Search Results: b (2704)

Letters sara genn lake ohara
18

My daughter, Sara, and I are again up to Lake O’Hara and Yoho National Park in British Columbia. Today, in the champagne air of a place known as “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” both of us are struggling with extra-large canvases. We’ve come this high with a little help from our friends, and we’re talking about “strong and wrong.” It’s a term currently used by some of Sara’s New York musician friends. Apparently it’s better to blow a strong note off key than to produce a wimpy one that doesn’t get noticed.

Letters The Studio, 1881 oil on canvas by Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-1884)
20

When I was a kid my folks took me on a road trip. As we approached the town of Hope, B.C., we saw, crawling up the shoulder of a steep hill, an ancient Model T Ford. A skinny, mustachioed man wearing a fedora was sitting up tall behind the wheel. Below him, a sign on the side of the old car read “Toronto or Bust.” Toronto was 5500 miles away. As we flew by in our ’47 Chev Fleetline I distinctly remember my dad turning to me, winking, and saying, “No hope.” My mom laughed. Dad turned out to be wrong.

Letters Ram's Head and White Hollyhock, New Mexico), 1935 oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches by Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)
16

Women artists may be knowingly or unknowingly practicing a creative system called, “cycle-synching.” Neuroscientists have concluded that the two main female reproductive hormones, estrogen and progesterone, do not only rule the body’s fertility but also have a powerful effect on our neurochemistry. Add to this that new fertility-tracking apps like Clue are enabling women to predict the onset of productivity tools like high energy, sex drive, boldness, tiredness, sensitivity and body pain.

Letters Deux Hommes, 1969 oil on canvas by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
15

A remarkable study, Endogenous Steroids and Financial Risk-Taking on a London Trading Floor, has implications for folks in other professions, including ours. According to the study, stock traders build testosterone on days when they are successful. Apparently, the additional hormones can cause higher levels of confidence and risk-taking, while too much of it can include feelings of omnipotence and even carelessness. Conversely, a trader who has experienced successive losses will have higher levels of the downer cortisol, leading to risk aversion and sloppy choices.

Letters The Hunter (Catalan Landscape), 1923–24 oil on canvas 25 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches by Joan Miró.
21

With the unmistakable breeze of authority, Dad said, “Never underestimate the power of a little pressure.” At the time, I took it as many aspiring artists would — that production pressure was a gift from the outside world, a reprieve from the echo chamber of your solitary room. But what he meant was that you need to put pressure on yourself. By doing so, you override the helplessness of creative dependency on external minders and convert yourself magically from a reactive artist into a proactive one. Here’s what I mean:

Letters Girl in White in the Woods, 1882 Oil on paper mounted on canvas by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
26

Just when I thought we might have maxed out on syndromes and disorders — attention deficit disorder, highly sensitive persons, etc., yet another has shown up in the studio inbox. Among the forest of responses to my letter on trees, “Nature Deficit Disorder” was mentioned by several artists. As webmaster Andrew Niculescu has gone mountain climbing, Michelle Moore, a high school student who is helping in the studio over the summer, spent last Friday trying to sort your letters out. From every viewpoint, artists identify with trees, endow them with spirit, wish to honour them, and bemoan their loss. To many, they remind us of our estrangement from natural places.

Letters Composition VII (1913) 78.7 × 118.1 inches oil on canvas by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
22

Every picture you’ve ever looked at has been designed with your travelling eyes in mind. Here’s an exercise for the next time you’re in a gallery: Scan paintings one-by-one in a half squint. Without over-thinking, give each painting’s eye control a score from 1 to 3, with 1 being average, 2, good, and 3, excellent. Are you travelling around within the picture’s edges, enjoying a balance of visual excitement, places of rest, satisfying weighting, depth of field and an intuitive tension and resolution? Are you feeling a sense of paucity and getting adequate information about the subject? Is there an ineffable sensory pleasure?

Letters Twilight of the Gods Acrylic on canvas 20 x 24 inches by Robert Genn (1936-2014)
12

With all the current running off to get things juried and critiqued by others, self-critiquing might seem an unpopular sport. It isn’t. The acquired ability to critique oneself is the fuse of great art and the silver bullet of the pros. While all artists work differently, here are a few thoughts:

Quality develops when the artist and the critic are honed into a functioning co-op within the same skull.

Letters Candace, 2006 oil on canvas 36 x 50 inches by Jacob Collins (b.1964)
9

Jacob Collins is a New York artist and art educator whose avowed goal is to be “an old-fashioned painter.” Working from life — nudes, still life, figures — in his dark and purpose-lit studio, he laboriously draws and draws out the character of his subjects by the time-honoured method of explore, erase and refine. A modern-day Rembrandt, he eschews the unskilled methodology of many among the current avant-garde.

Letters Singer-songwriter Vera Sola prepares to perform at the fourth annual Bombay Beach Biennale on March 22, 2019.
6

In 1905, in an effort to increase water flow for farming into Southern California’s Imperial Valley, engineers accidentally overflowed a bank of the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona. For two years, while repairs were made to the breach, the river flowed into a centuries-dry lake bed, forming the land-locked Salton Sea, about 64 miles southeast of Palm Springs.

1 … 81 82 83 84 85 … 271