Collection #3

I was looking around online and I found this Bulorussian artist named Leonid Afremov. I found some of his paintings and had to zoom on the tiny and hard to read signature and keep trying different things until I finally found some info on him! He was born in 1955 and his works are very different from other artists. He works with oils and a palette knife. He does not do many exhibits and stays away from galleries. Instead he sells his work on Ebay. His early paintings were influenced by Marc Chagall and Modigliani. He just wants the world to see the world how he sees it! All his paintings have a watery look to them and are very vibrant and colorful! The way he uses the palette knife makes it look like little squares of glossy paper cut out and put all together to make a picture!

Los Angeles 1930, cannot find date done.

I can't find the exact date but a lot of his paintings are reacent. Like in the 2000s.

"I tried different techniques during my career, but I especially fell in love with painting with oil and pallette-knife. Every artwork is the result of long painting process; every canvas is born during the creative search; every painting is full of my inner world. Each of my paintings brings different mood, colors and emotions. I love to express the beauty, harmony and spirit of this world in my paintings. My heart is completely open to art. Thus, I enjoy creating inspired and beautiful paintings from the bottom of my soul. Each of my artworks reflects my feelings, sensitivity, passion, and the music from my soul. True Art is alive and inspired by humanity. I believe that art helps us to be free from aggression and depression."

~ Leonid Afremov

Collection #2

For my second item in my collection I would like to do my favorite painting, Wind from the Sea by Andrew Wyeth.

Wind from the Sea, Andrew Wyeth, 1948, Tempera, 19"x28".

Wyeth painted this picture in the Olson House, which is where he painted over 300 of his pictures.

I really like this picture because of the way he painted the curtains, I think it is amazing and you can actually feel the wind.

This is the actual window Wyeth painted from.



Burchfield Penney Arts Center

On Friday we all went to Burchfield Penney Arts Center and my first impression was how it was very very different than the Buffalo Arts Studio. It seemed a lot more established and formal. They had a gift shop and a more finished look to the building. All of Charles Burchfield's paintings were in big frames and look very properly framed. But I really enjoyed the Charles Burchfield exhibit.

Charles Burchfield was born in Ashtabula, Ohio in 1893, and raised in Salem, Ohio. In 1921 Burchfield got engaged and moved to Buffalo, where he was a wallpaper designer for H.M. Birge. Then he wanted to do painting full time so he moved to Gardenville, NY and raised his family there.
He painted a lot of watercolors, and they all had to do with the weather, which he documented everyday. You can tell by looking at his paintings; the time of day, weather, season, and everything that was going on. I loved Charles Burchfield's paintings. I thought they were so beautiful. It was neat to see all his notes and if you looked close at the paintings you could see little notes under the paint and the initial drawing.

First we saw Burchfield's earlier works, which were very good but when we went through the next room to see his later works, you could see how much he improved. There was more color and more detail and he would take older paintings and add to them, and even use his wallpaper techniques to add on paper to make them bigger.

When I look at Burchfield's paintings online I don't like them nearly as much as I did when I was there. They look so much better in person and the online photos do not do him justice.

Next we saw Jackie Felix's paintings, which I didn't like. You could tell by her paintings that she had a hard life. It seemed like she went through abuse by the weird dolls and all the sexual paintings. You could feel her anger by all the big crazy brush strokes. She used bright colors and her paintings were not easy to ignore. She does a good job of giving a message, although sometimes it's not clear to what exactly everything means. There is a lot of ways to interprupt it. Over all I would much rather look at Burchfield's paintings than Jackie's.

Collecting Art

In class last friday we talked all about collecting art. We saw how Herb and Dorothy Vogel started collecting art when they realized the art out there was better than there own. I wish that they still would have tried to work on their art because it takes practice and learning to get better at art sometimes. But they then made a life long routine of going out to art galleries and shows and familiarizing themselves with the artists around New York city. And started collecting the minimalistic style that they liked. They started collecting that art because all the pop art of that time was extremely expensive and they wanted to be collectors themselves. They were really drawn to this type of art and ended up buying so much to fill their entire apartment. Then the donated all there art to the National Gallery of Art even though they had many money offers. The Gallery could only take 1000 peices of art so they decided to start a program to donate 50 art peices to each of the 50 states. (Website showing the 50 for 50; http://vogel5050.org/) When the Gallery cleared out the Vogels home they were hoping that they would get the home they never had with a couch and proper furniture, but the Vogels suprised them and bought more art, only to fill up their home once again. Personally, I wouldn't want to live their, it reminded me of the show Hoarders when I first saw it, but that is what makes them happy, and if they didn't collect all that art and give up everything for it the National Gallery of Art would never have that great collection. They made a sacrifice for art which is pretty meaningful.

In my life I've collected lots of things. My family has a cottage up in Long Point Beach, Canada so when I was little I was always bringing buckets of rocks, shells, and just random little things I found; like popped ballons, feathers, ribbons or beach glass. When I finally would get too much my dada would secretly throw away all the rocks and I would just keep bringing back more. I still will pick up rocks when I go, and my parents bought me a rock tumbler for Christmas this year, which didn't work as well as I hoped. I always want to make something with the rocks; like a picture frame or glue them all over a wood box. But for now, there sitting in some old jars and glasses in my room.

I do collect things, especially when I was younger with stuffed animals, Barbies, procelain dolls, hairs accesories, jewelery, crazy socks, candles, stickers, and bottle caps. Now that I'm older I think it would be fun to collect some art. I might wait till I have a house though so I can have room to hang the art up all around. I would like to save up for a big painting!

