I recently attended a one day workshop on Chinese Painting at the George Segal Gallery, taught by Professor Zhiyuan Cong, a wonderful painter and the head of the Printmaking Program at William Paterson University, NJ.
I am always telling my students to relax, be patient with themselves while they learn something new and here I found myself tense and frustrated. What a humbling experience.
Professor Cong over his blank rice paper
Beginning
He doesn't speak when he demos, all is quiet and we watched as this unfolded.
The "four treasures" 1.Chinese brush 2.ink 3.rice paper 4. ink table
The quality of the line, the brush stroke and the variation of values from the ink was impressive.
He is beginning his fish which symbolizes happiness.
Here is Professor Cong's Orchid
and mine.......
From my notes: Ink painting is write idea painting. Writing is freeing to express your ideas.
"More than 300 artists responded to the Dana Women Artists Series open call for submissions in 2007-08. The Dana Women Artists Series jury was comprised of three distinguished arts professionals: Sheryl Conkelton, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming, Temple University Art Gallery, Philadelphia; Jorge Daniel Veneciano, Director of the Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, Nebraska) and formerly Director of the Robeson Galleries, Rutgers (Newark); and Marilyn Symmes, Curator of American Prints and Drawings and Director of the Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts at the Zimmerli Art "Museum, Rutgers (New Brunswick)
In 1975, I arrived at Douglass College, in NJ to study art. At that time, Douglass was still an all women's college. There was a wonderful cast of characters in the art department: Bob Watts, Geoffrey Hendricks, Peter Stroud, Gary Keuhn,Hui Ka Kwong, and John Goodyear. This list of instructors reveals the fact that the art students had no female mentors or role models. Not only this, but up until 1971, the college gallery exhibited only male artists. It wasn't until 1977 that Joan Semmel was hired as the first full-time female faculty member. But, in 1971, Joan Snyder, former Douglass graduate and MFA from Rutgers conceived of a series of lectures and shows that were called the Women Artists Series (now called The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series). This series brought to Douglass College women artists, whose works were not represented in mainstream galleries. It gave these women a venue in which to show their art and gave us, the students, a chance to interact with them.
Women Make Lists, 2001, Joan Snyder
Here are just some of the artists that I seem to remember hearing talk about their lives and their work:
#1 Rope, wood and hemp 1976 Jackie Winsor One of my personal career goals was to be able to come back to Douglass Collage as a participant in this series. I look back at my work and see the visual influences of many of the artists who presented. I wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't been exposed to information about how they handled their lives and their art-making careers. I remember one of them—I can’t remember who—saying, "Don't do it [become an artist] if you don't have to." Not one of them said it was easy, but all of them presented the possibilities! I thank them and all of those involved in keeping this series alive.
I could live with this drawing of Kate Beck. I would hang it someplace where I could sit and stare at it with my morning coffee. There are moments of sereneness, elegance and then, the ever changing shifting of the image. I am interested in how she is dealing with the physicality and subtly of drawings on paper. Below is an installation shot of a drawing and Kate's description of how it is presented.
large drawing 42 x47-- graphite on paper, mounted on aluminum, which is my most current drawing work. I wanted to make the mark and the paper more accessible to human reaction -- I believe the paper has real life to it which gets hidden beneath protective glass, plexi. Mounting them on aluminum gave them a physical shape -- integral to the work -- and when on the wall, it protrudes a bit so that air and light fall in and around it. I like that. I varnish the drawings for protection.
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oil painting w/graphite, mica 12x12
Influence of Sky
oil painting w/graphite, mica 12x12
About me:
I am a non-objective visual artist interested in the pure aesthetic of line and color, and its potential for expressing a wide range of thought and feeling. My work is founded in drawing, which I consider the most visual equivalent to thought. I make large scale graphite drawings on paper mounted on aluminum panel, and poured oil paintings. Process is an integral component of my work. I embrace light conceptually as color, and form.
I live in Harpswell, Maine on the ocean with my husband, Jamie Whittemore, and our dog, Thomas. We have 4 grown up kids.
Top Art Influences:
Probably the most significant influence as far as my work today has been books. I was read to frequently as a child. The visual impact of the words on the pages, and the voice of my grandmother reading them and telling me the stories. It defined my sense of place; of being. Many of our books were old volumes –Arabian Nights, for instance, Rose Red, Beauty and the Beast... Not many illustrations. Often, though, the illustrations were prints, which I loved to look at, and into. So my love of drawing really comes from there. I drew everything – tried to draw over the pictures in books, on the big chalk board over the radiator in our kitchen (a piece of which I have in my studio now), outside on the pavement. To this day, drawing, both line and tonal hue, makes my heart beat faster…
Artists who have influenced me:
-- early Renaissance painters for their magnificent color and story-telling, humanism (Masaccio, Pieter Bruegal the Elder, van Eyck…). Much like stories in books, to me
*--the landscape drawings of Rembrandt – his deft perception, and manner of capturing so much with so little.
