November 2, 2014

Day 306- Vivian Springford- Beautiful Stains

It’s Day 306 and I really wanted to do a color field artist today so I stumbled upon today’s artist while browsing art magazines when running errands today. This piece was more challenging to create than I thought! Join me in honoring Vivian Springford today.

Vivian Springford

Martinique Series 1972- Vivian Springford

Vivian Springford was born 1914 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and educated at the Spence School in New York City, and then the Art Students League. Born to a prominent family (her father was the former president and chairman of the board of Sevel, Inc, an early maker of refrigerators), she was pictured in The New York Times “Debutantes of the Winter Season in New York” in 1932.

Originally a portrait artist, she illustrated Albert Carr’s 1938 book Juggernaut with portraits of twenty political dictators from the Napoleanic era to the early twentieth century.

She was championed in the late 1950s by Howard DeVree, the New York Times art

Untitled 1959- Vivian Springford

critic, and Harold Rosenberg helped Springford get her first show at Great Jones Gallery in 1960.

The show generated much excitement and was filmed in the movie “Bowl of Cherries”, in the film library of the Museum of Modern Art. Prominent collectors such as Leon Mnuchin purchased paintings from the exhibition.

Natalie Edgar reviewed the show for Art News, and wrote:
“Vivian Springford has a freely brushed calligraphic style with the fantasy and naturalism of Chinese derivation. An arrested immanence results.”

James R. Mellow wrote in the Arts Magazine:
“Calligraphy is said to have played an important part in the development of her style, but its effect upon the dominating blacks of these paintings is kinesthetic rather than formal – that is, it supplies the impetuous but not the resultant shape of things. The work itself is notable for a first one-‐‑man showing.”

Untitled 1976- Vivian Springford

And Peter Wood reviewed the show at length in The Villager, stating:

“… Miss Springford’s pictures are of a kind – all roughly four by five feet, all on unprepared canvas, all containing a major black form soaked up by the canvas, all embellished with colors, sprays and swirls of paint. In a sense, one might say that these works, too, are mere variations on a theme. But for me they have something more; they have an emotional content which I found lacking in the Camino

pictures. And this it seems to me is the essential difference between good abstract expressionism and bad. Miss Springford’s works evokes the feeling of some primeval or post-‐‑atomic chaos, or perhaps a conflict of the mind inexpressible in words. I saw darkness and fire and motion there…”

Springford was attracted early on to Chinese calligraphy:

“I liked the direct approach of the early Chinese painters. Whatever they put down

Vivian Springford

on paper stayed there; they didn’t edit. They didn’t copy nature, either; they interpreted it. In fact, some of the older Chinese drawings are much more abstract than anything done today. I adapted their rhythm and free motion to develop my own abstract paintings.”

Springford shared studio space with the Asian American artist Walasse Ting for ten years, and helped him with the translations of his poetry. Through her association with Ting, Springford developed close contacts with artists such as Pierre Alechinsky, Sam Francis and Karel Appel. Springford wrote “My painting is my own small plot of energy, in terms of color and movement, in the universal whole.”

Springford also had a solo show at Preston Gallery in NYC in 1963, but became a reclusive artist after that, only showing in a few group exhibitions at the request of fellow artists and friends. She otherwise refused to sell or promote her own works. She worked in her NY studio through the mid 1980s until macular degeneration rendered her blind.

Vivian Springford

Having no immediate family, she was unable to leave her small New York midtown apartment. In 1998, a volunteer from United-‐‑Neighbors-‐‑of-‐‑the-‐‑East-‐‑Side, which works with New York City’ʹs elderly “ʺshut-‐‑ins”ʺ, was visiting with Springford and learned about a storage room in Chelsea that held her life’ʹs work. They visited the room and found more than 40 years worth of paintings and drawings covered in plastic and a decades worth of dust since the room was last opened. The volunteer brought samples of Springford’ʹs work to Gary Snyder, an art dealer known for his revisionist exhibitions of historically rooted art and artists. Snyder immediately recognized its importance and began the process of cleaning, restoring, and showing her work. Snyder’ʹs first exhibition of Springford’ʹs work in 1998 was nearly sold out before its opening.

When Vivian Springford died in 2003, Gary Snyder presented a memorial show that was well received .

Doug McClemont reviewed the exhibition for Artnews, ending with:

“…The influences of artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Sam Francis are difficult not to notice, but Springford’s experiments with making acrylics behave like watercolors were original and skillful, and the results convey a rare sense of magic.”

Grace Glueck reviewed the show in The New York Times:
“The recent rediscovery of Springford’ʹs work, which lay in a warehouse for years after this reclusive painter stopped exhibiting, has generated her second show here. An American painter who started out as a portraitist and then came into the orbit of the New York

Vivian Springford

School, Springford (1914-‐‑2003) was introduced to Asian art and philosophy by her friend the poet Walasse Ting.
Her strong sense of color is tempered by an Asian feeling for delicate, calligraphic line, seen in works of the 1960’ʹs. These exuberant linear scribblings and doodlings, stained and painted on paper or canvas, are enhanced and sometimes almost overcome by areas of black paint, worked onto the surface by stain, brushing or other means.
In the Tanzania and Martinique series -‐‑-‐‑ canvases from the 1970s -‐‑-‐‑ she has gravitated to stain painting and lightened her palette. Big, blotchy cabbage-‐‑like shapes are built up in overlays of color that usually progress from light and translucent at the edges to intense opacity at the center.”

As the history of Abstract Expressionism continues to be explored and defined, Vivian Springford is emerging as an important figure, who developed a sophisticated and original stain style of painting.

Biography is from Peyton Wright Gallery’s website.

I hope you enjoy my tribute today. I painted it in many layers and it was nice to create. I will see you tomorrow on Day 307!

