Dusk Falls and Paul Klee

 

 

Good news! What a wonderful surprise when I heard that my painting, Dusk Falls, was accepted into the International Association of Pastel Societies biannual show Pastel World in Albuquerque NM. If I could give one piece of advice to artists... you can't be accepted if you don't apply.

I love to read about other artists, don't you? In my reading I found excerpts from Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925).
Paul Klee interesting tid-bits:
Paul Klee kept sketchbook since he was very young. The museum actually has ten from those days.
He was left-handed.
Another fact I didn't know was that he was the stay at home dad for the first 6 years of his child's life. His wife was a concert pianist and teacher. She traveled widely. He said his domestic duties got in the way of his art.  (imagine that!)
He said that it was in Tunisia that he began to understand and explore color. Here's a brief outline.
Wonderful quote: "Art does not produce the visible but make it visible. "

This is the link to the full article.
I love "Observe a fish tank."

gray

pastel on uart

"For a painter gray is the richest color, the one that makes all the others speak." Paul Klee
You see is when you look at the great beauties in art (my bias) In the later part of his life George Inness was the master of grays. He uses only a small piece of pure chroma surrounded by neutralized color (grays.)

snow break

pastel 6x6

On Friday I drove to the airport to pick up my husband, Paul. It was snowing like crazy and the beltway was a parking lot. Great for observation. I had him drive on the return trip so that I could take notes and photograph with my phone. I tried to get the feel of the blurriness that happens with snow. This was the beautiful moment when the skies began to break and the snow was only in the light clouds, not falling down. I am experimenting with the colors I build use to build the toned paper. My pastel is so thick I can scratch and scrape with my nails.

A new quote for you:

Create goals for yourself: 

play, fool yourself and other, be an artist."

Paul Klee, diary 1902

With that said, I think I will return to the press (in addition to painting) to work with monotype/print. I was checking out contemporary monotypes and found Forrest Moses. He makes beautiful monotypes that give me goose bumps. Check out his site.