Nancy Albrecht

We saw some of Nancy Albrecht’s recent plein air paintings in New American Paintings book #77 Midwest Open Studios Press. Here is what Robert Kameczura, Chicago art critic has to say about this urban plein air artist:

"Nancy Albrecht’s recent paintings represent something of the duality of Chicago’s personality. On the one hand the city is earthy, seemingly rough, massive and jumbled, on the other side Albrecht sees the city representing the acting out of the cycle of life, the eternal pattern of birth, death and rebirth.

Her paintings show a Chicago that is made out of tough steel and stone, in neighborhoods which include heavy buildings, El platforms, streets and alleys, with a particular emphasis on things which are being torn down for reconstruction. She takes a certain delight in the bizarre shapes and counterpoints of urban structures. Her Chicago views are all painted in a raw painterly style, done almost exclusively with palette knives, laid on in thick textured layers with small touches of lyrical bright color to enliven the scene…

“Albrecht’s Chicago paintings, with their strong geometry, bold paint surfaces, lyric details, and optimistic strength, seem very much in line with Carl Sandburg’s mythical image of Chicago as ‘…cunning as a savage, pitted against the wilderness, bareheaded, shoveling, wrecking, planning, building, breaking, rebuilding.’”

Robert Kameczura
Arts Writer and Critic
Big Shoulders’ Magazine, Chicago Artists’ News, and etc
January 10, 2007"

You can see Nancy's blog here:

http://www.paintergrannys.blogspot.com/

Painting on the Edge (or Art vs. Craft) – An Opinion

For contemporary painting to be taken seriously by the “real art” world, it is expected to create some element of surprise, incongruity, or discomfort (if not shock), be a little off kilter or unsettling – what is sometimes referred to as being edgy.

Although, like almost everyone, there is much current art that I don’t like, I find the idea appropriate. This is not a new idea – it has become a thoroughly engrained part of our culture’s painting tradition over the last 150 years, with roots going back 500 years.

Painting, once one of the skilled crafts, was nudged from its utilitarian moorings as a conveyor of information and narrative by (among other influences) the twin forces of Luther and Gutenberg – the former giving rise to the idea of the importance of the individual (and individual creativity) and the latter conveying information by more efficient means.

At first, the evolution of painting from craft to what we now call art was slow, but by the time photography came along, some painters (most of the ones deemed important today) were staking out non-traditional territory for themselves in some pretty edgy places: Manet with his roughly executed “Picnic on the Grass,” showing two well dressed gentlemen with disrobed women in the woods; shortly afterwards, the Impressionists with their dabs of paint depicting ordinary subjects (profoundly shocking at the time); followed by the Fauves (“wild beasts”), the Cubists and so on through the Pop Artists and the Minimalists, et al.

Edginess now marks one of the boundaries between art and craft. The arts are full of surprises and tension, the crafts are comfortable and predictable – the arts challenge convention while the crafts are guardians of the comfortable past (a valuable and valid role – just not art).

Turner found some of his edginess in technique, Manet in social values, the Impressionists in subject matter, the Fauves in color, the Cubists in form, and Pop in the everyday. Some edges are rediscovered and reinterpreted – today, just painting plein air is so reactionary that it can have some pretty edgy connotations.

Wolf Kahn and Fairfield Porter are modern plein air painters whose work is widely acknowledged in the broader art world. The edges that they staked out are now familiar. Ironically maybe the edgiest of images of the late 19th century were the tiny, abstract pochade box landcapes of James MacNeill Whistler. The renewed interest, after nearly a century, in the small and intimate scale of many plein air paintings once again challenges convention.

For me, the risk of leaving behind comfortable tricks of the trade, familiar materials and pictorial formulas is that I’ll fail (frequently) or fall over the edge into shallow contrivance (sometimes). Pushing the envelope is frustrating, exasperating and uncomfortable, but when I’ve found a new edge and negotiated it more or less successfully, it sure beats just cranking out another pretty picture.

- Carl Judson

Donald Demers

Donald Demers was born in 1956, in the small rural communityof Lunenburg, Massachusetts. His interest inpainting maritime subjects began while spending his summers on the coast of Maine near Boothbay Harbor. Crewing aboard schooners, square-riggers and other traditional craft has provided both the foundation for his technical expertise and the vision to transfer his first hand experience to the canvas. His love of sailing has not diminished over the years.

