Millet Gleaners — copy, pen on Moleskine, 3.5 x 5.5 inches (9 x 14 cm), 05/19/11 Millet Sower — copy, pen on Moleskine, 3.5 x 5.5 inches (9 x 14 cm), 05/19/11 Millet Knitter — copy, pen on Moleskine, 3.5 x 5.5 inches (9 x 14 cm), 05/19/11 … [Read more...]
Elective Surgery
Ultrasound — ink, 6.75 x 4.75 in (17 x 23 cm), 04/02/2010 Waiting Room — ink, 4.75 x 6.75 in ( 23 x 17 cm), 04/05/2010 Post-op Surgical Floor — ink, 6.75 x 4.75 in (17 x 23 cm), 04/05/2010 Sleep — ink, 4.75 x 6.75 in ( 23 x 17 cm), 04/08/2010 … [Read more...]
Gouache Copies
Periodically I paint small gouache copies of great artists's work. The copies are made using a limited palette — red, yellow, blue, and white — to create approximations from print reproductions of the originals. Aside from learning about subject and relationship, design and facture, the act of copying reveals my emotional response as each aspect of the original is encountered. Temperaments and … [Read more...]
200 / 20 / 2
This post marks the 200th publication on the two year anniversary of this blog. The occasion brings to mind another older anniversary. Twenty years ago I quit a perfectly good, well paying, full-time job in corporate marketing graphics. I didn’t quit outright. I took a one-year leave of absence beginning in 1988 to study painting with a teacher in Boston. His six week summer course included the … [Read more...]
VCCA Still-life
Postcard no. 1, oil on paper, 9 x 9 in (22.86 x 22.86 cm), 05/13/09 Postcard no. 2, oil on paper, 9 x 9 in (22.86 x 22.86 cm), 05/14/09 Bonnard, oil on paper, 9 x 9 in (22.86 x 22.86 cm), 05/15/09 … [Read more...]
Titian’s Supper at Emmaus
Boston's Museum of Fine Art is showing an exquisite collection of Titians, along with the work of two other fine Venetian painters, on view through August 16, 2009 — Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice. Included is Titian's Supper at Emmaus from the Louvre. A confrontation plays out between a dog and cat beneath the table cloth. The dog is familiar. It is the same type of … [Read more...]
Manet’s Modernity
Manet’s The Railway, 1873, gouache copy, 5.5 x 7.25 in (13.97 x 18.42cm), 2/26/2009 Reynold’s Nelly O'Brien, 1763, gouache copy, 5.5 x 7.25 in (13.97 x 18.42cm), 3/2/2009 Manet is often referred to as the first modern painter of European art, one of many it turns out, due to both his application of artificially flattened thick, abbreviated paint and for his use of contemporary subject … [Read more...]
Goya and Bonnard
There is an absurdity to making small gouache copies of extremely large, well known oil paintings. I enjoy it. It feels like the difference between gazing through a window at delicious cakes compared to going inside to taste one. It's not the same as painting in a gallery before the original, or groping through the uncertain dark alleys of one's own work. It involves a deeper involvement than just … [Read more...]