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Posts Tagged ‘painting’

sandy inspired watercolors

Posted in Branches, Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged arts, colors, creativity, digital photography, illustration, Inspiration, nature, painting, watercolor, weather on October 29, 2012| 2 Comments »

Meanwhile as I work from home today because of Sandy, it is fascinating and inspiring and a wee bit fear-inducing to watch the rising winds dance with the oak tree that towers above the house. The leaves fall to earth in a beautiful golden brown spiral.

Somehow it seems more right (excuse the bad grammar) to try to capture what I see with other tools besides my camera. I may feel differently over the course of the day as the light changes with the approaching storm, and the action outside my window is such that I want to capture as much as fast as I can with pixels instead of calming watercolors.

We shall see what the evening holds. Meanwhile have a good, safe day, folks. 😉

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Moments Captured: The Art of Donald Langosy

Posted in Inspiration, tagged art, Contributing Writer, creativity, Donald Langosy, family, illustration, Inspiration, painting, Photography on December 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Over the past few years, one of the great pleasures in my creative journey has been making the acquaintance of the Langosy family. Collaborating with illustrator Zoe Langosy has helped me view my photography in new ways and develop an evolving appreciation for collage. Her sister Hadley is a creative web designer but it is her photography that moves me with the ethereal beauty of her images. Mother Elizabeth Langosy is an editor and writer whose words always make me think more deeply about the craft of writing. As for my most recent Langosy inspiration? That would be patriarch, Donald. Each time I have the honor of visiting the Langosy home, I enter and fall into the worlds he has created on canvas. I only slightly exaggerate.

The canvases, of which there are many, loom large. Each frame contains a story with a single moment captured. Just barely.

In just about every painting I’ve seen there is an act in progress, a transformation taking place. There is motion. Whimsy abounds …

… as does a celebration of nature …

… and of travels …

… and most definitely of love. As he will tell you immediately in person and notes in his writing, his wife is his muse and often his model.

I have always admired artists that meld light and color to tell a powerful story. While I do love Mr. Langosy’s use of color, what especially inspires me about his work is the poetry in his paintbrush. Even before I read his artist statement and learned of his literary beginnings, I could see the love of myth,magic and lore on his canvases.

On the Isle of Prospero by Donald Langosy

Given that he’s been painting since the 1970’s, it takes time to view Mr. Langosy’s work. I hope quite soon that he has a major public exhibition but until then view his paintings, sculpture, and more online: The Art of Donald Langosy An Obsure Moment Justified

Enjoy! 😉

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Windows

Posted in Inspiration, tagged illumination, painting, Photography, Rooms with a View exhibit, visual art, windows on May 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I learned this weekend of an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC called “Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century.” As described on the Met’s website, the exhibit is presented in four galleries and represents the works of over forty European artists. A friend of mine, watching a CBS Sunday Morning profile of the exhibit, said she was reminded of my photography. Well, I looked through a few of my archives and noticed that I do indeed have a penchant for pictures taken with windows as backdrop.

During the morning show, the curator, I believe, pointed out that the view through the window by itself can be insignificant or downright boring. It is the juxtaposition of that view with the interior life that creates the romance. Sometimes the windows are not open, as in this Carl Gustav Carus (German, 1789-1869) painting called Studio in Moonlight (1826). Next to it is a rosy-hued picture I took several years ago during a visit to Jackson, Mississippi. In each case it is the illumination that is important, not the specific exterior scene.

I’m not sure if I will be able to see the exhibit, but even just learning about it, heightens my awareness of the photographic opportunities to be had in a room with a window. We’ll see what emerges over the spring and into summer as more light pours down from the sky. Meanwhile, for more information about the exhibit, visit here.

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Inspiring Me Lately: Georgia O’Keefe

Posted in Inspiration, tagged abstraction, art, artistic inspiration, colors, correspondence, Georgia O'Keefe, letters, painting, painting with words on September 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Not hot. Humid. Very humid. That was the state of the weather around Boston today. The sky was filled with layers of gray-blue clouds. Everything beneath seemed desaturated of color. And what did I think as I wandered the city on my way into work: how would Georgia O’Keefe paint this landscape? What colors would she select from her kit to capture this surreal view?

O’Keefe has been influencing my view of the world ever since I stumbled upon the book, Abstraction, at the Somerville Public Library. Created as part of the Whitney Museum’s recent art exhibit, the book highlights O’Keefe’s early abstract work, and includes transcripts of her letters written during the period. The letters were only recently unsealed, twenty years after the painter’s death. O’Keefe’s paintings have always inspired me and these early works are no different. Her use of color, the lines and angles, how the light shifts and shadows are created … I became lost in each image on the page.

The images, while beautiful, did not surprise me. It was the letters. Most if not all, I believe, are correspondence between her and her future husband, Alfred Stieglitz. In them, a very young and vulnerable O’Keefe paints with words her views of the world. Of the sky at dawn, she writes, “… the sky was perfectly cloudless — a deep pink like a hot kiss where it met the ocean.” And of jade artifacts at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, “… colors like you find in the mosses and lichens and soil of the woods — or even in the things washed up by the sea …”

Learn more about O’Keefe’s abstract art and her letters via the Whitney Museum’s exhibit website. It’s well worth the effort!

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