Clouds

Pink Cloud Study, oil on canvas

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I love tromping outside with my paints and easel to enjoy the sky. Today I was out in the field by the studio working on a companion to this study.  Unfortunately that one didn't work.  This one did so I thought I'd share.  More rain to come this weekend:)

Sunday At Pete's

Sunday mornings I have a little routine that I enjoy.  Some weeks I start at the gym and take a nice hot shower afterwards.  Other days I'll head to the beach in Ventura.  Either way I end up at the counter at Pete's Breakfast House on Main Street.  

The place has an atmosphere somewhat like the bar on the tv show Cheers except it's for breakfast.  As a creative I enjoy the clientele.  Artists, musicians, surfers, web masters, business people, etc. end up here.  It can make for some interesting conversation.    

On slow days I'll hang out for the counter for a little while and since I enjoy sketching people I took a go at it.  It often takes a few trys but I usually manage to get a sense of a person in these little gesture drawings.  If you make it to Pete's sometime just ask them to show you the sketch Mary-Gail did of Z and they'll proudly point this out to you.  (This way I can feel good because they'll tell me some random customer came in name-dropping me!)  

This kind of ritual clears my head.  That and a drive up the PCH where I scoped out the Santa Barbara Art Walk and visited with my friend Steve Richardson for a while made for a great way to recharge for the week.

My family tree

My mother's family is from Pensacola, Florida. One branch came here from Yugoslavia, specifically the island of Brac in the Adriatic Sea.   

Brac, Croatia- I wouldn't want to leave either!

Two brothers well up the family tree came to the US in the early 1900's to escape World War One.  The island, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, was not a safe place to be at the time.  They left their father, Jacov Biskupovic, behind.  As time went by they persuaded the old man to leave his garden and emigrate to Florida.  He came rather reluctantly and brought twigs from an old fig tree to his new home.  I always picture him slightly bent, stoically clutching his branches as he crossed the Atlantic on a ship much like the Titanic. 

He planted his tree in Pensacola where it has given birth to innumerable offspring!  Each of the trees lives in a garden I know and love.


Gramma's lived by the ocean in Florida. One went to an aunt in Connecticut  where I picture a pot on her back patio overlooking an expansive green lawn and a rose garden . My mother's lives in her warm, jungly Georgia garden; my sister's in pots behind her little yellow house. 


I took my own to a sunny yard in North Carolina where it grew over a sprinkler head by the front door.  I left it behind when I moved to California years ago.  


But the tree has caught up with me!  My sister, mother and niece just sent me two clippings which now live in beautiful new pots by my studio door.


They represent a connection to my past and the love my family has for tilling the earth.  We all live with dirt under our fingernails!

One of the cuttings is on the left

Here it is now...

Nurturing a creative voice

I'm not sure if I've said this here before but one of my deeply held beliefs is that everyone is creative in some way.   I love watching people discover who they are through the visual arts.  It's amazing to me that everyone's skills become evident the first moment they touch the paper with a brush, a pencil or even a stylus.

Me doing a demo for the Thousand Oaks Art Association

I had my Tuesday morning class with an enthusiastic group of new watercolorists.  I'm proud of their work and if they give me permission later I'll post some photos.    The first day we had class I went over the basic materials and the color wheel and had them do a few exercises to get familiar with the palette I have them using.  Then I had them paint something on their own.   I think they are romantic colorists.  All of them chose sunsets.  They did quite well and it was interesting to see their skills.  One is very good at drawing, another has a great sense of design and yet another is a natural colorist.  My job now is to help them recognize what they're good at and support their development.

Today one of my students brought a very interesting article from the LA Times to share.  Apparently David Hockney is using an app on his iphone and ipad to do new paintings.  He's already talking with one of the LA museums about an installation style exhibition using projections of his current work.  I love it!  Talk about someone filled with life.  It makes me want to add ipad painting to the list of mediums I use.

New technological innovations have always had a huge impact on how we create art.  With the information age firmly established and sophisticated tools easily available many of us can try our hand at this.

Here's the Hockney link.  Enjoy.

  http://senzala-senzala.blogspot.com/2011/01/david-hockneys-ipad-and-iphone-art.html

I think this is the brushes connection:  http://www.brushesapp.com/

California Springtime or Roses in Winter

  Roses in Winter,  9" x 12" oil on canvas

Well, not to rub it in, but February is one of the most beautiful months in Southern California.  The strawberries here aren't quite ready but will soon be ramping up.  Winter veggies are perfect and the flowers are amazing!  We grow many of the flowers you'll get for Valentine's Day right here in Ventura County.  Last Wednesday I started this still life in my oil painting class.  It's not quite done; I have a few things I want to fiddle with but hmmm, I do love flowers.  Happy almost Valentine's Day!  xo

Pearls

I've been wanting to record some of the unusual things that have happened to me in the last couple of years and this is the perfect place.

To me, living a creative life is being open to whatever comes my way. I try to view adversity as a way of guiding me on a path I wouldn't have chosen otherwise. Success can be the same way. This contains both. Success and failure (aka opportunity) are often close bedfellows.

Patty Van Dyke, Kristy Vantrease, Me, Diane Hanley

I had a show about a year and a half ago with some friends in a group I co-founded called The Ojai Group. It included the major works all of us had created in the year or so prior to the show which was hosted by Herzog Winery.  It was a very big deal for us.  They were planning our opening in conjunction with one of their wine club tasting events.  We would have amazing food and wine and a wonderful group of potential collectors.
Of course once the art was ready and the invitations sent I only had one thing to worry about...the clothes.  This may seem rather silly but dressing well makes me feel more comfortable whether it's well loved blue jeans for outdoor painting or a formal dress for a New Year's Eve party. It allows me to focus on other people because once I'm ready I don't worry about myself.


