Paintings and interior decorating-

Yesterday a rather lush home decor magazine arrived with the newspaper.... lots of glossy pages of beautiful kitchens, expansive decks, glass-railed stairs and so on. However, there were very few paintings on the walls. In a number of cases, the rooms were verging on the bleak because there were no personal touches. As a contrast, I love the Saturday feature where some well-known personality shows a favourite room in their home and explains where the pieces came from and the personal significance. As an artist, I love to have paintings on the wall- and I can even switch them around for variety.  I have a friend whose great-aunt had a closet with her "extra" paintings and  enjoyed changing them around. Currently, I have the boats at Steveston in the entry hall- but it could change again. Maybe some people are afraid to commit - but a lot of artists  are willing to have people try a painting out. Maybe some people feel the painting has to be really expensive -like Tobias Meyer's rule in the last blog-  but it is more important to have something you enjoy and can relate to.  After looking at those lovely homes with stunning architecture, I thought this statement by the interior decorator Ghislaine Vinas was applicable - "Art is the nods and winks that give a place personality."

pricing paintings- another view!

Here is Rudbeckias I - which I did earlier this year and have now posted to a new album on the website- scroll down to "View Loraine's paintings"... So, I actually have some of 2014 posted already- a new record for being up to date. It is priced at my usual rates-haven't got to being a really expensive artist yet. It is interesting,  however, to read about prices for the "superstars". There is a new book out "The Supermodel and the Brillo Box -Back Stories and Peculiar Economics from the World of Contemporary Art"  by Don Thompson that is mostly about big names with big prices and the globalization of the art market. This is a world well beyond life here on the West Coast- where it is all in the name and the hype. One model of art pricing is Tobias Meyer's rule. Meyer said that art prices must be judged against an anchor price like that for a prestigious New York apartment. If the apartment costs $30 million, the Rothko painting that hangs over the fireplace in the living room can have the same value.  Compare that to even inflated Vancouver-area house prices and we are nowhere near that kind of pricing. Even  for a well-known, well-respected artist like Gordon Smith, the price for a large painting might be $40,000.  Many of the Granville Street gallery artists sell for under $10,000  - and you would hardly get a shed, let alone an apartment for that.  In fact, here the painting may well be priced less than the sofa it hangs over. Different worlds and different prices. Here, I think it comes down to people buying what they enjoy and they no doubt get more enjoyment from their purchase than the fellow in a $30 million apartment who is mostly buying a signature in the hopes of impressing others.

Illustrated book

I thought it would be interesting to show these illustrations from Telling Time as we had the artist, Kathryn Shoemaker, as guest artist at the Guild May meeting. She was a very informative speaker and we got some insight into the complications of book illustration. This book begins with a grandmother telling the story of the last Purim celebration she had in Vienna.  The font changes from when she is telling the story to when the rabbi tells the story of Esther from the special scroll. When the story comes back to the grandmother's tale, the slanting dark swastika slashes imply the Nazi threat. The rabbi in his white prayer shawl almost disappears against the snow- was there a miracle and did he get away?  I bought this book for myself as I thought the illustrations were so well done- and I ended up doing a book review for Amazon. Kathryn works in gouache as the colours remain the same on the palette for the next session. She works larger than the finished size will be  and does an incredible amount of research. I think book illustration is important and quality art work is important for children. Too many books are kind of cheap and cartoon-y. ---Not that there aren't good cartoons too - but I think it is a good idea to try to expose children to quality art work. Most people know the classics but it is good to see that work in the best tradition of children's book illustration is being made today too.

Upcoming Midsummer Dream Art Exhibition-

"Let's Play" is one of my three paintings that will be exhibited next week at the CACR sponsored  juried show at Thompson Community Centre.  Midsummer  Dream Art Exhibition  opens with a reception from 6 to 8:30 on Friday, July 18th and continues Saturday July 19th from 10 to 5 and Sunday the 20th from 10 to 4. You can vote for "viewer's choice' which means a cash award to the winning artist. Last year Annie Tsai won with a really beautiful large flower painting.  This is a bit of a fun event as artists from all over enter.  My three paintings are not large ones- and "Let's  Play" is the smallest at only 9" x 12" - but I think the cat would like you to vote for her!

Life drawing in colour

After working in black and white on grey paper for the last sketchbook, I decided it was time to return to colour so I'm using water-soluble wax crayons in the new sketchbook for Life Drawing. The crayons are  Neocolor II by Caran d'Ache. The pictures posted here are actually backwards as the bottom one is the  shortest poses  - 2-minute sketches. I drew each pose in a different colour, using the crayons dry. Then, afterwards, I used a brush with water to wet and set the colours - and added the green around the forms. The next one is a 5-minute pose. Again, dampened afterwards.  It creates interesting effects as some of it becomes a bit like watercolour and some retains the crayon look. The top one was a 20-minute pose and I had time to use more colours. It is fun to work fairly loosely and working in colours is a nice change again.

Soccer and Statements

What with cleaning up and putting away from DoorsOpen, getting out to paint outdoors and having our last sessions on Fridays before the summer - when kids' classes take over the art centre- I haven't photographed the new model drawings. This one was done a couple of months ago and, while it is on my Pinterest Life Drawing folder, I hadn't used it for a blog. It seems appropriate now with the World Soccer Cup going on- so here it is. We had Darwin wearing a soccer uniform for a long pose on a Wednesday night. So that was bit of fun. I tried using vine charcoal to fill in the black pastel more - and it worked.  I also cleaned up some pastels and tools with shaking them in cornstarch - again, a hint that does work. I try to keep the pastels as clean as possible so as to keep the colours fresh. I felt the drawing turned out reasonably well and the light source - an indoor lamp- even was at a good angle to suggest the outdoors.
-Another project is to re-write my biography to bring it up to date and also write an artist's statement. For one upcoming exhibition, I need a one-pager that essentially combines the two. Like a lot of artists, I find it a challenge to get the words right. I often think of the statement by Jean Cocteau-"An artist cannot speak about his work any more than a plant can discuss horticulture". Nowadays, I think they must teach statement-writing at art school because some art is accompanied by a lot of words -or, as Hilton Kramer put it, "The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation". Robert Genn states,"there are people out there who think that heavyweight words are most in need for lightweight work."Pablo Picasso's comment was, "Those trying to explain pictures are as a rule completely mistaken. "..... and yet, something has to be produced....

Finished the Iris painting

I started this one just before DoorsOpen- having it roughly blocked in and intending to work on it during the Open Studio. Well, I did not get very much done. Then, the Irises, which had looked so great earlier, decided to "finish" -leaving only two survivors. I picked one - to have it as a close-up to paint by - and it promptly died!  Fortunately, I had taken photos earlier so I was able to complete the painting- in spite of lack of cooperation on the part of the models. I used some quinoxidine purple, some cobalt blue, some Azo yellow and I was wondering what a medieval artist would think of the colour assortment that I have- especially the man-made colours. We, in this age, are very fortunate with our colour selection and the studies that have gone into it. The National Gallery in London, England is opening a new show called "Making Colour" with the galleries arranged by dominant colours in the paintings. The history of what was available is then clearly visible. At one point, blue was very costly as it came from the gemstone Lapis Lazuli . It was often reserved for the robes of the Virgin Mary. Today, we have Ultramarine - in red or green shade, Phthalo Blue, Cerulean, Cobalt--- a wealth of blues. Van Gogh used some yellows - one of his favourite colours- that have unfortunately darkened but today we can read lab tests about permanency and see samples for transparency or opaqueness. We really have a tremendous wealth in current available pigments.