Seasons Greetings and Happy Nude Year everyone!
New Sketchbook Library Nude – Kick
Watercolor and Pencil on Paper
I’ve been continuing to work on my sketchbook library sketchbook, I don’t know if I am going to be able to realize all my plans for it by the time I have to send it off but I hope I can get some done at least. I feel a little bad that these sketches are so rough but I really do want to show my process and my process begins with really rough, loose hind-brain sketches. often late at night.
Stalin’s Secret Defaced Nudes
A nude drawing autographed and defaced by Joseph Stalin
MOSCOW — An unprecedented exhibition opened in Moscow Friday of nude prints with scrawled comments apparently written by former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that make ribald references to his party comrades.
Titled “Messages from the Great Leader: Stalin’s Autographs,” the week-long exhibition shows prints of 19th- and 20th-century art works that Stalin is said to have defaced with messages in coloured pencil.
“Ginger b..(expletive) Radek, if he hadn’t p..(expletive) against the wind, if he hadn’t been angry, he would be alive,” he wrote across the leg of a weighty male nude.
The macabre comment was an apparent reference to Karl Radek, the former head of the international communist organisation, the Comintern, believed to have been shot dead by Stalin’s secret police in 1939.
[From AFP: Exhibition reveals Stalin's 'nude drawings hobby']
Should I be concerned about the predilection for nudes that dictators seems to have? or that so many have artistic bents to them? I think that there is something in artists, a need to control, that we express through our art. we create our worlds, we own them, they are formed exactly how we want them to be and we become passionate about controlling the precise aspects of them. for some, perhaps, art wasn’t enough.
I find it interesting that both Stalin and Hitler were both very talented. I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if they had thrown themselves more into their art instead of tyranny. but perhaps, again, artists tend to walk a fine line between insanity and reality. perhaps one too many rejections sent them over the edge.
More disturbing to me about this exhibition are the comments, they show the mind of a sociopath. added 30 years after the works were created you have to wonder what was going through his mind. there is an implication in the comments, also, that often the models were well known to Stalin. was this a nude of Radek?
Some reports on the exhibition have suggested that Stalin had homosexual leanings, as most of the drawings are of nude men, and the commentator twice makes jokes about masturbation.
“Stalin and naked guys: what was between them?” a story was headlined in daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“We specially showed these works to psychologists. They didn’t find any expressions of homosexuality, although this material of course does prompt you to have this thought,” Turshatov said.
Personally I don’t see them that way, or think it’s important whether Stalin was homosexual or not. what I do see are the puerile nature of the comments which lead me to think that he had a very juvenile turn of mind.
I’ve written previously on the subject of whether the acts of the artist should count when viewing the work. I think in this example the acts of the artist has to count because he has made it part of the art. by defacing his own pieces with comments he brings his acts to the forefront of people’s minds. it is impossible to divorce Joseph Stalin the dictator from Joseph Stalin the artist in this case.
Remembering what is and was
Today is my Granny’s Birthday.
Granny and I were always very very close. I credit my love of art and my abilities to her. she started me on the basics of drawing what I actually see- not what I want to see. on looking at works and seeing more, and on creating art and wanting more from the works that I do. she pushed me to excel. she critiqued my child’s hand, not as a grandmother to her grandchild but as a genuine art critique. and she did it in such a way as to make me want to improve with every piece. The day she finally complimented a painting and told me it was brilliant was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Granny and I would spend weeks together in her studio sculpting and drawing. she was a bronze sculptor- originally of horses. but later branched out into painting and abstract sculpture. I’m lucky enough to own one of her bronzes.
Granny is impossible to describe. she was one of the most vital, energetic, creative, spontaneous people I have ever known. ever since I was tiny I knew I wanted to grow up to be just like her. she and I once had an hour long conversation on the use of the word ‘shat’ as past tense for the word ‘shit’. she taught me French as a baby like she taught her dogs. she schooled me so that my first words were ‘hippopotamus’, ‘rhinoceros’ and ‘sha na na’. Granny would argue for hours on any topic- she would just pick a side of a debate and go for it. the end result never mattered, just the joy of the debate itself. she cheated at cards when there was chocolate on the line. She was an artist to her bones.
Unfortunately the woman I know as my Granny is no longer here. Altzheimers is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. for someone as brilliant, as alive as she was to slowly lose herself over years is beyond cruel. My mother has recommended that I not see her, so that my memories will remain intact. sometimes I wonder if that is so that at least one of us will have strong uncorrupted memories of the wonderful woman that was. I wrote to her for a while, I sent her pictures of my works. while she still remembered me she was immensely proud of my career.
I love you Granny. Happy Birthday. you may not remember me anymore but I will always remember you and everything you taught me.
friday nude quotes
Girl on cell: Okay, I’ve got to get naked for my cousin. Bye!
Random passerby: Say what?–3rd Ave & 14th St
Upcoming exhibition – Summer Project Spaces at Guildford Lane Galleries
I will be exhbiting at Guildford Lane Galleries at the beginning of the year where I will be showing my latest works, and possibly some favorites that fit in with the theme. The exhibition series is Summer Project Spaces, a chance for artists to collect their latest and greatest and show them off. I will be exhibiting in “The Chandelier Gallery” (ooh) on the first floor.
Here are the pertinent dates, more details will be forthcoming later:
Opening Night Thursday 7th January 6pm – 9pm
Exhibition Runs 6-15th of January at Guildford Lane Galleries – 20-24 Guildford Lane, Melbourne 3000 Australia.
