It’s day two and I can legitimately say…I’m already intimidated.  Why?  Because today I am honoring…

Wassily Wasilyevich Kandinsky was born on December, 16th (4), 1866 in Moscow, in a well-to-do family of a businessman in a good cultural environment. In 1871 the family moved to Odessa where his father ran his tea factory. There, alongside with attending a classical gymnasium (grammar school), the boy learned to play the piano and the cello and took to drawing with a coach. “I remember that drawing and a little bit later painting lifted me out of the reality”, he wrote later. In Kandinsky’s works of his childhood period we can find rather specific color combinations, which he explained by the fact that “each color lives by its mysterious life”.

However, Wassily’s parents saw him in the future as a lawyer. In the year of 1886 he went to Moscow and entered Law Faculty of Moscow University. Graduating with honors, six years later Wassily married his cousin, Anna Chimyakina. In 1893 he became Docent (Associate Professor) of Law Faculty and continued teaching. In 1896 the famous in Derpt University in Tartu, where at that time the process of russification was taking place, a thirty-year-old Kandinsky was appointed Professor to the Department of Law, but at this particular time he decided to give up a successful career to devote himself completely to painting. Later on Kandinsky recollected two events, which had affected this decision: his visiting an exhibition of the French impressionists in Moscow in 1895 and an emotional shock he experienced from K. Monet’s, “Haystacks”, and an impression of Rihard Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Read his full biography at http://www.wassilykandinsky.net

My absolute favorite piece.

He is an artist that I decided to prep the night before for.  I really appreciate his art and wanted to make sure the vision of what I wanted to paint came out right.  Kandinsky, just like most artists evolved and changed in his paintings styles.  Below are some of the pieces that struck me the most so I am drawing inspiration from them.  From what I researched, they are mostly from his Bauhaus period, which was from 1922-1933.  He’s worked with different mediums from oil to watercolor, but for sanity and respiratory reasons (I don’t think my sick husband and highly olfactory dogs would appreciate oils), I will be painting with acrylics/watercolors for his tribute.

Here is my the progress of my artwork in honor of Kandinsky and my final piece!  I also made a fun video of the progress.  Thanks to my friend John Laux for filming for me while I painted. 🙂

Painting this piece was a wonderful experience.  I kept telling myself to keep it simple, but the brush kept going.  I found myself obsessing about color and composition.  It was interesting how one tiny extra detail made a world of difference.  The sun started setting and I made myself stop so that I could take a photo before the light was too dark!  Hopefully I captured the spirit of this amazing artist.

It’s amazing that it’s been 2 days and I feel that I’ve already learned so much…like it’s impossible to paint a straight line and that I need some more paintbrushes. 🙂

Onto day three!

Best, Linda