Best,

Linda

Stained- Tribute to Vivian Springford
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-VIew
Stained- Tribute to Vivian Springford
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Stained- Tribute to Vivian Springford
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Stained- Tribute to Vivian Springford
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Stained- Tribute to Vivian Springford
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

October 22, 2014

Day 295- Fritz Bultman- Symbolism and Geometry

It’s Day 295 and I enjoyed the abstract piece I worked on today. I’m also excited about my improv show tonight and need to do some research so join me in honoring Fritz Bultman today.

Fritz Bultman

Rosa Park- Fritz Bultman

Fritz Bultman (April 4, 1919 – July 20, 1985) was an American Abstract expressionist painter, sculptor, and collagist and a member of the New York School of artists.

A. Fred Bultman was the second child and only son of A. Fred and Pauline Bultman. His family was prominent in New Orleans, where his father owned a Catholic funeral company. By the age of thirteen he was interested in art, and worked with Morris Graves, who was a family friend.

As a high school junior in 1935 Fritz went to study in Munich for two years, and there boarded with Maria Hofmann, the wife of artist and teacher Hans Hofmann.

King Zulu- Fritz Bultman

After returning to the United States he studied with Hofmann in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Despite his father’s wishes that he become an architect, with Hofmann’s encouragement he decided instead to continue his study of art. In 1944 he bought a house in Provincetown, and thenceforth Bultman and his wife Jeanne divided their time between Cape Cod and New York City.

His early paintings have been described as “rough and painterly”, an amalgam of symbolism and geometry.

Red Rope- Fritz Bultman

Bultman was exhibiting with other abstract expressionists by the late 1940s, and in 1950 was aligned with the group of New York School artists, nicknamed the “Irascibles” in an article in Life magazine, who signed a letter to the Metropolitan Museum of Art protesting the institution’s conservative policies. With the assistance of a grant from Italy he studied bronze casting in Florence in 1951; subsequently he was the sole abstract expressionist to fully integrate sculpture into his oeuvre.

Affected by anxiety and depression, Bultman worked little between 1952 and 1956, and resumed painting and sculpting after undergoing Freudian analysis. At a time when African Americans were prohibited from visiting white museums in the south, in 1963 Bultman and his wife led a group of prominent New York artists and writers in the creation of a collection of modern art for Tougaloo College, a black institution in Jackson, Mississippi. Bultman was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1964-5 to work in Paris. In the 1960s Bultman began to make large collages, using pre-painted paper cut or torn and assembled into shapes reminiscent of his figurative drawings and more abstract sexual symbolism. In 1976 he started making stained glass windows with the aid of his wife.

Bultman died of cancer in 1985.

To Robert Motherwell, Bultman was “one of the most splendid, radiant and inspired painters of my generation.”, and David Houston,

Interior Game- Fritz Bultman

curator of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans called him “an important artist from the South who was part of that great moment that changed the American cultural landscape.”

Idea I, 1958, by Fritz Bultman

It has been suggested that Bultman’s career and subsequent reputation suffered from the vagaries of chance: he was not available for inclusion in the now iconic photo shoot for Life magazine that helped establish the reputations of the New York School painters; another possibility, according to Motherwell, was Bultman’s lack of interest in “art world politics”.

Biography is from wikipedia.

I hope you enjoy my piece today. I’m really happy with it. I will see you tomorrow on Day 295.

Best,

Linda

One Way- Tribute to Fritz Bultman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
One Way- Tribute to Fritz Bultman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
One Way- Tribute to Fritz Bultman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
One Way- Tribute to Fritz Bultman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
One Way- Tribute to Fritz Bultman
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Tagged abstract, abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist, American, art, art challenge, art history, art project, artists, challenges, collages, collagist, contemporary, creativity, daily art, day of the artist, Fritz Bultman, Hans Hofmann, Irascibles, linda cleary, Lyrical Abstraction, lyrical abstractionist, paint, painterly, painting, painting a day, projects, rough, sculptor
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October 21, 2014

Day 294- Per Kirkeby- Landskaberne

It’s Day 294 and today’s painting was fun yet challenging. Today’s artist has a special abstract style. Join me in honoring Per Kirkeby today.

Per Kirkeby

Per Kirkeby, Nikopeja II 1996, Oil on canvas

Per Kirkeby (born Copenhagen, 1 September 1938) is a Danish painter, poet, film maker and sculptor.

Per Kirkeby is one of the most internationally acclaimed Danish artists today. By the

Per Kirkeby Untitled, 1998

time he completed a masters education in arctic geology at the University of Copenhagen in 1964, he was already part of the important experimental art school “eks-skolen” and working primarily as a painter, sculptor, writer and a lithographic artist which he has pursued ever since.

Kirkeby’s interest in geology and nature in general, still plays a crucial role in his artistic expressions these themes are therefore very characteristic in the works of the artist. Kirkeby’s works have been shown at many art exhibitions worldwide and are represented in many public collections such as Tate Gallery, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art,New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Kirkeby has been teaching as a professor at the Art Academy in Karlsruhe (1978–89) and Frankfurter Städelschule (1989–2000).

Weltuntergang- Per Kirkeby

Biography is from wikipedia.

Danish painter, sculptor and writer. In 1962 he entered the Eksperimenterende Kunst-skole (Experimental Art School) in Copenhagen.His first important one-man exhibition abroad was at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, in 1977. He later exhibited widely at public and commercial galleries throughout Europe and the USA.

