Ok Vagabond, where have you been?
Well, last night I was at the reception for a big art exhibit in which I had two pieces hanging. I was very impressed with the work there and was a little intimidated by it. But one of the artists came up to me and complimented me very much about one of my paintings and said that on the precious day there had been a lot of discussion about it. That gave me a good feeling.
There was a lot of cheese and cold cuts, some excellent Merlot of which I had too many glasses, a harpist playing in the corner and many people. At one point some of the artists spoke about their work and experiences.
One of them described how art is a language. Whether it's painting, music or literature, it's the artist's specific language, the artist's own observation of life and vision of the world. He noted that each of the approximately 100 pieces of work around the large room were individual expression in an individual language and therefore a vast opportunity for communicating awaiting every person who stopped to look.
The communication is two ways, and that is one of the most interesting things about art. The view, the listener the reader adds something to the work of art to one degree or another. The composer Paul Hindemith referred toit as cocreation.
It was a pleasure for me to show in the exhibit and I am very grateful for the opportunity. When I got back here I was beyond tired so, instead of writing, I went to sleep.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
******************************
Showing posts with label paintings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paintings. Show all posts
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Brushed Off Strokes
I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist, so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.
Rod Taylor
********************
Hello Cotonou, Benin. Have a peaceful day.
*********************
There can be great sadness in missed opportunities. We can regret those things that were almost in our hands but somehow slipped away, those things that we hoped for and expected one day we would achieve and those things that we carry with us as dreams, only to realize one day the dreams will never become realities.
When I was at the Art Students League in New York City I took life drawing classes from three excellent teachers and a course in anatomy for artists with a fourth. One day one of my teachers encouraged me to start painting. I have been painting since but I never got to study painting with a teacher.
My enthusiasm for art was slow in coming, I was in my 40's before I ever began to draw. The League offered courses in illustration, realistic and abstract painting, water color and murals. It taught graphic arts, etching, engraving, lithography, wood cutting and linoleum cutting. There were classes in sculpture: wood, stone and clay sculpture.
I was so hungry for it I wanted to learn all of it. There were inspiring teachers there, some of them famous artists. I was looking forward, even in my advanced years, to sit at their feet and get their wisdom. But, unfotunately my career as an actor interfered. That wouldn't have been so bad except that it took me out of town for many months, and since it was the way I made a living and enabled me to pay for the art classes, I needed to go. When I was back in New York I was looking for work and didn't have the money to pay for any classes.
Years later I went back to the League and took some drawing classes, but it wasn't the same and I soon saw that the hopes of really learning about all the possibilities of artistic expression that had been available to me as a student were going to be lost.
Now I still yearn for that knowledge but there is no access to it other than books and magazines which I pour over. I don't even know if I would have ever become as great an artist as those I admired. It doesn't matter. I just wanted to know what they knew.
That I was never able to fully follow that desire is one of the sadnesses of my days.
Moral: Follow your dreams, even if you have to go slowly.
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
This Week's Contest
This is one I put up a few years ago and people seemed to enjoy it, so here it goes again.
You are now ordered to take a famous remark, a cliche or otherwise and restate it in the most verbose manner possible. Example:
Night is an inappropriate time for the manufacture of animal feed.
(Make hay while the sun shines.)
Get it? Ken Riches won this contest the last time, so you're up against some heavy competition.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Good luck. Enter as often as you wish. The decision of the ornery, biased, curmudgeon is final.
DB
******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
4 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Rod Taylor
********************
Hello Cotonou, Benin. Have a peaceful day.
*********************
There can be great sadness in missed opportunities. We can regret those things that were almost in our hands but somehow slipped away, those things that we hoped for and expected one day we would achieve and those things that we carry with us as dreams, only to realize one day the dreams will never become realities.
When I was at the Art Students League in New York City I took life drawing classes from three excellent teachers and a course in anatomy for artists with a fourth. One day one of my teachers encouraged me to start painting. I have been painting since but I never got to study painting with a teacher.
My enthusiasm for art was slow in coming, I was in my 40's before I ever began to draw. The League offered courses in illustration, realistic and abstract painting, water color and murals. It taught graphic arts, etching, engraving, lithography, wood cutting and linoleum cutting. There were classes in sculpture: wood, stone and clay sculpture.
I was so hungry for it I wanted to learn all of it. There were inspiring teachers there, some of them famous artists. I was looking forward, even in my advanced years, to sit at their feet and get their wisdom. But, unfotunately my career as an actor interfered. That wouldn't have been so bad except that it took me out of town for many months, and since it was the way I made a living and enabled me to pay for the art classes, I needed to go. When I was back in New York I was looking for work and didn't have the money to pay for any classes.
Years later I went back to the League and took some drawing classes, but it wasn't the same and I soon saw that the hopes of really learning about all the possibilities of artistic expression that had been available to me as a student were going to be lost.
Now I still yearn for that knowledge but there is no access to it other than books and magazines which I pour over. I don't even know if I would have ever become as great an artist as those I admired. It doesn't matter. I just wanted to know what they knew.
