Found this painting of mine on a Pakistani site
I am honored.
Afghan Women – I Get Around
Category: Art
Caterpillar of Feathers – by José Luis Rodríguez
This photo is titled “Oruga de Plumas” (Caterpillar of Feathers) by the artist.
José Luis Rodríguez is an amazing nature photographer. Here is his bio – in Spanish only. He also has a very well-done nature photography site.
.
Artist for Facebook Murals to Get $200 Million
Facebook hired a graffiti artist, David Choe, in 2005 to decorate its new headquarters after the company moved to California. He ridiculed the company at the time, but still, rather than taking several thousand dollars in cash fees, he worked for stock options.
Seven years later, when the anticipated Facebook IPO is over, Choe’s stock will be worth $200 million. This must be the most successful art commission in the history of the world.
Now, all the graffiti artists will be running to Silicon Valley to tag new startups.
Upcycling
Upcycling – What a Cool Idea! Here is a whole blog associated with this concept!
Here is an old chair Devin painted and gave us a couple of Christmases ago:
New Painting: No Lifeguard
I was in Clearwater Beach, Florida last November at a conference. In the evening I walked the beach. The setting sunlight illuminated the lifeguard stations. I knew there’d be a painting there somewhere.
Ruminations on Book Covers
I miss not getting any more book covers with my Kindle books. There is something about holding a book for a few hours, or days, while reading it, and getting used to the cover art. While the publishers still make cover art for books, since most books still come out in hardcopy, that will doubtless change.
Come to think of it, how many books have I bought for their cover? Very, very many. At least that’s gone now since I buy my books on the Kindle. The cover art is not the triggering factor for the purchase anymore. It’s the reviews and the sample that help me with the purchase decision.
The change in buying behavior based on cover art may be similar with the music album cover transition. I am old enough that when I first bought music, there were only vinyl records. I still have several boxes of those that were my favorites at the time. There was something special about those album covers. Who does not have Tapestry by Carole King and who cannot picture it (provided being old enough)? When CD’s came out, the much smaller pictures of the albums were not quite the same. I don’t even look at the displays on the iPod, of course. They might as well not bother anymore.
But back to books. I always got a kick out of the terribly hokey science fiction cover art of the classic age (1940 – 1970). There is an example in the post below for Seeds of Light, and there is another one here:
The cover and illustrations are by Jack Gaughan. Seriously, check out the red shining eyes.
I have issues with very hokey cover art, like this, but perhaps it’s because I am not a teenager, or because I am an artist.
Cover art for classic science fiction is as hokey as it gets. Check out my friend’s site Science Fiction Ruminations which specializes in classic science fiction and its cover art. I have learned a lot from Joachim, and I have read several books based on his recommendations. He is a treasure trove of resources on science fiction. And there is a wealth of cover art to check out, so I’ll stop here.
It’s easy to criticize someone else’s work.
What would I paint for Entry to Elsewhen? So I hold my peace.
Painting of Red Shack
The nursery down by Lake Hodges shut down about a year ago. They lost their lease. I thought there might be a painting in this, so I rode my bicycle onto the nursery. Sure enough, I got chased away by a mad farmer in a pickup truck, but not before I could take a picture of this abandoned shed. On the left you see a bit of the lake. To the left of that would be the I-15 freeway bridge. On the right, in the background, is the Sonata housing development, where we live. Indeed, there was a painting…
Markus Reugels – Water Drop Artist
Here is an entirely different, completely unique, exceptionally creative and probably very difficult to duplicate art form.
See Markus’ web site for a display of his amazing works.
Horsetail Fire Falls
For us artists – here is a special image. The phenomenon is so rare it can only be photographed a few days in February at sunset.
Art and Illusion
As an artist, I often struggle picking the right colors, mixing the right shades, so the resulting canvas matches what I see, and that way creates an illusion of reality for the viewer of the painting. My technique is not to mix paint much on the palette, but rather on the canvas itself. My paintings take a long time because I keep putting on transparent layers of different colors until I have the shade I want.
The dominant concept above is: mix colors to match what I see. But what do we actually see as compared to what we THINK we see.
