Category: painting
Portraits of Ryder & Atti, Christmas 2009
Ryder, acrylic on canvas, 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
These portraits were commissioned as a Christmas present to the subjects’ Dad.
Atti, acrylic on canvas, 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
Would you like to have a portrait made of yourself or a loved one? Download my pricing sheet here.
Illustration Friday: Blur
Whatcher Yennough, Patron Saint of First Impressions, acrylic and collage on found plywood, 2009. (Detail view.) Click image to view source.
He’s, I don’t know, maybe medium-sized, you know, average height, with short brown hair. I think he wears glasses. Eyes? Maybe bluish-brownish. Kinda dark, but, you know, not like dark dark. He was kinda funny-lookin’.
Whatcher is available at aka gallery in Oklahoma City. Detail views here and here.
Paseo First Friday 2009.11.06
Ennis Quadrangle, Patron Saint of Honne and Tatemae*, acrylic and collage on stonehenge, 2009. Click image to view source.
Lots of good stuff happening on the Paseo tonight.
aka gallery is featuring Fear Not The Needle, hand-sewn photographs by romy owens. I have new work in aka’s back space, including the one pictured above.
Josh Heilaman’s lush, fantastical paintings are on display at Art of Yoga. Treat yourself.
JRB Art at the Elms is showing the work of Jim Keffer and John Wolfe, along with their annual Small Works exhibit. Each 8×8″ piece in this show is priced at a mere $180! Get ‘em while they’re hot. Here’s my piece, a little piece o’ me.
Don’t forget the Girlie Show! (As if you could.) Hit the Paseo at 6:00, see the Girlie Show after 8:00, or go back to either on Saturday afternoon. You can do it all!
* I first heard the terms honne and tatemae in this NPR story about translating the untranslatable. Author Christopher J. Moore, in his 2004 book In Other Words, describes these concepts this-a-way:
Tatemae: A term often translated as “form,” but it also has the specific cultural meaning of “the reality that everyone professes to be true, even though they may not privately believe it.” For privately held views, the Japanese have a different term, honne, meaning, “the reality that you hold inwardly to be true, even though you would never admit it publicly.” The British civil servant muttering the reproach “bad form, old boy” over a drink in the club, may be expressing something very close to the quality of tatamae.
Longdecks Show @ DnA Galleries 2009.10.23
Margaret VIII (Blow, Wind, Blow), detail, acrylic on bamboo skate deck, 2009. Click image to view source.
See detail views of Margaret VIII here, here and here. See shots of the board in progress: stage one, two, three, four and five.
Join us the following Saturday, October 24 at 611 Creative for the Third Annual Ghouls Gone Wild Parade!
Found on Flickr: Visual Diary, September 2009
Flickr has a new feature for its users: Galleries. The gallery feature turns any Flickr member into a mini-curator. Give it a whirl! Some of my favorites so far are Minimalism Squared, 2x a Frame, and Kid+Cat Scream.
Stella Im Hultberg painting in progress from Thinkspace Gallery (website here). Click image to view source.
I’ve been using Found on Flickr as an ongoing visual diary, so I’ll make monthly galleries for awhile and see how it goes.
Here is my Visual Diary for September 2009.
I can’t include the following in my Flickr gallery, but they are also what I’m looking at these days:
Esra Roise, My hands are cold but my heart is on fire. Click image to view source.
Cat Panel Diptych by Dara Engler.
I’m exploring the possibility that a lot of Americans “relax” by entering a zombie-like state of hibernation. We choose diversions that allow us to zone out and ignore things in the world that are difficult. I paint secluded, vacant, zombie-like figures who have relaxed in their habits until they have lost time. … They are sluggish, jaundiced, and so lacking muscle tone that they hang over their chairs and defy anatomy. — Dara Engler, from her Artist Statement
Beverly McIver, Dear God 3. Click image to view source.
Hiroshi Watanabe, Baba, Ena Bunraku. Click image to view source. (What are bunraku?)
Annual 12×12 Exhibit Saturday 2009.09.26
Self Portrait with Deep Background, aka What About Pickles? Acrylic on canvas, 2009. Click image to view source.
12×12 Art Show & Sale 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009, 7pm
Fred Jones Industries Building
900 W. Main, downtown OKC (map link)
Featuring 150 of Oklahoma’s finest artists, delectable food from 26 area restaurants, panoramic views of the OKC skyline, live music and cash bar.