Don acknowledges his high school art teacher as the most formative influence in his early training. He continued his education at the School of Worchester (MA) Art Museum and Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, MA.

His professional career began as an illustrator. A move to Maine in 1984 marked a shift in his career in which illustration yielded to marine and landscape painting.

http://www.donalddemers.com/

Whistler: Landscapes and Seascapes

The author, Donald Holden is a painter, educated at Columbia and Ohio State Universities, the Art Student League of New York and the Parsons School of Design. He brings the perspective of a practicing artist to this volume on Whistler’s landscapes and seascapes.

“Whistler’s radically simplified paintings, with their flat planes of color, free brushwork, and elimination of detail, became potent weapons in the guerrilla war which the avant-garde waged against the pompous, literary salon pieces which dominated nineteenth century art. In an era of story-telling pictures, Whistler declared war on subject matter and insisted that the painter’s subject is painting. Like Turner and Monet, he gradually evolved an art in which outlines of the visible world began to melt away and the language of painting emerged as an end in itself.”

Of particular interest to plein air painters in this book will be the reproductions of the seldom exhibited modest “thumb box” paintings (mentioned above), which represent the ultimate experimental works of one of the most influential artists of the 19th Century.

– Carl Judson

Whistler Landscapes and Seascapes Donald Holden, Watson-Guptill, New York, 1976, (88 pages, 11 x 10 1/4, 32 color plates, paperback)

Joseph Paquet

St. Paul, Minnesota artist Joseph Paquet uses a combination of on-site and in-studio processes, and a combination of factual scenes and personal vision, to draw our attention to the subtle poetry of ordinary objects and settings.

He begins a painting by toning the canvas with raw umber, followed by a drawing of the main shapes and dark vaules with a cool grey thinned with mineral spirits before adding local color.

He credits his teacher at the Ridgewood Art Institute, John Philip Osborne, with letting him come up with his own decisions, to learn by taking risks and making mistakes rather than by following a formula.

Joseph Paquet is a Signature Member of the Plein Air Painters of America, the Salmagundi Club and an Out-of-State Artist Member of the California Art Club.

http://www.joepaquet.com/

"The Talisman"

“The Talisman,” an exquisite small plein-air landscape by Paul Serusier, marked a turning point in art history. Painted in 1888 on an 11”x9” wooden panel in colors almost straight out of the tube, this single painting became an inspiration to a generation of Post-Impressionists.

Born in Paris in 1864, Paul Serusier studied classical philosophy, Greek, Latin, and the sciences and began his art training at the Julian Academy in 1885. From there, he went to Pont-Aven in Brittany, a town popular among artists (both French and foreign). Just before he went back to Paris, Serusier decided to show one of his paintings to the well-known Paul Gauguin, who had spent much of his childhood in Peru and had no academic art training. He encouraged Serusier to free himself from the constraints of imitative painting, to use pure colors and exaggerate his impressions, giving the painting its own logic. Returning to Paris, Serusier carried a small painting he had made following Gauguin’s advice, which became known as “The Talisman,” and began sharing the new ideas with his friends at the Academy - Bonnard, Denis, and Ranson.

Serusier named his group, which later included Vuillard and Roussel, “The Nabis” (Hebrew for “The Prophets”). In their departure from linear perspective and modeling, they had an affinity with Japanese prints, Italian primitives and contemporary graphic posters on the streets of Paris. Denis defined their view of painting as “basically a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order,” which put the emphasis on the two-dimensional, “decorative” use of the visible world (in French, the concept doesn’t imply triviality, but rather work that is personal, evocative and even spiritually significant).

The Nabis disbanded in 1899, but they had created a link between the remote past (medieval tapestries and frescoes), distant places (Japan & Africa) and the future (Matisse and Picasso) as well as between fine art and applied design (theatre sets and Art Nouveau)... and all because of that one little plein-air painting.

– Sarah Judson

References:

Ellridge, Arthur, Gauguin and the Nabis, Terrail, 1995
http://www.metmuseum.org/
http://www.abcgallery.com/

Shaun Horne

Shaun Horne was brought up on a dairy farm in upstate New York. He graduated from SUNY at Stony Brook with a degree in Evolutionary Biology and a minor in Studio Art. In 1995 he entered the Colorado State University graduate art program and came out as a committed plein air painter. While at CSU, he taught the upper division painting course and discovered he did not want to teach; he wanted to be outside painting.