A prolific artist, Kirkeby used a range of different media. He was a member of the Fluxus group and was influenced by Pop art in the 1960s. Later he was influenced by Tachism and Abstract Expressionism. The vigorous brushwork and chromatic beauty of his, mostly untitled, paintings and the sensuous modelling of his rough black bronzes have earned him the title ‘lyric expressionist’. The paintings, which tend towards the abstract, bear veiled iconographic reference, largely to the Danish landscape and the female figure.

In contrast to the poetic and dramatic character of his paintings and black bronzes Kirkeby’s brick sculptures display an unusual clarity.

Per Kirkeby

They make strong reference to traditional Danish housing and are inspired by Mayan architecture, as in the house-like, symmetrical form (1973) at Ikast, Denmark.

Per Kirkeby

In 1981 Kirkeby completed a group of such sculptures for the County Council building in Ålborg. His concern with experiment and conceptual art led him to execute a series of works in chalk on blackboard, and he regularly published poetry, essays and travel books, as well as making television and full-length documentary films. He also produced many artist’s books, such as the ‘picture novel’ Landskaberne (‘Landscapes’; Copenhagen, 1969).

Biography above is from the Tate website.

I enjoyed doing today’s piece and I hope you enjoy it. I will see you tomorrow on Day 295.

Best,

Linda

Klipper og Sprækker- Tribute to Per Kirkeby
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Klipper og Sprækker- Tribute to Per Kirkeby
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Klipper og Sprækker- Tribute to Per Kirkeby
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Klipper og Sprækker- Tribute to Per Kirkeby
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Klipper og Sprækker- Tribute to Per Kirkeby
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Tagged abstract, abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist, abstract landscape, abstract landscape painter, art, art challenge, art history, art project, artists, challenges, contemporary, creativity, daily art, Danish, Danish artist, day of the artist, female figure, figurative, geologist, Gestural, landscape, landscape artist, linda cleary, lithographic, lithography, lyric expressionist, Lyrical Abstraction, lyrical abstractionist, mountains, paint, painters, painting, painting a day, Per Kirkeby, projects, rocks, sculptor
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October 15, 2014

Day 288- Elaine de Kooning- Returning to Things

It’s Day 288 and I was excited to work on today’s painting. Another artist I could’ve sworn I had already paid tribute to! Join me in honoring Elaine de Kooning today!

Elaine de Kooning

Elaine de Kooning, Bacchus #63, 1982

Elaine de Kooning (March 12, 1918 – February 1, 1989)

Elaine de Kooning was born Elaine Marie Catherine Fried in 1918 (although she would later claim her birth year was 1920), to Marie and Charles Frank Fried, a plant manager for the Bond Bread Company in Brooklyn, NY. She was the first of four children who were all raised in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn. Elaine’s younger sister, Marjorie, once recalled that their mother was not the most attentive and loving parent, but she did instill in her children a love for the arts, often taking them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to several Broadway shows.

Elaine was clearly their mother’s favorite of the four children. According to an old friend

Bullfight- Elaine de Kooning

of Elaine’s, Marie’s nickname for her oldest daughter was “Samson,” from the Old Testament figure who was granted great strength by God. Marie was an eccentric and highly intelligent woman who was frequently seen walking around town in disheveled clothing and heavy makeup.

Self-Portrait

In the late 1920s, a neighbor reported Marie to the police for neglecting her children, and when the police arrived at the Fried home, Marie had to be physically forced from the premises. She was committed to the Creedmoor Psychiatric

Bullfight La Corrida- Elaine de Kooning

Center in Queens Village for a year, during which time the children’s primary caregiver was their housekeeper. Elaine de Kooning became a surrogate parent for her younger siblings.

In 1932, de Kooning began attending Erasmus Hall High School where she excelled at nearly everything, including sports and academics. Four years later, she enrolled at Hunter College in Manhattan, but dropped out after only a few weeks of classes.

After leaving Hunter, de Kooning enrolled in classes at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, located on 3rd Avenue and 34th Street, where artists employed by the New Deal-funded WPA (Works Progress Administration) were working as teachers. It was at the da Vinci School where she met artist Robert Jonas, whom she dated briefly, and remained close to throughout her life.

Portrait of John F. Kennedy- Elaine de Kooning

While attending classes at the da Vinci School, de Kooning became politically active, representing the school at meetings of the leftist John Reed Club. At these meetings she attempted to organize students into a new auxiliary union for artists, simply called the Artists’ Union. It was also at the John Reed Club meetings where she met artist Milton Resnick, who was representing the American Artists School. Resnick and de Kooning began dating soon thereafter, at which point she dropped out of Leonardo da Vinci and enrolled in classes at American Artists, where she learned from teachers Stuart Davis and Raphael Soyer.

Through her involvement with the American Artists School, de Kooning became active with

Untitled Corrida- Elaine de Kooning

the Young Communist League (YCL), and frequently attended workers camps and other meetings sponsored by the Communist Party. To support herself financially during her student years, de Kooning joined the Models’ Union to find work as an artist’s model.

In the autumn of 1938, Elaine’s art teacher introduced her to the 34-year-old Dutch emigre Willem (Bill) de Kooning, but there is little evidence to suggest any romantic connection at their initial meeting. Elaine was with Resnick at the time, who had supposedly commented once to her, “Bill is going to be the greatest painter in the country.”

Untitled 1965- Elaine de Kooning

Shortly after their introduction, a friend of de Kooning’s took her to Willem’s studio. Later in life, Elaine recalled, “It was the cleanest place I ever saw in my life. It had painted gray floors, white walls, one table…one easel, one fantastically good phonograph that cost $800 when he was only making $22 a week, and one painting of a man on the easel.”

Shortly after meeting, Willem offered to give Elaine drawing lessons, which she

Portrait of Jack Greenbaum- Elaine de Kooning

accepted. In late 1938, de Kooning finally sold her first work, a watercolor, for $10.

