The National Gallery

 

The Mill, by Rembrandt van Rijn

I  took a friend’s children to the National Gallery this week, the daughter was 14 and their son was 11.  I was really surprised at their taste in art.

In order to learn about what they liked we played the game, “pick your favorite painting” in each collection that we hit.  I basically asked them, look at the art in this room and then tell me, if you could have one of these paintings which one would it be and why.  It was my sneaky way to really get them to look at the art in each room and to get engaged in really looking at the art.  Although they could pick out what they liked they were sometimes unable to communicate why they were drawn to a particular work. 

Watson and the Shark, by John Singleton Copley

The younger child is a boy, and he preferred landscapes and nautical scenes.  His favorite Rembrandt was the painting The Mill which to me is a very dark and depressing scene.   We both liked some of the paintings in the impressionist area of the museum but our choices in most rooms were at opposite extremes. 

Most of the landscapes he was drawn to were well executed, with a fine sense of color and proportion. He has an excellent eye.

 I was surprised that he didn’t seem to love John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark; I had assumed that the image of the shark attacking was bloodthirsty enough to satisfy any teenager. The interesting story about this painting is that it was commissioned by the Man who was the boy being attacked by the shark.  The Boy lost his leg below the knee as the result of the two attacks by the shark.  To think that anyone could survive this in 1749 amazes me. If you want to learn more information about the story behind this painting recommend you visit this wikipedia link or  the link from the National Gallery of Art.

Statue by unknown Artist

The other child was a 14 year old girl, she preferred the impressionist, especially Girl with a Watering Canby Renoir and this sculpture (that I loved as well).  I checked at the NGA website and couldn’t find the statute or the artist’s name and the picture I took the name is illegible.

It’s been interesting taking them to the different museums. I didn’t want to push them to love art because -well they are individuals and they are also young (still teenagers). They like the things I’ve done and they both promised to pose for me on Sunday so it will be interesting.

Oh Dear

While cruising through the word press tag painting I found another LOLJesus type blog.

This one is called LOLChrist. I thought the funniest image was:

For those unfamiliar with the message, the translation is “Oh Hi, I absolve. OK, thanks bye.” It’s gamer speak or l337 speak.

It looks like Hazel Motes just put this site up so there weren’t a lot of images to giggle over.

I always wondered why the individual who started LOLJesus (and now Hazel Motes with LOLChrist) started the LOLJesus-type blog.  Are their intentions outreach to a younger population? I think these are pretty funny since they usually play on our perception of popular images (Ben Hur, The Robe etc) of what Christ was like. I like to think that God and Jesus have great senses of humor and that they approve.  I mean you know God has a sense of humor since he made Pandas and Platypus’.

Back

Well the trip to Portland was fun.

I picked the kids up Saturday morning. We hit Powell’s Books downtown first thing. Then we did some shopping at Artist’s Media as well.

Afterwards, I took the kids to my in-law’s house and made reservations for dinner at Salty’s a local seafood place on the Columbia River (we had our wedding rehearsal dinner there and try to eat there once a visit). Since we were celebrating my Mother-in-Law Karen’s belated birthday I wanted to take her and Nick (her husband) as well as the kids to dinner there.

Karen took the kids to visit her family. I ran a couple of errands and then drove out to see my husband’s aunt and uncle as well as his grandmother. Stayed for a few hours and then we all drove back to Portland.

Dinner at Salty’s was nice, but they’ve gone pretty frou-frou. The seafood chowder was great as always and everyone really enjoyed their food. The Diver’s Scallops and the Smoke Salmon dinners were true standouts. Our waiter Jeremy was very nice (the kids really liked him and wanted to see him promoted!).

Salty’s had a jazz quartet playing on Saturday night. My in-laws love jazz and they knew several of the members of the group playing so they really enjoyed the evening. Me personally, I thought the band was a little too loud and it made conversation difficult. That’s probably sacrilege to say, lol.

Karen has mentioned to me several times that she wants to start painting with watercolors. So while we were at Powell’s I bought her a book on watercolors, and then bought her a moleskine watercolor sketchbook, small winsor newton paint set and an extra kolinsky sable brush. We gave it to her after her cake/candle arrived and she seemed to really like it!

With the kids in town I will try to paint studies of each of them. We should be all over so my posting will probably be a little sporadic as well.

