ABSTRACT EMOTION, AN AMAZING ARTIST

THESE AMAZING ABSTRACT IMAGES ARE 

COMPLEX IN DESIGN AND FORM

BUT THEIR ORIGIN WILL AMAZE YOU MORE

                     LAUGHING

     CHANGE

                                           GRIEF

TEARS OF ELATION FOR A SPECIFIC 

MOMENT 

Who is this amazing abstract artist that works in such detail? Who is this amazing new abstract talent? It is none other that you, or any human being.  These are microscopic studies of tears.  Tears of laughter, grief, remembrance and so on.  In this study by Rose Lynn Fears on the Typography of Tears she wondered what her tears would look like. Our tears have a distinct mark depending on the emotion we are feeling! It reminds me of the studies done to show how water changes molecularly when exposed to different music or sound.  Our bodies and our worlds are far more complex than we understand.  And I think we can fairly say our senses are far more complex than we have ever understood in the sciences.  The more we discover about our world the more interconnected we are to all living things and perhaps some things we have not considered to be living at all…like a rock.
Artists are very sensitive people who are highly observant in ways that they hardly understand themselves and often not understood by others.  They open themselves, as if refined antennas, to the world around them, the express and reflect what they absorb.  Art is a complex business, it is not about the mere copying of a scene or a person.  The previous post Rabbit's Moon Studio did on the artist for the 9/11 memorial is an example of this.  Spencer Finch did not paint a scene of planes hitting the twin towers or the grief and panic on peoples faces. No, his thought was far more complex.  He remembered the clear blue sky, the fall deep blue crisp sky on that day….a beautiful day by all accounts, so many people remarked on that.  Who would expect such a horrible event to take place on such an absolutely gorgeous day?  So Finch created a mural assigning a hue of blue to each of the 3,000 victims of that day the sky was so beautiful.  It speaks of contrast of beauty and violence, of peace and war, of life and death.  In this single concept the artists has captured the complexity of the moment…joy and grief, laughter and tears…all from the myriad of hues of blue on what was a stunning fall day.  To the sky we looked, the planes came out of no where, to the sky we look and the ashes fell of thousands of lives, to the sky we look for hope of a better tomorrow.  A remarkable monument to the families and to a country that was changed forever on that day.
  

"From a distance, in the museum’s soaring subterranean space, which is clad mostly in concrete and aluminum, Mr. Finch’s work looks as if it could be a decorative stone mosaic. But as the viewer approaches, it becomes clear that the color is simply watercolor paint on unframed paper, hung on a wire armature like children’s artwork at a school fair or, more so, like themissing-person notices that papered the city after Sept. 11. The work, which surrounds an inscription in steel taken from Virgil’s “Aeneid,” also brings to mind the reams of office paper that floated over the city on the day of the attacks, some of it drifting as far as Mr. Finch’s studio near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

Over several weeks in the late winter, Mr. Finch, 51 — whose work often focuses on the interrelationships of light, color and memory, operating in a territory somewhere between poetry and science — mixed subtly varied shades of blue and, day after day, painted the papers, managing to complete as many as 150 on a good day." Randy Kennedy, Art and Design

9/11 MEMORIAL  NEW YORK CITY 

I think there is much we have not learned yet about our world.  I think there is much we assume is fact, that is not.  I think we often belittle people who dare to think differently.  Many scientist and artists have been persecuted as witches and the like, for their ideas, beliefs and concepts. Newton, Galileo, and Leonardo da Vinci for a start.  Some were imprisoned, others humiliated and shamed. Perhaps they are just ahead of their time and perhaps society cannot accept vision and change…or things not commonly understood.   
Watch these two films below, the first on water and emotion and the second on how plants may feel emotion.

THE ART LAB AND THE SCIENCE STUDIO!

science laboratory 

art studio

from google for education only

Of course we know it is the Art Studio and Science lab, but I would put to you they are much the same in many ways:


1. Place of discovery

2. Place of exploration

3. A place of testing and experimenting

4. A place where the imagination must be used

5. A place where learned skills are called upon to solve a    problem.

6. They are both places where one must be visionary

7. In both places the persons involved must be highly observant and sensitive to his environment

Einstein, Math Genius,            The Speed of Light is Broken 

We might go on and on about the commonalities, if we wanted we could list the difference as well.  However, that is not our focus here.  What we are looking at in this series of post is how they are aligned. 

If we look closely at artists we know, and famous art work then perhaps we can see the parallels clearly.  

