The True Essence of Art and Life

It is the middle of the night, and I stumble across an interesting quote during my insomnia:

“The function of the artist is to overcome the opacity of human experience – to confront a universe that does often seem baffling and, by judicious selectivity, to reveal its true essence.”

- Ayn Rand

Train stations and only colours

Turner has this fantastic painting of the St Lazare station in the morning. He manages so fantastically to catch the mood with just colours and a hint of form. Brilliance.

I am myself at the Gare de Nord. The atmosphere is special in these places ... so what is your colour theme today I wonder? 

:-D

Shining light in Sacré Coeur

Here a small collage of pictures I took on a morning walk around Paris' Montmartre, and the adjacent cemetary (absolutely worth the visit, and worthy of a separate blog entry). You are with me on my journeys and in my thoughts, but so distant IRL ...

I had some red wine, cheese and a baguette at the local bistro ... and miss your voice and glitter eyes.

As a matter of fact i am completely confused.

I was thinking of doing a post on the role of symbols. It may come ... here is one of the  largest symbols I can think of ...

Portraits

Finally, something resembling spring days have also come to Paris. I took a long walk to the quartier latin and saw Craig Hanna's works at the Laurence Esnol Gallery. What a treat. Apart from his fantastic sense of color he combines a new technique of painting both on the reverse side of perspex glass, as well as the underlying board, with acrylics and ink. It produces a great effect, and his portraits are stunning in their brilliance and depth. I wish  I had been there too, to share the experience. It provided food for thought on what new techniques can bring, alongside a sence of perspective, context, color and form.

The art of Love

So, I took the time to do a large size watercolor sketch. As you can see it is not finished. I have to wait for my muse to return in some way before I can continue ....

I used Andrew Wyeth's Lovers as reference. He was increadibly skilled, and I have yet to figure out how he handled the various parts of this marvelous tribute to a woman. He must have loved her deeply given the painstaking detail with which he painted her. He painted her again and again over many many years, in secret. His dry brush watercolor technique is simply outstanding, as is his intriguing compositions. Like Dumas the younger, who wrote a whole book, La Dame aux Camélias, for his love of a woman, and of great human drama, he manages to create magic tension in his works.

Wyeth's works seem fresh and spontaneous, but he uses such a range of techniques and sometime doing brush strokes with only one or two hairs on the brush (the hair for example) .. I would have loved to watch him work. A contemplative approach and yet direct ..

I wouldn't mind.

Details of Paris

Voila! For some years now I have been pursuing this photo project of exploring the traces of our human imagination as seen on the old 'lids' to the coal cellars around old Paris. Here is a sample of the pictures taken over the last four years: some sensually curved, some strict and formal, some beautifully feminine and ornamented, whereas others are commanding and dominant. In the most unexpected places, we leave traces of our inclinations: shy, expressive, naked, masquerading, romantic, dominating, exotic or controlling. Preferences? Our fantasies take us there  ... if we let it.

Photography is a great art form .. but reality all the more ... one of the key elements of it is timing.
Small joys can be found even on mundane and dark places ...

L'espoir (Hope)

Banksy is one of my favorite graffiti artists. Here one of his very special works, marking a special place; it's his "hope!".

We human's are fragile beings, and the world we are exposed to and sometimes even create ourselves can be very hard and cruel. Here the little girl is seen against the hard, dirty and barren concrete wall, sending her beloved red ballon off ... (no she isn't losing it, she smiles) for someone to catch ...

In my inner vision I catch it ... and get to see the girl's beautiful smile ...

Although I am up for trying a lot of different mediums, I am quite sure I will never do real graffiti (thus this borrowed pic ... thanks Banksy). I enjoy the power of it, as long as it's not just tags and destructive spraying in otherwise beautiful settings. The best works lift  the dull, expose the beauty in dark corners and remind us of important things, such as that there is always hope where there is a will.

T

miss dior

Another odd posting, but the luxury goods and perfume industry make fantastic use of artistic expression; they seduce us, me, you ... and bring me to lands hitherto unknown. The thrill and excitement of being really ALIVE. Here a photo I took of Dior's installation at the C-E in Paris.

Just Imagining

I imagine her in a black or dark blue dress. She sits cuddled up on the sofa. Elegant, beautiful and enjoying herself. Her knight is fetching her a drink, but taking a little too long - as he is waiting for some small sign of her interest in dancing through the night.

Read up on water colors in Jeanne Dobie's eminent "Making Color Sing". She makes it straight forward and it seems simple, until you actually try it. Water color is so demanding, and yet that is the fun of it: making those colors fresh and to make them sing! Here a place with warm and cold, wet-in-wet, opaque and transparent colors.

50 Shades of Red (and Grey)

I saw an exhibition of the lesser known impressionist the other day: Caillebotte . He was a front runner also of realism, and the exhibition also nicely showed how the camera pictures started to influence paintings of the time, but also how photographers were influenced by art. This ' dialectic ' is still vital for our progress in arts and as humans.

So here a little photo snippit that I cropped, rearranged, recolored and turned. Evokes memories of longing, a tender caress, a sensual movement ... worthy a painting in iRed, don't you think?