Photographer Rudy Burkhardt, who Willem introduced to Elaine, later recalled that “Bill was incredibly in love with her, but she didn’t treat him very well at the beginning… She would lean back on the couch and say, ‘Bill. Cigarette.’ And he would leap to get it.” In 1939, the year after the two artists met, de Kooning moved into Willem’s studio on West 22nd Street.

On December 9, 1943, Elaine and Willem were married at a small, understated ceremony at City Hall. De Kooning later recalled that the wedding itself was “kind of bleak… afterwards, we went to a bar in the downtown district and we all had a drink… it was kind of amusing.”

Elaine de Kooning, Al Lazar (Man in a Hotel Room), 1954

Working and teaching outside the shadow of her more famous husband, de Kooning gained acclaim as one of America’s premier artists. In 1962, she received a commission from the White House to paint the portrait of President John F. Kennedy; an impressive honor bestowed upon an artist commonly associated with the bohemian New York School of painting. De Kooning then spent the better part of 1963 fine-tuning the portrait, collecting hundreds of photographs of Kennedy, and drawing short-hand sketches of him whenever he appeared on TV. The resulting portrait remains one of de Kooning’s most well-known and celebrated paintings, and easily stands out in the long line of presidential portraits.

She died February 1, 1989.

Partial biography is from www.theartstory.org.

I decided to use a few matador/bullfighting photos as reference for my piece today, since it seemed to be a recurring theme in some of her paintings. I really enjoyed the gestural and fluid style of today’s piece. I think I needed to return to that after doing artists like van Gogh and Matisse this week! I hope you enjoy my piece and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 289!

Best,

Linda

Matador- Tribute to Elaine de Kooning
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side View
Matador- Tribute to Elaine de Kooning
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Matador- Tribute to Elaine de Kooning
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Matador- Tribute to Elaine de Kooning
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Matador- Tribute to Elaine de Kooning
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

October 6, 2014

Day 279- Italo Valenti- Narrative Dimensions

It’s Day 279 and I’m running around getting things done before going out and having dinner with my in-laws that are in town. I haven’t done a collage piece in a while so I did one today. Join me in honoring Italo Valenti today. I had to translate his biography from Italian.

Italo Valenti

Italo Valenti
Archétypes, 1971
38 1/2 in. x 39 1/4in. Painted paper on pavatex
– See more at: http://www.bechtler.org/collection#sthash.CVAeIPcI.dpuf

Italo Valenti (Milan, April 29, 1912 – Ascona, September 6, 1995) was an Italian painter.

“And it’s probably indulge in this aimless, in these pauses of silence, which one has

Italo Valenti

the feeling of being closer to themselves, that is, more spontaneous. In living in this world of the unusual, where things often live concealed or lost outside and inside of us, is perhaps the natural phenomenon of forgetting, working almost automatically.”
(Italo Valenti)

He was born in Milan April 29, 1912, the son of wealthy merchants. His was a happy childhood, even in the absence of parents, passed in the house Milan welcomed by the fairy tales of his grandmother who will be a constant source of inspiration for his art. At seven he moved to Vicenza; in the Venetian city attended the School of Arts and Crafts and began working at a goldsmith.

Italo Valenti

It was the theosophist Free Augenti to him to discover that all the arts are in connection with each other. He held his first solo exhibition in Valdagno in 1932 he enrolled at the Academy of Venice and then at the Academy of Brera where he studied with Aldo Carpi and Eve Tea. At this date also the first trip to Paris and Belgium to the discovery of Cézanne, and painting impressionist and post-impressionist.

In 1937 he entered the Corrente movement with Sassu, Luciano Anceschi, Guttuso, Fontana, Birolli, Cassinari, Raffaele De Grada, Treccani, Benjamin Joppa, Salvatore Quasimodo, Migneco, Morlotti, Vittorio Sereni and others, which referred to civil

Valenti Italo Collage

and social expressionist art to overcome the provincialism and the rhetoric of Italian art. The participation of Valenti activity of the group was intense: the distinctive feature of his figurative painting was to be found in the sleepy and dreamy lyricism that made mention of “primitivism fantastic,” already stretched to the stylization of the figure that will land as a result of abstract forms.

“Eurydike”- Italo Valenti

In 1938 he began his teaching career at the School of nude di Brera, where he taught until 1952, when he moved permanently to Switzerland, Locarno. Here he came in contact with the group of artists that were present at that time in Ascona (Jean Arp, Ben Nicholson, Remo Rossi and Julius Bissier) and this led to a gradual rethinking of his painting: the narrative dimension, more properly figurative, was progressively less as he said more research on the effects of color and space that led him to a phase of “lyrical abstraction informal.”

The themes of the dream “primitivism fantastic” were still present: the magicians, the series of cerfs ruffles, the moons, the theaters, the stations of vessels; but the style was completely different:

Italo Valenti

the composition was shattered into triangles, trapezoids, rhombuses, primordial symbols and enigmatic with their own “thoughtful lightness.”

It is among the painters that the entrepreneur Giuseppe Verzocchi contacted for its collection of works on the theme of the work: between 1949 and 1950, Valenti realized locomotives (1949-1950), under which, together with the self, is now preserved Collection Verzocchi, at the Pinacoteca Civica of Forlì.

His painting is more pure, clean, composed of a few elements that float in an abstract vacuum. So are created abstract collages of the last artistic production, in which the boyish, the fantastic, dreamlike find their final equilibrium with the symbolic, the enigmatic abstraction, in a vital synthesis and final. In 1985 he was hit by stroke which deprives him of speech and the use of his right arm. For this reasons, the collages that follow belong to what he calls the “era of the left hand.” He died September 6, 1995 in Ascona.

Biography is from Italian wikipedia.

