Monthly Archives: May 2014

Day 151- Eva Hesse- Life and Art Together

It’s Day 151 and today’s artist was mainly known for her sculptures, but I really enjoy her paintings as well!  Join me in celebrating the beautiful Eva Hesse today.  Reading her story made me sad, but honoring her today helped.  On another note, last night’s improv show was wonderful.  Thanks to all who came out to enjoy it.  I’m sad we won’t be performing until the fall, so hopefully the classes I take throughout the summer keep me sane until then!

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1960. Oil on canvas

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1960. Oil on canvas

Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970), was a Jewish German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics.

Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany. When Hesse

From Eva Hesse's Spectres show 1960

From Eva Hesse’s Spectres show 1960

was two years old in December 1938, her parents, hoping to flee from Nazi Germany, sent Eva and her older sister; Helen Hesse Charash, to the Netherlands via Kindertransport. After almost six months of separation, the reunited family moved to England and then, in 1939, emigrated to New York City, where they settled into Manhattan’s Washington Heights. In 1944 Hesse’s parents separated, her father remarried in 1945 and her mother committed suicide in 1946.

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1960. Oil on canvas

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1960. Oil on canvas

After graduating from New York’s School of Industrial Art in 1952, Hesse studied at New York’s Pratt Institute (1952–1953) and Cooper Union (1954–1957), then at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1957–1959), where she studied under Josef Albers and received a B.F.A. Upon returning to New York she made friends with many young artists. In 1961, she met and married sculptor Tom Doyle. In August 1962, Eva Hesse and Tom Doyle participated in an Allan Kaprow Happening at the Art Students League of New York in Woodstock, New York. There Hesse made her first three-dimensional piece: a costume for the Happening. In 1963, Eva Hesse had a one-person show of works on paper at the Allan Stone Gallery on New York’s Upper East Side.

Hesse and Doyle—whose marriage was coming apart—  lived and worked in an abandoned textile

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse

mill in the Ruhr region of Germany for about a year during 1964–1965. Their studio was set up in a disused part of the industrialist and collector Friedrich Arnhard Scheidt’s textile factory in Kettwig-on-the-Ruhr near Essen. 

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse

The building still contained machine parts, tools and materials from its previous use and the angular forms of these disused machines and tools served as inspiration for Hesse’s mechanical drawings and paintings. Hesse was not happy to be back in Germany, but began sculpting with materials that had been left behind in the abandoned factory: first relief sculptures made of cloth-covered cord, electrical wire, and masonite, with playful titles like Eighter from Decatur and Oomamaboomba. Returning to New York City in 1965, she began working in the materials that would become characteristic of her work: latex, fiberglass, and plastics.

Eva Hesse had an interest in painting in the earlier stages of her career, as well in drawing, as evinced by her numerous workbooks. In

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1960. Oil on canvas

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1960. Oil on canvas

November 1968 Hesse exhibited her large-scale sculptures at the Fischbach Gallery in New York. This exhibition was titled Chain Polymers and was Hesse’s only solo sculpture exhibition during her lifetime. The exhibition was pivotal in Hesse’s career, securing her reputation at the time.

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse

She was associated with the mid-1960s postminimal anti-form trend in sculpture, participating in New York exhibits such as “Eccentric Abstraction” and “Abstract Inflationism and Stuffed Expressionism” (both 1966). In September 1968, Eva Hesse began teaching at the School of Visual Arts.

Except for fiberglass, most of her favored materials age badly, so much of her work presents conservators with an enormous challenge. Arthur Danto, writing of the Jewish Museum’s 2006 retrospective, refers to “the discolorations, the slackness in the membrane-like latex, the palpable aging of the material… Yet, somehow the work does not feel tragic. Instead it is full of life, of eros, even of comedy… Each piece in the show vibrates with originality and mischief.”

From 1968 to 1970, Hesse taught at the School of Visual Arts, New York. In 1969, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her death in 1970,

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1960. Oil on canvas

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1960. Oil on canvas

after three operations within a year, at age 34 ended a career spanning only ten years.

Her art is often viewed in light of all the painful struggles of her life including escaping the Nazis, her parents’ divorce, the suicide of her mother when she was ten, her failed marriage and the death of her father. Danto describes her as “cop[ing] with emotional chaos by reinventing sculpture through aesthetic insubordination, playing with worthless material amid the industrial ruins of a defeated nation that, only two decades earlier, would have murdered her without a second thought.” She also always felt she was fighting for recognition in a male dominated art world.

Hesse is one of a few artists who led the move from Minimalism to Postminimalism. Danto distinguishes it from minimalism by its “mirth and jokiness” and “unmistakable whiff of eroticism”, its “nonmechanical repetition”. She was influenced by, and in turn influenced, many famous artists of the 1960s through today. For many artists and friends who knew her, Eva Hesse was so charismatic that her spirit remains simply unforgettable to this day.

Biography is from wikipedia.

My life and art have not been separated. They have been together. (Eva Hesse)

I hope you enjoy my piece today!  It was a different experience than I thought I would have painting it.  I really enjoyed using a subdued color palette with the exception of the red and lime green.  I will see you tomorrow on Day 152.  Best, Linda

Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Like Mother Like Daughter- Tribute to Eva Hesse
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Day 150- Georges Mathieu- Screaming Your Soul

It’s Day 150 and I have my last improv show tonight for a while.  They don’t have the performance class throughout the summer so I’ll probably just be taking the advanced/intermediate improv which I enjoy as well.  It’s fun to meet new people, but I’ll miss performing.  My chest and back are achy today so hopefully after a nap I’ll feel refreshed and not gross tonight.  Anyways, I love the paintings of my artist today so join me in honoring Georges Mathieu today!  I took his short bio below from wikipedia and then found another bio as well.

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu (January 27, 1921 – June 10, 2012) was a French painter in the style of Tachisme and/or Lyrical Abstraction.

Mathieu was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, and gained an international

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

reputation in the 1950s as a leading Abstract Expressionist. His large paintings are created very rapidly and impulsively.

Despite his unconventional technique, he considered himself an historical painter working with abstract subject matter. His paintings are related to American Lyrical Abstraction and to Art informel as well.

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

Mathieu lacked a formal art education. In 1947 he was working for American Express in Paris, France and rented a chambre de bonne near the Palais Luxembourg. There he executed a number of large canvases with a black background on which he painted colored scrolls, whorls and other shapes.

He subsequently refined his technique, using a white background on which he painted

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

simple geometrical forms, most often a single line in color. In the 1950s he exhibited fifty of these canvases at the Leicester Galeries in London.

Biography below is from www.rogallery.com.

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

French painter, Georges Mathieu gained an international reputation in the 1950’s as a leading Abstract Expressionist. His large paintings are created very rapidly and impulsively. Despite his unconventional technique, he considers himself a historical painter working with abstract subject matter.