Leonardo da Vinci  from google image for education only

Leonardo da Vinci is an obvious choice, as the Renaissance man and inventor.  I have a real affinity for Da Vinci for many reasons.  I even named my dog, Vinci or Da Vinci after him. (and my brother always told me I was adopted…just teasing-like any brother he picks on his little sister) Leonardo was also born in April, on the 15th, and my birthday is April 12th. I have always  been fascinated by his love of science and inventions and his daring in using new art materials. In some cases he invented his own materials and colors. Click for link to more about Leonardo's inventions. And his art.  

Leonardo da Vinci's Inventions   from google image for education only

and later we will look at other  artist who use science in their work.

The Doubting

If you read Julia Cameron's books on artists and writers, The Artists Way or the book the War of Art by.....Then you will read about the artists block and the many ways artists block and sabotage their own creativity and art projects.  It is inherent in the process.  "I will never make the deadline I might as well quit", "I shouldn't have put that there and now it is to late", "this is no good, no one will like it", "this is no good, it is the crappiest piece of art I have ever done", "why did I ever think I could do art", "maybe everyone will find out I am really no good and the last award was just a fluke", .......it goes on and on-a thousand negative thoughts that are meant to sabotage your efforts all manufactured by your mind.  Then there are the delaying tactics, I need to clean the house(when you know you don't), I need to wash my hair, I need to take go to the store, I need to watch paint dry(I threw that in for the ridiculousness of it) and so on.  Then we often enable friends and family members to sabotage us by asking leading questions, "don't you think this work is a piece of crap?", "this is not the best work I have ever done", or when we choose a family member or friend who we know doesn't appreciate our style of work and then ask their opinion, in that way we subtly invite negative remarks to sabotage our own feelings of doubt to re-enforce our own need to block ourselves.  

This is a dangerous phase because even the best of artists and the most experienced of creative people will fall pray to its temptations.  If you think Leonardo Da Vinci or Michelangelo or Manet or Sargent did not have these devils you would be wrong, all you would need do is to read their biographies and you would find the same struggle all artists have gone through over time.  Van Gogh is one of the most dramatic of examples, his mental illness magnified his struggles and doubts.  But the point here is it is a step in the artist process as well as any other, and one we must all weather through to get to the other end of success in our work.  

Last night my doubts began and my mind filled with negative thoughts about my piece.  Much the same as I wrote above...this is a crappy piece of work not worthy of my effort, they are going to think it is ridiculous and look at it and know right away I am a failure, the cows are the wrong color, I should have glued the evil eye charm down I should have tied it, shit I got glue on the plastic now the piece is ruined, the top works, but the bottom belongs to another piece, I am not conveying the theme Home,  I started in one direction and ended up in another maybe that is too confusing, I can't enter this and show it hundreds of people, and on and on and on.  

Then at some point the doubts quiet down if you stare them down and restore confidence in yourself.  Ah, if I put this here or it really does look good, that flows better than I was thinking, the blue cows with added lettering in gold work, I have put in many elements, but it is a conceptual piece and I want people to think, and in the end I realize I must do the work for myself and  create for myself..how others perceive it is their own business.  Andy Warhol said it best, just do art and let others figure it out, but the art must get done. 

I am a Surrealist at heart, it took me half of my art lifetime to understand that, it is an intellectual, conceptual way I work.  I put many subconscious triggers throughout ever work, each to be interpreted in a variety of ways by the person viewing them.  So I know from the outset my work will be viewed differently by the experiences a person has in their lives when they view my work.  For example if I put a snake skin in a work, some people may thing evil or danger or the shedding means getting rid of the old to be born anew, new life or many other meanings.  So much depends on our experiences, our education, our culture, our age, our childhoods, and so many other things.  The next time you view a piece of art, whether conceptual or not....there is always an intent the artist is trying to convey to you, even when you think they are not, take time with the work, let it seep in to your senses, and then open your mind to all the images and possibilities that come.  That is what the artists, the creator would want. 

And for the artist who are experiencing the doubting phase I say weather through, it is only one of the steps, but it is necessary to go throughout the tunnel to get to the light.

THE DNA OF ART

WHERE ART AND SCIENCE MEET

Leonardo Da Vinci      from google for educational purposes only

Artists have used science and science has used art for hundreds of years, it is almost a symbiotic relationship. We just are not always aware that is so and has been so for ions.  