I hope you enjoy my tribute today! I will see you tomorrow on Day 279.

Best,

Linda

Forme- Tribute to Italo Valenti
Linda Cleary 2014
Mixed-Media on Canvas

Side-View
Forme- Tribute to Italo Valenti
Linda Cleary 2014
Mixed-Media on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Forme- Tribute to Italo Valenti
Linda Cleary 2014
Mixed-Media on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Forme- Tribute to Italo Valenti
Linda Cleary 2014
Mixed-Media on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Forme- Tribute to Italo Valenti
Linda Cleary 2014
Mixed-Media on Canvas

September 27, 2014

Day 270- Makoto Fujimura- Beauty Revealed

It’s Day 270 and I have an improv show this evening! Pretty excited and nervous…but painting definitely helped distract my mind a bit today. I found this artist and was going to wait to do a tribute until I bought actual gold leaf…then I got too excited to try it and did it with metallic paint. I hope I was able to capture the essence of his artwork. Join me in honoring Makoto Fujimura today. He is so wonderful!

Makoto Fujimura

Tree Grace- Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura (born in 1960 in Boston, USA) is a 21st-century contemporary artist. He graduated with a B.A. from Bucknell University, then studied in a traditional Japanesepainting doctorate program for several years at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music with several notable artists such as Takashi Murakami and Hiroshi Senju.

He was the first non-native to participate in the Japanese Painting Doctorate

Splendor for Kayama- Makoto Fujimura

Program, which dates back to 15th century. His bicultural arts education led his style towards a fusion between fine art and abstract expressionism, together with the traditional Japanese art of Nihonga.

Fujimura founded the International Arts Movement in 1991 and currently acts as Creative Director. He has co-hosted several major conferences for the International Arts Movement, most recently “Inhabit.”

Makoto Fujimura
Soliloquies: Joy

He is represented by Dillon Gallery in New York City and Tokyo; as well as by White Stone Gallery in Philadelphia. His work can be seen at the National Modern Museum of Art in Tokyo, the Saint Louis Museum, the Cincinnati Museum, and the CNN building in Hong Kong. He was appointed by President Bush to the National Council on the Arts in 2003. At the completion of his term in 2009, then Chair Dana Gioia awarded him the Chairman’s Medal for his service and contribution to arts advocacy in the United States.

His work includes “The Splendor of the Medium”, “Water Flames,” and “Charis,” a collection

Golden Summer- Makoto Fujimura

of paintings using stone-ground minerals including gold, platinum, azurite,malachite and cinnabar. He has collaborated with percussionist/composer Susie Ibarra on multiple occasions, and his live painting was recorded by Plywood Pictures in “Live in New York: Susie Ibarra + Makoto Fujimura.” (2009)

In November 2009, Fujimura’s works were coupled with works of Georges Rouault at Dillon Gallery. Fujimura created several new works in homage to the 20th century master, the catalyst of the “Sacred Arts Movement” in Paris that influenced Picasso, Matisse and other modernist artists. Fujimura wrote an essay for the show that was included in a short book that was produced to accompany the show called “Soliloquies” (Square Halo Books, 2009) ISBN 978-0-9785097-2-9.

Crossway Publishing commissioned Fujimura in 2009 for The Four Holy Gospels project to commemorate the 400th Anniversary of the publishing of the King James Bible. It was the first time that a single artist has been commissioned to illuminate the four Gospels in nearly five hundred years. The Gospels were on exhibition at the Museum Of Biblical Art in Manhattan until October 2011, and are on display in Takashimaya, Nihonbashi, Tokyo, until Dec 27th. The Four Holy Gospels comprise of five major frontispieces, 89 chapter heading letters and over 140 pages of hand illumined pages, all done in traditional Nihonga.

Golden Pines- Makoto Fujimura

A popular speaker, he has lectured at Bucknell University, Philadelphia Biblical University, Gordon College, Grove City College, The King’s College (New York), Princeton University, Yale University, Baylor University, Belmont University, Duke University, Belhaven University and various arts conferences. He is also an author of several books including “River Grace” (Poiema Press, 2008), and “Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art and Culture” (NavPress, 2009). His essays have appeared in IMAGE Journal, American Arts Quarterly, and World magazine. His essay “The Fallen Towers and the Art of Tea” was selected for IMAGE Journal’s “Bearing the Image: Twenty Years of IMAGE” anthology. He is featured twice in the book “Objects of Grace: Conversations on Creativity and Faith” (Square Halo Books, 2004) ISBN 978-0-9658798-3-5 and contributed an essay and artwork to “It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God” (Square Halo Books, 2007) ISBN 978-0-9785097-1-2. In 2010 Fujimura made his on-screen debut with commentary in the award winning documentary, The Human Experience.

Biography is from wikipedia.

Visit his website here.

I hope you enjoy my piece for today and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 271@

Best,
Linda

Golden Skies- Tribute to Makoto Fujimura
Linda Cleary
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Golden Skies- Tribute to Makoto Fujimura
Linda Cleary
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Golden Skies- Tribute to Makoto Fujimura
Linda Cleary
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Golden Skies- Tribute to Makoto Fujimura
Linda Cleary
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Golden Skies- Tribute to Makoto Fujimura
Linda Cleary
Acrylic on Canvas

Tagged abstract, abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist, American, art, art challenge, art history, art project, artists, bicultural arts, challenges, contemporary, contemporary artist, creativity, daily art, day of the artist, fine art, gold leaf, japanese, japanese american, Japanese style art, linda cleary, lyrical abstractionist, Makoto Fujimura, minerals, natural painter, nihonga, paint, painters, painting, painting a day, popular speaker, projects, Writer
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September 26, 2014

Day 269- Josef Mikl- New Discoveries

It’s Day 269 and my busy week is wrapping up…I had a very nice time painting today’s piece. I feel like I haven’t done an abstract piece quite like this one in a while. There’s something very freeing about these kind of paintings. Join me in honoring Josef Mikl today!

