Utopian Art Blog: Painting Père Lachaise, Discovering Cecily Brown, and How to Ship Sold Work

Green Paintings

This week has gone by quickly! I have kept on with my green paintings, and here they are:

 

I was inspired to paint ‘Victor Noir’ because first, I love painting sculpture, second, I love cemeteries, and third, this was a very weird creepy thing to encounter on my visit to Père Lachaise – It seemed a story to tell. I love the folds of cloth, the artful poses, and the signs of aging that sculptures offer to the painter. Just plainly super fun to paint. This figure is laid out on a tomb, and weirdly, it serves as fertility and/or a find-you-a-husband charm. Apparently if you kiss his lips and rub his crotch you get the goods. Placing flowers in his top hat is optional. Victor Noir is a sad story, and now it seems disrespectful how he is treated, but it is apparently a time honored tradition for women looking for a husband, or trying for a baby, to ask poor Victor Noir for help. The story as told on Wikipedia, is quite fascinating – of his life, politically volatile death, and subsequent patronage: Victor Noir

I do love cemeteries, and took lots of pictures, made sketches, and took color notes for future use when I went to Père Lachaise on that beautiful day. I did the next painting inspired by the long column of tombs and the leafy green trees behind. I was interested in the challenge of taking all that information and tackling it a relatively small painting. I found myself thinking of Cezanne as I broke up the space, accommodating shifting angles of vision, and shifting light, and simplified everything with an aim to creating a lyrical composition. Thanks Cezanne! Here is a super interesting video about what he does, optically speaking: Paul Cezanne and his Revolutionary Optics

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Great Woman Artist

I investigated the first GREAT woman artist on my list, Cecily Brown.

 

I am starting this regular feature weekly, on my weekly Blog, to introduce myself and others to GREAT women artists, alive and working today. I want to debunk the myth that you have to be an old lady to have the love of the Art World – not that the love of the art world is so desirable, and certainly it is ridiculous how underrepresented great women artists are, occupying only about 10% of the artists on the top 500 hammer price list – there should be way more. Cecily Brown is evidence for my cause.

Born in 1969, she is a painter who got representation at age 29, by Gagosian Gallery in New York. She designates herself a figurative painter. I listened to a couple of great interviews on youtube, pictured via screen shots above, that you can go to and learn more. She talks about the importance of the figure in her work, describing how without it, she feels her paintings would be merely decorative. I thought that was very interesting. Also, she takes Old Master paintings as a starting point, which I love. I am so glad to be introduced to this excellent artist! I had seen her work before, but did not know too much about it. I thought it was mainly people having sex and therefore the artworld let her in… not so! I loved hearing her articulate why she does what she does, and all about her practice. She is 28 on the list of top hammer prices paid in 2017, with a painting selling for over 7,000,000. Here are the links I used: Cecily Brown Interview: Take No Prisoners (2015) and An evening with Cecily Brown – Contemporary Talks Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien (2018) Also, through the latter interview, I got onto her instagram, and now happily am a follower and a fan @dellyrose.

Next week I am going to feature an artist I have never heard of at all, and even mistook  her for male the first glance down the list because her name was unfamiliar to me: Njideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983). On a quick glance of her images, I am super excited to be introduced. More on that next week!

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How to Ship a Painting

I entered into a new project that now I must stream line: Shipping sold paintings. A happy problem! here is what I learned on that.

 

 

How to ship a sold, framed, oil painting (no glass):

1. wrap in glassine, create  corners to protect from damage
2. wrap in bubble wrap, have the bubbles facing outward so they won’t leave an imprint on the painting
3. put the wrapped painting between two appropriately sized foam core boards, tape together, create cardboard corners to make it a neat protected package
4. wrap like a gift, with clear plastic wrap, to keep out any moisture
5. place wrapped work in a box, label it fragile
6. take it to the post office and you are done!

Here is the best link I have found to show how it is done How to package a framed painting (no glass) for shipping. I feel very lucky to be supported by my newest collector, and AMAZING artist herself.

Utopian Art Blog – Week Five in paint: Women Artists, Art Marketing Blunder, and Thinking Green, by Dr. Elizabeth Matthews

This week has been a busy one. With Saint Patricks day I shifted to green themed paintings. I re-visited my PhD exhibition, and that, along with the buzz around international women’s day, got me to thinking about women artists. In closing, I had a horrific instagram experience which I would like to share in case anyone might know what the heck happened.