Leonardo Da Vinci invented not only the thought processes that led to helicopters, airplanes, machine guns and other technology, but he also invented techniques and applications of art that were new to his time. Have you ever noticed when you view the Mona Lisa she seems to follow you where ever you are standing in the room? It is the way in which he painted her eyes that helped achieve that end. Sfmato was another technique Leonardo invented, which blurs the background to the image. His use of complex perspective allowed us to see art more dimensionally that we ever had previously.  Have you ever noticed how Dali used the double helix in his symbology in his paintings. Dali was friends with the brightest scientific geniuses of his time.   Paints in tubes took artists outdoors and enabled them to do plein air painting for the first time.  New paints changed the color pallet artist had available. 

To See a time line of art innovations click below
Time Line of New Techniques in Art...read more(<click here)

• ARTIST WHO USES DNA TO PRODUCE PORTRAITS!

Dewey-Hagborg’s odd habit has a larger purpose. The 30-year-old PhD student, studying electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, extracts DNA from each piece of evidence she collects and enters this data into a computer program, which churns out a model of the face of the person who left the hair, fingernail, cigarette or gum behind.

Dewey  Hagborg Dna portraits    from google for educational purposes only

It gets creepier.

From those facial models, she then produces actual sculptures using a 3D printer. When she shows the series, called “Stranger Visions,” she hangs the life-sized portraits, like life masks, on gallery walls. Oftentimes, beside a portrait, is a Victorian-style wooden box with various compartments holding the original sample, data about it and a photograph of where it was found.

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/05/creepy-or-cool-portraits-derived-from-the-dna-in-hair-and-gum-found-in-public-places/#ixzz2SLyqjN62 
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

WHAT IS ART?

Cave Paintings of Lascaux     from google

This is worthy of a discussion and has been for as long as man first picked up a stick of charcoal to draw.  From the days of the cave man when drawings of bison and deer were depicted on the walls of caves man has been involved in the act of making things and expression.  The caves of Lascaux, France did not show stiff nor ultra realistic drawing, but drawings that show movement and a knowledge of oneness with nature.
 I am sure there are people today, if these drawings were taken out of context, would call them too fluid, not realistic enough, a limited color pallet and so on. Every period of art, every movement of art has been met with controversy of some kind. From ancient Egypt to Italy, to France, to Asia and the Middle East, culture upon culture, age upon age, the needs and styles of art have changed.

Egyptian side view with frontal eye                     google image

I think another part of this discussion is why does man need to draw or create? Why did the cave man feel the need to pick up a piece of charcoal, mix earth and chalk to recreate their hunts?  One could have just told stories or sung songs.  In some cultures drawings become real things that have a life of their own.  Each culture has a need to create, to reflect upon itself and as our technology has changed so has our art.

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci 
from google image

Artist once were chained to their studios because paints in a tube were yet to come and easels were not portable.  Colors had to be made and ground out, brushes were licked to a point by assistants, and there were periods where anything could become a base for a color, such a mold for green, or mollusks for an intense purple.  Whole villages died due to lead poisoning from the lead in the artists paints and assistants lips were distorted from pointing brushes loaded with lead.
The Greeks came up with perfect proportion, the ideal.  Leonardo dissected bodies to learn the true structure of a human to the risk of his own life.  Math came into play as Renaissance artists wanted a truer since of perspective.
Once the camera was invented there was not the need to record images for the sole sake of representation.  Now artists could take more leeway in interpretation, emotions, and experimentation. The art movement in Paris led us away from stiff dark colors, to emotion, light and movement. Impressionism moves forward with Monet, Renior, Van Gogh, and Degas.  How does the light seem, what is the emotional play through the artist to the subject at hand.  How can I show just the quick look of movement and light?

Monet's Gardens at Giverny, France
from google image

Then came harder times with violence, poverty and war.

Salvador Dali                                                     Surrealistfrom google image

Dadaism was a reflection of a senseless time at the end of WWI that people questioned to the core of their beings the desperation of their times. Science and art often go hand in hand.  As Freud is questioning the meaning of our dreams and symbolism then surfaces art that presents symbols and the nature of the mind. Surrealism was not long to follow, then we begin to question again what perspective truly is as Picasso shows us a multi -dimensional person with the nose to the side and the eye looking forward. 

