Blog Archives - Kathy Shell, Artist.

A NEW Pinnacle to Reach, to Stop being the Once Was and Paint En Plien Air, Again. 03/15/2010

I proved I have overcome decades of ill health and injury and reclaimed my fitness by bush walking to the Pinnacle today, in the Grampians.

I just missed a group of artists painting en plein air (in the open air), it would have been great to see them. Confront myself with what I once had the courage to do and did well.

Today would have been a great time to paint outdoors, it was slightly overcast, not too hot and mid week, not too many people around, much easier to paint without too many on lookers.

Privacy is not easy to achieve when you are painting, en plein air.
I think I would prefer to create in private, like a hermit and only come out in public to exhibit or teach my art. Sneaking away, up a hill on a quiet bush trail, taking just a small kit of equipment, using the landscape itself as seating, far away from people, is my favorite on site painting location.

It is only now, that I have outlived my mum in actual age that I can totally free myself from feeling a twang of guilt when I disregard as I often do, all those instructions I was given as a child that no longer serve me well. lol, I cannot sit on a rock or a brick wall, without hearing my mum saying that sitting on hard cold surfaces will cause me to need hemorrhoid treatment. Reg says his mum would have said exactly the same thing. Lol J. Great to be older than your mum got to and feel OK about disregarding her advice on the basis of, ‘well mum, look at me know, I’m still going strong so I must be doing something right’ J, I think she would be pleased. J

I WILL, make a commitment to overcome my inhibitions I have allowed develop these last few years and get out and en plein air, paint again, while I am here in the Grampians. Off my butt, stop talking about it, and 'do it'.

A Brief History of Art Styles. 03/14/2010

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History of Art Styles

Prehistoric:

     Paleolithic (30,000BC-8000BC)
     Neolithic (8000BC - 1000BC)
     Bronze Age (2000BC - 1200BC)

Western:

Egyptian (3000BC - 332BC)
- Sumerian, Assyrian, Persian (3000BC - 331BC)
- Aegean (2000BC - 1100BC)
  Greek (1100BC - 146BC)
- Roman (146BC - 476AD)
- Early Christian (313-600AD)
- Byzantine (330-1453) - also from Persian culture
- Romanesque (1000-1200)

Gothic (1137-1550) typically religious, distinctive arched design of churches - also from Islamic culture

International Gothic (1350-1480) more secular eg. de Fabriano, Witz, van Eyck,
Gothic Revival (1820-80)

Proto-Renaissance (1300-1420) eg. Giotto

Early Renaissance (1420-1490) eg. Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Francesca, Botticelli

Renaissance in northern Italy

examples:
- Mantegna - (1431-1506) the master of perspective and the fore-shortened figure
- Foppa (1427-1515)
- Da Vinci (1452-1519)
- Bellini
- Giorgione - painted the 1st "reclining nude" in 1507, creating a new genre
- Titian (Venice - 1490-1576) - influenced the Lombards & Caravaggio
- Brescian artists Moroni, Moretto & Savoldo (1480-1550) who specialised in the study of light & was a precursor to Caravaggesque luminism

Renaissance in northern Europe (1495-1580) eg. Durer, Hans Holbein, Brueghel
High Renaissance (1490-1520) calm, ordered eg. Michelangelo, Raphael Mannerism (1520-80) tension, discord following scientific discoveries and Calvinist Reformation & Counter-Reformation of the Christian Church.

examples of Mannerists:
- late Michelangelo (Florence) - anti-classical
- Tintoretto (Venice)
- El Greco (Spain)
- late Raphael - respectful of classicism, achieved a perfect synthesis of form and colour with the most expressive results.
  