First, here are the paintings of the week along with the images I pulled up from my PhD exhibition::

The paintings of the week – grapes, a forest, and fennel and parsley, were inspired by green produce, which I sought out at my local supermarket, in celebration of St. Patrick’s day. I realize now that I can’t really expect myself to paint one unique painting every day. Its a nice goal to have, and I am glad I tried, but it made me realize something about myself as an artist, and as a person. I like to take my time and let thin layers dry before resolving the final painting with thicker blobs. I think three paintings a week is all I can expect, and it really does serve a great purpose. I am getting lots of practice. I am also producing paintings that I feel happy with, and I have sold two of them! I am keeping prices appropriately low for these preliminary studies (larger paintings are in progress, expanding upon the more successful small studies), at $100  – $200 per piece. If you want one, then I definitely want you to have it, so send me a message and I will send you a paypal link and pop it in the mail to you right away. Above you see “grapes” 7×5 inches, and that one is for $100. “Fennel and Parsley” is 11×14 inches, and that one is $175. “Magical Forest” is 8×10 inches, and that one is $125.

The rest of the images are from my research exhibition in August, 2016. I pulled up the PhD work looking for some more green, and I threw in some images from opening night including pics of the great peace activist and famous Irish dramatist, Margaretta D’Arcy, who graciously opened my exhibition. She counseled me to be outspoken against injustice, and to be willing to fight for what you believe in. Well, I am definitely more of a lover than a fighter, but with International Women’s day creating some dialog around the issue of women in the arts, I have heard a comment repeated that annoys me. That comment, based on a quote by Louise Bourgeoise, is that the art world loves young men and old women, the implication being that women might have to wait until they are in their 80’s to get recognition – thats just how it is. This comment reminded me of Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” which explains the myth. I researched to find great women artists to prove that they exist. Its true, there are way more men than woman represented amongst the top living artists. But about 10% of the top hammer price living artists are women. I know, that’s really sick when you consider that women vastly outnumber men in art schools and have done so for decades. Why do women not account for at least half on that list of 500 top? I don’t know but I do think its worth celebrating the 10 percent or so on there. We should make them more visible as role models, I think. Next week I will highlight one of those artists, starting from the top down, inspired by my role model Margaretta D’Arcy to be an activist and do something. Tune in next week! That woman artist is… Cecily Brown, b. 1969, no. 28 on the list of top hammer price artists in 2017, an amazing painter.

In closing I would like to tell you of my instagram scare. It was harrowing. I am trying to post my current and past work several times a day on instagram, to release my work a bit at a time to my audience. In that effort, I subscribed to a post scheduler, Iconosquare, that an artist friend told me about. It worked fine for a few days. But then today, at 11 am my scheduled post randomly started posting multiple times. every five minutes it posted itself again! Now what will that do to my istagram account? Probably they would block me eventually. I am allergic to technology, things like this happen to me all the time, but this really did have me in a panic, I felt really embarrassed. What would my followers think? Finally, I figured out how to de-activate my account with Iconosquare. If anyone reading this uses Iconosquare and/or has had an experience like this let me know how it worked out. It was scary! I would like to use this post scheduler because my followers are in time zone’s such that I would like to make a post at 4 am for the sake of my Washington state and California followers – dear friends all of them – but I don’t want to get up at that hour to do it!

Thank you for reading my blog. If you would like me to send it to your inbox weekly, send me a message and I will do that. I am just forming a mailing list bit by bit for that purpose. Thank you so much for reading!

Sincerely,

Dr. Elizabeth Matthews

Full Time Painter week 4…

This week has been a long one, as in about three weeks long. But, here is my so-called weekly blog post at last! My PhD project was on Contemporary Art and Utopia, and I wrote a whole book on it, and started this blog during it, hence the title of this blog. But today, I am reflecting on the fact that painting full time is, to me, Utopia! I am delving into colors, and paint behavior, adjusting to a new studio space, and to me these problems, and this focus is like heaven, a job I really love, my utopia. Next week maybe I will make a more theoretical blog post, but this week here it is: Simply images of what I have been up to in my studio.

 

“Grapes on Red Cloth” 24×14 cm oil on canvas. I learned so much from this painting. The main lesson is: do not expect painting three grapes on a red cloth to be simple. I wrestled with a shockingly badly behaved palette until finally, toward the end, I got out the palette knife and am now pleased with how it all came together in this little study. It now expresses something of what I was trying to say. I will be painting a few more grapes in the near future to build on what I have learned. Do you need to have this in your your house? Then I think you should have it! click here on my Buy it Link

“Paint on Paint” oil on canvas 12×12 in. You would think that painting paint with the actual paint that you are painting (try to say that 10 times fast) would be easy, but its not! I do love paint, and this little painting pays homage to that. Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Yellow. Would you enjoy having this as your very own? Well, its just about dry and I could easily pop it in the mail to you. Just follow this buy it link

“Think Spring”, 12×12 inch,Oil on Canvas. I was inspired to paint this because I really am thinking of Spring. This beauty will pop up on the median strip near my house amongst hundreds of likewise gorgeous blooms. I know we still have a way to go, but the snow is melted and it won’t be that long. Thank you to the gardeners and planners of Saint-Germain-en-laye, who make this happen, I am here to tell you that the gardens of Versaille could not be more beautiful! It is quite amazing.

“Pomegranate” 24×16 cm oil on canvas. Painting this was harder than I thought, but the colours and crevices made an interesting study.