I started with my classic black base.  Could be boring, but I always come back to it.  I had palazzo pants and a tank top and only needed a jacket of some kind and some accessories.  I was jazzed about the show but didn't want to go broke on the much needed clothes so I ended up at the sale rack at Chico's.  I found the beautiful gold brocade jacket you see here. I bought a belt that I thought would look silly with an involved necklace so I decided to wear my grandmother's pearls. They would look elegant and I would feel as if Gramma was sharing my success.  The only problem was that I had broken them at a Mardi Gras party a few months before.  Don't ask.  It wasn't as bad as it sounds!

I needed to get them re-strung so I took them to a great local jeweler, Van Gundy's. I only had a week to get them back but they assured me they could put a rush on them so I'd have them in time for my opening.  You guessed it they weren't ready.  I was disappointed and told them I had planned on wearing them to my opening.  I didn't rant or rave; I've learned that rarely does anything but make a bad situation worse.  Sooo

These wonderful people loaned me some pearls!  Tom Van Gundy took a beautiful box out and asked me if I thought the strand of pearls he had was a good length for me.  (Believe it or not I wasn't even thinking about what he might be doing.)  Short story long, we decided the pearls were the perfect length and he quickly wrote up a receipt for me.  I signed (no money exchanged here) and was on my way.  I felt like a movie star all night.

Isn't that fun?  It's one of my favorite memories!

What is art?

This post explores the idea that my 3-D spoof Orange in a Bottle is art.  My vote is in for the water bottle/ clementine rind/ "neck warmer" installation and photo as real art.   

Mary-Gail King

Famous the Fish's body double and my final painting. (His container looked more like a water bottle than a fish bowl so I called in his double.)

famous the fish

17 hours ago via iPhoto Uploader ·  ·  · Share

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  Milenko Pempa Pribicevic and Mary Daniels-Yu like this.
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    Donna Carver Great way to concieve an abstract.
    

    6 hours ago ·  ·  1 person
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    Beth Warren Wait...I thought that was a real fish at first. I think that your model should qualify as 3D art. If it was a real fish in that bottle you would have to call him a STUNT double:)LOL Beautiful painting!
    

    3 hours ago ·  ·  1 person
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    Mary-Gail King Love those comments. Every time I think about Famous I smile. I think that may be his mission in the world. He brings happiness everywhere he goes. Here's a philosophical question. Does the orange (clementine) peel in   the water bottle qualify as art? If so/ not, why?
    

    about an hour ago · 

My reasoning is that the concept or intent to mimic fine art while appropriating contemporary images and process (Aquafina bottle photo taken by an i-phone camera and posted to Facebook) classifies it as classic pop art.  It is also be a stepping stone to a different way of looking at a subject.  Whatever else it is, it's sideways thinking and very funny stuff.


I'm spinning with ideas on this one but will just leave this wikipedia overview of pop art and my posting of the fish in a bottle.  (BTW, I'll never stop painting for this stuff!)


See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art 

"Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation.^[1][2] The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.^[2]

Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them.^[3] And due to its utilization of found objects and images it is similar to Dada. Pop art is aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony.^[2] It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques.

Much of pop art is considered incongruent, as the conceptual practices that are often used make it difficult for some to readily comprehend. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of Postmodern Art themselves.^[4]

Pop art often takes as its imagery that which is currently in use in advertising.^[5] Product labeling and logos figure prominently in the imagery chosen by pop artists, like in the Campbell's Soup Cans labels, by Andy Warhol. Even the labeling on the shipping carton containing retail items has been used as subject matter in pop art, for example in Warhol's Campbell's Tomato Juice Box 1964, (pictured below), or his Brillo Soap Boxsculptures.

Comments?

More Adventures with Famous

Impressionistic Painting of Famous by MG King

Famous the Fish is quickly becoming an icon.  I'm not sure what he represents yet...The fearless adventurer, the artist's muse or the comfortable friend ... only time will tell.

Just to fill you in, Dave Gallup, oil painter extraordinaire, chose Famous as a "model" for one of his Master's oil  painting classes.  Famous modeled to an unimpressed group of painters; Dave painted him with enthusiasm and  gave him a new home.  In an ice bucket.  Would you be happy? Neither was Famous.  In comes Steve Richardson who saved him from imprisonment in a Camarillo art studio.  Famous has been keeping Steve company on his commute to and from Santa Barbara for art classes in Camarillo ever since.  (Steve's take on this: morecolorpleeez.blogspot.com)

Famous' body double 

My painting and at least five others show Famous at his flashy finest.  (It's way too late to post this but I can't stop laughing at my own body double joke.  I have to share!)  I thought my painting made Famous look like he was hanging out in a water bottle rather than a fish bowl.  Since I didn't finish my painting while Famous was around, I called in his body double.  Her name is Clementine.  She stays still better than Famous did.

"Famous" mugging for the camera

Go back to all of my fish tales. (Ugh!) to get some more giggles.  Check my earlier blog and link to David Gallup's story to hear how Famous got his start. This silly thread will keep you laughing!

Steve!  Please post a photo of Famous.  His public awaits:)  His double doesn't do him justice.