Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Representaional Art in the Film: Local Color




I just saw a screening of the movie Local Color, written and directed by fellow So-cal painter George Gallo. I've never seen the French Easel featured so much in a film or a lead actor dropping names like Nicolai Fechin or John F. Carlson, or even talk about local color. The story is based on the director's life, as an 18 year old in the 1970's wanting to learn to paint representational in a time when the art world considered realistic painting old fashioned and irrelevant. The main character finds a bitter old master Russian painter who he persuades to teach him to paint. In one funny scene Seroff (the Russian master) is asked to judge an exhibition of "progressive" art, and after getting an obfuscating explanation about a minimalist painting by the artist, he storms out and gives the award to the air conditioner because "it's the only F-ing thing that works". In another great scene, Seroff shows some modern art paintings to an art dealer who then goes nuts over them until he's told they were made by Down Syndrome kids. So, if you have an appreciation for representational painting you need to go see it when it comes out December 5th. According to George everything in the movie really happened to him.

Check out the trailer on the apple site. You can also see some clips on the movie's website.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Paintings That Inspire

When I was done teaching the workshop at the Grand Central Academy in New York I went to the Met with a group of painters to see some of the newly displayed paintings in the 19th and 20th century galleries. A few paintings I'd never seen were a Sorolla landscape and portraits by Zorn and Repin.

A landscape by the master of color Joaquin Sorolla.

Master of edges, Anders Zorn (detail) Portrait of Mrs. Walter Rathbone Bacon

Ilya Repin (the master of pretty much everything) Portrait of the Russian writer Vsevolod Garshin

Artist David Kassan and friends outside of the Met.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Bull's Bridge CT


Richard Schmid lived near South Kent CT a while back and painted a lot of landscapes of the area. One of these is the genius painting of Bull's Bridge. We found Bull's Bridge and I shot this photo down from where I think Richard painted.

Bull's Bridge by Richard Schmid




Katie photographing



I did a quick painting below the bridge with Ed Martinez.

Painting in Connecticut

Katie 16" x 12"

I did this demo for a painting group recently at Robert Lenz'z garden in South Kent Connecticut. I had Katie Swatland model for me, and yes, that's how she dresses for a day of outdoor painting. It was a little challenging because half way through the painting she was in full sun, we had to move to a new location with some shade but I lost that warm yellow light hitting her back.

Jeremy painting outdoors

Katie Swatland and Jeremy Lipking
 

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