Picasso                  Cubism   google image

Cubism is born and we look at many things, not just people from a different view. We know objects are three dimensional, so what is realistic and not?  
And now we are at a time when Modern art often has a disconnect with people who view it.  So we must ask ourselves why is that?  What is it about our age and our culture that has produced art that seems is harder for people to understand?  As we are more complicated as a society, as we are more advanced as a civilization, and as our technology rapidly changes...our art reflects us as a people.  Art reflects the confusion of the time, the alienation people feel from a modern world that often leaves them in their wake of rapid change, and changing value systems.  I have oft heard it said that artists are the shaman of their times....we reflect our world back to our culture.  Modern art makes us think, asks us questions that are not simple, and rarely is a representation of the sake of representation.  

Andy Warhol                            Pop Artist

 The need is not there because we have cameras, computers, and the ever expansive flow of data.  As technology expands even further and more things become possible that seem beyond our imagination now...what will artists do with it?  They will create, that is what they do.  They will interpret our world for us when it gets to complicated to comprehend.  They will make us think deeply and help us to see things in a way we never would have.
 Should it always be pretty, should it always be easy, should it always be representational-I would put to you it should not be.  It would be to our detriment if it was.

Robert Rauschenburg      from google image

  Should it be ugly and hard to understand...yes, sometimes for that is how we are as a world and as people.  We would dishonor art to take away artists freedom to think and create, we would diminish art if we demanded artist only copy nature or people realistically and more so we would limit our growth as people and a civilization if we do not encourage our artists to experiment and grow and to envision what can be.
 If Gaudi had never envisioned architecture as if it were fluid and melting instead of angular, if Da Vinci had never dissected the first body, if Buckminister Fuller had never built the geodesic dome, if the cantilevered arch had never been invented, if Van Gogh had never painted starry night, and Michelangelo had never lay on a pallet painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, if Picasso had never painted Guernica protesting the massacre of the Basque in Spain, and Pop art had never pointed out the mass commercialism of our times, the Eiffle tower was never built, and Frank Lloyd Wright had never picked up building blocks....our world would be poorer for it. Look about where ever you are, right now.  Now imagine if there were no art..the walls bare, the architecture non existent, the furniture no imagined, the halls of all the buildings blank..so signs, no nothing, just bare..that is a world with out art.
 I am not an art historian, but I have had many art history courses.  I am open to discussion and correction.  I think we should be open to a fascinating discourse on the arts.  Please feel free to add to the discussion.

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than 

felt, and poetry is 

painting that is felt rather than seen.” 

from google image

― Leonardo da Vinci

MONA LISA CONTROVERSY

IS THE NEW MONAL LISA REAL?

Mona charms us and always has.  There is such mystery behind the half smile and the way her eyes follow you no matter where you stand.  We continue to discover new things about her and Leonardo Da Vinci with new technologies abound.  One of the first discoveries were the under painting and sketches based on Leonardo's on face.  And now the discovery of a new painting...is it Leonardo's, was it painted by him or a student, and when was it painted? 
I thought you might like a link to a site about the controversy around the newly found painting of the Mona Lisa.  There seems to be an agreement among some that the painting is a younger version of Mona Lisa painted a decade earlier.  Here is the link...New Mona(click)

Mona Lisa                 google image

Mona with underneath sketch showing       google image

The Creative Process Does Not Belong To Artists Alone
The Kahn Academy 

Salman Kahn of Salman Kahn Academy            google image

Though we as artists often feel that is the case, all we need to do is look at visionaries, inventor's, and scientist who have led the way in their innovative thinking skills.  From Leonardo Da Vinci to Einstein to Buckminster Fuller to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, there is plenty of evidence of a wealth of creative thinking in other 

Leonardo Da Vinci              google image

fields.  So today I wanted to highlight an innovative thinker of today.  His story is one of those that seems happenstance and unlikely, but altogether true.  Salman Kahn was a hedgefund manager on Wall Street, when his niece was having trouble with algebra.  He happened to be very good in math, so he offered his help.  The only problem was he was in New York, and she was in New Orleans.  So he decided to do a you tube video to help her out, explain in fully, and make her feel like he was there with him. As unlikely as it seems, someone else needed help and happened on it, and another and another...then people started e-mailing him asking him for help with other math problems, the science and other fields.  Salman made video after video for people and refused to charge and fees for his work.  Then it all became viral and he soon discovered Bill Gates was using his videos to teach his children with Kahn's lessons.  It seems Kahn has a knack of explaining really difficult things in the most simple way.  So then the story goes Bill Gates contacts Salmon and now he has started the Kahn academy that is still refusing to take money.  He started his business as a non-profit so anyone can access his free education on line.  His idea are being looked at to revolutionize how we teach math to students in the United States and world wide. I admire people who care more about helping others than making profit for themselves.  To me Salman Kahn is a hero and a creative thinker.  Please join me in celebrating the life of someone who makes others lives better.

