Swap the sable brush for a … potato!
Potato print by Miranda SofroniouI always say chips, french fries, frites – whatever you call them in your common parlance – are one of mankind’s greatest culinary inventions. But the delicious potato has other uses too.
Who remembers the potato printing many of us must have done in art class in primary school? Simple spots and geometric shapes stamped in bright pop colours on butcher’s paper. For some reason this primitive printing method came into my head shortly before I went overseas, and I did a quick search online.
‘Spring Flurry’ potato print by ‘Brianchi’Scroll past the children’s experiments and be inspired by the adults out there who are turning the humble spud into an artist’s tool, and plan to get crafty like me. But don’t stop at potatoes – there’s a whole world of vegies out there!
Click images for links.
Onion cushion by Vicky Williams
Portrait of a Lady
Heinrich Matvejevich Maniser’s ‘Anna Karenina’I deliberately didn't take any books to read overseas with me because I didn’t want to weigh down my luggage (more room for souvenirs!). I thought, well, I have books on my iPhone, I can read those … forgetting that I would be saving my battery to use the Hipstamatic camera.
Anyway, eventually the time came when I was desperate to read something, (on the train to Marrakech from Fés) and I opened up one of my favourite books apps, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I read until the battery was almost flat.
When I arrived home and pulled out my hard copy version, I was surprised and impressed at how much I had managed to read on that tiny little screen: about half the book.
In an idle moment last night, I found myself wondering what Anna might have looked like. Had anyone painted a portrait of her? I was thinking Renoir, Manet, or John Singer Sargent. A quick search online turned up very little, and the most popular portrait of her was painted by Heinrich Matvejvich Maniser in 1904. I couldn't even find any information on him.
I also learned that there is a new film being planned, with Keira Knightley in the title role, and Jude Law entirely miscast as her husband, the unattractive Karenin who is 20 years older than his wife. Somewhere I read an opinion that she (Knightley) is not pretty enough to portray the dazzling Anna Karenina.
This painting by Sargeant suits my notions more: a languorous, seductive Anna enfolded in silks and cashmere, reclining on a settee.
John Singer Sargent’s ‘Nonchaloir’
Sunday Afternoon
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, (1884–86)I have a childhood memory of my sister Star wearing a t-shirt with a print of Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86). I remember being fascinated by it.
This was Seurat’s second monumental composition on the theme of Parisians at leisure. It was painted at Asnières, on the island in the middle of the Seine known as la Grande Jatte. Seurat made over 30 preparatory drawings and oil sketches in which he studied the details as well as the overall composition.
When it was first exhibited, much of Seurat’s public were puzzled by the stiff, controlled figures seemed so at odds with the setting and the notion of leisure. Did they stop to consider that he was making a commentary on contemporary society?
Quite apart from social archetypes, Seurat has succeeding in capturing the shimmering brightness of a summer day. His pointillist style – applying paint in dots – seems to be ideal for this object. One can almost see the heatwaves; feel the stifling warmth; the prickly grass beneath one’s skin.
The Seine at La Grande Jatte, 1888
Click on image to view the detailThe Seine at La Grande Jatte (1888), above, is another painting that completely sums up summer for me. Kenneth Clark, author of Looking at Pictures describes it rather lyrically. He was referring to Bathers at Asnières, (scroll down to see) but it applies equally to this hazy river scene:
There are moments on hot summer days when we are prepared for a miracle. The stillness and the gently vibrating haze give to our perceptions a kind of finality, and we wait listening for some cosmic hum to enchant, like Papageno's bells, the uncouth shapes and colours which surround us, so that they all dance to the same tune and finally come to rest in a harmonious order. In life the miracle doesn't happen, and it is rare enough in art, because great painters have usually created imaginary worlds, outside the range of our ordinary visual experience…
Bathers at Asnières, 1883-84
Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888
To see some of Seurat’s charcoal drawings, click here.
Polka-Dots & Stripes
Last Thursday I went to the opening of my friend Rapunzel’s exhibition of pastel drawings and paintings, which I very much enjoyed viewing. (I also enjoyed the glass of champagne.) She’s already sold a few pieces – hooray!
Here’s what she says about her work:
“My large pastel drawings and acrylic paintings utilise my distinctive illustrative style, with a more personal theme. The female figures appear caught in a moment of an improvised narrative: I rarely plan my images; rather they evolve as I work.
“Inspirations come from everywhere, but mostly everyday observations, feelings, situations, memories, dreams, songs – or sometimes all those at once. The weather, changing seasons and striped clothing are most always present in my work.”
So true! And she very often wears stripes too, although she was wearing the cutest polka-dot stockings and red shoes on the day. Congrats, Rapunzel!
The exhibition is on at South Yarra Art House until Sunday 5 June.
Capturing the Night
The road ~ La routeYears ago, when Rapunzel and I shared a house, I would spend most of my time drawing in the sunroom we called a studio at the back of the house. I worked mostly in pastels: soft pastels, oils, and also compressed charcoal and conté. I particularly loved doing my night drawings: paper so densely covered in black that one could barely make out the scene. It was ‘night’ I was trying to capture.
My then boyfriend suggested I look at the drawings of Georges Seurat (1859-1891). I managed to track down a single paperback book through the Amazon marketplace: The Drawings of Georges Seurat, published by Dover in 1971.
‘The drawings are done not so much for line as for the atmosphere’ – Gustave Kahn
The cat ~ Le chatSeurat is of course famous for his pointillist paintings, particularly his riverbank scene: Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte, painted when he was just 26. These drawings are quite different. They are heavy with charcoal applied vigorously to large areas, leaving hints of light along the contours, and revealing his subject lurking in the dim light. ‘The drawings’, Gustave Kahn states in an essay written in 1928, ‘are done not so much for line as for the atmosphere.’
If his paintings capture the sparkling light of the day, his drawings do indeed encapsulate that shifting play of disappearing light at dusk, investing its subject with mystery.
Wheat and trees ~ Blé et arbres
Woman reading ~ Femme lissant
At the ‘Concert Européen’ ~ Au Concert Européen