C.

The Sixty Minute Artist

I’ve been lurking around an interesting art blog called the Sixty Minute Artist.

The artist, Mr. Jerry Lebo’s premise is that as painter with a full-time job and large (well to me anyway) family and he must make the most efficient and effective use of his time. He can not putter about.Having read through his blog I realized he’d actually taken time off from work to paint full time in the past. He is a serious daily painter with a great deal to share and teach.

I really like Jerry’s blog because he is using the blog format to share with us the things he’s learned along the way.

Above Tesque by Jerry Lebo

What draws me to Jerry’s work is the boldness of the strokes he uses in his landscapes. They are lush and beautiful but spare as well. Spare and lush seem like diametrically opposed words to use when describing a painting. But if you look at this painting I think you will understand what I mean. Too get a better view of his brushwork, go to his sie/blog and look at the post titled “Location location”. I had a link here but it is not working. If you click on the painting, you will see a gorgeous closeup of this work.

I will add more about what I’ve learned at Jerry’s site later in the week. His site is well worth the visit.

On a Jet Plane…I fly to Portland Oregon tomorrow to pick up my stepchildren. Hopefully I will post more when I return. I am sad that I am missing a session with Robert Liberace and also with Ted Reed, but it can’t be helped.It’s a quick trip to Oregon, I return Sunday. I hope to get some time to paint both of the kids and to take them to a few museums while there are here, that is when we’re not exploring DC.I am in a pretty small apartment so it’s going to be very crowded with everyone here. But I haven’t seen them since December so I am really looking forward to it-crowded conditions and all.

Religion, painting and Cats (Artist David Oleski)

David Oleski

David Oleski is an artist who lives in Pennsylvania. I’ve always admired the way he renders forms. He has amazing lush brushwork and his work is subtly colored. I first saw one of his paintings several years ago on a visit to Washington DC. We were strolling in and out of the stores along King Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virgina. I saw two of his paintings in a gallery, one had three apples and one had pears. I loved the bright green apples. Up close they seem nothing more than shapes with thick paint, but if you stepped back they became these wonderful apples. I was enchanted.

At that time it never occurred to me to ‘google’ his name to learn more about the artist. But I stumbled upon a link to David’s website at Bill Sharp’s blog.

One of the things I love about David Oleski is he provides complete information about the materials he uses in his work. If you wonder why it’s important, believe me it is, maybe not to you -but certainly to your heirs who may inherit any works you’ve purchased. I believe an artist has the obligation to create their work with the best materials they can afford. I paint so I know how expensive the materials are.

Ok the religion and cats part. In the link for his technical information, David gives you all the details of the materials he uses, type of beer he drinks, the cigars he smokes and even mentions his dog and cat (Frank and Ojisan, respectively). Got to love a man that is very detail and has such a sense of humor! I thought what he wrote about his cat, Okisan was sweet and funny:

Ojisan eats Flint River cat food, and every Sunday I’ll crack open a can for him, just so he has some rudimentary understanding of the abstract concept of religion. It remains to be seen if it’s working or not.

I loved the wry humor in that statement! I mentioned it to a friend this weekend and she looked at me like I was insane.

Back to the materials.

Why is it important to understand the materials an artist used? Well part of the answer is that many of the materials artist use are toxic. Flake white paint contains lead and so does maroger medium. If you go to a museum and view the works you will see some contemporary oils (by that I mean they are from the 20th century) with cracks and damage. I am not a restorer but in every art class I’ve taken the artist emphasises the principal of fat-over-lean for oils. If you fail to follow that rule you will get cracking. If you paint acrylics over oil you will get these types of cracks. And we all know that crack kills.

Last year I bought a painting at a great gallery in Santa Fe, NM. At the opening I was so excited to meet the artist whose work I adored. We actually got to spend a lot of time together talking and I asked her what paints she uses. Her reply astonished me because she used student grade oil paints and has since she started painting. Keep in mind her work is priced up to several thousands of dollars. Although the piece I bought wasn’t that expensive it made me wonder how the painting would hold up over the next 30-60 years.

Last year I drove with a friend from Albuquerque to Cerrillos, NM. Cerrillos is a beautiful mining town turned artist community with the luxury of being close to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. When I spoke with one gallery owner/artist and asked him about the materials he used his response was, I don’t know-what ever is on sale. I was a little shocked, he had these gorgeous landscapes and the impression I had was the less it costs him to make them, the more profit he had. I waited a bit and browsed but eventually I left.