  northern Lombard naturalism:
- in Lombardy, a more expressive style of Mannerism flourished, based on regional peculiarities that had already been evident in previous centuries. Artists endeavoured to avoid stylistic compromise, preferring simplicity & attention to naturalistic detail, following on from the Renaissance painter Foppa, who, in the 15thC, was interested in the perception of the fluctuating effects of light and shadow, and noted for his lively, realistic representation & Da Vinci who had arrived at a representation of truth founded largely on scientific investigation and was the 1st artist to concern himself with expressing the feelings of the people he depicted.
- in the 1580's, the Lombard painters flocked to the more culturally rich Rome and Pope Sixtus V who was an art lover
- Carracci academy Bologna's naturalism (1585-88)
  - return to Lombardy naturalism in opposition to the artificiality in late Mannerist art.
- the origins of the still life (late 16th C):
  - a return to easel painting instead of frescos in order to capture the immediacy of real life events combined with Flemish experiences of portraying natural detail and a sense of three-dimensionality led to the "still life". Use of actual models.
  - Udine,
  - Caravaggio (southern Italy d1610) - studied the movements and spontaneous reactions of people in a manner far removed from the captiousness that so often pervaded Mannerism
- late Roman Mannerism (1585-1600):
  - Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) overseas the reconstruction of Rome and imposed on artists a homogeneous style of figuration that reinforced the work's overall moral purpose. For the 1st time, Flemish influences were seen in Italian art. eg. da Reggio
- Baroque (1580-1750) heavy, theatrical, dynamic, emotional, often violent
  - during the 1620's, painters throughout Europe were alerted to the news emanating from Rome: the revolutionary art of the late Caravaggio who achieved astonishingly realistic effects through the use of diagonal light, corresponded with a rapid expressive development of the Baroque style & the result was a lavish tour de force of colour & animation.
  examples of Baroque:
  - Rubens (Flemish - 1577-1640 - dominated the Antwerp school) after trip to Rome in 1601, recognised Rome could offer a wealth of old & new material, which he converted it into "Baroque" form. He linked this with Titianesque colour & Caravaggesque chiaroscuro, and was fascinated by the power of Caravaggio's religious paintings but had little admiration for his figurative compositions.
  - Utrecht School (Catholic Dutch) - inspired by Caravaggio
  - Rembrandt (Calvinist Dutch d1669), his portraits tended to be character studies of a more psychological nature. He is one of the greatest engravers of all time.
  - Velasquez - strongly influenced by Caravaggio
  - Gentileschi - strongly influenced by Caravaggio, famed for his female nudes in particular
  - La Tour - St Mary Magdalene with candle1635
  - Rococo (1700-90) King Louis XV; dainty, charming often based on motifs from shells eg. Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, Tiepolo
- Classicism (1550-1760) return to calm Renaissance style eg. Poussin, Le Lorrain
  - English 18thC (1760-1800) eg. Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth
  - Victorian Classicism (1840-1900)

Realism (1850-80) rejected academic artificiality, historical fantasy & romantic exaggeration eg. Manet, Courbet, Daumier
- Impressionism (1870-90) capture transient light on scenes eg. Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas
  - Australian Impressionism (1885-) eg. Heidelberg School (Roberts, McCubbin, Streeton, Conder); Hans Heysen, Gruner; Meldrum;
  - Les Nabis (1889-99) tried to connect Impressionism with theories of Gaugin eg. Bonnard, Vuillard
  - Precisionism / Cubist Realism (1920-1940) realistic rendering of objects but emphasising geometric form eg. Sheeler, Demuth
  - Social Realism (1930-1940) eg. Rivera
  - Magic Realism (1943-1960) overtones of fantasy & wonder eg. Cadmus, Evergood, Albright, Tooker
  - Photo-realism (1965-1980) eg. Kacere
  - Contemporary Realism (1965-) eg. Wyeth
Modern Primitivism (late 19thC) eg. Rousseau
Modern Architecture (1880 onwards)
Post-impressionism (1880 onwards) underlying structure, emotional use of colour & scientific approach to patterns eg. van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Seurat
- Pointillism (1880's) brush-style using tiny dots of primary colors to create secondary colours eg. Seurat
- Fauvism (1905 onwards) "wild animal" unrestrained freedom of artistic expression to bring emotionalism into art eg. Matisse, Dufy Expressionism (1908 onwards) highly personal expression of psyche eg. Roualt, Munch
  - Blaue Reiter (1911-13) eg. Marc
  - The Bauhaus Painters (1919-33) eg. Feininger, Klee, Kandisnsky - also from Cubism
  - Kinetic Art (1920 onwards)
  - Dadaism (1916-22) eg. Arp, Duchamp, Ernst
  Surrealism (1924-39) "super-real" dream-like eg. Dali, Miro
  - Abstract Expressionism (1947 onwards) rejection of natural form of objects eg. Pollock, Kline
  - Colour-Field (1948 onwards) large flat areas of colour eg. Rothko
  - Op Art / Optical Art (1955 onwards) optical illusions eg. Vasarely, Uecker, Riley
- Cubism (1907-25) geometric shapes as basis for art eg Picasso, Gris
  - Futurism (1909-20) dynamic sensation of motion & speed eg. Severini, Boccioni, Balla
  - Suprematism (1913-1918) eg. Malevich;
  - Australian Post-Impressionism (1913-) eg. Wakelin, Bell, Shore, Frater, de Maistre;
  - Purism (1918-) eg. Le Corbusier, Ozenfant
  - Neo-Plasticism / De Stilj (1917-44) 2D geometric eg. Mondrian
    - Geometric Abstraction (1932 onwards) Hard Edge Abstraction (1955 onwards) eg. Albers, Kelly;
    - Minimalism (1960's-) objects stripped down to geometric form & represented impersonally eg. Kelly
  - Pop Art (1953 onwards) explores the everyday imagery which is part of contemporary consumer culture eg. Warhol, Lichtenstein, Wesselmann, Rosenquist

