Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2021 i Artists Magazine

It was after seeing one of Monet’s haystack paintings at an exhibition in Moscow that Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)—inspired by the primacy of color and composition seen in the work—began to take up a more improvisational approach to color. The other seminal experience for the artist occurred during a performance of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin. Kandinsky was fascinated by the power of music to elicit an emotional response without any direct connection to identifiable subject matter—ideas that would lead to his pioneering role in abstract painting. The artist not only saw a link between color and music, he also felt that color had the power to put viewers in touch with their spiritual selves. “Color is a means of exerting direct influence on the soul.”—WASSILY KANDINSKY In this issue, you’ll…

although observation of the Juneteenth holiday—also known as Freedom Day—dates back to 1866, the story behind the celebration, traditionally observed on the 19th of June, is still unfamiliar to many Americans. On January 1, 1863, after more than two years of Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order abolishing slavery in all of the remaining rebellious states. Two and a half years later, the state of Texas was still holding enslaved people in spite of that order. On June 19, 1865, Union army general Gordon Granger arrived with an infantry of 2,000 troops on the island of Galveston, Texas, to enforce the emancipation and set 250,000 enslaved black people free. It’s a tide-turning tale, accompanied by a few myths and misconceptions, but the full story is…

“When I need to come up with an idea, I go to my drawing table. The only meaningful breakthroughs happen in the place where I show up to work. I’ve updated quite a few things in my studio, but I hang on to a few old relics for sentimental reasons. My drawing table dates back to my high school years. I took it to college at UC Berkeley. The wood is full of pinholes and the wing nuts are always loose. A tightener crank busted off, so I use a C-clamp, and it wobbles. Still, I can’t bring myself to replace it. It’s like an old friend. All my dreams have flowed through it.” JAMES GURNEY ARTIST AND AUTHOR OF THE ILLUSTRATED BOOK SERIES DINOTOPIA “I use show deadlines and…

When depicting a building, it’s important to consider lines of sight. Although exactitude is never my goal for drawings such as Abbaye de Villers la Ville (27½x39⅓), I want enough accuracy to support a sense of architectural realism. A single point of view often won’t be enough to sufficiently demonstrate the impression of a space. Our comfortable viewing angle ranges from 60 to 100 degrees. Our impression of a space, however, is based on an image that combines views from several points. When observing a building on site, we don’t stand still. We turn our heads and make small steps from side to side to create a more complete image. The drawing above illustrates the composition we’d observe if standing at point A (as indicated in the diagram at left).…

“I’ve always been interested in using multiple images to tell a story that moves through time,” says master printmaker Andrew Raftery. His narratives rely not on inventive twists and turns of plot but on the details of familiar scenarios. Through painstakingly executed etchings, he embraces common domestic activities of middle-class America and transforms them into images and objects that transcend time and place. GROUNDWORK Raftery’s own story is deeply rooted in Rhode Island. His mother, also an artist, has supported her son’s artistic interests since he made his first print at age 11. It was in the garden surrounding her house that Raftery found the subject matter for his most ambitious work to date—a series of engravings on 12 ceramic plates showcasing a yearlong cycle of home gardening. There were,…

Oak Spring Garden Foundation Offers the Eliza Moore Fellowship for Artistic Excellence Gardens, a source of inspiration for artists throughout history, have also served as places of solace during times of crisis. In April 2020, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, in rural Virginia, sponsored Shelter in Art (osgf.org/exhibits/shelter-in-art), an online exhibition of 13 creativesvisual artists, composers and writers—who were “using the pandemic to re-examine their relationship to the natural world.” The benefactor and founder of this endeavor supporting the interrelationship of art, plants, gardens and landscapes was the philanthropist Rachel (Bunny) Lambert Mellon (1910–2014). Born into great wealth, she was the daughter of Gerard Barnes Lambert, president of the Gillette Safety Razor Company, and the granddaughter of Lambert Pharmaceuticals’ founder, Jordan Lambert, who invented Listerine. Her mother, also named Rachel, nicknamed…

“as a 19-century African-American who’d been the most well-known painter in Rhode Island in his day, Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901) nevertheless suffered from invisibility.” Thus was Bannister’s quandary explained in a 1992 monograph on his life and art. Born in New Brunswick, Canada, he moved to Boston in 1848, where he initially worked as a hairdresser. Although Boston was intellectually progressive, racism was pervasive, and Bannister was denied access to a formal art education. With neither a willing teacher nor the means to study in Europe, he was largely self-taught. Bannister joined the abolitionist movement and was active in the Underground Railroad. “The lone figure following a narrow path and struggling against the wind can be seen as symbolic of the artist’s resolve.” Bannister eventually settled in Providence, R.I., in…

A graphite pencil is the most accessible instrument for making art. Often, an artist’s connection to the visual arts begins with a pencil drawing. As a tool, the humble pencil may be used in so many different ways that an artist needs a lifetime to get to know them all. Part of the pencil’s power lies in its simplicity. When we exclude color from a picture, we can focus more intently on the play of light and shadow, on value contrasts and rhythm. For these reasons, it’s my favorite medium for my drawings of grand architecture, timeworn buildings and ruins. By working in a monochromatic palette, I’m able to immerse viewers into a world of heightened emotion. ARCHITECTURAL REALISM To achieve architectural realism, it’s crucial to discover a subject that…