That I was never able to fully follow that desire is one of the sadnesses of my days.
Moral: Follow your dreams, even if you have to go slowly.
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
This Week's Contest
This is one I put up a few years ago and people seemed to enjoy it, so here it goes again.
You are now ordered to take a famous remark, a cliche or otherwise and restate it in the most verbose manner possible. Example:
Night is an inappropriate time for the manufacture of animal feed.
(Make hay while the sun shines.)
Get it? Ken Riches won this contest the last time, so you're up against some heavy competition.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Good luck. Enter as often as you wish. The decision of the ornery, biased, curmudgeon is final.
DB
******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
4 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Is This A Real Apple?
The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe Discard the make-believe and take the truth.
Ramakrishna
**************************
Hello Buenos Aries. Have a happy day.
---------------------------------------
Years ago I was an actor in a beer commercial. The scene was a party where we were all walking around chatting and having good time. It took an entire day to shoot the commercial which is about average. We all had glasses of beer in our hands. Because of the truth in advertising regulations then in effect it had to be the actual beer being sold in the commercial. But because we were working we couldn't actually drink the beer. And because of the hot lights for the cameras the beer soon became flat. So every now and then they would come around with a big bucket and we would pour the beer into it and get a refill. For a beer lover like me it was heartbreaking to see all that tasty beer going to waste.
On the stage and films there is a lot of make-believe. If there is a bowl of fruit or a bouquet of flowers all of it is artificial or the bright lights would soon rot the fruit and wilt the flowers.
There may be a scene in which a character takes an apple from the bowl and bites into it. In that case the actor has to be very sure he picks the real apple and not the plastic one. On the other hand, during "Greetings" I had to throw a baked apple on the floor. The other apples in the bowl were real ones so I had to make sure I got the make-believe baked apple or there would be a mess on the floor for people to skid in..
It's the same with liquor on the stage. It's water, colored water or tea. If it was genuine we would never make it through the third act.
Now you might say, Well, everything on the stage is make-believe, isn't it? And the answer is More and Less. On the stage the kisses are real but we shoot blanks. A fight is choreographed and rehearsed but the rage that brings two people to fight is real. It's that combination of the wig and the passion, the portraying the real life of a human being through art, that makes theatre what it is.
That is a condition that exists in all the arts. When you look at a painting you may see outlines, colors and brush strokes, but is that really what the painting is all about? It could be the painting of a bowl of fruit or a bouquet of flowers. But they are not fruit and flowers no matter how realistically the painter has rendered them. They convey to the earnest observer the essence of fruit and flowers, or even more the essence of one's experience with nature. Huntington Cairns said "Art is imitation, not of things, but of the nature of things."
Real artists are always peering more deeply into the nature of things so they can cast off the make-believe and paint and portray the truth.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
SPRING QUESTION
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
2 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Ramakrishna
**************************
Hello Buenos Aries. Have a happy day.
---------------------------------------
Years ago I was an actor in a beer commercial. The scene was a party where we were all walking around chatting and having good time. It took an entire day to shoot the commercial which is about average. We all had glasses of beer in our hands. Because of the truth in advertising regulations then in effect it had to be the actual beer being sold in the commercial. But because we were working we couldn't actually drink the beer. And because of the hot lights for the cameras the beer soon became flat. So every now and then they would come around with a big bucket and we would pour the beer into it and get a refill. For a beer lover like me it was heartbreaking to see all that tasty beer going to waste.
On the stage and films there is a lot of make-believe. If there is a bowl of fruit or a bouquet of flowers all of it is artificial or the bright lights would soon rot the fruit and wilt the flowers.
There may be a scene in which a character takes an apple from the bowl and bites into it. In that case the actor has to be very sure he picks the real apple and not the plastic one. On the other hand, during "Greetings" I had to throw a baked apple on the floor. The other apples in the bowl were real ones so I had to make sure I got the make-believe baked apple or there would be a mess on the floor for people to skid in..
It's the same with liquor on the stage. It's water, colored water or tea. If it was genuine we would never make it through the third act.
Now you might say, Well, everything on the stage is make-believe, isn't it? And the answer is More and Less. On the stage the kisses are real but we shoot blanks. A fight is choreographed and rehearsed but the rage that brings two people to fight is real. It's that combination of the wig and the passion, the portraying the real life of a human being through art, that makes theatre what it is.
That is a condition that exists in all the arts. When you look at a painting you may see outlines, colors and brush strokes, but is that really what the painting is all about? It could be the painting of a bowl of fruit or a bouquet of flowers. But they are not fruit and flowers no matter how realistically the painter has rendered them. They convey to the earnest observer the essence of fruit and flowers, or even more the essence of one's experience with nature. Huntington Cairns said "Art is imitation, not of things, but of the nature of things."
Real artists are always peering more deeply into the nature of things so they can cast off the make-believe and paint and portray the truth.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
SPRING QUESTION
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
2 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
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