Watch this video below and you’ll never trust your perception of shade and color again.
Excellent 60 Minutes Piece on Van Gogh
The 60 Minutes piece on Van Gogh shows brilliant art work, tells the story of Van Gogh and lays out an alternative version of his death. Widely purported as a suicide, recent research indicates that his death was far from what we think it was.
More than anything, I enjoyed the pictures of the places in Auvers where Van Gogh lived and finally died, the room where he stayed, the inn where he took his meals, photographs of the people who lived around him, and the portraits of the people he painted.
Click here for the link to 60 Minutes. Unfortunately, you have to watch 2 Liptor commercials to get there. You can fast forward over the first story to get to the Van Gogh piece, but you can’t get past the commercials. Argh.
Art Interpretations
A few days ago I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, one of the world’s largest art galleries. I spent some time in the rooms where many of the Van Gogh paintings are. Van Gogh is my favorite painter and I could spend hours sitting there in the presence of greatness.
But that’s not possible in the Met. The Van Gogh rooms are usually packed. I am not the only one who loves Van Gogh. Guides come through regularly with their groups and they always talk about Van Gogh and particularly one of his most famous paintings, A Wheatfield with Cypresses:
One of they guides told about the meaning of the cypresses, the clouds and the wheatfields. Everyone puts thoughts into Van Gogh’s brain and meaning into his brushstrokes. At the risk of offending an entire academic branch of art historians and art analysts:
I think it’s all made-up:
I don’t think Van Gogh ever sat there and thought about what symbolic meaning to put into the wheatfield and the cypress. He painted the damn things because he could not help it, he was a painter and that’s what he did. He loved the bright colors of the world, and he loved even more magnifying them and laying them thick on the canvas. The field was hot, and he wanted to make the yellow in wheat look hot. It worked. Van Gogh had passion for his work and his art. He never thought that there would be art interpreters in museums in New York that would look at his work. He never knew how great he would become after his death.
And that is a very sad thing, making Van Gogh greater yet.
I cannot turn around and walk away from A Wheatfield with Cypresses without tears welling up in my eyes.
Play Review: Avenue Q
I love plays yet I don’t go very often. However, I do not care much for musicals.
Avenue Q is a musical — with puppets, like those in Sesame Street. Huh? And how is that fun? I would never have picked this if it were left to me.
But Trisha bought the tickets and I must say — it’s been a long, long time that I have enjoyed a live play as much as this. I had a wonderful time. Thank you very much.
Avenue Q is a most unusual musical. There are seven “actors” in this play. Three of them are human actors, and the other four are puppeteers who control eleven puppets like those in Sesame Street. The human actors wear colorful costumes and they interact seamlessly with the puppets in the play. The puppeteers are humans dressed in gray, gray shoes, gray jeans, gray shirts or skirts and they wear no discernible makeup. The idea is that they are not really there and just blend into the background. The human actors completely ignore the puppeteers as if they were not even there.
As I watched, I found myself completely immersed in the story, following the colorful actors and puppets. I noticed that I was paying attention to the expressions of the puppets, and only occasionally I would look at the humans controlling them, noticing their facial expressions mimicking the puppets. To make matters more complicated, some puppets were controlled by two humans at the same time, like one controlling the right hand and the other the left, but always the same voice. This went further, when two puppets were on stage voiced by the same puppeteer but controlled by two different ones. If this all sounds confusing, you’re not alone.
Within the first song, however, I was so drawn into this story, into the custom written music, and into the puppets as believable characters, I just took it as such is the world. I would not have been surprised if I had walked out on the streets of Manhattan later and found people carrying puppets around. It would have made complete sense.
The story is one of coming of age, the culmination of the generations of children who grew up with Sesame Street, accepting of the neat and safe world of only good, and hope, and beauty, only to find out that there is betrayal, and porn, and unemployment, and flat-out bad luck. The first song is “It Sucks to be Me” and this is just a start.
I had a delightful time and I would recommend this show to anyone without any reservation. It’s glorious entertainment and it deserves all the awards it has received.
Rating: ****
Electronic Magic
Here is a new kind of art: