Friday’s Famous Artist is …. Mark Rothko

 

Born in Russia (Sept 1903 – February 1970) his family moved to Portland, Oregon when they feared they would be drafted into the czarist Russian army. 

Life was difficult as they lost a sibling on the trip over which meant all the kids had to work to help the family make ends meet.  Markus was in 3rd grade at this time and was excelling so well he was moved to the 5th grade where he learned his 4th language after, Hebrew which was English.

Mark Rothko went on to study at Yale University but felt it was an elitist establishment and dropped out after his 2nd year.  It was an encounter in New York some years hence where he saw a young student sketching that started his desire to become an artist which continued to the end of his life.

By this time Rothko had joined a group of other fairly well known painters and is known for painting what he himself claimed were “industrial paintings” works that hung on large walls.  Rothko’s work was 8 to 10 feet long and equally as high. 

The progression of a painter's work as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity.. toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea.. and the idea and the observer.. To achieve this clarity is inevitably to be understood.

Rothko suffering from severe depression took his own life in February of 1970.

To me Rothko seemed deeply affected by an intense need to arrive somewhere in his work which in some small insignificant way I can understand.  There is a hidden drive in some artists to get at it.  The vision can be so intense at times that portraying it is almost the hardest thing to do.  As you get a bit of it, you think it’s right and then somehow in the next day or so it slips away. 

I think if you spend some time deeply looking at Rothko’s work you will see much in what appears to be “nothing.”  He is extremely adept at layering and shading with the colors underneath bouncing through to the foreground.  His work shimmers and has a very lush quality about it.  He definitely had a vision for his work and it saddens me that in the end he took his life for it. 

New Work …. From The Studio

 

Vivid Red seems to be the theme for HOT SUMMERS.  I have been working on 14 x 17’s pretty much exclusively all summer.  I had a need to work out a series which means for those of you who aren’t familiar with artist’s terms …. create about 20 like minded and inspired pieces.   The idea of a series is to stick to the same theme, using repetitive patterns so when you look at them all together, framed and ready to rock and roll … they all look similar.  All the work should be as if they belong as oppose to NOT belonging.

 

Anyone familiar with the jury process at an art show will know that the art work has to look cohesive.  Cohesive. 

My work is considered abstract and expressionist which means it is not a picture of an apple or a cat or a landscape … it’s an abstraction of ???   It’s an abstraction of an expression.  What does a SCREAM feel like?  What does the smell of rain look like, and so on.  That’s expressionism. 

That’s the News From The Studio … how’s your day going? 

News From The Couch ….

Weaving the Unexpected In

My work dramatically changed this week.  So I stopped midway to breath and my head is trying to catch up with change.   I didn’t expect the lines to shift so quickly and now that I’m here, well it’s interesting to understand whether to go forward or back.

Funny isn’t it?  In life taking a left turn on a map means that you usually have to shift yourself around and ultimately aim towards the direction you had intended.  Things don’t always happen like that with paintings. 

Paintings are an evolution of many things, like pattern, shapes and the context they are put in.  Change anything and the whole piece is completely altered. 

I have in my heart; a beginning, a middle and a crescendo to my work and in the middle of doing that A LOT HAPPENS.  Spatially things don’t move the way I expected or better then I expected the colors I chose change the mood for awhile,  my kitten jumps up on the canvas, my kitten decides it’s time to stop painting and I don’t agree. 

 

Day to day of life is a process of many things interwoven.  Painting a canvas is no different.  We have a list when we start our day of things that need to be done and how urgent that is.  It is much like painting.  Certain things have to happen in order for the magic to occur. 

The odd and unusual can make your day heaven or hell.  I have a wonderfully precocious kitten who is full of energy running around and what a delight.  Until the water gets tipped over and the paint falls to the ground. 

I have made changes in my directions because it’s better to have the company of the profound and lovely.  That means not getting upset when things don’t go the way I thought they should.  Leaves room for imagination and patience and a lot of fun.

That’s the news from the Couch ….. how’s your day going? 

Friday’s Famous Artist is … Paul Klee

 

 

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.” Paul Klee

  

 

Paul Klee    1879 – 1940 was born in Munchenbuchsee, Switzerland.  Credited with inspiration in the impressionist and cubism movement, here again we see an artist moved by symbols and the primitive essence.  Finding words and color could move together to form a thought or sentence, Klee was inspired to paint symbols as a code in his work.  Each piece representing an entire experience. 

He is credited with writing the book “The Thinking Eye” which details an obsession with spiritual concepts and exactness.  The  book is considered the most detailed manual on the science of design ever written.  This book is as valuable as Da Vinci’s journal and notes on A Treatise on Painting.

Paul Klee was a man who un spun the wheel and detached from the need to create limp realistic, stilted images.  He was more impressed with the impression of time upon a person’s consciousness and deformed objects and related them back to the place they “belonged.”

His works take great leaps of change throughout his career, none staying exactly in any one direction, but there is a pattern to the evolution of his work in his artist’s eye.   It is color and pattern, color sometimes more important and at other times pattern or symbols more important in the progression of his work.  Shapes are expressive and speak, then pattern is expressive and speaks.  In yet another work, a face or a figure are expressive and speak all returning to …. and then a release from that structure. 

Playful, humorous, emphatic, brilliant and majestic are all words to be found in his pieces.  He is at once, demanding an attention to our human past, present and future.  Time stops in one work and begins again in another.  Moments are captured and released to return again.  All of his work speaks the language of the human spirit. 

“Beauty is as relative as light and dark.  Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none as all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.”  Paul Klee

  

News From the Couch: Why Buy Original Artwork?

 

  Finding the right location for a picture is easy for me.  I was the person who nailed a chair to the wall and put a picture on it.  I was the person who put vases on the floor with real flowers in them.  Luckily Gabriel (the kitten) didn’t tip it over, he’s so nice. I was the person who painted a huge mural on my staircase wall with stars and canyons and guest’s handprints all over it. 

I have seen beautiful pictures in magazines of stunning living rooms and nooks and bookcases and, and and.  I also didn’t have the resources and or just the product available in my area to buy.  What to do?  Well we punt. 

I’m eclectic with an eye for the best.  I love rich fabrics and good couches and quality where I can afford it.  After that …. well sometimes it’s a can of paint, some ingenuity and a few “what ifs.”   Decorating is an unique as you are. 

Beloved pieces can make any house a home.  Make sure your have some.  Have an original piece of artwork on you walls, not a print, not a copy, not a piece of cardboard with color on it.  An original, made by an artist.  That’s what artists are there for, to give you an authentic, real piece of work to add to your home. 

This piece is titled mother n child and is for sale at http://agapistudios.blogspot.com or contact the artist Beth Simpson at agapistudios@hotmail.com.   THANKS!