I will actually be attending this opening! the only sad thing about exhibiting so often overseas is that I never get a chance to go to my own openings. it may be upstairs but I will get there by hook or by crook.
Nude of the Week – Help me think of a title!
5 x 7 Oils on Canvas
I’m stumped, I have no title for this piece. I actually don’t know how i feel about it, but I am feeling better about the way the light is working. I was quite depressed when I started this piece but cheered enormously through the creation of it- I think that shows somehow.
friday nude quotes
Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.
Nude of the Week – Composed
Oils on Canvas
10 x 12 in
$250
This painting has been quite a struggle to finish. I started it a few months ago and although it started really well, every time I went to work on it I would almost pass out from nausea and dizziness. my techniques rely on fast work using wet paint and as I use thin washes it dries quite quickly (especially in Australia). I almost threw it out and started again but I knew there had to be something there. the past couple of weeks have been easier so I have been able to tackle what once felt so impossible to me. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction in finishing it. like I claimed part of myself back by refusing to let it slip away.
this is my first work exploring volumetric lighting. yes I am obsessed with it, I see it everywhere. it’s quite difficult to capture because it’s.. well.. light.. it’s easy to overwork the beams or to underwork it but I am learning so much about the nature of light.
Sylvester Stallone’s nude art at Art Basel
Sylvester Stallone’s Nude Artwork
There’s many a celebrity that will turn up to the opening of an envelope. But Rocky and Rambo star Sylvester Stallone had a very good reason for his random appearance at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair.
It was the actor’s first gallery show, and it was his colourful expressionistic paintings which were being exhibited.
But judging by the scribbled quality of the work, which includes self portraits and what looks like a line drawing of a nude woman, the 63-year-old may not want to give up his day job just yet.
does it bother me that a celebrity can get into a top gallery during art basel and command insane prices at his first show? yes, yes it does. Leonard Nimoy is a different matter, his photography is beautiful and he has worked long and hard as an artist for years. but these.. well… I like the frame! These pieces are no better or worse than many artists’ – especially at their first shows – but to command $40-50,000 per work for a first time mocks artists who have been slaving away their whole lives with art as their only goal. Many artists, many brilliant and talented artists, will never see amounts like this on a yearly basis- let alone per work. It seems to me that shows like this occur and people buy the works purely based on the name involved. I think that’s a pity. If Stallone gains release and satisfaction from his work then that is wonderful, I see a lot of energy and emotion in the pieces. but I wonder if the exhibition itself is more of a publicity stunt than anything else.
Child porn debate rears it’s head in ottawa
Sarah Hatton’s controversial painting
“Each person does figure out for themselves what they think the intent is,” she says, “and some are going to see that it’s negative and others will see it as I see it, which is an innocent observation of what I see every day as a mother.”
I’ve shown the digital scans of the images to various people and seen very distinct reactions. Another gallery owner saw the images as provocation for its own sake, and exploitive of the child.
A man with university-age daughters of his own was not troubled by the images, but wondered if we have “lost the innocence” that would allow us to behold paintings of a nude child and not feel uncomfortable. A middle-aged woman found the images disturbing, and felt that one pose had been “eroticized.”
And then there’s the provocative question that one veteran figure in the Ottawa arts community put to me in an e-mail: “Bishops lose their jobs for looking at pictures of naked children: Should artists be allowed to paint them?”
I am not going to enter into all my previous debates yet again, I think everything I can say has been said on the subject already. I do, however, find this article very interesting. it’s carefully written and worded to provide all sides of the debate and works hard to remain unbiased- even clinical. it raises some very well thought out questions and doesn’t seek to answer them.
I don’t know the works of the artist in question or the story behind the exhibition, so I am not going to comment on the artist’s personal ethics or how the works appear to me. there is a feeling, however, to her comments which make me wonder if this exhibition is a deliberate attempt to utilize such a controversial topic. whether to raise awareness of the issues, to bring the debate about and (hopefully) some kind of answer or definition or just to bring more people into the gallery I couldn’t say. it could be all three, or just, as the artist says, “an innocent observation of what I see every day as a mother.”
I do agree with the man above who is concerned that we have “lost our innocence.” I mourn that we have to analyze everything like this, that they cannot be taken at face value. I think that our fears and constant debate belittle the notion of innocence and our appreciation of the simple beauties in life.
perfectionism adjustment
I think the key to overcoming a block is to just go into the studio and paint. the trick is that you have to surrender to the possibility of creating crap. this is something I’ve been warring with internally for months now. this may have been one of my longest blocks yet. I could create ideas, I could sketch, but I couldn’t seem to create paintings. this happens to me quite a bit. often it is followed by a surge in creativity and an upgrade in skills. however, these days as a professional I don’t have the luxury of just waiting for it to come back to me in it’s own time. I have to create. I have to produce. I am also a perfectionist so every piece must be the very best I can do and an improvement on the last. anything less than an improvement is seen by me as a failure. and I don’t like to fail, it’s be perfect or don’t do it at all.
this is an attitude that needs adjusting.
I’ve been increasingly aware of my own anxieties about perfection and failure. I have also been learning the key life lesson that I have to make mistakes in order to grow. that my need for perfection and completion is holding me back from my dreams and goals. this probably seems stupidly obvious to most of you, but for me it’s been a real struggle to comprehend- and it’s something that has to come from within. one of these stupid things that everyone can tell you but you still have to work it out for yourself.
so last night I couldn’t sleep. I decided to hit the studio, see if a different time slot could shake things up a little. I am reassured that at the moment I am experimenting with volumetric lighting and that experimentation necessitates mistakes. this is a good way for me to move forward and hopefully progress beyond this block.
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