Post-war painter, Georges Mathieu was born in Boulogne sur Mer, in 1921, and received a bachelor’s degree in English. After the war he went to work in Paris, working in public relations for the marine company LAST American Lines.

Mathieu began to paint non-figuratively around 1942, and in 1947 his abstract work began to attract attention due to the application of paint

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

directly from the tube.

 

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

This new abstraction, described as: “lyric, informal or “tachiste” (having spots and blurs), ignored the traditions and the rules that existed previously. Mathieu was the first to bring this new style to the School of Paris before 1950 and also to the painters of the School of New York.

His position at the U.S Lines, allowed him to keep in touch with the movements of the

Georges Mathieu

Georges Mathieu

vanguard New York art scene, thus becoming aware of Action Painting. He became aware of lyrical abstraction and abstract expressionism. He began to show at galleries around 1946, at the Sixth Hall of the Minors for 30 years, Galerie Des Beaux-Arts of Paris, and in 1950 he held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie René Drouin, Paris.

“The Tachisme stands on the improvisation of forms and belongs to the adventure of the “Abstraction Lyrique”, adventure that consists in striving to move, and translate, the world while screaming your soul.” (Interview with Pierre Cabanne, 1966) – See more at: http://www.en.ozartsetc.com/2011/12/21/georges-mathieu/#sthash.Txb4yTST.dpuf

I really enjoyed today’s painting.  It’s another piece that I want to try in bigger form.  I did get some huge canvases so maybe I will.  From the pictures I saw, it looked like he painted on enormous canvases!  I hope you enjoy my piece and I will see you tomorrow on Day 151!  Best, Linda

Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Hommage à la Douleur- Tribute to Georges Mathieu
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Day 149- Edward Gorey- Sunny Nonsense

It’s Day 149 and I have to admit that I’ve been putting off this artist for a while…moved him back and back because of intimidation and feeling overwhelmed in what and how I wanted to go about painting/illustrating my tribute.  He’s one of my favorites of all time.  I finally hunkered down this morning and told my self not to put him off any longer…to come up with something meaningful and captured his spirit.  I think I succeeded so please join me in celebrating Edward Gorey today.

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

Edward St. John Gorey (February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000) was an American writer and artist noted for his illustrated books. His characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depict vaguely unsettling narrative scenes in Victorian and Edwardian settings.

Edward St. John Gorey was born in Chicago. His parents, Helen Dunham (née Garvey) and Edward Lee Gorey, divorced in 1936 when he was 11, then remarried in 1952 when he was 27. One of his stepmothers was Corinna Mura (1909–1965), a cabaret singer who had a small role in the classic film Casablanca as the woman playing the guitar while singing “La Marseillaise” at Rick’s Café Américain. His father was briefly a journalist. Gorey’s maternal great-grandmother, Helen St. John Garvey, was a popular nineteenth-century greeting card writer and artist, from whom he claimed to have inherited his talents.

Gorey attended a variety of local grade schools and then the Francis W. Parker School. He spent 1944 to 1946

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

in the Army at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and then attended Harvard University, beginning in 1946 and graduating in the class of 1950, where he studied French and roomed with poet Frank O’Hara.

Edward Gorey- From The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book

Edward Gorey- From The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book

In the early 1950s, Gorey, with a group of recent Harvard alumni including Alison Lurie (1947), John Ashbery (1949), Donald Hall (1951), and Frank O’Hara, amongst others, founded the Poets’ Theatre in Cambridge, which was supported by Harvard faculty members John Ciardi and Thornton Wilder.

He frequently stated that his formal art training was “negligible”; Gorey studied art for one semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943.

From 1953 to 1960, he lived in New York City and worked for the Art Department of

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

Doubleday Anchor, illustrating book covers and in some cases, adding illustrations to the text. He illustrated works as diverse as Dracula by Bram Stoker, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, and Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. In later years he produced cover illustrations and interior artwork for many children’s books byJohn Bellairs, as well as books begun by Bellairs and continued by Brad Strickland after Bellairs’ death.

Edward Gorey- Illustration from H.G. Wells War of the Worlds

Edward Gorey- Illustration from H.G. Wells War of the Worlds

His first independent work, The Unstrung Harp, was published in 1953. He also published under pen names that were anagrams of his first and last names, such as Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde, Ms. Regera Dowdy, and dozens more. His books also feature the names Eduard Blutig (“Edward Gory”), a German language pun on his own name, and O. Müde (German for O. Weary).

The New York Times credits bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, the Gotham Book Mart, with launching Gorey’s career: “it became the central clearing house for Mr. Gorey, presenting exhibitions of his work in the store’s gallery and eventually turning him into an international celebrity.”

Gorey’s illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

ostensibly Victorian and Edwardian settings, have long had a cult following. Gorey became particularly well-known through his animated introduction to the PBS series Mystery! in 1980, as well as his designs for the 1977 Broadway production of Dracula, for which he won a Tony Award for Best Costume Design. He also was nominated for Best Scenic Design. In the introduction of each episode of Mystery! Vincent Price would welcome viewers to “Gorey Mansion”.

Edward Gorey- From The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book

Edward Gorey- From The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book

Because of the settings and style of Gorey’s work, many people have assumed he was British; in fact, he only left the U.S. once, for a visit to the Scottish Hebrides. In later years, he lived year-round in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, where he wrote and directed numerous evening-length entertainments, often featuring his own papier-mâchépuppets, an ensemble known as Le Theatricule Stoique. The first of these productions, Lost Shoelaces, premiered in Woods Hole, Massachusetts on August 13, 1987. The last was The White Canoe: an Opera Seria for Hand Puppets, for which Gorey wrote the libretto, with a score by the composer Daniel James Wolf. Based on Thomas Moore’s poem The Lake of the Dismal Swamp, the opera was staged after Gorey’s death and directed by his friend, neighbor, and longtime collaborator Carol Verburg, with a puppet stage made by his friends and neighbors, the noted set designers Herbert Senn and Helen Pond. In the early 1970s, Gorey wrote an unproduced screenplay for a silent film, The Black Doll.

Gorey was noted for his fondness for ballet (for many years, he religiously attended all performances of the New York City Ballet), fur coats,

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

tennis shoes, and cats, of which he had many. All figure prominently in his work. His knowledge of literature and films was unusually extensive, and in his interviews, he named Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, Francis Bacon, George Balanchine, Balthus, Louis Feuillade, Ronald Firbank, Lady Murasaki Shikibu, Robert Musil,Yasujirō Ozu, Anthony Trollope, and Johannes Vermeer as some of his favorite artists. Gorey was also an unashamed pop-culture junkie, avidly following soap operas and television comedies such as Petticoat Junction and Cheers, and he had particular affection for dark genre series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman: The Animated Series, and The X-Files; he once told an interviewer that he so enjoyed the Batman series that it was influencing the visual style of one of his upcoming books. Gorey treated television commercials as an art form in themselves, even taping his favorites for later study. Gorey was especially fond of movies, and for a time he wrote regular reviews for the Soho Weekly under the pseudonym Wardore Edgy.

