Category Archives: Bolivianos
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: “Majordomo,” 20” x 26,” soft pastel on sandpaper, is coming along. After today’s studio session, I will put it aside and add finishing details when I am able to see it fresh again. I‘ve been looking at this piece too long to know what else it needs now.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I’m working on a 26” x 20” pastel painting that will be number 14 in the “Bolivianos” series. This is very early in the process.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I’m slowly working on a small, 20” x 26,” pastel painting. The tentative title is “Majordomo,” although I’m searching for something better.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: “Avenger,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” awaits finishing touches.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 378
With “Poseur,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 70” x 50,” 2019
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
[John] Graham told Lee [Krasner] and Jackson [Pollock] they were at the most wonderful part of their artistic journey because they were unknown and therefore free, and that there was only one thing they had to dread: fame.
How many men of great talent on their way to remarkable achievement in the present day are ruthlessly destroyed by critics, dealers, and public while mediocre, insensitive hacks, who by intrigue and industrious commercial effort have gained recognition and success, will go down in history with their inane creations. Success, fame, and greatness coincide very seldom. The great are not recognized during their life-time… Poe, Van Gogh,Rembrandt, Cezanne, Gauguin, Modigliani, Pushkin, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and others could not make even a miserable living out of their art.
As Graham described it, true art could never be of the world because it was always steps, decades, light-years ahead of it. Artists, therefore, had no need to be part of the world, either. Their only duty was to persevere. Humanity, he said, depended on it.
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: “Schemer,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 26” x 20” is nearly finished. Among other things, I will do more blending to soften the transitions from light to dark in the fabric.
Comments are welcome!
Start/Finish of “Sentinels,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 38” x 58”
Start
Finished, signed lower left
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Preliminary sketch
A: This is a preliminary charcoal sketch for my next large (58” x 38”) pastel painting. I loved seeing “The Champ,” 26” x 20,” blown-up as a poster in the London Underground so I decided to create a larger original. Now I can’t wait to tackle all that hair! So far the sketch resembles a Rastafarian, but who knows if that will carry over to the pastel painting! Stay tuned.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
“Sentinels,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 38” x 58”
A: At last, I have put finishing touches on “Sentinels,” 38” x 58,” and signed it! The photographer will photograph it and then, on my next trip south, this painting goes to the framer in Virginia.
Comments are welcome!
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