The 12×12 Art Show & Sale is the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s only fundraiser, with proceeds benefiting the organization’s many programs to support visual artists in the state of Oklahoma.
Music from The Stringents, a rock string quartet, and the Millwood Drum Line.
A preview of artwork is online now and images will be added weekly. You can also view some of the artwork during a preview exhibition in the Lobby of Leadership Square, 211 N Robinson in OKC, September 1-20.
Click here to read more about this fabulous event and purchase tickets.
My friend and colleague romy owens will be bringing her Photobooth to this event. It’s not to be missed!
Normal, OK: Edmond “Mundy” Tulsa
Pencil underdrawing of Young Mundy Tulsa. Click any image to see larger.
Edmond “Mundy” Tulsa was born to a man who was hoping for a boy. Everyone calls her Mundy. She is a prodigious baker, and wins many bake-offs and Opteemah County Fair ribbons.
Young Mundy Tulsa, first underpainting.
The Tulsa family’s money went down with Penn Square Bank when the bottom dropped out. But Grampa Dewright Tulsa had placed gold and silver coins inside sections of pipe and buried them in the backyard. One day Mundy undertakes to dig a vegetable garden and discovers the coins. This becomes the startup capital for Miz Mundy Cookies, and later Mundy Buns.
Young Mundy Tulsa, second underpainting.
Mundy Buns grows so successful that Mundy gets a buyout offer from Nabisco. She declines on account of her personal integrity. Soon after, she strikes a deal with Dobbin Wynn to be the exclusive concessions distributor for the Dobbin & Dixie Family Film Fest.
Young Mundy Tulsa, third underpainting.
The Mundy Buns plant remains the economic heart of Normal. Mundy hires Katie Hennepin to help her branch out into organic baked goods.
Normal, OK: Young Mundy Tulsa, graphite and acrylic on paper, 2009
Mundy is seen here at the Opteemah County Fair in 1944, with the blue ribbon she won for her Sweet ‘n’ Spicy Blackberry Pie.
Back To Normal: Normal, OK Revisited is on display at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum in Oklahoma City through September 19th.
I would like to thank everyone who attended my talk at the show last Saturday, I had a wonderful time. Please join us for the closing reception on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 5 pm.
Carrie Ann Baade Interview at Hi Fructose
Wedding Portrait of Madam Himmelblau, oil on panel, 2005 by Carrie Ann Baade. Click image to view source. This painting is from the Secret Lives of Portraits series.
via Right Some Good.
The Hi Fructose blog is featuring an exclusing interview with contemporary pop baroque painter Carrie Ann Baade. Reading Baade’s description of her working process, I found that she uses collage as a sketching method, just like I do! Quote:
The spark of the muse that could be called intuition is present when I make the collage for my work. I begin this process by covering the first floor of my house in photos and ripped out pages from books. After the floor is covered I walk around looking for images that fell on top of each other in an interesting manner…this is similar to reading tealeaves. Often I will have a question in mind while diving into the piles of picture images, such as, “What can I say about the horrors of dating in Tallahassee.” This process reminds me of reading tarot cards and getting an answer through the cards that can sometimes be uncannily accurate. Looking for the divine spark to speak to me through these images, I collect and adhere together with cellophane tape to paint later. I know something is really working if I involuntarily laugh aloud at the juxtaposition.
I feel the same intuitive connectivity when I’m making collage sketches. Sometimes the best compositions happen by accident, because I left two scraps in the same pile. I look over and realize, with a little rush of adrenaline, “Of course those go together!”
Ostrich, collage sketch, 2007 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
I like how Baade allows the collage aesthetic to show through in her finished paintings, without her images appearing slapped-together. She does an excellent job of creating integrated compostitions from a variety of sources. The world is a vast grab-bag of information, and our job as artists is to interpret, reinterpret, and dis-cover meaning through our medium. Although Baade has been told that “paint was an inadequate media to display the complexity of [her] ideas,” her intricate creations overflow with narrative and emotion. You can explore more of Carrie Ann Baade’s work here.
As I was reading this interview on the Hi Fructose blog, I felt an eerie similarity between Baade’s collage process and my own. This feeling was redoubled when I saw the previous blog post about the release of Isabel Samaras’ new monograph by Chronicle books. The gent on the cover bears an uncanny resemblance to this guy here. The similarity is a coincidence.
This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.