After Gorey’s death, one of his executors, Andreas Brown, turned up a large cache of unpublished work, some completed, some incomplete. Brown described the find as “Ample material for many future books and for plays based on his work.”

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

Although Gorey’s books were popular with children, he did not associate with children much and had no particular fondness for them. Gorey never married, professed to have little interest in romance, and never discussed any specific romantic relationships in interviews. In the book The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, published after Gorey’s death, his friend Alexander Theroux reported that when Gorey was pressed on the matter of his sexual orientation, he said that even he was not sure whether he was gay or straight. When asked what his sexual orientation was in an interview, he said,

I’m neither one thing nor the other particularly. I am fortunate in that I am apparently reasonably undersexed or something … I’ve never said that I was gay and I’ve never said that I wasn’t … what I’m trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else …

Edward Gorey agreed in an interview that the “sexlessness” of his works was a product of his asexuality.

From 1995 to his death in April 2000, the normally reclusive artist was the subject of a cinema-style documentary directed by Christopher

Edward Gorey- From The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book

Edward Gorey- From The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book

Seufert. (As of 2014, the film has screened as a work-in-progress with NPR and the accompanying book is yet to be released.) He was interviewed onTribute To Edward Gorey, an hour-long community, public-access television cable show produced by artist and friend, Joyce Kenney. He contributed his videos and personal thoughts. Edward served as a judge at Yarmouth art shows and enjoyed activities at the local cable station, studying computer art and serving as cameraman on many Yarmouth shows. His Cape Cod house is called Elephant House and is the subject of a photography book entitled, Elephant House: Or, the Home of Edward Gorey, with photographs and text by Kevin McDermott. The house is now the Edward Gorey House Museum.

Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species, including bats and insects.

Gorey is typically described as an illustrator. His books may be found in the humor and cartoon sections of major bookstores, but books such as The Object Lesson have earned serious critical respect as works of surrealist art. His experimentations – creating books that were wordless, books that were literally matchbox-sized, pop-up books, books entirely populated by inanimate objects – complicates matters still further. As Gorey told Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe, “Ideally, if anything were any good, it would be indescribable.” Gorey classified his own work as literary nonsense, the genre made most famous by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

In response to being called gothic, he stated, “If you’re doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there’d be no point. I’m trying to think if there’s sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children – oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that’s true, there really isn’t. And there’s probably no happy nonsense, either.”

Biography is from wikipedia.

I ended up painting and doing pen and ink for my piece today.  I also spent a good time emulating his unique font-type/handwriting for this piece as well.  It took a good amount of time for how simple the piece is, but I’m glad I spent that time because I am pleased with how it turned out!  It’s also a cathartic and personal piece.  I hope you enjoy it and I will see you tomorrow on Day 150.  150!  Can you believe it?  I can’t. Now to go and work on my chapter I’m submitting for my writing group and then working on my new book.

Best, Linda

Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Side-View Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Side-View
Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Close-Up 4 Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Close-Up 4
Linda Imagined Things…-Tribute to Edward Gorey
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic/Pen&Ink on Canvas

Day 148- John Hoyland- Felt Through the Eye

Day 148!  I can feel summer coming (well, actually it already feels like summer)…been taking my dogs on nice hikes.  There’s nothing better than a pooped out pup.  I’m excited to go to improv tonight…one more class and then our show on Friday.  Then it’s summer break.  I’m sure I’ll be taking a class throughout the summer to keep myself sane.  I’ve actually been interested in the playwright class.  I’d like to get into that more.  I’ve been writing so many books, I’d like to delve into writing plays.  We’ll see.  For now, join me in celebrating John Hoyland today.

John Hoyland

John Hoyland

John Hoyland

John Hoyland

John Hoyland RA (12 October 1934 – 31 July 2011) was a London-based British artist. He was one of the country’s leading abstract painters.

John Hoyland was born on 12 October 1934, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, to a working-class

Love and Grief 2006- John Hoyland

Love and Grief 2006- John Hoyland

family, and educated at Sheffield School of Art and Crafts within the junior art department (1946-51) before progressing to Sheffield School of Art and Crafts proper (1951-56), and the Royal Academy Schools, London (1956-60) where Sir Charles Wheeler, the then President of the Royal Academy famously ordered that Hoyland’s paintings – all abstracts – be removed from the walls of the Diploma Galleries.

It was only the intervention of Peter Greenham, Acting Keeper of the Schools, that saved the day when he reminded Sir Charles Wheeler that Hoyland also painted landscapes – evidence that he could ‘paint properly’.

Painting Poems- John Hoyland

Painting Poems- John Hoyland

In 1953 Hoyland went abroad for the first time, hitch-hiking with a friend to the South of France. After the bleakness of Sheffield it was a revelation.

The 1960s were a crucial decade for Hoyland; it was in these years that he found his voice as an

John Hoyland

John Hoyland

artist. Hoyland’s first solo exhibition was held at the Marlborough New London Gallery in 1964 and his first solo museum show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1967, curated by Bryan Robertson.

In the 1960s, Hoyland’s work was characterised by simple shapes, high-key colour and a flat picture surface. In the 1970s his paintings became more textured. He exhibited at the Waddington Galleries, London throughout the 1970s and 1980s. During the 1960s and 1970s, he showed his paintings in New York City with the Robert Elkon Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.

John Hoyland

John Hoyland

His paintings are closely aligned with Post-Painterly Abstraction, Color Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction. Hoyland disliked the “abstract” painter label and described himself as “a painter”.

Retrospectives of his paintings have been held at the Serpentine Gallery (1979), the Royal Academy

Lebanon- John Hoyland

Lebanon- John Hoyland

(1999) and Tate St Ives (2006). He won the 1982 John Moores Painting Prize.

His works are held in many public and private collections including the Tate. In September 2010, Hoyland and five other British artists including Howard Hodgkin, John Walker, Ian Stephenson, Patrick Caulfield and R.B. Kitaj were included in an exhibition entitled The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art From the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie, at the Yale Center for British Art.

Moons Milk- John Hoyland

Moons Milk- John Hoyland

He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1991 and was appointed Professor of the Royal Academy Schools in 1999. The National Portrait Gallery holds portraits of the artist in its collection.

Hoyland died 31 July 2011 aged 76, of complications following heart surgery undertaken in 2008. He was survived by his wife Beverley Heath Hoyland and his son Jeremy, from his first marriage to Airi Karakainen.

Biography is from wikipedia.