I may not be able to look at a red on my palette and tell you that it’s winsor newton or old holland paint. But I do know the manufacturers of the paints and solvents I use, the types and weights of the linens/boards I use and also the types of mediums I use.

What’s the difference?

Student quality oils means that there is less pigment and more fillers used when they make it, I was told when I started watercolor painting years ago to buy the professional grade. The differences were pronounced enough that if I learned using student grade materials, I’d have to relearn how the materials worked when I switched to the professional grade. So it made sense to start with the professional grade.

Professional grade materials have more pigment and fewer binders. The amount of pigment varies from maker to maker. For the reds Ted Reed recommends Winsor Newton, I love the Williamsburg paints made by Carl Plansky. I’ve also seen folks talking about someone in New York City who makes these incredible blue paints. I haven’t found him yet (I know he doesn’t have a web site – you order through the phone)

Trying to Process This…

I am still not feeling well, so I decided to stay home and be ill in comfort.

World of Warcraft if off-line for maintenance so I logged in and started hopping around blogs. I saw an interesting post on the wordpress news department and I ended up in a priest’s blog called Glory to God in All Things. I found his post with a link to an article by Fredrica Mathewes-Green. The article, The Wounded Torturer, is shattering.

In her essay, published in the Review of Faith and International Affairs; Summer 2007, Ms. Mathewes-Green talked about the survivors of an experiment in Romania, called the “Pitesti Experiment”—the most intensive program of brainwashing to take place behind the Iron Curtain. In particular she spoke with Father Roman Braga and Fr. George Calciu , both survivors of Pitesti “You had to go somewhere; you had to find an inner perspective,” he said, “because otherwise you would truly go crazy.”

Neither man would describe what they’d endured. “It is secret, intimate,” Fr. Roman said, “I saw saints fall, and I saw the simple rise and become saints.” Fr. George admitted that he gave way under torture. When a victim is out of his mind with pain, he doesn’t know what he is saying. Fr. George told his interviewer, “It was a spiritual fight, between good spirits and evil spirits. And we failed on the field of battle; we failed, many of us, because it was beyond our ability to resist … The limit of the human soul’s resistance was tried there by the devil.”

This emotional and spiritual damage was even worse than the physical pain. Fr. George went on, “When you were tortured, after one or two hours of suffering, the pain would not be so strong. But after denying God and knowing yourself to be a blasphemer—that was the pain that lasted … We forgive the torturers. But it is very difficult to forgive ourselves.” At night a wash of tears would come, and with it, returning prayer. “You knew very well that the next day you would again say something against God. But a few moments in the night, when you started to cry and to pray to God to forgive you and help you, was very good.”

Fr. George once attempted to write a memoir of his Pitesti experience, but found it impossible: “Sometimes I was hammering at one word, timidly, then persistently, then intensely, to madness. The word became nothing other than a sequence of letters or sounds. It had no meaning. It didn’t tell me anything. I would say: ‘beating’ or ‘pain’ or ‘prayer’ or ‘curse’ … and I would substitute one for another without any change; none told me anything! I would say ‘cell’ and the word would not speak. I could say instead ‘lelc’ or ‘clel’ or ‘ellc’ with the same result. Everything was mute and absurd.

When I read this passage it made me think about my sister. She wrote an honors thesis in college, which discussed the role of silence in holocaust literature. I have never read her thesis and now I know I need to.

Fr. George stated that at the point they were required to torture fellow prisoners that many of them attempted or committed suicide. Ms. Mathewes-Green states, “It may sound surprising that being a torturer was so much more painful and soul-destroying than being a victim.” I had to reread that line several times. I am still not sure I’ve processed it.

Where am I going with all of this?

I think most Americans were horrified at the images we saw at Abu Gahriab. I am glad those involved were court martialed. They dishonored their country, themselves, and the US military.

I believe (beyond all of the spiritual implications and considerations), that people who use violence/torture to obtain information from a prisoner are ineffective because most people will say what you want to hear in order to make the pain stop. Perhaps I am naive?

Reading this article made me wonder how will the interrogators involved with GITMO or other similar facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan will fare when they return home. It made me wonder if the government will even realize the damage they’ve inflicted on the interrogators in the current conflicts.