If you know anyone world wide that needs a free education and can access on line lessons please educate them about the Kahn academyhttp://www.khanacademy.org...It may make a difference in a persons' life.

How We See, Why We See What We Think We See!

Ancient Greek Statue  google image

Ways of Seeing 
by John Berger

I am continuing to re-read Berger's book after a long absence. It was one of the reccommended text when I was taking graduate level art history.  It has been many years, but I find it as fascinating as before.  It is not an easy read, but full of deep and thoughtful statements about our relationship to visual images and what we accept as real in our world. What emerges is that how we see is through a set of filters of our own making.  I thought I would share a few of his ideas with you and then discuss the thoughts he presents.  His writing is bit dry so hang in with us as we decipher these diamonds in the rough.

"Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent.  Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented; it showed how somebody or something had once looked and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people.  Later the specific vision of the image-maker became part of the record.  An image became a record of how x had seen y.  This was the result of an increasing consciousness of individuality." Berger

google image        Cave Paintings of Lascaux France

Egyptian Image of a body  Google

So let see if we can say this is simpler terms.  Cave man painted pictures of animals he hunted on the walls of his den with charcoal and chalk and red clay.  He drew an image of something that was absent..he had killed and was no longer there or the herds had migrated for the season.  Later other cavemen and later peoples see the images the first cave peoples drew and accepted their vision of what a deer or stag looked like.  Then for centuries people drew deer in the same manner and accepted that deer looked like that image.  It became part of the record of how the original artist saw and experienced deer from his point of view.  Think of how he drew the deer and the feelings he brought forth.  He was a hunter, he drew on ground level, not from above, he drew a magnificent creature that he as a hunter would be proud to kill to supply his clan and family with food.  He drew the deer as a huntsman might and he drew with the elements he had at hand in the lighting of the cave which would have been dramatic contrasts due to the firelight.  So now we beginning to see how the image maker (artist)  draws us into his way of seeing, his view point.


Now think of Europe and how this process lasted in the arts for a long time.  Drawing before the understanding of how a person is structured was one way to think of this...artists ideal of a person is repeated and repeated with out proper proportions or skeletal or muscular accuracy...until bodies are dissected by Da Vinci and others in secret.  Then the way the image maker...Da Vinci...Michelangelo...and others portray people becomes radically different and more life like. It changes how we view and accept a person looks.  Other artists then accept that view and paint in bodies or animals in the same way.

Leonardo Da Vinci's Study of Man and Body Proportions  google

Michelangelo's Pieta         google image

Think of art as time travel, but through an image that an artist offers at a specific time the way he perceives the image at that time with the influences of the culture around him.  

As Berger puts it, " No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such a direct testimony about the world which surround other people at other times.  It is in this respect that images are more precise and richer than literature." Berger goes on to say that in saying this he is in no way denying the expressive and creative nature of art, but it even more so allows us to experience the times and the artists experience with the visible.  

So Dr. Who didn't have it wrong, time travel is possible and gives us insight in people in another time and culture and makes their view of their world visible for us...so much so we accept it at times as real for ourselves now!  
Opinions and discussions are welcome.

El Mac, Master Graffti Artist

El Mac

You know as much as one generation may criticize another, I think I am falling in love with this new generation. Their ideas are fresh and edgy. They are not afraid to leave behind old mores.  They are seeing the world in new and different ways, they are interacting socially in a world environment completely out of the box.  I am thinking what would Diego Rivera or Leonardo done with technology and thinking differently about the world.  El Mac's world tour taking graffiti to new heights, putting art where everyone can enjoy it, not in some cooperate board room...bringing the average person to art and seeing the world in a different way.  El Mac(click for link) takes ordinary people and paints them large in a space that people see on their way to work or to the store and bam!, there is art.  He takes pictures of people in one country and paints them in another...a sort of a giant world howdy!!!!

A better explanation of his history and work is from his own bio...here is an excerpt from his site.

