Most Popular Posts of 2013

The most often viewed posts from this blog of 2013 have turned out to be mostly drawings instead of paintings, not surprising perhaps, considering the slow pace for me that 2013 took on. The most popular from this past year though, is about storing oil paint. Here they are:

5. A Fine Day: Drawing

4. "One Brief Moment Caught From Fleeting Time..."

3. Pencil Appreciation

2. Faster Than Speech

 

1. Keeping Stored Oil Paint Fresh for the Palette

Happy Holidays!

Edmund Dulac The Snow Queen


Happy Holidays everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Reaching Through © 2013 Katherine Kean
diptych, oil on linen   12 x 16 inches each

Wishing everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Building Clouds

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." 
Henry David Thoreau

It looks like putting in "foundations" is the next order of business. In the dark area at the very bottom I'm imagining an imaginary path leading down imaginary steps to an imaginary beach.

While waiting for all of that to appear, below are close up views at the cloud detail and the layers of color.

Traveling Art Returns

Vent ©2012 Katherine Kean
oil on linen 10 x 10 inches

Maine Tides and Rocks  ©2012 Katherine Kean
oil on linen   8 x 10 inches

Rapidly Changing Conditions  ©2012 Katherine Kean
oil on linen   20 x 30 inches.

These three paintings recently returned from exhibiting with Paint America. As part of their Paint the Parks exhibition they went to the Jefferson National Expansion Monument, a 91 acre memorial that is part of the National Park System and receives approximately 2,500,000 visitors annually.

For the exhibition the paintings hung in the Old Courthouse, afterward traveling to the Coutts Museum before returning home.

All of the paintings in this exhibition depict one of our nation's 390 areas supervised by the National Park Service. Rapidly Changing Conditions and Vent are portrayals of Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park, and Maine: Tides, Rocks represents Acadia National Park.

All three paintings returned unscathed, safe and secure, each in it's individual strong box and in probably the most pristine condition I've ever received work back in, no doubt owing to the expertise and professionaliam of the National Park and the Museum staff.

Studio Sneak Peek

A Small Crowd to Watch A Bigger Picture

I sat down with a small group of art friends and watched “A Bigger Picture” a David Hockney documentary, which made for a very pleasant evening, followed up with even more enjoyable discussion and debate.

There is much to appreciate; the free, intuitive work of the hand, the sense of ease and playfulness, and of course the color, witnessing his process as it evolves from relying on photography to exploring nature in person, how he deals with the challenge of completing a large scale 50 panel modular painting for The Royal Academy of Arts in a brief two week period. Luckily he has the means; resources that include hot and cold running assistants to set up easels and supplies, move canvases, and record, digitize, and catalog every piece.

I am intrigued with Hockney’s exploration of alternate forms of perspective, the “moving focus” that Hockney describes – very evident to us in Eastern art, in scroll painting, where the eye is always moving, traveling as the scroll unrolls, rather than locked on a single point. ”Clearly, human eyes do not see in the same way as a single camera lens does.“  How we perceive, how the eye sees, is an ongoing and very basic question for artists, and possibly different for everyone and part of what makes art so interesting.

Watching this documentary may have raised more questions than answers. At least one person didn’t wholly believe that the idyllic English countryside Hockney is painting is real. Fortunately one of our guests grew up there, and validated that the lush pastoral landscape depicted does in fact, exist. We wondered whether the effect in person of the size of the painting is as impressive as it is made out to be. How important is spectacle in art? Is it more than just a method to draw a crowd?

We all wanted to know what happened to Margaret, Hockney’s sister, who moved out of the family home when Hockney and company moved in? And where can we find our own “Jean-Pierre” an essential assistant who seems to take care of all the details that threaten to obstruct the creative process.

In making this large , “difficult” piece, that as Hockney declares, ushers us into the “post photographic age”, is Hockney sincere, or is he thumbing his nose at the art establishment? Hockney himself says, "It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work."