A Wonderful Exhibition

On Saturday my husband and I went to the Atlanta Art Gallery to view their current exhibition, Jacob Collins and the Water Street Atelier. The show contains the works of many artists, all of whom are or have been students of the famed Brooklyn Water Street Atelier founded by Jacob Collins in 1994, when he was thirty years old. Frustrated with the lack of traditional academic training in the art schools at that time, Jacob founded this school in his studio, hoping to attract like-minded artists/students, those interested in preserving, or at that time, perhaps more appropriately, resurrecting the teaching methods of the Masters and the Academies found in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. With good draftsmanship the foundation for good painting, students would work first in pencil or charcoal only, replicating sculptural casts. Next they would draw the human form from life and only when they had mastered this could they begin to paint.
Thus began a new generation of artists in the United States, artists whose high degree of excellence could not be ignored by the modernist art establishment. Classical Realism slowly crept back into the galleries and museums, and while it is still not held in the highest regard in all circles, it has certainly gained a very strong foothold in the art world of the 21st century. Today there are ateliers and more formal academic schools throughout the country, offering students the kind of educational foundation that can lead them to greatness.
It has been my great honor to have met and spoken with Jacob Collins, to have attended a round table discussion with him, and to hear him speak and present an incredible slide show of his work. I have also had the privilege of interviewing and writing articles about two of the artists in this show, Juliette Aristedes and Patricia Watwood. Juliette runs a four year atelier at the Gage Academy in Seattle and has recently published two wonderful books, both based on the classical academic tradition, one on drawing and one on painting. (Look them up in my Art Matters Amazon Bookstore in the right column of this blog.)
I strongly recommend that you visit the Atlanta Art Gallery in Buckhead to see this show. You will not be sorry that you did. I am posting a few images from the show here to entice you, but you can see the catalog and view more images at their website.
Seeing a show of this caliber just makes me want to paint better and better! I hope it will do that for you, too!

Great Landscape Workshop!

Boy, did everyone do a great job on these paintings! This was a really great workshop a couple of weeks ago. These photos were taken on the last day, Critique Day! Everyone made great progress and really produced some great paintings! A round of applause for these beautiful art works!

Recent Plein Air Outings

I've gotten to go out painting on location several times in the past couple of months. Top photo is of a small 5" x 5" painting of students painting at Meeks Park in Blairsville. Third painting is the same day, as I turned and faced the opposite direction. This, too, is a small painting, about 5" x 4" I think.
Second from top photo is from a great day at Crane Creek Vineyard, where we were served a wonderful lunch with some wine in the pavillion. The two bottom photos as well as the Crane Creek photo are from a day at Vogel State Park with the AFAL sponsored workshop with Anita Louise West, based at Carriage House. These photos are not the best and I apologize for that!

You fight the elements when you paint on location. At Crane Creek we persevered on a very unseasonal cold and windy day with plenty of rain! At Meeks Park, the insects and the wooly worms were in great abundance, and I got some nasty bites on my neck. First time I didn't have my insect repellant with me! At the Lake at Vogel State Park, we had gale force gusts of wind that overturned easels and paintings. I had to scrape the dirt, grass, and bugs off my lake painting when it dried! But it was fun nonetheless!

Finishing a "Finished" Painting

A student recently brought this painting to class (done outside the class) for a critique. First, though, he added two additional elements to it to try to balance the composition - the palette knife on the lower left and the tube of paint on the lower right. This did not really do the trick. The apple, because it contained the strongest light int he painting, is the focal point, located in the left third of the painting, not a good place for a focal point to be. The lighting on the vase is inconsistent with the level of the light on the apple. One brush, which enters the vase at the lower left "corner", would go through the outside of the vase if it followed the path indicated by the top of the brush. The student wanted to just paint over this painting with a new one. Instead, I asked if I could show him how he could improve this painting before he covered it up.

I modeled the apple a little better by adding form shadow to the right dide and bottom of the apple, which not only improved the roundness of the apple, but also decreased the amount of light in the left third of the painting. I added a stem and its shadow. I painted over the palette knife and the tube of paint with the color of the table and increased the light on the table as it approached the vase. My purpose from here on was to change the focal point from the apple to the vase, which would make the focal point more appropriately placed.

I corrected the middle value on the vase as it turned out of the light into the form shadow on the right and I lightened the light value on the left third of the vase. I then added highlights to the main body of the vase and made these, as well as the highlights on the neck of the vase, much lighter and more intense than the highlights on the apple.

I moved (repainted) the errant brush into a position that would allow its handle to stand upright int he vase. I also added slight highlights to the brush handles to add to the effect that the light was hitting this area of the painting strongly. I also added a reflected light on the right edge of the vase.The last thing I did was add another green apple, totally in shadow, to the area behind and to the right of the vase, to balance the composition. This is not a great painting, but it is much improved from its original state. And now it will lie beneath a hopefully successful new painting for many years to come! My thanks to my student for allowing me to demonstrate this.

Portrait in Progress

I am currently working on two portraits, going back and forth as necessary to keep working as paint is drying. I don't usually do this but I really must complete these, so I am putting in every effort to complete them as soon as I can. My clients have been incredibly understanding of the delays and I don't want to keep them waiting any longer than I have to.

The work in progress I am showing on the left (detail above) shows the painting with only the face in a greater state of completion than the initial block-in. The painting on the right is at its current stage which includes a more complete upper half background, the hat and right arm with more work done on them, and new paint applied to part of the shirt. When I view images on the computer I get to see them in a new light, so to speak, and areas that need more work become more apparent to me. For example, I want to lighten the boy's upper lip on his right and darker side. It is a little too dark, I think. If you click on the image of the more complete detail above, you should see what I am referring to.

I will post some new photos as I make more progress.