“Paintings are there to be experienced, they are events. They are also to be meditated on and to be enjoyed by the senses; to be felt through the eye.”

John Hoyland, 1979

Pleasure Rage- John Hoyland

Pleasure Rage- John Hoyland

I really had fun painting this piece today.  In order to get the splashy effect, I put a tarp down and watered down the paint and had did a Pollock-esque experience.  I then used sticks and my fingers to paint.  So no brushes today.  Just splashing, finger painting and dripping today.  It was fun and I also had to wait for layers to dry before applying more so it took longer than most paintings.  I hope you enjoy it and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 149!  Best, Linda

Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 4 Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 4
Nervous Joy- Tribute to John Hoyland
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Day 147- Lee Ufan- Art of Emptiness

It’s Day 147 and it’s another beautiful day.  It was so nice to come down to my garage/art space and see how organized everything is.  My back is still hurting, but I’m going to try and relax before heading out to my extra long therapy session today.  I’m still wondering if it’s working.  I’m doing a method called EMDR and it’s going to take a few more sessions to see how it’s working.  Here’s to thinking positively about it!  I’m really enjoying writing my new (gasp) teen romance novel so I’m going to try to work on that tonight as well.  Today’s painting was enjoyable to paint.  Very relaxing.  Join me in honoring Korean artist Lee Ufan today.  I grew up in Korea for a large portion of my life so it was great to honor a Korean artist that I never knew anything about!

Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan

 

Lee Ufan, From Line, 1977.

Lee Ufan, From Line, 1977.

Lee Ufan (Korean: 이우환, Hanja: 李禹煥, Korean pronunciation: [iːuhwan] born 1936 in Haman County, in South Kyongsang province in Korea) is a Korean minimalist painter and sculptor artist and academic, honored by the government of Japan for having “contributed to the development of contemporary art in Japan.” The art of this artist, who has long been based in Japan, is rooted in an Eastern appreciation of the nature of materials and also in modern European phenomenology.

Lee, the main theorist of the Mono-ha (“School of Things”) tendency in Japan in the

Lee Ufan /Point Series

Lee Ufan /Point Series

late 1960s and early 1970s, was trained as a philosopher. As a painter, Lee significantly contributed to Tansaekhwa, or Korean monochrome painting, the first artistic movement in 20th century Korea to be promoted internationally. He advocates a methodology of de-westernization and demodernization in both theory and practice as an antidote to the Eurocentric thought of 1960s postwar Japanese society. Lee divides his time between Kamakura, Japan and Paris, France.

Lee Ufan, "Dialogue," 2013

Lee Ufan, “Dialogue,” 2013

Born in Haman-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do in 1936, Lee Ufan was raised by his parents and Confucian grandfather. Lee studied painting at the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University for just two months and, in 1956, moved to Yokohama, Japan, where he earned a degree in philosophy in 1961. Whilst studying philosophy Ufan painted in a restrained, traditional Japanese style, eschewing the expressive abstraction of the contemporary Japanese Gutai movement.

Lee spent his early working years pursuing careers as an art critic, philosopher, and

artist. In Japan he became an active participant in the countercultural upheavals surrounding the Anpo Movement of the 1960s. He came to prominence in the late 1960s as one of the founders and theoretical leaders of the avant garde Mono-ha (Object School) group. Mono-Ha was inspired by the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and Japan’s first contemporary art movement to gain international recognition.

The Mono-Ha school of thought rejected Western notions of representation, choosing to

LEE UFAN,From Point

LEE UFAN,From Point

focus on the relationships of materials and perceptions rather than on expression or intervention.

Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan

The movement’s goal was to embrace the world at large and encourage the fluid coexistence of numerous beings, concepts, and experiences. Lee U-fan’s position in the philosophy department at Nihon University in Tokyo earned him a distinguished role as the movement’s spokesman. In 1973, he was appointed Professor of Tama Art University in Tokyo and he stayed there until 2007. Yoshio Itagaki was one of his students in 1989-1991. He is Professor emeritus at Tama Art University.

In the mid-1970s Lee became a pivotal figure in the Korean tansaekhwa (monochrome painting) school, which offered a fresh approach to abstraction by presenting repetitive gestural marks as bodily records of time’s perpetual

Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan

passage. In his early painting series, From Point and From Line (1972–84), Lee combines ground mineral pigment with animal-skin glue, characteristic of nihonga painting in which he was trained. Each brushstroke is applied slowly and is composed of several layers.

Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan

Where the brush first makes contact with the canvas, the paint is thick, forming a ‘ridge’ that gradually becomes lighter. Rarely does his brush touch the surface more than three times. The artist refers to this as yohaku or the art of emptiness. In the From Point works he adopted a similar method in order to produce a fading series of small, discrete, rectangular brushstokes.

In 1991 Lee began his series of Correspondance paintings, which consist of just one or two grey-blue brushstrokes, made of a mixture of oil and crushed stone pigment, applied onto a large white surface. On average it takes Lee about a month to finish a painting, on canvases that typically measure about 60 by 90 inches, although they can vary in size from a few inches to 10 feet per side. He completes no more than 25 works a year.

Lee Ufan- Dialogue

Lee Ufan- Dialogue

Lee Ufan- From Point 1978

Lee Ufan- From Point 1978

Lee’s sculptures, presenting dispersed arrangements of stones together with industrial materials like steel plates, rubber sheets, and glass panes, recast the discrete object as a network of relations based on parity between the viewer, materials, and site. In his sculptural series Relatum, each work consists of one or more light-colored round stones and dark, rectangular iron plates.

Biography is from wikipedia.

I had different ideas for paintings for this, but then decided to use a pouncer with a watered down paint.  When I was initially painting this, I wasn’t sure if I was liking it, but I decided to keep going and I think it turned out well.  I think I captured Lee’s essence and style.  I hope you enjoy my piece for today and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 148.  Getting close to 150 paintings!  Then it’s 50 more and then only 165!  Can’t believe I’ve gotten this far with so many changes and activity in my life the past few months without a hitch. 🙂  Best, Linda

Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Fading- Tribute to Lee Ufan
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

 

Day 146- Louise Fishman- Bold Visions

It’s Day 146 and I woke up a little earlier than I wanted to day, but it was good because my hubs and I cleaned and organized the garage and art space downstairs.  It looks soooo much better!  In between that I painted coats on my daily painting, waited for it to dry and then kept painting.  Finally it was finished so join me in celebrating Louise Fishman today!

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman (born 1939) is an American abstract painter from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Louise Fishman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 14, 1939. She

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

attended the Philadelphia College of Art between 1956 and 1957. In 1958 she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. After being successful at both schools she went on to receive her BFA and BS at the Tyler School of Art in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and in 1965 she secured her MFA from the University of Illinois, Champaign.