Baker’s fine body of portraits is all the more remarkable as an achievement when we learn that it came later rather than early in life. An avid artist as a child, she studied art in college, eventually completing an MFA in painting from the Pratt Institute, in New York, in 1981. She was faced with the task of making a living and, eventually, adding the role of a mother. “I taught painting, drawing and pastel classes at local adult schools in New Jersey and started a small studio school for adults and children before I became a full-time public school math teacher,” she recalls. “Finding time for my art became increasingly challenging, so I took an occasional figure-drawing class near my home, as I love to work from life. Then…

To say that Randy Honerlah has not followed an artist’s traditional path is probably an understatement. True, he studied art at college, but he majored in psychology and built a career in computers, logging a total of 31 years at the multinational tech company, Intel. Since his retirement, however, he has emerged as a highly successful painter, known for his bright and luminous work in acrylic. EARLY BEGINNINGS Honerlah isn’t the first artist in his family. He possesses some oil paintings of roses that his great-great-grandmother painted around Lake Tahoe in the 1800s and another painting of a deer on the shore that he describes as “simply beautiful.” It was his grandmother who got him interested in art, while his mother gained a degree in painting but never made art…

We’ve all seen fish-eye photos that wrap a scene into a sphere, yet few of us are aware that the original model for such pictures first appeared in ancient Greece around 500 B.C. Centuries before modern medical science understood the mechanics of eyesight, artists of the Archaic period were using principles of optics in their visual art. As the first people to realize we see through spherical eyes, the early Greeks created no “flat-vision” paintings. Rather, they focused on images that reveal a profound awareness of human vision. According to art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968), Greek artists had a system for projecting designs onto flat surfaces that corresponds to the way information is received on a curved eyeball. They were also aware that it’s not possible for us to observe…

Colorado SIMPHIWE NDZUBE: ORACLES OF THE PINK UNIVERSE DENVER ART MUSEUM DENVER, COLORADO THROUGH SEPTEMBER 12, 2021 DENVERARTMUSEUM.ORG “Simphiwe Ndzube: Oracles of the Pink Universe” explores a fictional time and place of artist Simphiwe Ndzube’s making that he calls “Pink Universe.” The elements of magical realism in the eight new paintings on display are meant to evoke questions of power, history and conflict as they relate to post-apartheid South Africa, where the artist is from. The exhibition is Ndzube’s first solo show in the United States and is inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights. “‘Oracles of the Pink Universe’ is an expansion of Ndzube’s visual search that explores a mythological place, drawing from his personal experiences, imagination and art history,” reads a press release from the…

a practicing physician working in America’s most populous city at the height of a pandemic earns our respect. We wonder how this person manages. While helping others deal with their physical injuries and maladies, it’s important for health-care workers to find ways to alleviate stress and minimize the risk of their own psychological trauma. For Dr. Jeffrey M. Levine, the remedy is art. As an artist, Levine is mostly self-taught although he has taken classes at the Art Students League. He’s also able to transfer his physician’s observational skills to take note with an artist’s eye of the people and places in his larger orbit. With his penchant for video documentation of his processes, he shares time-lapsed painting demonstrations on social media—something like a speeded-up version of PBS’s beloved Bob…

If I tell people that I’m making a drawing, they’re likely going to picture me picking up a pencil or stick of charcoal to make lines of dry media on a sheet of paper. To artists trained in the Western tradition, this is the norm. Those trained from youth in traditional Asian art, however, experience drawing as something different. In this case, it’s the ink-and-brush combination that defines drawing media, with the mark-making done in liquid lines. Why not bring both together? The influences of East and West in the visual arts have flowed in both directions. The Impressionists were inspired by Ukiyo-e prints, and painters from Asia traveled to Europe, bringing back what they learned about linear perspective and oil painting. My drawing practice merges dry and wet media.…

As a medium, graphite is both accessible and uncomplicated, which allows artists to lean in to their personal preferences and aesthetic needs. I prefer a drawing to remain a drawing, so I never tone the surface. To emphasize the power of each stroke, I do the main drawing using mechanical pencils of different thicknesses and levels of softness. I particularly enjoy the ergonomics of the Alvin Draft/Matic. For the darkest parts of a drawing, I use various carbon pencils, which lack the gloss that’s typical of soft graphite sticks. My favorite tool for drawing darkest shades is the Kimberly drawing pencil 9XXB by General Pencil Company.…

AS AN OUTDOOR PAINTER, I’m absolutely married to the light—its effects and how they play out in concept and composition. I never tire of the continuous movement and varying distributions of light. These changing situations create an atmospheric sparkle with repose that I find terribly exciting to articulate with my pastels. THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA I work alla prima, very directly. I don’t make preliminary sketches to plan a composition. Rather, I just have at it and let the painting rise from passages, much as a poem rises from words. I allow the thinking behind what I’m experiencing to develop organically and reveal itself while in the act of painting. In this way, the idea for the painting becomes a birthing process more than a preconceived notion. What has…

On May 10, 1998, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, in Greensburg, Pa., presented an exhibition honoring the Philadelphia Ten, a group of women painters and sculptors who collectively promoted and exhibited their work from 1917 to 1945. Ultimately, the group would consist of 30 members—23 painters and seven sculptors, but the 10 founding artists were all graduates of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now known as the Moore College of Art and Design. The 1998 exhibition was the first time in more than 50 years—and the last time since—that work by these talented women artists has been shown together. WOMEN MAKING ART Recently, major art institutions, most notably the Baltimore Museum of Art, have been examining the lack of representation of women artists in their collections. In…