"Born in Los Angeles in 1980 to an engineer and an artist, Mac has been creating and studying art independently since childhood. His primary focus has been the lifelike rendering of human faces and figures. He has drawn inspiration from the surrounding Mexican & Chicano culture of Phoenix and the American Southwest, religious art, pin-up art, graffiti, and a wide range of classic artists such as Caravaggio, Mucha, and Vermeer. He began painting with acrylics and painting graffiti in the mid ’90s, and has since worked consistently towards mastering his signature portrait style. Around 1998 he began to paint technicolor aerosol versions of classic paintings by old European masters. This led to being commissioned in 2003 by the Groeninge Museum in Brugge, Belgium to paint his interpretations of classic Flemish Primitive paintings in the museum’s collection. He has since been commissioned to paint murals across the US, as well as in Mexico, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, South Korea, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, Singapore, Germany, Ireland, and Vietnam."

source El Mac website

google image photo

google image photo

google image photo

 A NEW GENERATION TO ADMIRE! ART CAN BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER AND DO GOOD

An Artist and Genius/Leonardo Da Vinci

A wonderful NPR article about the genius of Leonardo Da Vinci. Click on the highlighted name and you will be led to the article.  Enjoy.

Blue Madonna/A Portrait of Motherhood

BLUE MADONNA/A PORTRAIT OF MOTHERHOOD

Why do we do art, what motivates us as artists to do what we do? Joy, love, anger, pain, sadness...emotions and shared human experiences are certainly one of the things that motivate all artists.

An artist is like a sponge that absorbs experiences around himself/herself and then expresses them back to others using color, shape, texture, line and space. Dance, drama, music, poetry, and visual arts can elicit feelings that are difficult to express in any other way. Complex feeling can be expressed through art...think of the aria in the movie Philadelphia when Andy knows he is dying and has no other way to express the sheer pain of leaving life and loved ones, other than to play his favorite opera La Mamma Morta, at full volume, sung at by Maria Callas until it encompasses his whole being. Or think of the play a Street Car Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, when Stanley cries out Stella in a soul riveting pleading sob. Contemplate the ballet Swan Lake, its tender tragedy and love story. These are the ways artists interpret and give back our inexpressible emotions to us.

Aging of our parents and loved ones is not easy to look at and experience. It is a journey we all go on, unless a parent dies young. There are moments of joy, tenderness, and sadness on this journey. Everyday I go into my Mother's nursing home, into the alzheimer/dementia unit I am bombarded by sights, sounds and smells. I come away with feelings and emotions I do not know what to do with. The nursing home can be a drama of emotions on any given day. Adult children visiting alzheimer parents who no longer recognize them, patients who are robbed of their memory by dementia, the frustration of nurses trying to be patient when a patient screams and screams caught in a moment of confusion of where they are...sometimes it is no more that a tear sliding down a cheek or a head bent lost in a world of boredom...it is a bombardment of images and impressions. The smells of medicine, food, urine and antiseptics and the sounds of old movies droning away in the background effect other senses. One cannot walk away without feeling something and for an artist it is a hundred times so. Sometimes I think of Picasso's "Guernica" or Munch's "Scream" and then I think of Leonardo Da Vinci's pictures of aging or Renaissance pictures of Motherhood and religious icons.

I love this picture of my Mother, it is sad, it is tender, it is vulnerable. Mother is almost 99 now and at times aware and at other times not. She still knows me and my brother, she can still express her unconditional love she has always had for us. I have looked at this photo many times and felt a myriad of emotions. I have been reluctant to write and share because it is so close and personal to me. But like art ideas that come over and over to me, telling me they need to come in to creation, this one calls to me. It won't go away, I keep going back to this picture and thinking about it. Something about it seemed universal, beyond just an ordinary moment in the nursing home with Mom, it transcends the everyday to a shared human experience...it is persistent in my mind. What is it that I am being called to create, to express? Then I realized that the photo of my Mother wrapped in a blue blanket reminded me of Renaissance paintings I had seen before in art history studies and at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida that has a large collection of Renaissance paintings. The photograph of my Mother takes on an iconic form to me, the Jungian idea Motherhood as an archetype, as a perfection of love and sacrifice-for my Mother truly embodied those qualities.if

I know I will do an art work from this photo, from these experiences..but it has not yet completely formed in my mind as to how. But it keeps calling me, and I cannot ignore the call for long. I have thought about would my Mother mind me using pictures that show her in a vulnerable state, and I know in my heart she would not. She would tell me to reach out to others, help in anyway you can, touch others lives, give to others...that is the kind of person she is. So when I do this artwork it will be with her in mind, and with her guidance and love.