Fishman’s painting style at first gave her some trouble in being recognized. She exhibited only occasionally in the 1960s, a period in her life when she produced primarily grid based work.

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

During the later 1970s her abstract work was linked with Pattern painting. Large scale works like Grand Slam (1985) and Cinnabar and Malachite (1986) reflected her bold visions, and caused many reviewers to label her work as having elements of Neo-expressionism.

In 1980 she was one of the ten invited artists whose work was exhibited in the main event of the Great American Lesbian Art Show.

As the feminist movement gained strength in the 1970s, Fishman abandoned her Minimalist-inspired, grid-

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

like paintings and began making work that reflected women’s traditional tasks. These pieces required the sort of repetitive steps that characterize activities like knitting, piecing, or stitching. Returning later to the masculine realm of abstract painting, Fishman still sought a way to distinguish what she was doing from the work of male artists, both historic and contemporary. The resulting compositions combine gestural brushwork with an orderly structure: it is as if Fishman built or wove—her paintings, starting from a foundation and carefully adding to them, layer upon interlocking layer.

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

In 1988, Fishman accompanied a friend who survived the Holocaust at both Auschwitz and Terezin. This trip was part of a larger one that took her to Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest. This trip had a dramatic impact on her life as an artist and altered her way of working. She returned with ashes, cremated human remains – from Auschwitz. She mixed the ashes with beeswax to use in her paints for the series Remembrance and Renewal. These paintings served as abstract art as well as memorials to a tragic and obscene event in history.

In the early 1990s she returned to painting grids in a slightly altered format. This can be seen

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

in works such as Sipapu (1991) and Shadows and Traces (1992)

The organization of Fishman’s work derives ultimately from the grid, which was key 35 years ago, is vestigially apparent though less and less important. Some of the mark-making in the current paintings inclines toward writing, as has been true for around a decade.

Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman

In the fall of 2011, Fishman completed her residency at the Emile Harvey Foundation in Venice. She cites her residency in Venice as an important influence on her most recent work. Likewise, the work of Venetian artist Titian has been of chief inspiration during this recent period of her work.

Biography is from wikipedia.

I enjoyed painting the layers on this piece today.  There was a kind of freedom to what I was doing.  No right or wrong…and I liked that!  I hope you enjoy my piece and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 147.  Best, Linda

Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Feel the Pain- Tribute to Louise Fishman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Day 145- Jiro Yoshihara- “Satori”

It’s Day 145 and it’s a beautiful day out!  Did a bunch of gardening and spent a good amount of time outdoors.  Didn’t start my painting until later.  My hubby spent a couple hours last night putting up a TV into my art studio so that I can watch stuff when I sew and paint.  How fun.  I can now watch Vikings or whatever silly SF show I want. 🙂  Join me in celebrating Jiro Yoshihara today.  Through him I found a whole group of artists known as the Gutai.  I’ll definitely be honoring some of them soon too.

Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara

 

Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara

Jirō Yoshihara (吉原 治良 Yoshihara Jirō, January 1, 1905 – February 19, 1972) was a Japanese painter. In 1954, along with Shōzō Shimamoto, he co-founded the avant-garde Gutai group in Osaka. He was a businessman and scion of a family that owned a cooking-oil company, along with a group of young, Hanshin-region artists. Yoshihara had taught Western-style painting before becoming Gutai’s leader. Yoshihara wrote the “Gutai Manifesto” in 1956 and was the leader of the so named group of internationally acclaimed avant-garde artists representative of Japan’s post-war art world.

He worked in surrealist and abstract expressionist painting styles before turning, in his

Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara

final years, to the repeated depiction of circles reminiscent of “satori,” the enlightenment of Zen. This white circle was made by leaving the canvas unpainted while painting the background black. When asked about his circles, Yoshihara said that he could not manage to paint even one circle with satisfaction, an indication of the depths of his pursuit of this form. Indeed, no two of his circles are shaped exactly alike. He was the leader of the Gutai Group until his death in 1972.

 

Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara

In the early 1950s, works by Yoshihara were featured in the opening shows of Nihon Kokusai Bijutsu-ten (International Art Exhibition Japan) and Gendai Nihon Bijutsu-ten(Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan) during the resurgence of contemporary art in Japan. In Osaka 1951, Yoshihara and others established the Gendai Bijutsu Kondan Kai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group), known as “Genbi”. This group served as a workshop and forum for creating new art forms merging Eastern and Western culture as well as the modern and traditional.

The main focus of Yoshihara was gaining recognition in the art world through

Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara

Japanese tradition. 1953 first exhibition of the Contemporary Art Discussion Group was held. At this time Yoshihara operated workshop out of home in Shibuya; one of his students was Shōzō Shimamoto who would later be part of the Gutai group. Around the same time, a group called Zero Society had formed who experimented with conceptual and performance art. They would later join the Gutai formed by Yoshihara in 1954.

 

Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara

During this time period, Yoshihara drew inspiration from children’s art, Zen calligraphy, and action painter Jackson Pollock. He rejected Japanese modernism of the 1950s and abandoned formal abstract painting. In December 1954, Yoshihara co-founded the Gutai Art Association which would later debut in spring of 1955 at the 7th Yomiuri Independent. The Gutai became known for their avant-garde performances and artistic methods. Yoshihara also wrote the group’s “Gutai Manifesto” in 1956.

Aside from being involved with the Gutai group, Yoshihara was also involved with Morita Shiryu and the avant-garde calligraphy movement

Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara

called Bokujin-kai. From 1962, Yoshihara worked on a series of circle paintings inspired by Zen tradition.

 

Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara

In this period of time, he moves from the stormy impasto surfaces of the Gutai period to singular circles of water based acrylic on red, white, or black backgrounds. Yoshihara died in Ashiya, Japan in 1972.

Biography is from wikipedia.

I thoroughly enjoyed painting this piece…it was definitely “satori” to paint it.  The Japanese term for “awakening”.  This was a very zen experience.

I hope you enjoy it and I will see you tomorrow on Day 146!  Best, Linda

Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Satori- Tribute to Jiro Yoshihara
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

 

Day 144- Pat Lipsky- Mouth-Watering Colors

It’s Day 144 and I’m excited because I drove the car around tonight when Matt came home.  We went out to Target and then went to dinner.  I’m less nervous in the car.  I haven’t driven in over ten years so that’s normal.  It’s starting to feel more natural again though.  Yes, I’m 35…don’t judge!  Anyway, join me in honoring Pat Lipsky today!  This piece was fun to paint. 🙂

Pat Lipsky

Pat Lipsky

Pat Lipsky, Close Up (Delft), 2007

Pat Lipsky, Close Up (Delft), 2007

Pat Lipsky is an American painter associated with Lyrical Abstraction, Color Field Painting, and Geometric abstraction.

