Antiquitopia

Again, a painting I finished just before moving to Mississippi: Green Pumpkin.  Appropriate for the upcoming fall season.

One of the latest studies I did before moving to Mississippi: Sunburst.

My latest painting, for my newly born niece, Jaryn.

Here is my newest painting, "Discovery."  I just put on the last touches tonight.  It is a gift for my niece, who loves fairies and who turns four very soon.

My latest painting, finished just two nights ago.

One of the best aspects of the Society of Biblical Literature meeting this year is that it is in New Orleans. I probably attended a panel and a half total. My schedule was packed with interviews and other events on Saturday and Sunday. It was a misty, cloudy, and rainy weekend. It felt like the U.K., but perhaps a bit warmer. But Monday the sun came out and I was able to wander through the French Quarter--not that I didn't wander before, but it was more enjoyable in the sunshine. After a plate of beignets and a cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde, my attention was caught by these beautiful prints/paintings--they are monoprints--of silhouetted trees against a marbled, colorful background. The colors were rich and deep, yet still caught a nice contrast against the foregrounded black trees. The trees had few leaves and the roots were in full view, exposed, just like so much became both covered and exposed after Hurricane Katrina. I spoke to the artist, hanneke danielle relyea of cl...

Two artists, one from Pakistan living in Queens and the other the child of Iranian immigrants living in New Jersey, in a conjoined show grapple with what it means to be Muslim, American, and women through their art. See the somewhat lengthy, but very interesting NYTimes article : In Pakistan Ms. Ahmed Shikoh’s work had been sociopolitical, addressing what she saw as the country’s colonization by American fast-food chains, for instance, with paintings like “The Invasion,” in which swarms of Ronald McDonalds, wearing screaming-red clown wigs, surround a central monument in Karachi. Here, however, her art turned deeply personal as she grappled with her new identity as an immigrant and, having rarely set foot in a mosque back home, as a gradually more observant Muslim. In her first American paintings Ms. Ahmed Shikoh reimagined the Statue of Liberty in her own image: in a Pakistani wedding dress, as a pregnant immigrant and as a regal mother, baby on hip. Next she transformed the subway m...

John Hobbins has posted on Van Gogh's faith in the expressionists' oscillations of joy and depression, in which the downs eventually outweighed the ups. Van Gogh is by far my most favorite painter of all time. Here is a quote from Hobbins's post: In 1885 Van Gogh painted this volume in his Still Life with Bible. A crack in the spine still causes the book to fall open at Isaiah 53, precisely the page at which the Bible lies open in the painting. I have posted the "Still Life with Bible" above. And here is Isaiah 53:1-12: Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath bo...

"Christina's World" "Daydream" I was saddened to hear of the death of Andrew Wyeth today . You can recognize his work most easily by his use of egg tempera in largely landscape paintings that show a great calmness in skill. By Jon Hurdle PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Renowned American artist Andrew Wyeth, famous for landscapes of his native Pennsylvania and Maine, died on Friday, according to a spokeswoman for the Brandywine River Museum near his home. Wyeth, who was 91, died in his sleep early in the morning, surrounded by his family and friends, after a brief illness, the museum said in a statement. He is best known for "Christina's World" (1948), in which a disabled woman appears to be striving to cross a largely empty landscape. It was painted, like many of his other works, in egg tempera, a technique that he said forced him to slow down the execution of a painting. Wyeth, one of the best-known American painters, drew international recognition duri...

You can make your own drip and pour painting, a method best known through Jackson Pollock, online here ! As someone who paints and loves paintings, this is a fun site to play with. Image: Jackson Pollock, Lavendar Mist, No. 1, 1950

A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History")

As mentioned sometime before, I paint. And here is my most recent painting done for my niece, Rebekah, for the occasion of her birth a couple weeks ago--yes, I am a newly minted uncle. Unfortunately, there is a glare on this photograph, losing some of the depth of color, particularly at the bottom of the painting at the bottom of the leaves and losing some of the contrast between the blues and purples in the swirls of the night sky. The contrast, to the naked eye, is as strong as it is at the top of the painting. Moreover, the contrast of the swirling stars is also stronger to the naked eye, again being obscured by a glare unavoidable due to the lighting in my apartment. As is now appearing to become my style, the painting emphasizes secondary colors--oranges, greens, and purples--more than primary colors. In contrast to the paintings I posted earlier in the year with almost dizzyingly detailed leaves, I went with larger patterns and shapes on this one. I like how it looks on my wa...

So, in my free time I paint. I had taken a few pictures of two of my more recent paintings, and I thought I would just share them with everyone. These two are very similar in subject--they are both leaves that form patterns based upon the direction they are pointed, but only differ in their patterns. The first is a "burst" pattern, after which the leaves start to spiral outward. In the second, the leaves move inward. The first has a bit more of a structured color pattern that becomes more and more random as one moves outward. The second's color pattern maintains a certain randomness throughout. Although the deep purples and the oranges tend toward the center in second as they are clearly so in the first. And, lastly, the first was painted for my sister and brother-in-law, while the second was painted for my girlfriend.

In case anyone didn't know, my absolute favorite painter is the earless Vincent van Gogh. My girlfriend just got me a mug with one of van Gogh's self-portraits on it, and when you fill it with hot liquid, the ear disappears! It is hilarious! Anyway, whenever I go to the Met, I have to make homage to the Impressionist / Expressionist wing where I can see some of his stuff. So I get excited anytime he's in the news--which is rare. And right now, due to advances in X-Ray technology, he is! I just read the following : Hidden Van Gogh revealed in color by scientists Wed Jul 30, 11:33 AM ET Scientists have made a colored view of an early rejected painting underneath Vincent van Gogh's 'Patch of Grass' painting, using advanced X-ray techniques, a Dutch university said on Wednesday. The very detailed image shows the face of a woman and may give art historians a better understanding of t...