Josef Mikl

The dog Kopejkin (Gogol), 2000, oil on canvas, 200×200 cm- Josef Mikl

Josef Mikl (August 8, 1929 – March 29, 2008) was an Austrian abstract painter of the Informal style.

Born in Vienna, he received his first training at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, studying at the prominent Viennese academy from 1949 to 1956 under Josef Dobrovský. Collaborating with Friedensreich Hundertwasser at the Vienna Art Club, Mikl later was a member of the Galerie St. Stephan group. In 1968 Mikl, well known in Austria, represented his home country at the 34th Biennale in Venice.

Classified as an Informal and Modernist artist, Mikl himself despised his artwork being placed under a specific label, calling it “an insult” in an undated interview. He worked in oil, pastels and water colors, as well as sculptures and drawings that either stood alone or served as illustrations in a book or decorations in a church. Mikl is best known for renovating the Redoutensaal in Vienna’s Imperial Palace after it was destroyed in a 1992 fire. The hall once served as a venue for the first performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 8th Symphony as well as a summit between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita S. Krushchev and was reopened in 1997 with vibrant reds and yellows depicting notable themes and figures of Austrian literature, all of Mikl’s design.

Josef Mikl died of cancer on March 29, 2008. His funeral was held on April 3 though his death was not announced until the next day, in

Josef Mikl

accordance with Mikl’s wishes. Survivors include his wife, Brigitte Bruckner, and their 20-year-old daughter Anna Mikl.

Biography above is from wikipedia.

Below is from his obituary in The Guardian.

The painter Josef Mikl, who has died from cancer at the age of 78, was one of the most distinguished abstract artists of his generation. Though relatively little known in Britain, in his native Austria he received many honours, including a commission to decorate the state room known as the Redoutensaal, in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace, after its destruction by fire in 1992.

Josef Mikl

As well as its impressive size and vibrant fields of colour, the hall’s painted ceiling includes 34 verses by the early 20th-century author Karl Kraus, handwritten by Mikl on such a small scale that they are invisible to the spectator below. Public art and personal expression have rarely been so deftly combined.

Mikl was born in Vienna, where he started his training at the end of the second world war. After three years at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (Vienna Training and Research Institute of Graphic Arts), in 1949 he began studying under Josef Dobrowsky, who had recently been appointed to the Academy of Fine Arts, the institution in which Mikl was himself to become a professor 20 years later. Dobrowsky’s vivid landscapes and genre paintings had a significant effect after the cultural sterility of the Nazi era. However, together with his fellow academy student Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Mikl helped to open Austria to more radical foreign influences, especially the expressive abstraction of French art informal.

Even more important was Mikl’s relationship with Markus Prachensky, Arnulf Rainer and Wolfgang Hollegha. In 1956 these abstract painters joined the circle around the extraordinary Monsignor Otto Mauer, a liberal Catholic intellectual who set up a gallery, next to St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, at which Mikl frequently exhibited in the late 1950s and 60s.

His rising reputation led to some monumental commissions, for example to design a stained-glass window in 1959 for the Peace Church

Josef Mikl

in Hiroshima. During this period he was also invited to prestigious international shows, representing Austria at the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968, and twice participating in the documenta exhibition in Kassel.

Mikl’s output was certainly varied, ranging from oils, pastels and watercolours to sculpture and book illustrations. The clearly defined, almost mechanistic forms of his youth gave way to more lyrical images in which the human figure was often hinted at through sensuous washes of colour.

The influence from action painting can hardly be denied: like other artists, most famously Jackson Pollock, Mikl sometimes laid his canvases on the floor in order to work. The scale of his projects also increased, as in his 300-square-metres decoration for a chapel at the St Virgil educational centre in Salzburg in 1975-76. However, he was still capable of producing small, subtle pieces: lithographs and other prints, for example, filled with delicate shifts of tone and linear patterns.

Josef Mikl

Moreover, Mikl was keen to distance himself from abstract expressionism’s more extravagant aesthetic and intellectual claims. Above all, he did not wish to be seen as representing contemporary anguish or any other spirit of his age. He dismissed the concept of zeitgeist as “decorative”: as he put it, “it works with the masses as the most powerful force, with sentimentality, foolish content, false form, bad technique, the pseudo-philosophy of the art trade. The word zeitgeist is an insult.” Mikl saw himself rather as the Thomas Edison of painting, continually making new discoveries, regardless of the preconceptions of the day. This intellectual dynamism is most clearly reflected in the Redoutensaal canvases, which were completed in 1997. While the ceiling and some of the wall paintings are responses to modern works by Kraus and Elias Canetti, other images in the room refer to the 19th-century dramatists Johann Nestroy and Ferdinand Raimund.

Nestroy’s sharp satire, often using comic songs and wordplay, could be expressed only obliquely through abstract art, and yet the contrast with the reconstructed room’s pompous architecture is highly effective. It is hard to imagine a more fitting adornment to a chamber that hosts such magnificent functions as the council of EU ministers and the Viennese coffee-makers’ ball.

Mikl himself was given numerous awards, from the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1990) to the City of Vienna’s Ring of Honour (2004). He is survived by his wife, the artist Brigitte Bruckner, who was over 30 years his junior, and his daughter Anna. The news of his death was not made public, according to his wishes, until shortly after his funeral.

· Josef Mikl, artist, born August 8 1929; died March 29 2008

I hope you enjoy my piece for today! I will see you tomorrow on Day 270!

Best,

Linda

Rot und Blau Tanzen- Tribute to Josef Mikl
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Rot und Blau Tanzen- Tribute to Josef Mikl
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Rot und Blau Tanzen- Tribute to Josef Mikl
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

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Rot und Blau Tanzen- Tribute to Josef Mikl
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Rot und Blau Tanzen- Tribute to Josef Mikl
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Tagged abstract, abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist, action painter, art, art challenge, art history, art informale, Art Informel, art project, artists, Austrian, challenges, color field, contemporary, creativity, daily art, day of the artist, Informal Style, Josef Mikl, linda cleary, Lyrical Abstraction, lyrical abstractionist, modern art, modernist, paint, painters, painting, painting a day, projects
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September 19, 2014

Day 262- Frank Bowling- Freedom in the Abstract

It’s Day 262 and when I found today’s artist I got pretty excited about doing a tribute for him! Join me in honoring Frank Bowling today. 🙂

Frank Bowling

Frank Bowling ‘Julia’ (1975) courtesy of Tate website.

Richard Sheridan Franklin Bowling, known as Frank Bowling, OBE (born 29 February 1936), is a

For rose – Frank Bowling

Guyana-born British artist who is widely considered to be one of the most distinguished artists to emerge from post-war British art schools. His paintings relate to Abstract expressionism, Color Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction.

Bowling was born in Bartica, Guyana, South America. His father was a police district paymaster and his

mother a seamstress, and in 1950, at the age of 15, he moved to England, where he lived with an uncle and completed his education.

After doing his National Service in the Royal Air Force, Bowling went on to study art, despite earlier ambitions to be a poet and a writer. He studied at the Chelsea School of Art, then in 1959 won a scholarship to London’s Royal College of Art, where fellow students included artists such as David Hockney, Derek Boshier, Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj and Peter Phillips.

At graduation in 1962, Hockney was awarded the gold medal while Bowling was given the silver. Bowling had been tipped to win the gold

Frank Bowling, Upright, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 74 x 53 inches

but due to his controversial 1960 marriage to Royal College Registrar Paddy Kitchen (they divorced in the late 1960s), he was relegated to silver.

Frank Bowling- Crossing Liberty 1 (courtesy of the artist and ROLLO Contemporary Art)

His first one-person exhibition, entitled “Image in Revolt,” was held in London in 1962 at the Grabowski Galleries, and other exhibitions followed. However, Bowling was frustrated at being pigeonholed as a Caribbean artist; as he said in a Guardian interview with Laura Barnett: “It seemed that everyone was expecting me to paint some kind of protest art out of postcolonial discussion. For a while I fell for it. I painted a picture called the Martyrdom of Patrice Lumumba.”

A move to New York in the mid-1960s exposed Bowling to his American

contemporaries and soon won him a place in the 1971 Whitney Biennial. As Maya Jaggi writes: “unlike contemporaries who founded British pop art, Bowling took a singular path, from Bacon-esque figurative painting to an abstract art touched by

Frank Bowling- Tony’s Anvil 1975, acrylic on canvas

personal memory and history…. Encouraged by the US critic Clement Greenberg, he found a freedom in

Head (1974)- Frank Bowling

abstract art, alongside Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.” Between 1969 and 1972 Bowling was a contributing editor of Arts Magazine.

Bowling now spends part of each year between London and New York, where he maintains studios.

Bowling’s paintings have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States and are included in major private and corporate collections worldwide. His work can also be seen in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as the Tate Gallery in London.

Biography is from wikipedia.

I had such a fun time with my “pouring” painting today! This is definitely one I want to emulate on a much larger scale. I hope you like my piece today and I will see you tomorrow on Day 263.

Best,

Linda

Standing Up- Tribute to Frank Bowling
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Side-View
Standing Up- Tribute to Frank Bowling
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Standing Up- Tribute to Frank Bowling
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Standing Up- Tribute to Frank Bowling
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Standing Up- Tribute to Frank Bowling
Linda Cleary 2014
Acrylic on Canvas

September 18, 2014

Day 261- William Tillyer- Edenic Visions

It’s Day 261 and I really was in the mood for doing another watercolor piece. I loved this artist’s style. Join me in honoring William Tillyer today!

William Tillyer

William Tillyer,
The Age of Anxiety / The Kerry Sunset

William Tillyer (born 1938 in Middlesbrough) is an English artist. His work has been shown frequently in the UK and internationally since 1970.

He studied art in his home town from 1956-9, moving south to London in the 1960s to study at the Slade School of Art. It was there he encountered William Coldstream

William Tillyer The North York Moors, Falling Sky, 1985

and Anthony Gross, among others. Following his time at the Slade, Tillyer took up a French Government Scholarship to study gravure under Stanley William Hayter, at Atelier 17 in Paris.

On his return to London, Tillyer began to make radically experimental work which raised questions about the relationship of art to the world – man to nature.

William Tillyer, ‘Northern Arizona 3’ 1984

Wandering between the conceptual intrigue of works like Eight Clouds and the Minimalist assertions of works like Red Interior, Tillyer developed a range of means by which to deepen the external references of his work.

Consistently searching for new means by which to explore his thoughts, the 1970s saw Tillyer return to print-making with renewed vigour. He won international

William Tillyer
Haute Alps, 1983

acclaim at the Second International Print Bienalle in Kraków, and found the support of Bernard Jacobson, who has been his dealer ever since.

With these prints Tillyer used a variety of techniques, from etching to five tone screenprinting, to create lattices, which through the gradation of tone themselves depicted what Pat Gilmour, the head of the Print Department at the Tate, described as ‘a cool and unpeopled world…in which to reflect the surrounding flux of nature’.

William Tillyer The Balcony 25

Such concerns have continued to underpin Tillyer’s practice to the present day, the artist balancing formal and technical experimentation against the demands of subject matter – demanding multiple reactions from the viewer.

His most recent series reveals the artist returning to some of the earliest themes of his career, isolating John Constable’s cloud studies, as a motif through which to explore his own thoughts about the English Landscape today.

In 2010 a major monograph on his watercolours was published by 21 Publishing covering almost 40 years of his practise. In the extensive text American art critic and poet John Yau writes “However beautiful they are, and many of them are extremely beautiful, almost painfully so, Tillyer’s watercolours never lead us away in favour of an Edenic vision”

In 2013 Mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) in Middlesbrough will be giving Tillyer his first major retrospective exhibition

William Tillyer Beach and Sea, Seaton Carew, 1956

since 1996.

Biography is from wikipedia.

The more I experiment with watercolor the more I learn…AND the more I realize how tricky watercolors can be! Next time I’d like to do them on paper and then mount it on a canvas. I hope you enjoy my piece today and I will see you tomorrow on Day 262!

Best,

Linda

Dark Horizon- Tribute to William Tillyer
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor on Canvas

Side-View
Dark Horizon- Tribute to William Tillyer
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor on Canvas

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Dark Horizon- Tribute to William Tillyer
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor on Canvas

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Dark Horizon- Tribute to William Tillyer
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor on Canvas

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Dark Horizon- Tribute to William Tillyer
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor on Canvas

July 26, 2014

Day 207- Leon Berkowitz- Depth of Vision

It’s Day 207 and the dogs woke me up early…so I decided to get my painting done so that I can finish my last chapter of my book today. 🙂 Join me in honoring Leon Berkowitz today. When I looked at his paintings I thought it’d be an easy one…but alas, it wasn’t. Yet another lesson learned during the process of this project. 🙂 I decided to focus on a certain era of his paintings. They are wonderful and “known for their mystical radiance”.

Leon Berkowitz

Leon Berkowitz (1919–1987)

Leon Berkowitz

A painter, philosopher, and teacher, Leon Berkowitz was a central figure in the Washington Color School. He began his career as a landscape painter, but evolved into a painter of abstract canvases. Using glazes of oil to produce luminous effects, he created works noted for their mystical radiance.

Berkowitz was born in Philadelphia and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Art Students League in New York, as well as in Paris, Florence, and Mexico City. He was stationed in Virginia while serving in the army during World War II. After completing his military service, he moved to Washington, D.C. There he taught art, both in high schools and at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, where he was chairman of the painting department. He continued teaching until his death in 1987.

In 1945, Berkowitz established the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts, with his

Golda 1979- Leon Berkowitz

first wife, Ida Fox, who was a poet. Established to foster artistic culture through an exchange of ideas, the center played an important role in the capital’s art scene. The painters associated with it included Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Gene Davis.

These artists, along with Berkowitz, would become known as the main figures in the Washington Color School. Berkowitz did not feel comfortable with this label, preferring to acknowledge “the greater influences of poetry, music, and physics” rather than a description of his art as color for its own sake.

Big Blue- Leon Berkowitz

After the center closed in 1956, Berkowitz spent a decade traveling extensively and living abroad with his wife. They resided for periods of time in Wales and Spain. Berkowitz developed his art in a new direction during this time. Merging art with structure, he created fully abstract works filled with mists of color and light. Berkowitz sought to restore to color a “depth of vision,” engaging the viewer in a discovery of the natural forms in the universe: sea, sky, and earth. His works have been related to those of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko for their use of color for a meditational experience.

Berkowitz exhibited his work widely and received several awards, including a purchase prize

Source #7- Leon Berkowitz

from the Flint Invitational, Michigan (1970)and a grant from the National Foundation for Arts and Humanities (1971). A solo exhibition of his work was held at Guelph University, Ontario, in 19170.

His work belongs to many important private and public collections including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Flint

Leon Berkowitz

Institute of Arts, Michigan; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the James A. Michener Collection, Houston, Texas; the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona; and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.

Biography is from Spanierman Modern Gallery’s website.

I hope you enjoy my piece today! It was difficult to emulate since I didn’t use oil glazes, but I tried to do the best I could with water colors and an enamel glaze! I will see you tomorrow on Day 208! Best, Linda

Sunspot- Tribute to Leon Berkowitz
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor and Enamel on Canvas

Side-View
Sunspot- Tribute to Leon Berkowitz
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor and Enamel on Canvas

Close-Up 1
Sunspot- Tribute to Leon Berkowitz
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor and Enamel on Canvas

Close-Up 2
Sunspot- Tribute to Leon Berkowitz
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor and Enamel on Canvas

Close-Up 3
Sunspot- Tribute to Leon Berkowitz
Linda Cleary 2014
Watercolor and Enamel on Canvas

Tagged abstract, abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist, American, art, art challenge, art history, art project, artists, challenges, color, color field, contemporary, creativity, daily art, day of the artist, ida fox, Leon Berkowitz, linda cleary, Lyrical Abstraction, lyrical abstractionist, paint, painters, painting, painting a day, projects, Washington Color School
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Day of the Artist

One year, one girl, one painting a day…can she do it?

Tag Archives: lyrical abstractionist

Day 306- Vivian Springford- Beautiful Stains

Day 295- Fritz Bultman- Symbolism and Geometry

Day 294- Per Kirkeby- Landskaberne

Day 288- Elaine de Kooning- Returning to Things

Day 270- Makoto Fujimura- Beauty Revealed

Day 269- Josef Mikl- New Discoveries

Day 262- Frank Bowling- Freedom in the Abstract

Day 261- William Tillyer- Edenic Visions

Day 207- Leon Berkowitz- Depth of Vision

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