Lipsky grew up in New York City. She graduated with a BFA from Cornell University in 1963, receiving

Pat Lipsky, Chapaque 2

Pat Lipsky, Chapaque 2

an MFA from the Graduate Program in Painting at Manhattan’s Hunter College, where she studied with the painter and sculptor Tony Smith.

Raised by a painter mother and an engineer father, Lipsky had her first one-woman show in New York, at the André Emmerich Gallery. Her work at the time was strongly in the mode of “Lyrical Abstraction.” The 1969 canvas “Spiked Red” (Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Bienstock, New York) demonstrates Lipsky’s then-approach: close hues, bright color waves and bursts. In The New York Times, the critic Hilton Kramer found that the painter’s work looked both to the aesthetic past and future: “Miss Lipsky reintroduces the drip, splatter and smear of abstract expressionism for notable anti-expressionist purposes…She also demonstrates a very clear identity of her own. Her pictures are very handsome, and it will be interesting to see how she develops what is already a bold pictorial intelligence.”

Blue Grey Not Touching 2002

Blue Grey Not Touching 2002

Lipsky was invited to participate in the influential 1970-1971 Lyrical Abstraction exhibition which traveled the country and culminated at New York’s Whitney Museum; the critic Noel Frackman highlighted her contributions for freshness, gesture and exuberance, finding the style “sustained a mood which celebrates the sheer splendor of color. The edges of these shapes lick out like flames and there is an incendiary vividness in the impetuous yet directed forms…These are mouth-watering paintings.”

By the later seventies and eighties, Lipsky had expanded her palette to include bolder

French Painting- Pat Lipsky

French Painting- Pat Lipsky

colors and geometric forms. She had also begun to explore, as the critic Katherine Crum later wrote, a pictorial vocabulary in direct challenge to her roots in lyrical abstraction. By 2003, the critic Karen Wilkin would declare Lipsky in The New Criterion to be an “unrepentant abstract painter.” Wilkin found in the work, “A lifetime’s accumulated experience of all kinds, including the experience of looking at art. That, of course, is what all art worth taking seriously—whether abstract, figurative, or somewhere in between—is supposed to address.”

Glowing 1970- Pat Lipsky

Glowing 1970- Pat Lipsky

In the 1980s and 1990s Lipsky continued to refine her broader color concerns, achieving a brooding, more sharply-defined palette. A selection of works from this period, “The Black Paintings,” was exhibited in Miami in 1994 and New York City in 1997. Wilkin found the “deliberately limited” dark work of this period to be “dramatic” and “powerful.”

The critic Elisa Turner again described them as a step away from the “sleekness” of

Brandywine, 1970

Brandywine, 1970

modern abstract painting, toward the direction of vertigo, emotion, and ambiguity: “This vertigo adds an unnerving, emotionally-charged twist to the tradition of sleek, impersonal abstract art…Such ambiguity about the location of lines and shapes in space is echoed in her exquisite sense of color.” The New Yorker magazine instead drew a connection of her work in this period to the “classic” style of calmly modernistpainters Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee.

Morning Fever- Pat Lipsky

Morning Fever- Pat Lipsky

In the 2000s, Lipsky began another redefinition of palette, reincorporating color within a bold central image. Writing in the New York Times, the critic Ken Johnson associated these pictures with mechanical forms and music. Noting their “seductive, egg-shell surfaces,” Johnson linked them to the minimalist painters Frank Stella and Ad Reinhardt. “The effect is polyrhythmic in three dimensions; the bands seem to push up and down like valves in a machine[,] enhancing the feeling of Bach-like musicality. The more you gaze at them, the more absorbing they become.”

Lipsky began to focus on single images presented in series. Her more recent

Thin Fingers 1969

Thin Fingers 1969

exhibitions have contained repeating colors, in a stripped and repeated form. The painter and critic Stephen Westfall, in Art in America, called these paintings “her most successful,” finding her “classicism” to be “ultimately idiosyncratic in the best sense,” and finding a link to Ad Reinhart and Philip Guston: “Guston meeting Reinhardt, then; a synthesis that, however full of painting culture, feels just right in our present moment.” The critic David Cohen, in The New York Sun, noted instead the opposite of classicism, “a steely, seemingly dispassionate composure” that contained “seething reserves of aesthetic emotion,” stating, “Lipsky is not merely the dean of contemporary geometric abstraction but its dominatrix.”

White Space 1969

White Space 1969

Karen Wilkin, reviewing Lipsky’s 2006 exhibition, discovered in the work a simplicity that served the reverse function—to be ultimately liberating: “Lipsky’s complex, richly allusive counterpoint demands that we pay close attention to her paintings as paintings…and then rewards us by setting free our imaginations.”

Biography is from wikipedia.

Lipsky’s style has evolved and changed throughout her years of painting, but I wanted to focus on her Lyrical Abstractionist years.  The rainbow palette of waves.  I was really drawn to those.  I wish I had a huge canvas to do a tribute in this style…I’m talking 50 feet long!  Now that would be fun.  I hope you enjoy my piece and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 145.  Best, Linda

Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Summer Stache- Tribute to Pat Lipsky
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Day 143- Irving Kriesberg- Animal and Human Forms

It’s Day 143 and I’m feeling a little under the weather.  Very sore and fatigued.  My sinuses feel dry and my ears are popping.  Hopefully, my body fights it off and it’s just an allergy thing!  I was feeling okay earlier and that’s when I got my painting done.  So join me in honoring Irving Kriesberg today!

Irving Kriesberg

Irving Kriesberg

Oh, Joy! (Tokyo) 1985- Irving Kriesberg

Oh, Joy! (Tokyo)
1985- Irving Kriesberg

As a young child Irving Kriesberg would create drawing books filled with images of museum taxidermy he encountered at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. This early experience of biological rendering, combined with an admiration of George Harriman’s innocent playfulness, poetic dialogue and surrealist environments in the comic strip Krazy Kat, made a lasting impression on Kriesberg, who later engaged his own animal imagery by tapping into subconscious memory.

For over sixty years Kriesberg invited viewers to observe what he experienced through

Owl with Purple Legs- Irving Kriesberg

Owl with Purple Legs- Irving Kriesberg

images that, as he described it, “well up behind my eyes”. His work blended the lines between abstraction and representation during a time when mainstream artists had chosen complete abstraction as a means for a more spiritual and absolute style. Kriesberg used the figure prolifically, creating his mystical dreamlike environments out of a process he defined as the spontaneous application of paint. Kriesberg’s animal figurations have multiple intentions and, he steadfastly maintained, his artwork has no allegorical intent. He combined his individual and shared worldly experiences with his fantastical imagination.