--ancient Chinese ceramics, formed and marked, delineating the cultures – so human an expression
*-- Gerhard Richter, his deconstructed images and physical process.
Untitled, Graphite,Charcoal on Rives, 46"x42" 2008-2009
Statement (formal)
Drawing through Process
I am interested in the pure aesthetic of line as an element of both color and substance, and its potential for expressing a wide range of thought and feeling. My drawings and paintings are created intuitively as a response to material placed within a defined space or shape: graphite on paper, paint on substrate. They are quiet, yet deliberate. Subtle gradients of soft and subdued tones evolve from a repeated resolution of line, allowing an essence of life to echo within the austere confines of the structural surface. In this way, a tension is created which oscillates between formalistic geometry and existential space; an allusion to thought and consciousness, and the passage of time. This is my structure; my vocabulary.
Manifesto
I believe white to be the most inherently beautiful color as it carries with it the potential to simultaneously expose and negate space.
I believe black to be the most innately powerful color as it is defined by the presence of light as well as by the absence of light.
All comes of air, of water, of light.
Kate Beck, 2010
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Haiku (Blue) poured oil and pigmented pencil 46x46 inches
sea from my home, studio
News
-Black and White, at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, NY thru March 6, with 2 new large, poured oil paintings
-Art on the Edge, New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe – opening April 15 – August 2010
Curated by Nicholas Baume, Laura Addison – full body of work, painting, drawing.
-Fuzzy Logic: Contemporary Painting after a Century of Abstract Art at the Cambridge School of Weston, Weston, MA – curated by Todd Bartel
-Drawing show at Icon Contemporary Art, Brunswick, Maine – opening May 1, new panels
-Non-object art international group exhibit, curated by John Tallman and Ron Buffington at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, Jan 2011, and traveling around
Also this spring, a writing project on my blog exploring the contemporary drawings, process of 4 artists: myself, Marietta Hoferer, Anne Lindberg and Jaanika Peerna. Excited about this, we are all friends!
Friday, I went to Red Dot, Pulse and then Chelsea. There was plenty of art worth seeing but these three stayed with me. David Smith at Gagosian Gallery
Ron Klein at Howard Scott Gallery Squared Diamond (front view) 2008 Appropriated Objects, 42.0 x 36.0 x 5.0 in.
Mix Master 2009 Appropriated Objects, 108.0 x 84.0 x 24.0 in.
Bill Jensen at Cheim & Read Gallery Bill Jensen PASSARE DA BERNARDO XXIV 2009 Ink on antique paper 17 x 11 1/2 inches
Bill Jensen PASSARE DA BERNARDO XXXVI 2009 Ink on antique paper 22 x 14 3/4 inches
here excerpt from Park Place Magazine written by Susan Brierly
“I love new things, and always find a spot for the pieces I love,” says Pat Bell. “When I’m surrounded by all this wonderful work, it’s like living with the souls of the artists.”
Each month, as fresh—and sometimes massively large artwork—arrives at her home, Gabrielle Pulls, Bell’s housekeeper of 17 years, equips herself with an electric drill, a level, and a keen eye. As pieces leave the home, they often are loaned or contributed to non-profit organizations, such as the South Orange Performing Arts Center.
“I’m fortunate to live in this state because we have so many wonderful artists,” says Bell. “I like what’s in my backyard.” To keep au courant with the local art scene, get acquainted with some of her favorites:
Willie Cole, Mine Hill, multi-dimensional (williecole.com)
Tom Nussbaum, Montclair, sculptor (tomnussbaum.com)—profiled on page 46
The other day these images appeared on facebook. They are artist, Brenda Goodman's most recent paintings. She has posted them on her new blog. These paintings are the gutsiest, most heart felt paintings I have seen in a long, long time.
"Crossing Over" oil on wood 60x64 2009
She says, "these are the influences that first come to mind."
DB: A lot of people talk about Guston being important for their work, especially people of my generation, but you had an actual relationship with him.
BG: He really liked my work and we exchanged a few letters. But the thing about Guston, as with de Kooning, and as with Gorky, Soutine, and Dubuffet, which were the big ones in my life––then Morandi later on––you have a connection to them. You’re on the same wavelength, or whatever you want to call it. You have this affinity with certain artists and there’s a reason why you’re influenced by them, because there’s something of them already inside you.