Shaun estimates that he paints outdoors about 1000 hours a year, making upwards of 50 large-scale realist plein air landscapes in all weather in the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of Utah. Shaun lives with his family in Crested Butte, CO where he and his wife, Dawn Cohen (also a very fine plein air painter), have the Oh-Be-Joyful Gallery.

“Currently my commercially available oil landscapes are working largely to capture and share Earth's beauty. With this function my paintings are essentially consoling to a viewer: this to the extent that beauty is real (it is) and endures any level of scrutiny or skepticism. However one so inclined will notice realist inclusions in subject matter which I hope begin a dialog about apparent, contemporary relationships between humans and Earth.” – Shaun Horne

http://www.shaunhorne.com/
http://www.ohbejoyfulgallery.com/

Heiner Hertling

Heiner Hertling received his formal art training in Hamburg, Germany. After his immigration to the United States in 1965, he owned a commercial art studio until his recent retirement. He has now established an open art studio and school Milford, Michigan, where he conducts classes and workshops covering a variety of media. He also conducts classes in framing and gold leafing.

Heiner is the author of Your Brush With Nature, which has now become a PBS Series with Hiener as the host. He is a plein air and studio artist working in oil, pastel and watercolor.

http://www.heinerhertling.com/

James Abbott McNeill Whistler – 1834-1903

Born in America and educated at West Point, James McNeill Whistler was an expatriate living in Europe his entire adult life. He was a legendary character, cynic and artistic revolutionary in Victorian London (and Paris), counting among his friends Monet, Degas and Rodin. Whistler was a real “painter’s painter, whose ideas and work influenced many leading painters of his day including John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase.

Of course, he was best known for his portraits, particularly Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother (“Whistler’s Mother”). His mature work, the lesser known small plein air paintings, anticipated abstraction and shocked his Victorian audience at least as much, if not more than, his outrageous behavior.

These small pochade box oil paintings (some of my all-time favorites), done on wooden panels, are about 5” x 9” in size. The paint application is fluid and the brushwork deliberate, deft, direct and spare. For such a flamboyant personality these remarkably modest and unassuming little paintings stand in stark contrast.

Fortunately for us in America, Charles Lang Freer, a Detroit industrialist, became Whistler’s most important collector. Consequently most of these little gems are in the collection of the Freer Gallery at the Smithsonian.

- Carl Judson

References –

Whistler: Landscapes and Seascapes Donaly Holden, Watson-Guptill, New York, 1976, 88 Pages, 11x10 1/4, 32 color plates, paperback

Sharon Calahan

A Pacific Northwest native, Sharon has had a lifelong love for nature and active outdoor activities. Her art education in illustration and design led her into a career as an artist in the motion picture feature animation business. She has spent her career studying the effects of light and color to enhance beauty and mood in the film world and has recently endeavored to transfer this knowledge into landscape painting. Sharon loves to hike and paint out of doors, and then to use these field studies as direct inspiration in the studio. She has participated in juried events such as the Sonoma Plein Air Festival, the Napa Valley Art Festival, the Emeryville Art Show, as well as selected gallery shows.

http://www.calahanfineart.com/

Lori Putnam

Lori’s interest in art began before she was 5 years old. By age 11, she had won her first student competition and used the $5.00 prize to purchase pencils and a large sketchpad. As an adult, she managed her own successful graphic design company for more than 13 years while continuing to study art independently. Scott Christensen, Michael Shane Neal, Jason Saunders, and Quang Ho are among her most influential teachers. She credits her love of learning and dedication to the challenge to her friend, mentor, and accomplished artist, Dawn Whitelaw. Lori finds it both a joy and a privilege to share her knowledge and talent with students through plein air and studio workshops across the United States and abroad.

"Like a candid snapshot, I strive to record my first impression, to capture a moment in time or everyday life. I express the effects of light and atmosphere, translated so that viewers can experience the beauty in something seemingly ordinary – something they may never have seen in that way before." - Lori Putnam

http://www.loriputnam.com/

Alla Prima Demonstration by Larry Seiler