attend the show yourself and figure out which ones those are (they might surprise you, but you will never know for sure.............!).

A Painting a Day
Doesn't that sound like a great idea, creating a painting a day, or doing anything every day? Imagine all the work you would accumulate, how much you would improve your skills, what you would learn..... I've heard of people writing a play a day, a poem a day...
At one time I decided I would spend some time every day for a year working on my tiles, not even completing one a day, just putting in the time every day. Never happened. I would love to be that focused, that dedicated, that passionate about one part of my life. But ain't gonna happen.
I seem to work best in blocks of time. I'm really gung ho about something for a few days, or even weeks, then I have to let it go and move on to something else for a while. During the time I am interested in that one thing, I can work on it intensely, then work on the next different thing just as intensely. Some things drop off my list of interests forever, but the things I love always come around in the circle again.
One person who seems to have mastered the art of the "one a day" is Diane Hoeptner. Well, almost every day. And not just any old painting, but beautiful little paintings that I happen to love. I especially like her paintings of cut flowers in containers. Her flowers are not "still" lifes... they have a life of their own. The flowers are leaning, swaying, reaching across the canvas... they don't how to sit still!
She also does paintings of toys such as rubber duckies and pinnochio. I have to admit these are not my favorites, but they are fun, and I can imagine other people liking them, as toys seem to be popular on the art scene lately. She put nine of her pinnochio paintings together as a group which gave them new meaning and even I found that approach fascinating. I also happen to like the rubby ducky with the flower.
Her latest (December 20) posting is A Pair of Red Amaryllis Paintings. Separately these paintings are wonderful. Together makes them, oh well, doubly wonderful!
Of course, I have to mention that she paints cats too. But not enough, in my opinion!
I have known Diane for many years. When she lived in LA she was a member of the Culver City Art Group. I was in awe of her colored pencil portraits. But now I like her looser style of oil paintings even more. I hope you will check out Diane's blog on a regular basis and her postings will inspire you to do more art work yourself! (Hmmm, maybe I'm saying this to myself...)
http://dianehoeptner.blogspot.com/

Happy (Creative) Holidays!

Every year I set up my Dickens Village between Halloween and Thanksgiving to welcome in the holiday season. All the Village People have come out to wish you peace, love, harmony.... and most of all, ART... during this festive season and in the year to come!

(Photo copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Holiday Boutique Sale in the Marina

For those of you who couldn't come to the art show last weekend because you had to de-flea the dog or weed-whack the lawn, ha ha, here is your second chance!! You can now visit my ceramic tiles, some new, some not so new.

Holiday Boutique, Saturday & Sunday

November 22 & 23, 9:00am to 4:00pm

Santa Monica Windjammers Yacht Club

13589 Mindanao Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90029
Located next to Burton Chace Park.

For questions contact Pat Salcedo (310) 578-9912.

Looking forward to seeing you!

(Flyer design copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Gauguin and the Tuxedo CatI was looking through some old photos on disc and found my cat Friday staring back at me from the screen. The image was screaming "TILE!" For the background I immediately thought of the rug in Guaguin's "Arii Matamoe (The Royal End)" which I wrote about recently.
He is a handsome guy, isn't he?
Ceramic tile, 6"x6"
(Photo and design copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Lucky 13th Annual Culver City Art Group Holiday ShowDon't miss our show. The Culver City Art Group has some fabulous artists (far better than me, thank goodness). And if you don't like art, come for the snacks!
I will be showing a handful of new tiles, four Photoshop digital "paintings" that I experimented with, a couple of mosaics and two small acrylic paintings. I also have three entries in the "Colors of Fall" exhibit. How's that for variety?
Saturday, November 15, 2008 from noon to 6:00pm. Meet the artists (and those snacks) between 3:30pm and 6:00pm). Rotunda Room, Vet's Building, Overland and Culver in Culver City. Plenty of free parking! See you there!

(Flyer design copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Ancient Mosaics Among the Saguaros

One of the many niceties about going to the Getty Villa for an event is the drive along Pacific Coast Highway with the view of that seemingly endless blue ocean... LA has so many facets to it, and the Pacific Ocean is certainly a good enough reason to live here, even if I don't make the attempt to see it as often as I could... but I digress (my favorite thing to do).

And so, Thursday morning my car was headed back to her favorite parking spot at the Villa, this time to take me to the one-day class, "Ancient Stones in Modern Contexts" taught by Lillian Sizemore. In the morning we discussed ancient and modern mosaics in general, toured the four mosaics on display (which I pretty much know by heart now, although always noticing something new each time I see them), then visited the exhibition "Jim Dine: Poet Singing (The Flowering Sheets)", a contemporary installation inspired by scupltures in the collection.

The idea was for us to design our own mosaic based on the ancient mosaics we had viewed that morning. I did a preliminary sketch of grape leaves in a geometric pattern but I had no enthusiasm for it. After a short meditation I saw a vision of saguaros in the southwest with mountains against a sunset. I had no idea where this came from or how it would translate into what was supposed to be a geometric mosaic, especially as we had to use the pieces without cutting them, but there it was, so I proceeded to lay it out on my board.

As the design progressed I realized I had gotten myself into more than I could deal with and part of me had the strong desire to wipe all the mosaic stones off and start over with something more organized, but as we only had a couple of hours to work it was too late. Nevertheless, another part of me was compelled to see the outcome of this mess.

Regardless of my design choice, I have to say I enjoyed the process, of being in the moment, and the realization that no matter the outcome I was creating something that had never existed before. That, to me, is the beauty of the creative process: the opportunity to give birth to an entity entirely new with a life of its own.

Even though, as one of my classmates expressed, the Jim Dine exhibit was not my cup of tea, I "got" what he was doing. This mosaic was my expression of all the influences of that day and of my entire life.

Later, reflecting on what I had done with the mosaic I understood where my inspiration came from. Looking at the mosaics had tapped into my love of archaeology in general and specifically, the project I am working on currently, drawings and photos from an excavation in the southwest US. The images in the mosaic are not just saguaros, but as another classmate commented, look like some of the Indian petroglyphs and pictographs to be found on rocks and cliffsides. So perhaps my subconscious mind was weaving together the designs left by the ancient Romans with those of the Indians. Stones hewn from the mountainsides, rocks and cave walls painted, pebbles and clay taken from the earth. It's all the same. Art is what ties us all together.

[As a side note, one of the many things I learned this day was the technique of dry grouting. Because these mosaic stones are very porous, it's not a good idea to apply wet grout. Instead, you can sprinkle the dry grout over the finished piece, let it fall into the spaces and brush off the excess powder. Then spray the piece with water, carefully clean off any grout that has bubbled up over the stones and let dry. Repeat this process until the grout is as you want it. I am in the process of doing this. Very useful advice for grouting my framed tiles as well, as the wet grout sometimes mars the wood frames. I'm going to try it with my latest tiles.]

(Photos copyright roslyn m wilkins)