Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2023 i Artists Magazine

EXPLORE SOMETHING NEW “My recollections of Armenia open new visions for me. My art is therefore a growth art where forms, pines, shapes, memories of Armenia germinate, breathe, expand and contract, multiply and thereby create new paths for exploration.”ARSHILE GORKY Every artist grapples at times with creative block. Even seasoned artists can struggle for motivation if they allow themselves to get too settled into a comfort zone. A pastel artist, Frank Federico (1928–2018), once shared with me that the way he avoided a feeling of stasis in his art-making was to embrace variety in his creative practices. Whether in the choice of media or subject, or even style, he fostered in himself a willingness to “change it up.” You’ll hear several of the winners of this year’s Over 60 competition…

Stephanie Struth enjoys painting live scenes and portraits, and she’s comfortable working in front of an audience. With these skills in her toolbox, she’s a natural for creating wedding paintings from life. “Many people spend a lot of money on a wedding and often have little left to show for it,” says Struth, a wedding artist in Essex, England. “Live painting is a genuinely fascinating feature that wedding guests love, and it gives the couple a precious souvenir of their day, created on that day.” Five years ago, wedding publications such as Brides and The Knot magazines declared live wedding painting a growing trend—and their prediction has held true. In this digital age of photography and video, some couples are also investing in a physical, one-of-a-kind painting that they can…

During exhibition openings, through the mail and over the telephone, art collectors regularly ask painter Scott Prior to produce works just for them. Sometimes, these collectors suggest an image they want him to paint. Most of the time, they simply tell him, “I want anything.” Money and praise are offered, but Prior approaches these offers warily. “I’m not encouraging,” he says. “For every 10 people who ask me to do something, I may work with one. When I don’t know the person, how can I be confident there won’t be problems down the road? I don’t even know what the problems might be.” POSSIBLE PROBLEMS Actually, Prior does know, generally, what problems he might encounter, even when he doesn’t know the particulars about a specific collector. He may find himself…

In my school-age years, I really struggled with math, but I discovered that if I could work out the right questions to ask, I could usually figure out the answers. The same goes for many other challenges—and landscape painting has plenty. Soliciting critiques from other artists can certainly be a helpful practice, but knowing what to assess in your painting and how to troubleshoot some basic missteps on your own will greatly enhance your efforts. When you develop a habit of self-critiquing your work in this way, fumbles are avoided before they have a chance to rear their ugly heads in front of an audience. TOP 10 LANDSCAPE PITFALLS The number of potential problems for landscape artists, especially for the painterly impressionist, surpasses this list, but these are 10 of…

When Colorado artist Lui Ferreyra tries to identify the inception of his artistic journey, he wonders if it has to do with the encouragement he received. He had the solid support of his family, and the reactions his peers had to his talent was highly motivating. “I feel like all kids make art and all kids love art, and, for me I don’t know what the trick was,” says Ferreyra. “I was obsessive about art very early on as a kid. Once I entered the school system, I received lots of positive reactions from my peers and teachers.” This kept the young artist going, as did the willingness of his teachers to assign him special projects outside of class curriculum. When Ferreyra says he has always been an artist, he…

Fresh out of art school, I was on the hunt for a gallery. I put together a portfolio showing everything I could do as a young painter: expressive charcoal figure drawings, loose plein air oil landscapes, detailed watercolor still lifes. I thought gallery owners would be impressed by my wide range of styles and subjects. After all, my mom was! Instead of praise, however, I was met with puzzled looks. “What are you trying to say with your work?” the dealers asked. “What, exactly, is it that you do?” I retreated to my studio to think about my answers, and decades later, I’m still figuring this out. For an artist, there are no more difficult questions, and each of us must find our own response. The minimalist master Agnes Martin…

Experimenting with new materials is a great way to reveal unexplored possibilities in your work. The whole concept of water-soluble drawing materials excites me. Although I’ve worked with Graphitint pencils before, it has been a challenge to embrace them fully because I’ve developed a reliance on more traditional materials that I know will deliver the results I want. The following demonstration helped me gain a better understanding of these unique pencils—and the color possibilities they provide. MATERIALS Graphite: Derwent’s Graphitint water-soluble, tinted graphite pencils Watercolor brushes: Kolinsky sables in various sizes Surface: 9x12-inch cold-pressed watercolor paper DEMONSTRATION: DRAWING WITH GRAPHITINT STEP 1: INITIAL WASH I made light outlines of the primary shapes and used ocean blue to lightly layer the sky. Then I washed the area with a No. 14…

What Is It? Encaustic is a painting medium dating back to the first century. It’s made with beeswax mixed with crystallized tree sap (damar resin), pigments and color. On the Surface A sturdy surface or substrate is a must. • Wood panels are a common choice, although there are papers and cards made for encaustic. • Avoid canvas supports because humidity and temperature changes will flex the fabric—cracking the wax. Add Caution A fire extinguisher, burn kit and good ventilation are must-haves. Keep flammable materials well away from your heat source. Add Heat When melted, encaustic medium can be applied like paint. Heat also fuses the wax layers. You can heat the medium in several ways: • Use a hot-plate palette to mix colored waxes, which you can then work…

When Shalese Sands first experimented with scratchboard in a high school art class, she was intrigued but unimpressed. She used an X-Acto knife and nibs to mark into a layer of black ink applied over glossy cardstock paper, removing the ink to reveal lighter lines and areas. “You can only go so far before you start scratching the paper itself,” she says. “It’s limited what you can do with materials of that quality.” Fast forward to 2013, when the artist was reintroduced to the medium in an online artist forum. The meticulously made scratchboard art being posted caught her attention. She learned that most of those artists were using a scratchboard surface by Ampersand—very thin, ⅛-inch-thick hard boards coated with a thin layer of kaolin clay. “That’s the white we…

During its 50th year, Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum goes all out celebrating its namesake artist. Vincent van Gogh’s dramatic life story embodies the stereotype of the tortured creative genius—an artist, unrecognized in his own time and suffering in isolation, who becomes famous after death. Founded in 1973, the Netherlands’ Van Gogh Museum has become a must-visit venue for tourists from around the world who hope to gain some insight into van Gogh’s legacy. Artists recognized by a last name alone frequently become the subject not only of traditional museum exhibitions but also of popular forms of entertainment, such as movies, novels and even songs. It’s not surprising, then, that van Gogh should be featured in the newest art-world obsession—immersive exhibitions. These multimedia extravaganzas, with their large digital reproductions of paintings…