I hope and pray that the Veterans Administration is prepared for them. I believe what they are doing is necessary, but I doubt many people will really understand what they job they’ve been asked to do will cost them in terms of pain, grief, and agony.

Sunday Painting Class

Apparently my new found skills at a painter can make sweet older ladies cringe.

While waiting for the Torpedo Factory to be opened I talked with this sweet older woman and told her I was taking classes with Ted Reed.  So on the way out I stopped by (she was mannign the booth in one of the coops) and showed her what I did.  she cringed and gave me all sorts of advice (sigh).

I stepped out of my comfort zone today. The painting is simply supposed to be a road map on where to go next so we weren’t supposed to worry about making it ‘pretty’ jsut getting the angles, structure and lights/darks correct.

Pretty comes later.

Ted asked me to bring in a larger canvas, (since I use raymar panels) so I can have fun/explore larger format.  The results are utterly forgetable. Since I hate it I felt free to experiement with the colors in a way I wouldn’t do if it was something I adored.

I will miss class next Sunday so I am hoping I can get this done in the final session.  Although the kids will be in town so chances are the answer will be no.

I will past a copy of the painting later tonight.

Friday Night Class 10 Aug

I’ve discovered the violet in the clouds was the result of taking a photo in low-light on this camera. I may have to take it back to the store which makes me one sad panda.

The model for this evening was one of my favorites, she’s really nice and she has some really dramatic poses. I was very happy with the silver point drawing. In person this image is pale silvery gray. It’s difficult to take a picture of this type of drawing because the metal in the silver point reflects light.  I also decided to delete the picture of the drawing until I get a better image.

On the plus side, the model loved the drawing and she also loved the picture I painted of her during Ted’s class (I showed her on my camera).  I asked her permission to post the silver point becuase her face would be clearly visible. 

It’s late and I am tired so ~it’s off to bed.

Faces of the Fallen

I saw the Faces of the Fallen display of the paintings today. It was very sad.

It’s strange because my coworker is a tough cookie and he told me that he had to leave when he saw it because he’d gotten pretty teary-eyed.

The display shows a painting/artistic rendering of the service member who died, when they were born, the date they died, how old they were and who painted the picture.

I found only one by Robert Liberace, three by Edward (ted) Reed, one by Marjorie and several by artists I’d never heard of, but their paintings were incredible.

I had to explain to my friend why the paintings seemed a little strange. All of the paintings were drawn from photos, except for two which had a design. I am not sure if that meant there were no pictures.

These men and women looked so young. Some were only 19. There was a picture of one Army reservist who was in his 50s and he looked like he was full of piss and vinegar. The kind of guy you knew you could trust to take care of you and your friends.

If they decide to update the display I will volunteer either time and talent or money to support it. I’d donated previously through my bank when they said they were supporting it.

I did see the picture of a friend and coworker on display, it made me very sad. It was a good likeness and the artist nailed his smile.

Just what WoW needs, another BE Rogue

I decided to give WoW another shot. I goofed around on my 60 shammy for a bit this weekend. After talking with my husband I decided to roll a Blood Elf rogue just to see what the class is like.

I would try to level the shammy but the British guy who asked every girl in my old guild to marry him; including a friend who is gay, won’t stop bothering me. hence my new little rogue. Got to admit she’s fun so far. What is not so fun is a coworker asked me to log on my 70 priest (shadow) to heal during a quest. The shammy sucked, NO totems. None until I asked, how can you play a shammy to the fullest without a few totems? Ya know, windfury, strength, manna for your healer. It made no sense and told me this guy thinks enhanced means he plays like a tank. And sorry, but unless you’ve got great gear and really know wtf you’re doing you should not be tanking as a shammy, especially when we had a warrior in the group. Grrrr.

I liked plinking on the lowbie. But she’s just gonna be for the occasional fun thing. Weird thing is I think WoW on our server is still very short on endgame healers (what a surprise) I was invited to several heroic instances when I logged on the priest and several friends did not want to take no for an answer.

Interesting linkage ~~>Blizzcon II

No email confirmation about Rob Liberace’s class and workshops, I did see that they process my payment so happy days!

I know I’ve been all over topic wise the last 10 days, but that seems to be how my life has been. Hopefully things will settle down after I return from Portland OR next weekend.