Should Friends Drop In or Call First? 03/13/2010

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My walking shoes and hat were on, my shoulder bag had the essentials, including the filled water bottle, when I saw Indigo, ‘stiffen’, and take up ‘pointer dog’ stance. I looked up and there quietly observing me was six guests who had dropped in without a warning, asking if they could stay for a morning tea with us.

Hastily we reshuffled our plans and put the kettle on and they stayed for a chat or a photo shoot anyhow as they were exceedingly vain guests, primping and posing and for endless photos.

After our coffee, they turned away in disgust saying they did not like my no left over breakfast scraps camp site and they moved on without telling us when they would next turn up totally treading so softly, unannounced and give me a start like that. Lol, it was funny. One moment they were not there, then the next thing these huge five baby emus and their daddy were in my camp.

You have to love emu law. The fathers do most of the child raising work.

So should guests arrive unannounced?. Lol J

Our Special Place: The Grampians, Victoria. 03/11/2010

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Reg and I had a whirlwind courtship after a friendship that began when I was fourteen and Reg was twenty. My darling man tells me he fell in love with me then but waited until I was an adult, before 'testing the waters', with a letters sent from where he was living at the time, Dampier in Western Australia.

When I replied, he quit his job and set of to Melbourne sending me love letters about returning to his 'girl', from each overnight stop he arrived at. I fell in love on our first date, the first Wednesday in December 1967, the year I had turned 21. We were engages (secretly), on the following Saturday, our second date, then we promptly planned our honeymoon and lol, we left on the 1st of January, 1968 for our honeymoon in the Grampians.

Oh yes, we did get married, a respectable, 6 months after our first date, in May 1968, we did not want to be foolish and not get to know each other a little more before making the commitment in a church in front of family and friends. lol. Well that is how 'we got together', and why the Grampians is such a special place to us.

Reg and I also spent his long service leave there. Our daughters attended the primary school at Halls gap and we hiked all over those mountains for a second time.

When I had my stroke at age 32, I set climbing to the top of Mount William in the Grampians as my goal. I did it two years later. I wonder if I could do it again at 63. WOW :-). that would be a challenge I might seriously think about :-). I think I might accept that challenge.

I have painted heaps of art works of the Grampians as I LOVE this place.

We will be staying for one week, from this Saturday night 13 March 2010, at the Grampians Gardens, Tourist Park.

What Phone Will I Buy? 03/06/2010

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I have never adapted to using my mobile phone for internet use. In fact, I have never even learned to send text messages on my mobiles phone. My main excuse for not doing that is that the keyboard on my several years old, mobile phone is too small to allow for easy texting.

I intend to upgrade to an Iphone or a full keyboard phone, I am not sure what I want. I am currently looking around, trying to decide what phone to get.

Many of my friends are buying an unlocked phone so they have full choice of internet provider and I am unsure if I want to do this or to get a phone for a discount price along with a two-year plan with a phone and internet provider.

When any of my friends chat, about their new phones, I am ‘all ears’.

I am letting everyone know ‘I will be in the market for a new phone soon’, as I want to learn all the advantages of the different types, so I make the best decision for my own use, one that will give me additional use, especially ease of texting, but will not greatly increase my monthly expenditure.

I hope to learn more from my own friends, before I make this decision.