Posts Tagged ‘pears’

Day 19: Pears and Still Life – and the Art World Loses Jeanne-Claude


2009
11.19

What the heck?  What’s happening to me!  I painted some pears today.  Badly, yes, but I don’t mind.  I used them as a backdrop for today’s Art Every Day Month piece.  I am enjoying setting up and photographing still lives.  I’m stuck in the fruit mode at the moment, but Cezanne did a lot of fruit, so I can too.
pears one resized

Jeanne-Claude Dies

I am very saddened by the death of Jeanne-Claude today.  She’s Christo’s wife, and the two of them collaborated on their wonderful temporary art installations.  My husband and I worked on two of them:  The Umbrellas and The Gates Central Park.

She was a vibrant, warm, and exciting woman.  We’d see her walking around with her flaming orange hair as she checked on the projects, talked and ate lunch with people, etc.  I’ll put up a picture of my husband eating lunch with Christo and Jeanne-Claude during the Gates Project.  I’ll also put up one of my photos of the Gates.

mark lunch resized

This photo of the gates may be the most interesting I’ve ever taken.  It is absolutely as photographed – no photoshop, no boosting colors, nothing.  Yet it has a strange cartoonish , illustrative quality.  I just love it.

gates resized

The New York Times reported that she died from complications of a brain aneurysm.

Still Life: Pears, and Essays


2009
11.18

I’ve been running in a million scattered directions lately trying to figure out where my next series will come from.  I’m not finished forever with Altered Landscapes, but I do want something different for a while.

One of my favorite genres of painting has always been still life.  Cezanne is the master as far as I’m concerned.  This is why:

cgfa_cezanne18

Paul_Cézanne,_Still_Life_With_Apples,_c._1890

It’s a funny genre (if that’s the right word) because it’s essentially static.  The composition is what’s important and of course the painter.  I can’t paint.  Seriously, I can’t.  I’ve tried.  I’ve taken classes.  It’s an embarrassment.  The professors can’t critique me because there’s nothing to critique.

But – I can and do use photography as my art form.  So why not construct and photograph still lives?  This is a far greater challenge than I imagined – and I didn’t think it would be easy!  I’ve done three so far.  Two have been posted previously but I’ll put them on this post just for the heck of it.

In today’s, I got smart and painted the background.  I’ll just keep painting over and over this canvas – it’ll be fun.  I used a collage of mine in this still life.  The collage was recently exhibited in a juried show and won a prize, so I’m getting some more mileage out of it.   Here’s the show poster.

poster-11

Finally, today’s still life, in which Metropolitan makes an appearance.  Is it coincidence that “pear” appears in “appearance?”

Still Life- Pear

And here’s the first two.  I’m liking the challenge of this still life business.

Still Life Trunk Resized

Still Life Music

Essays

Finally, if anyone has kids who need help writing essays, I’ve posted a few eHow articles on this.  They might help. (I’m a former 7th-grade language arts teacher).  The first link is for How to Make Your Essays Better.  Here’s one for a five-paragraph essay and a persuasive essay.

That’s all folks!  Happy Art Every Day Month for November 18.