Category Archives: New York, NY
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Works in progress
A: I have two large (38” x 58” and 58” x 38”) untitled pastel paintings in progress.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What does a pastel feel like in your hand?
With “Prophecy,” 70” x 50,” at Westbeth Gallery
A: Each manufacturer uses distinct binders to hold the raw pigment together to form a pastel stick. Due mainly to this binder, each pastel feels slightly different. Rembrandts are medium-hard and I generally use them for the first few layers. The black backgrounds of my pastel paintings are achieved by layering lots of Rembrandt black.
I enjoy using Unison because they feel “buttery” as I apply them to the sandpaper. If you’ve been to my studio, you know that I use just about every soft pastel there is! Believe it or not, no two are the same color.
Each pastel has its own qualities and some are harder or more waxy than others. Henri Roche has the widest range of colors and they’re gorgeous! I want them to show so I use them for the final layer, the ‘icing on the cake.”
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 348
“The Orator” in “Worlds Seen & Unseen” at Westbeth Gallery, NYC
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
The percipient apprehends the primal quality of art as beauty and symbol, in an experience that invariably involves a sense of radical mystery. Art dissolves the fog of Consensus in which we normally operate to reveal the unseen in the situation. It places us in exactly the same position as the first people who stared up at the stars in wonder. The work of art is perpetually new; it demands reinterpretation with each era, each generation, each percipient. Great works of art are like inexhaustible springs originating from a place beyond our “little world of man.” They reconnect us with a reality too vast for the rational mind to comprehend. Therefore, art can be described as the human activity through which our all-too-human mentality is overcome and in light of which all finite judgments are shown to be inefficient. It is at once a sinking to the source and a leap toward the infinite.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
Comments are welcome!
Q: What made you fall in love with soft pastel versus another medium?
“The Champ” in “Worlds Seen & Unseen” at Westbeth Gallery, NYC
A: I like to get my hands right into my work. In other words, I don’t like brushes or anything else to intervene between my hands and what I’m working on.
I work with 400 or 500 grit Uart sandpaper so the downside is that I rub my fingertips raw from blending layers of soft pastel onto sandpaper. I’ve tried using rubber gloves (they make my fingers sweat and wear out fast), cotton gloves (they leave bits of lint on the paper), using a blending stump (it leaves lint on the paper), etc., but nothing works as well as my own fingers. So sore fingertips are an unavoidable occupational hazard. I sometimes take days off from the studio just so that my hands can heal.
I adore color and love looking at the thousands of pastels in my studio! After working with this medium for more than thirty years, I still love what I am able to accomplish and I am still pushing it to do new things. The colors are rich, intense, velvety. No other medium is as sensuous or as satisfying.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 347
“Prophecy,” on view in “Worlds Seen & Unseen” at Westbeth Gallery, NYC
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Like the cyclotrons of physicists, the artistic work is a machine for uncovering hidden layers of reality. It gives us insight into the psychic forces that shape the world, enabling us to divine where we come from and where we are heading. It is in this sense that art can be said to be prophetic.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 342
New York, NY
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I work either way, you see – assisted or unassisted – because that is what you must do in order to live a fully creative life. I work steadily, and I always thank the process. Whether I am touched by grace or not, I thank creativity for allowing me to engage at all.
Because either way, it’s all kind of amazing – what we get to do, what we get to attempt, what we sometimes get to commune with.
Gratitude, always.
Always, gratitude.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 340
Lower Manhattan
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
What, do you suppose, are the lives of those who raise themselves above the level of the common herd? A continual struggle. A writer, for instance, must struggle against the laziness which he shares with the ordinary man when it comes to writing, because his genius demands to be heard, it is not merely of an empty desire for fame that he obeys, it is a matter of conscience. Let those who work coldly and calmly keep silence, for they have no conception of what it means to work under the spur of inspiration – the dread, the terror of rousing the sleeping lion whose roaring moves us to the very depth of our being. To sum up: be strong, simple, and true; here is an aim for every moment of the day, and it is always useful.
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix, edited by Hubert Wellington
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 306
New York, NY
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
It is the responsibility of artists to pay attention to the world, pleasant or otherwise, and to help us live respectfully in it.
Artists do this by keeping their curiosity and moral sense alive, and by sharing with us their gift for metaphor. Often this means finding similarities between observable fact and inner experience – between birds in a vacant lot, say, and an intuition worthy of Genesis.
More than anything else, beauty is what distinguishes art. Beauty is never less than mystery, but it has within it a promise.
In this way, art encourages us to gratitude and engagement, and is of both personal and civic consequence.
Robert Adams in Art Can Help
Comments are welcome!
A: Would you agree that there are more opportunities for women artists these days?
At Salomon Arts in Tribeca
A: It’s true that there are more opportunities now for women artists. Indeed, there are more opportunities for ALL artists. Social media has helped immensely in that it allows artists to take charge of our own careers, making us less dependent on the approval, largesse, and/or validation of art world gatekeepers.
However, at the highest levels of our profession, there are many inequities. As more women become art museum directors, collectors of contemporary art, and leaders whose taste matters, the status of all female artists is bound to improve to become more aligned with that of males.
Comments are welcome!
