Book On Reflections Brings Back Reflections

My art books are my bedside books. Very few of them ever reach the coffee table.

The past six months have been very good to me in receiving art books. They are either piled up on my special “get to” shelf or stacked somewhere near my reading place.

Yesterday a fresh unopened art book arrived in the post. This was from a good friend who knows my soft spot for water reflections in paintings. The book that arrived to me was Reflections of Nature: Paintings by Joseph Raffael written by Donald Kuspit and Amei Wallach.

Just to give you a little insight to myself and interest with the reflections of water.

As an art student at Marshall University in Huntington, WV. I took several painting classes in a studio setting under the direction of Stanley Sporny. He had a different take on colour and approach to painting. And a solid practice on learning to see and the observation of form.

While I was studying, Stan was exploring his Water Series in small studies in his studio. There were multiple elements he wanted to apply in building these painting. It is interesting to see his work after ten years. I think that they were a success from what he had set out to do.

Stanley's last show River Series was located at the Callen McJunkin Gallery in Charleston, WV.
He passed away in October 2008.
Remembering Stanley Sporny

Briefly looking this book and on first impressions. The first paragraph, located in the main text, sums it up for me. This is what I would like to see more of.

“When Joseph Raffael paints water, he paints light and movement. The light is transparent, it glitters, it moves as the water moves. There is a great deal of slippage in this light. It loses itself in the depth and reflects off the surface. The surface appears gelatinous, seems to slide, submerge, to surf the light...”

I could only surmise how much of a challenge these water paintings were to create. They are visually challenging. Yet, there is a calming energy about them. They show what an artist can do.

If anyone has read this book, I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

-Kim Bennett

Lesson 6: Combat the Uglies

Today's lesson for the Blog Triage class was to make a couple of changes to our blog so it would have more of a visual impact. These are a before and after pictures from one of my post. Before is located on the left and After is on located on the right.

Here are some noticiable changes to the blog.

Font: The font in most of the post, title and side bar has been changed from Times New Roman to Arial. Arial is one of my fonts of choice and as we learned today, it is easier to the eyes. I discovered make Arial into a default text. Hooray… no more forgetfulness of having Times when what I really want is Arial.

The Header: I couldn't tell what the font was originally in the header. I can only tell you that it has changed to Georgia.

Font size: The font size to the post text has also been made larger so it is easier to read. I was able to increase the font size in the settings. So it is still normal but looks larger.

Photograph at the top of this post has been increased in size. An extra photo had been added lower down the post. Another photo has been changed in a previous post.

Colour change to the header, title and links.
The header has been changed from light grey to black.
The titles were originally orange but are now black.
The links The link colour was a little bit of a problem for me as the paler blue links made the difficult to distinguish from the text. And now they are one of my favourite colours.

Another alteration that has been made is trying to have some sort of consistency of labelling artwork throughout the blog.

It looks much better!

Over all I am pleased with the changes but will have to return to it with some changes at a later date. There are still a few more tweaks I would like to do such as add a few more photos to a post and work on developing a header.

Thanks for Alyson's advice. There has been so much improvement to it all ready.

Cheers,
Kim Bennett

Wounded Blog in Need of Help.

I got myself a prescription and enrolled in the 4-week course Blog Triage course with Cynthia Morris and Alyson Stanfield.

The first part of the lesson is to describe the people I want to visit and read my blog. The second part is to describe what kind of change and growth I would like to experience through blogging.

My blog serves or is going to as an outlet to share things that I am unable to cover in class and connect with other artists. I also wish to share my own experiences and insights that I encounter while painting. And let’s have some fun too!

So artist, student, art appreciators, lovers, patrons, family, friend’s and anyone else that I have forgot to mention. Learn and share this journey with me!

-Kim Bennett

Relax and Enjoy the Process

Still Life With Melon, 6 x 12 inches (15.24 x 30.48 cm), Acrylic on MDF
2009 Kim Bennett

In February 2009, I was working on a painting that was to be entered in an exhibition. The challenge was, to select a painting from a list of master artist and do our own interpretation of it. I selected a still life from the impressionist painter Monet.

In doing so, several attempts were made on the same surface. When things were not going well, I sanded the work back to the essentials. But, each time they were nearing completion. Why did I do this? The painting was just not working for me. The decision of how to approach the painting kept changing. I now realize that if I treated each attempt separately, I would now have a progression of studies or even sketches to look back on and use as a learning tool.

As the deadline neared the painting had to be finished. It also occurred to me that I could have completed several paintings in the time it took me to produce the final piece. By treating each painting individually I would have had three or four pieces to select from, and not be forced to send in the only completed piece.

During this time, while looking through paintings by Monet, I noticed he often produced several versions of the same study. One example would be “The Façade of the Rouen Cathedral” (1892 – 1894). What he did was to take things beyond. He produced more than 30 works of this cathedral on canvas. Each was created independently and simultaneously. As the weather and the seasons started to change the paintings of the works created varied in the use of light, atmosphere, mood, etc. You will be able to find some examples of the painting here: http://www.learn.columbia.edu/monet/swf/

Yes, we learn from our mistakes. Sometimes we can get so caught up in producing the one painting it can become an unhealthy exercise. When we struggle in our search for perfection we can loose sight to what is important. Just relax and enjoy the process.

-Kim Bennett