The Eyes Have It!

"Eyes are the Windows to Our Souls"

This famous quote has a mysterious origin, but one person that has been thought to have coined it is Leonardo Da Vinci. Many artists use they eye as a symbol, as do various cultures. The evil eye in the middle east protects you. The eyes on the temples of Katmandu are God watching over you. The hand in the middle of the palm can be found in the earliest of art going back to ancient Egyptian times as a symbol of protection against perceived evil.

I like to use eyes as a symbol in my work. I feel comfortable in the world of Surrealism and the use of symbology. I like the idea of concept, visual poetry and hidden subtle images triggering meaning. The photo below is a detail from my latest work for the Dali Museum Event, Liquid Desires. The name of the art work is "Wet Dreams". The work is now in the collection of an Orlando Physician and shares its space with a Chihuly! It is partly a reflection of what the eye sees, as Dali portrayed in several of his pieces.

In the detail of Alternate Universe you can see how I used eyes again as a symbol in my work. On the far left are the eyes of Galileo, in the center are the eyes of the Mona Lisa, and on the far right are the eyes of Einstein. The rusted metal strip with multiple transfers, glass and mirrors is as a sentence to a paragraph. The paragraph being the larger section of the art work.

Some eyes are so identifiable that they are iconic. When using popular icons one can not help but think of Andy Warhol and his Pop Art portraiture. Elvis peers out at you in the top photo while a young Leonardo looks out at us in the last photo.

The Hand as a Portrait

The Portrait of the Hand

In the details of every day life are hidden moments we all share that form our world. They are so easy to miss and to overlook: a touch of compassion , a pat on the back of support, a hand held for comfort, a glance of understanding. Noticing these details are partially what make artists sensitive to the flow of life.

I remember my Grandmother's hands so vividly. She sat me down when I was about nine years old to teach me how to make her famous cinnamon bun rolls. She was a marvelous cook and the rolls were a family treasure. She just didn't realize she chose the grandchild with the worst memory! What I did remember were her hands: how they kneaded the dough, how she sprinkled the flour, how the rolling pin moved in her hands. I remember every detail of her hands, but not the recipe! I later drew her hands over and over. She was a strong woman, who was born in a covered wagon and lived to see the first moon shot. She could wring a chicken's neck, have fried chicken for supper and hold a baby gently at the same time. It was a tough life growing up on a farm and raising four children through a depression with a disabled husband. Her hands were broad, big boned and every wrinkle spoke her life's story.

In these photo's you see my brother holding my Mother's hands so tenderly and gently. This is a portrait that speaks volumes of Mother and son, aging and youth, compassion and sadness, and life reversing roles. Now 98 1/2 my Mother's hands still hold a graceful pose with great strength. If I had to capture my Mother's character in three words, it would be love, grace and strength. I believe her hands reflect the same characteristics.

I remember studying in art history that master artists would call in their most skilled apprentices to do the hands in a painting. Leonardo Da Vinci did hands so well as an apprentice he excelled over his own master teacher. In renaissance paintings we see hands in a more stilted pose with meaning hidden in each gesture. It is interesting when one looks at hands against the backdrop of art history and various styles, how the presentation of hands has changed. It gives us greater insight into how we view ourselves as human beings through history.

Happy Halloween to all

Leonardo Da Vinci, the dog, wants to wish you a Happy Halloween!

This is actually a Mardi Gras outfit from New Orleans.

Vinci is a rescue boy found wandering 4 years ago on a four lane highway. After three people cared for him, he found his way to my heart. His second year he ruptured a disk in his back and was paralyzed for a month after his surgery. We thought we would have to get him wheels to get about. But he now walks and runs with a limp, but he does fine.

I am was an art teacher, hence the name, Da Vinci. I can say he is an art dog, sitting in my lap in the studio and always my constant companion.

Halloween is not celebrated in every culture, but I am not sure which countries do and which countries don't participate. Some people think is fun and others see if as suspicious. I think it is a chance to be creative, to use one's imagination. Tonight my neighborhood will be inundated with hoard of treaters from all one the city. We are one of those neighborhood's that people think there is good booty!

For today I will post a picture of Leonardo Da Vinci in costume. My dog, Da Vinci, in costume. I would love to know if your country does celebrate Halloween and if so, how. Look forward to you feed back. If you have trouble leaving a comment, the email me at rabbits5@aol.com

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