Van Gogh

Earlier this year after spending three months at The Celebration of Art in Scottsdale, Arizona, and painting virtually day and night without stopping (except for a few hours of sleep), I hit a total artist's block. When I got home, I was so mentally exhausted that I literally could not pick up a paint brush for almost two months. During that time I managed to work on my photo reference, compositions, and all the prep work that is involved in a painting, but I was really avoiding my studio. If I did go out with the intent to paint I would end up staring at my easel and paint brushes but I just could NOT force myself to paint. I had never felt like that before and I was facing a lot of my own fears. It wasn't that I didn't feel inspired or that I didn't want to paint, I think I was just burned out. As an artist I feel like that is totally normal. I just hadn't experienced it to that extreme before.

In the midst of this my wife came across this quote that we had never heard before. I have seen it many times since, but it applied to me perfectly at that time. And it really applies to anything in life.

“If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint“, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” 

Vincent van Gogh

Me and van Gogh at The Met in NYC in the spring of this year.

I have been more intrigued by this classical artists after connecting with his inspired words. The more I read about him the more fascinating he becomes. The following quote really made me see him in a different light.

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.” 

I really have a deep respect for van Gogh and can relate to many of his feelings (except for the insanity part I hope!). After a break from painting I gradually snapped out of it and have been going with an intensity like never before. I am learning over and over again this year that I really need to pace myself!

I hope you will join me tomorrow for my show "Rust". Click here for a preview of the paintings that are available.

305 Main Street

Park City, UT

Friday, Sept 28, 2012

Open house - 6-9 pm

In A Painting

During our drive home from Cali we started to feel like we were driving in a Jeff Pugh painting. We have both fallen in LOVE with his work over the last few years. I absolutely covet his square cow paintings and dream about having one in our home.

Santiago was determined to stop and get a picture to capture the Pugh-like scenery. He cracked me up pulling over on the side of the highway, hoping out, and running down to get a shot as close as he could.

I think the cows were pretty surprised.

All that for this shot - the windmill was awesome!

With a little enhancement from Instagram.

Artwork In Our House

 Up until just recently we have only had my own paintings hanging in our house. And depending on the demand from my galleries, or the shows that are going on, I will take everything down and our walls look pretty empty. We have a few permanent pieces (one of my son and one of my wife) but other than that we are sometimes left with only my much older work on the walls or nothing at all. Over the last year we have started to acquire some permanent pieces to our collection from other artists. Mind you this is just a start but we love these additions to our home.

This water color Mission Inn Towers is by Don O'Neill my wife's great uncle.

Our first sculpture "Who Cooks For You?" by Paul Rhymer

We are very proud to own this piece!
It won Best in Show at the 2011 Ward World Championship Wildfowl Carving Competition

Bending Light is a mixed media piece by Andrew Smith and has so much character we love it!

Happy Place by Melissa Behr hangs in our living room.

Inspiration At The Met

During the three days were in New York City we had the chance to visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We could have stayed there all day! But, we had so many things to fit into our short visit so we saw as many exhibits as we could fit into about 4 hours.

Here are some pictures of our favorite paintings:

Mrs. Hugh Hammersly by John Sargent

Seeing Sargent's pieces was the main event for us.

"Madame X" by Sargent was absolutely stunning in person!  

"Salome" by  Henri Regnault - Santiago loves this painting and we wandered all over to make sure we saw it.

Van Gogh's self portrait.

"Wheat Field with Cypresses" by Van Gogh. It was an amazing experience to see so many famous paintings
in person that I have only seen pictures of in books. 

Apparently I wasn't the only one that was tired.

"Vsevolod Garshin" by Ilia Repin. This piece was one of our overall favorites.

"Joan of Arc" by Jules Lepage

I was OBSESSED with all of the mother and child pieces and want Santi to compose and  paint
something like this for our permanent collection.

I really liked some of Picasso's portraits.

This Picasso "Mother and Child By A Fountain" reminded me of something
Brian Kershisnik would paint.

You're Invited!

Hope you can make it for our first show in the barn!

A Painting Of Us?

Brian Kershisnik is an artist we have really come to love and appreciate.  He has a great sense of humor and ability to portray that in his depiction of daily life.  The first time we saw this painting we both thought it looked just like us and a common scenario from our house.

The only difference is that Our Little Artist always wants to be in the middle of the hugging action, and our dog is a Newfoundland not a lab.

A few weeks ago we got to see this other piece of Krishisnik's at The Meyer Gallery before it got shipped off to the lucky new owner.  It's titled The Gravity and with Little Artist #2 on the way we both thought it was rather comical.  Plus, she's a red-head!

An Original Taylor!

I was thrilled to recently add a couple of Justin Taylor paintings to our collection.  Maybe thrilled is an understatement, it's more like absolutely ecstatic! 

This was the first painting of Justin's that made me fall in love with his artwork "Flux."

A few weeks ago when we went to his show at The Meyer Gallery I confessed to Santiago that someday I want Justin to paint our portraits.  I say confessed because I almost felt guilty telling my talented husband that I wanted someone else to paint us.  But Santiago didn't mind, and we are both agreed.  In the meantime we get to enjoy these two pieces.

I can't wait to get them framed and hung up!

Tuesday's - A Post By Santiago

Every Tuesday night at 5:00 I make the drive out to Spanish Fork for the figure drawing class that Sean Diediker teaches out of his studio.  Some nights it's hard to pull away from the barn construction, but we are making a lot of progress! It wont be much longer until I can be back to painting more.  I have this idea to do an acutal size Volkswagen bus painting and the barn will be the perfect place to set the stage.

In the meantime, for the last several weeks, we have been painting and studying fabric folds in Sean's class.  Of course I love anything that involves drawing/painting the human figure, plus this meant doing another study of Sargent.

Here is the original.

Here is my study.

The Big Apple

At the beginning of June Santiago travelled to New York with The Bridge Academy.  It was a wonderful opportunity to tour, see the sites, meet artists and gallery owners, and visit various museums.

 So many things about the city were beautiful!

Some of his favorite paintings/artists.

 The trip would not have been complete without a game of chess in Central Park.