I think that Herb and Dorothy were the biggest art collectors of all time, and they influenced many people!!!!

Looking forward to going to the art exhibit friday!!!

Collection #1

My first image in my collection is Falling Into Love by Mark Warren Jacques, 2010.

This is acrylic and ink done on a 11''x13'' canvas board.

I chose this as my first image because I really like all the colors and how you can imagine them spinning to the center. It's titled falling in love and I think the title matches the piece because it is like falling in love. Everything is bright and wonderful and you feel like your spinning when you fall in love!

Mark Warren Jacques was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1984 and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
His friend, Howard Hurst says, "Mark’s paintings trace the lines that connect us all into playful lazy circles." I think his work looks sort of psychadelic.

Here is a video of Jacques talking about his art, and how he thinks it's weird to sell art.
http://vimeo.com/1714290

“I am a painter, a dreamer, a reader, often a thinker, ambitious, and living for love and beauty. My work is a major connector between my body and my mind. Sometimes life is pretty wearing on the soul and the body, so the work becomes a resting place." Mark Warren Jacques

Buffalo Arts Studio

On Friday we went to the Buffalo Arts Studio. I've only been there once before, when I was in Art Appreciation last year. I like this gallery and really want to take a class there, maybe this summer. When we were there we looked at three artists; Megan Greene, Esther Neisen, and Balint Zsako. They all had a common theme of things representing humans mixed with nature.

The first artist we saw was Esther Neisen, an artist from Buffalo. Her pieces all had insects in them, which represented her family members. She worked with multimedia to make a family tree sort of thing. At the top of most of her works there was big circles that either had a red circle, for the people who passed away, or insects which I interperated as important family members. Then branching off she had white circles with I couldn't tell if it was sillhoutes of countries or insects, or both. The art that was done like this I felt was very simple looking but had a lot of meaning for her put into it. It isen't something that I would buy to hang up on my walls but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. I thought that it was fun to learn what the meaning behind it was. And once I understood them better I appreciated it more. She also had two light boxes with insects that if you looked closely were made of negatives of family photos and educational material which were neat too get close to and really look at that tiny pictures!

The next artist we looked at was Megan Greene, who is from Buffalo but now lives in Chicago. I thought that her work was absolutley beautiful! It is something that I would want to hang in my house. She took pictures of birds from the book "Birds of America" with paintings by John James Audubon and altered them too look very appealing. She turned the pictures upside down or sideways. I brought my boyfriend, Shawn, with me and he didn't like how all the pictures were sideways or up side down. But I think that she wanted them that way because that's the way that they looked the prettiest, and they might not be as interesting if they were all the right way. You could tell by looking at each picture that she had spend a lot of time on each one. They all had beautiful shapes, girly things like jewels, and dolls, and arms and colors that all blended together very nicely. I really enjoyed this artist for the realistic but abstract-edness!

The last artist we looked at was Balint Zsako, who was born in Hungary but now lives in Brooklyn. When I first walked into his exhibit area I loved the colorfulness of all the pictures. They were very fun to look at but something younger kids shouldn't look at! His pictures were very illustarative looking because of the colors and amount of detail. When I saw the people in the pictures they looked to me like they were all filled with colors to represent something in nature. Like this painting below reminds me of a sunset!

His paintings represent guilt and pleasure which I think he did a good job at. When you first look at the paintings your first impression is there colorful, child like and fun. But once you actually realize what is going on you realize it's not just that but there is a dark side of the art too.

I looked up this artist and he also has a very different style for some of his work. It has the same idea behind it but it is not bright colors or illustrative looking. I would say some of his other works look like renaissance with a twist. Then he also has these paintings of "heads" that are faces with weird expressions or just filled with color. He sculpts too!!





After looking at the Art Show I enjoyed walking around looking through the artist's studios too. One of them really caught my eye. Rosemarie Bauer Sroka was working on a series called water that was awesome! It was very relaxing to look at I wanted to buy it, paint my room blue and then hang it up!

I really enjoyed the Buffalo Arts Studio, and definitley will go back there for there next show! I think Esther Neisen, Megan Greene, and Balint Zsako all deserved to have there works hanging up there!



Beauty Doesn't Make Art, Art

Well after taking me a day and a half to remember my gmail email and password, I finally have logged into blogger the night before class! Now its on auto remember so that won't happen again!!!!

So I'm looking at my notes from last class and I remember us discussing the debate over what is art and what is not. I was researching on Google and came across this video named What is Art, and What is Not?



This man, Milton Glaser talks about how he distinguishes art. He says that art is something that has helped culture survive, and he also talks about beauty and art.

         "I also believe, curiously, that beauty, which is very often something we confuse with art, is merely a mechanism to move us towards attentiveness. You realize we all have a genetic capacity and need to experience beauty, but beauty is not the ultimate justification for art. It is merely the device by which we are led to attentiveness."- Milton Glaser

He goes on to say that he's decided that he distinguishes art and not art by if it grabs your attention it's art, if it doesn't, it's something else.

I agree with Milton Glaser on his conclusion of what art is because it is not all about beauty, art is something that will grab your attention.

An example of something that grabs my attention is the "Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic" by Jana Sterbak. In 1991, this artist took 50 pounds of raw flank steaks and stiched them together to make a dress. It was most famously displayed at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. It was meant to show the contrast between vanity and bodily decay. But this made a lot of Canadians upset, and they protested the work by mailing in food scraps!

Some things will really make you question yourself on what is considered art, but by reading and learning about it all, it helps you have a more open mind. I know both Milton Graser and Jana Sterbak have helped me change my mindset a little bit tonight!