Kriesberg’s travels around the world made him aware of ancient spiritual cultures and modern, non-westernized civilizations. After graduating from the Art Institute in Chicago, Kriesberg traveled to Mexico City in 1942. His years in Mexico exposed him to expressive forms of art being made “for the people, by the people”. The emotive, violent murals of Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as the political printmaking by the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP), an influential print workshop, would be important elements of Kriesberg’s early Figurative Expressionist work. Combining emotive violence with spiritual mysticism from the Old Testament, Kriesberg began to paint poignant figurations. It was also in Mexico that Kriesberg first started to work with clay to create primitive sculptures that recalled ancient relics of the past, a practice he periodically returned to over the next 50 years.

Irving Kriesberg, Old Man and Black Bird

Irving Kriesberg, Old Man and Black Bird

Kriesberg returned to New York City in 1945. Soon after, Kriesberg came to the attention of sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, who introduced Kriesberg to his art dealer, Curt Valentin, the owner of a prominent uptown gallery. Valentin became Kriesberg’s first dealer. He also showed Kriesberg’s paintings to Dorothy Miller, who was the first trained curator at The Museum of Modern Art. Miller included Kriesberg in a 1951 ‘New Talent’ exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art (and again in 1957). His big break came when Miller included him in the landmark 1952 exhibition: 15 Americans at The Museum of Modern Art, the show that significantly substantiated the careers of abstract painters Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes, Clifford Still, Edward Corbett, Richard Lippold, Herbert Ferber, Mark Rothko and Bradley Walker Tomlin. Although there were many seminal Abstract Expressionists shown in this exhibition, Kriesberg was the only Figurative Expressionist to be represented. In 1953, Valentin included Kriesberg in a five-person group show at his gallery, and in 1955 Kriesberg had his New York City solo debut at the Curt Valentin Gallery. After Valentin’s death in 1954, Kriesberg was picked up by Duveen Graham Gallery in New York and later Graham Modern, the forerunner of the current Graham Gallery in New York.

Over the next 50 years, Kriesberg created his paintings, ceramics and sculptures in an idiosyncratic style that continuously evolved over the decades, with images of animals, yearning angels, and huminoid figures predominating. His output ranged from innovative two-sided multi-panel “changeable” paintings to banners for some of the large peace demonstrations held in New York during the 1980s.

Kriesberg consistently maintained that his concerns were painterly and abstract. His figures were meant to project their own identities and

Irving Kriesberg, Goat with Birds

Irving Kriesberg, Goat with Birds

invite the viewer to partake in a world populated by a dramatic labyrinth of colorful characters. His figurations were intended, Kriesberg asserted, to touch the observer deep in the subconscious mind, evoking a sense of the primeval, and tapping a collective sense of an archetypal visual language.

Irving Kriesberg- Landscape with Fox

Irving Kriesberg- Landscape with Fox

On the other hand, he never denied an implied spirituality in the figuration. These spiritual influences are not limited to one source, but derive from Judaism, Eastern Philosophy and his interest in ancient civilizations. During various periods from the 60s through the 80s, he lived and worked in India and Japan. Although his work sometimes reflected imagery of where he worked, he often described his painting style as one that developed not so much from outside sources as from within.

George Nelson Preston said of Kriesberg, “He has never consciously sought a counter aesthetic through purely painterly means. He has been a leader in innovation through eccentricity of composition and exposition of an internal mental dialect of polarities. The means by which this has been carried out are largely through the presentational motifs of proscenium, setting, and encounter.”

Kriesberg has had over 33 solo gallery exhibitions. He exhibited regularly since 1951 at such venues as Gertrude Kassel Gallery, Detroit, Terry

Walking Out 1978- Irving Kriesberg

Walking Out 1978- Irving Kriesberg

Dintenfass Gallery, Inger Gallery, Martha Jackson Gallery, Katharina Rich Perlow, Peter Findlay Gallery, and Lori Bookstein Gallery, who presented his most recent one-man show, in 2008. He has been given numerous museum solo shows nationally, including a major career retrospective at the Jewish Museum in 1961, and a second retrospective at The Everson Art Museum in 1980. The Jewish Museum retrospective exhibition and catalog was a joint venture with Graham Modern Gallery.

During his life Kriesberg received two Ford Foundation Grants, two Pollock-Krasner Awards, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation Memorial Award and many other honorariums. In addition, Kriesberg held several important teaching positions including Yale University Graduate School, Washington University in St. Louis, State University of New York and Columbia University. Kriesberg’s publications include three books on color and art theory. He also created a number of well received animated short films including Pastoral (1954) with music by Douglas Townsend, and Out of Into (1971) with music by Bulent Arel. Kriesberg has had numerous bibliography references written about him by a wide range of prominent art critics, museum curators and art scholars.

The Red Dance- Irving Kriesberg

The Red Dance- Irving Kriesberg

Irving Kriesberg’s paintings are held in the permanent collection of over 60 American art museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Corcoran Gallery, The Brooklyn Museum, The Detroit Museum of Art, The Kresge Art Museum, the National Museum of American Art, The Butler Institute of American Art, The Birmingham Museum of Art, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, The Dayton Art Institute, The Allentown Art Museum, The Boca Raton Museum of Art, The Rose Art Museum, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, The Scottsdale MOCA, The Crocker Art Museum, and many other museums.

-Written by Adam Zucker (From www.irvingkriesberg.com)

I really enjoyed today’s painting.  I took my fox image directly from one of his paintings because I liked it so much!  I haven’t really done that with any of my tributes, but this time I couldn’t help how much I wanted to paint that fox.  Well, I hope you enjoy my piece today and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 144.  Best, Linda

Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3 Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Fox and Skeleton- Tribute to Irving Kriesberg
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Day 142- Bram Van Velde- Art Giving Back

It’s Day 142!  I’m having one of those days where I almost hate painting.  I know that it’s going to happen from time to time throughout this year since I’m painting a painting EVERY freaking day.  BUT, as soon as I got into painting this piece I felt better and had a pleasant time.  My writing group is coming to my house this evening so I have to go get a few things done before they show up so join me in honoring Bram Van Velde today!

Bram Van Velde

Bram Van Velde

Bram Van Velde

Bram Van Velde

Bram (Abraham Gerardus) van Velde (October 19, 1895, in Zoeterwoude, near Leiden, Netherlands – December 28, 1981, in Grimaud, near Arles, France) was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored and geometric semi-representational painting style related to Tachisme, and Lyrical Abstraction. He is often seen as member of the School of Paris but his work resides somewhere between expressionism and surrealism, and evolved in the 1960s into an expressive abstract art. His paintings from the 1950s are similar to the contemporary work of Matisse, Picasso and the abstract expressionist Adolph Gottlieb. He was championed by a number of French-speaking writers, including Samuel Beckett and the poet André du Bouchet.

Bram van Velde was born into an intensely poor family, and this would mark him profoundly for life.

Bram Van Velde

Bram Van Velde

His mother, Catharina von der Voorst (1867–1949) was the illegitimate daughter of a Count. His father, Willem van Velde (1868–1914), owned a small company in water transportation on the Rhine. Bram was the second of four children (his sister Cornelia was born in 1892, Geer and Jacoba were born in 1898 and 1903). After going bankrupt, the father abandoned the family; the mother and children moved repeatedly over the next years, from Leyden to Lisse, and finally to The Hague.

Bram Van Velde

Bram Van Velde

In 1907, the young Bram entered into service as an apprentice in the painting and interior decorating company of Schaijk & Kramers in The Hague. He was encouraged in his art by the co-owner Eduard H. Kramers and his son Wijnand, who were appreciators and collectors of art, and these two would become Bram van Velde’s artistic patrons until around 1934. Because of his status as bread-winner for his family, Bram van Velde was exempted from service in the First World War, and he was able to continue his work as a painter and decorator, and to enroll in the Mauritshuis of The Hague, where he was able to copy masterworks in the collection.

In 1922, the Kramers encouraged van Velde to travel and gave him a monthly stipend. He went first to

Etendue (1974)- Bram Van Velde

Etendue (1974)- Bram Van Velde

Munich in May, then to north of Bremen (in Worpswede) in June, where, since the 1890s, there existed a colony of expressionist artists. This brief exposure to contemporary art (3 months) revolutionized van Velde’s work. He left Worpswede shortly after, and moved to Paris (in the “Belleville” quartier, 19th arrondissement). His career progressed slowly, and in February 1927 he exposed his works in Bremen. This was followed by the Jury-Freie Kunstschau of Berlin in April. Finally, he (with his brother Geer) was admitted into the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where he would show his works several times (1928 to 1932, in 1940 and 1941). In this period he went to Chartres in the company of Otto Freundlich, and also discovered the works of Henri Matisse(probably at the home of Paul Guillaume). Matisse would have a great impact on van Velde’s work (as too, in coming years, van Velde’s discovery of Pablo Picasso).

Bram Van Velde

Bram Van Velde

On October 6, 1928, van Velde married the German painter Lilly (Sophie Caroline) Klöker (1896–1936), that he had been seeing since perhaps his stay at Worpswede. With the Great Depression, their material conditions deteriorated and they moved to Spain, and in September 1932 they were living in Majorca. It is here that van Velde used the early painting of Matisse as his inspiration and he made a series of still-lives in which his later abstraction started to show itself. When the Spanish Civil War started in 1936, Lilly van Velde died in a hospital and Bram van Velde fled back to Marseille with several of his canvases made on Majorca. He came back to Paris and moved in with his brother Geer. He met Marthe Arnaud, a former Lutheran missionary in the Zambezi, and they became a couple. On the studio of his brother Geer van Velde—also becoming an abstract painter—Bram van Velde met the writer Samuel Beckett, and the two would develop a friendship. Stopped on the street by the police in 1938 because he was speaking German with Marthe, van Velde was briefly imprisoned (his papers were not in order), and brief incarcerations would occur several times in the coming years.

In 1939, van Velde came upon his own painting style while working in a large-format with gouache. He stopped painting in 1941, but began

Untitled 1948- Bram Van Velde

Untitled 1948- Bram Van Velde

again in the fall of 1945. His first solo exhibition opened March 21, 1946 in Paris in the “Galerie Mai” with 25 canvases, nearly all of his existing works, but the show was a failure. Beckett wrote his first essay on his work in les Cahiers d’art de Zervos. In 1947, van Velde signed a contract with the Galerie Maeght in Paris, and in 1948 he showed his work in the Kootz gallery in New York, but this was also a commercial failure, despite a good review by Willem de Kooning. After one more commercial disaster at Maeght, van Velde stopped painting for a year. In 1952, Maeght canceled their contract with him, while retaining his works.

In 1958, Franz Meyer organized the first museum exposition of Bram van Velde, a retrospective at the Kunsthalle of Bern. The couple Bram-Marthe left Paris the same year, but Marthe died the following year (August 11), having been hit by a car during a brief trip to Paris. On Christmas 1959, Bram van Velde met Madeleine in Geneva, and the two became a couple.

Starting in 1961, van Velde began to achieve a certain critical success. Jean-Michel Meurice made a documentary film about the artist. Also younger expressive painters asPierre Alechinsky and the Danish Cobra-painter Asger Jorn admired Van Velde’s art and his privat vue on art very strongly; they met him frequently and let their own art be influenced by his expressive art. Van Velde shuttled between Paris and Geneva, and in 1967 he moved to the latter. When the relation with Madeleine broke he returned to the Bourgogne where he lived and worked in a very sober little house. In 1957 Van Velde makes his first lithografy, and with the help of Jaques Putman from then he starts to make long series of lithografies in the next years.

Bram Van Velde

Bram Van Velde

In 1962, 1964 and 1968 Van velde had exhibitions in the United States organized by gallery Knoedler. In 1968 the art critic can appreciate him as ‘an important abstractexpressionist painter with an independent vision’. In 1962 he visits Willem de Kooning—also of Dutch origins—but the contact between the two artists is not very satisfying for either side. After 1970, van Velde travels a lot to visit his own expositions in Poland, Iceland, Italy and Norway, Brussels, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Rome. He doesn’t make much new work during this period. In 1964, he was named “chevalier” of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the Netherlands awarded him the Order ofOrange-Nassau in 1969. In 1973, he painted at La Chapelle-sur-Carouge several large gouaches which are seen as the last “savage” appearance of colour in his work. Aimé Maeght took him back in his gallery, almost 20 years after having dropped him. In 1975, he was received by universities in Lausanne, Geneva and Neuchâtel, and in 1980 he was made chevalier of the “Order of the Falcon” in Iceland. For his 80th birthday, a collective homage was published by the presses at Fata Morgana (Montpellier).

Bram van Velde died December 28, 1981 in Grimaud (near Arles), and is buried there. His mentor and friend Jacques Putman, who supported him and his career after Bram’s departure from Maeght, is buried beside him (Putman died February 27, 1994 in Paris).

Biography is from wikipedia.

I hope you enjoy my piece today.  I’m really enjoying the Tachisme movement of painting!  I have many more artists that do lyrical abstraction style painting and I can’t wait to do those as well. 🙂  I will see you tomorrow on Day 143!  Best, Linda

  • ..art is not for the personal satisfaction of one or the other, but art wants to return all what’s in life.. .. Art wants to give back everything what’s in our lives. The more comprehensive the artist stands in life the more powerful his work will speak, and therefore a work of art is a measure of the mental size of his creator.
    • letter to H. E. Kramer, 25-10-1926, as quoted in Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 44 (english translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1 Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2 Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

 

 

Close-Up 3 Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde Linda Cleary 2014 Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Untitled 142- Tribute to Bram Van Velde
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas