Happy (Almost) New Year!

Well, it is almost time to put 2014 to bed, and what a fun year it has been!  I've been so lucky to get to see a lot of great art, including Matisse, Goya, Magritte, more Matisse, Cezanne, Manet, more Magritte, Picasso and Braque, Bates, Soto, van Gogh, Rembrandt, Pollock, and so many others.

I've also had the opportunity to (finally!) take art history (1&2!) this past summer.  How that experience has added to my enjoyment of museums (in particular) and art (in general).

I have also been making some art of my own.  You saw "The Girl with a Pearl" in my last post, and since, I have completed two more pictures.

The first is based on Magritte's Surrealist masterpiece, "The Treachery of Images."





I was so excited to see this in person at the Menil Collection in Houston this summer.  For those of you who do not know about the Menil, it is a FREE museum that always has very interesting exhibits, located right in the heart of one of the most charming old neighborhoods in the city.  While you are there, pop over to the Rothko Chapel, as well; it is close enough to walk, and you will be rewarded with a completely immersive modern art experience that is like no other.

The Menil Collection was one of the stops on a national tour of some of Magritte's most famous works, and it was such an enjoyable exhibit, that I ended up going twice.  Each time, I was most handsomely rewarded - Magritte could really paint quite well, and the humor and cheekiness of his work still brings a smile to my face, even these months later.

Rene Magritte was a Belgian surrealist, and if you don't know his name, you must certainly know his work.   Famous for his paintings of falling apples and steam trains coming through fireplaces, this 20th century artist made his mark by creating work that was purposely designed to blow your mind...

An example:



Magritte called this work The Human Condition, and if it doesn't make you do a double take, I don't know what will.

I was thinking a lot about Magritte and his unique vision of the world when I set out on my trip to New York City (to see the Matisse Cut Outs - outstanding!).  I was particularly pondering the pipe that was and was not a pipe, and the many layers and levels of thinking that this particular painting required of those observing it.

We did a lot of subway riding to get around the city on the cold, rainy weekend we were there, and as I looked around, observing the other riders, I noticed that most everybody, during every moment of their trip, had their heads bent in prayerful obedience to their cell phones.  Even when we went above ground, a lot of people couldn't put their phones down, even in restaurants, and even during what were clearly dates.  I found that very strange, and a little bit sad.

Even in the museums that we visited, the patrons seemed to spend very little time looking at the art, and a lot of time with their heads hunched over, staring at either their cell phones or the museum's self guided tour devices.   I saw a lot of the tops of people's heads.

As a person who did not grow up with a cell phone in her hand, I wanted to shout at them: "Hey!  Look up!  Big world out here, and your'e missing it!"  I wanted all of these hunch necks to realize that their cell phone was not their life - their life was the thing they were missing, because their eyes were glued to their screens.

So, I thought to myself: "What would Magritte do?"  He would make a little barbed joke, and hope they got it.  Here is what I did:

The Treachery of Jobs

I initially intended to either paint or embroider a cell phone as part of my picture, but when I got out an old cell phone to use as a reference, I decided it would be better to just add a real object to the picture.

For those who do not speak French, (I think) the translation says: "This is not a life."

I like that it plays on many different levels - Magritte had an image of a real object that was not real because it was an image; I present a real object that is virtual in it's nature - playing with the idea of a real vs. a virtual existence.



The cell phone is firmly attached to the picture plane; I figured out how to sew the phone case where I needed the phone to be, and that phone isn't going anywhere.  Another surprising aspect of the painting was the reflected view in the glass.  When I looked into the painting, I saw my own virtual image reflected back to me, which did blow my mind a little bit.  Mission Accomplished.

When I was finishing the back of the painting, I decided (on a whim) to give it a better than standard picture wire...

The Treachery of Jobs (reverse)

I called it The Treachery of Jobs because I both love and hate Steve Jobs.

While I was on my surrealist kick, I decided to also make a crewel work portrait of Frida Khalo.  Frida (whom I wrote about in The Vincent Project Blog) was such a beautiful and iconic figure in the history of art - I just wanted to get to know her a bit better by painting her portrait in silk.

Here is what I did:

Diego's Chica (portrait of Frida)

Because of Frida's timeless sense of fashion, I chose a purposely old fashioned oval frame, which I stretched with black velvet.  I began the painting with a stitched green "underpainting" to give her olive skin life and substance.  Once the underpainting was complete, I slowly built the layers of vibrant color, stitch by stitch, mixing the individual fibers just as I would have mixed paint.

Here are some photos of the details:

Frida's face and the flowers in her hair

And an extreme close up of the face - you can see the green peeking through

For the flowers in her hair, I did a stump embroidery technique, making individual petals, which I embroidered separately, then added piece by piece to form the flowers.  That was a lot of fun to do!

Stump Embroidery Flowers

Well, that gets me pretty caught up.  If you want to see more, be sure to check out my website.

My latest work -

Hi!  I wanted to let you know that I now have a website, which you can link to by clicking on http://catherinehicksart.com




Now here's what's been going on in the studio -

Girl with a Pearl - Crewel Embroidery on black velvet.

I am on a big crewel kick since I took a life drawing II class this summer.  It is fun to use wool and silk as my medium, and I am getting images that I think are pretty interesting.

Please feel free to let me know what you think!

My painting is roughly the same size as Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl earring upon which it is based.



There are about 8 layers of Wool and Silk on the painting, which was done with a traditional glazed painting technique.  I began with an underpainting of various shades of thin green wool under the flesh, and purple and orange wool underneath the sweater and beret, respectively.

Details, details!

Rimfire - Charcoal on Paper - completed during my Life Drawing II class - before Kim Kardashian even thought about breaking the internet.


Pastel Selfie - from my class

Boyo - Pastel from my class

Cruel, Crewel Summer (left and below) and Crewel Self Portrait, were both completed for my class.

I had been struggling in working with pastels because they kept on smearing.  I was trying to demonstrate that I understood the color theory discussed in class, but the pastels were just too difficult to work with (without overworking) and transport.  So, I decided to go sideways.

For the two final self portraits required, I decided to "paint" them with crewel embroidery.  The one on the lower left was the first one I did, and then one on the left and below was what I turned in for my final.

Happily, I got an A!

Below are two more "fabrications" which I made since my last studio posting but before starting my classes.  At left is Silent Spring, made of woven strung sequins, and Invidia, made up of green silk and everything  black in my studio.

I am currently working on a silk crewel portrait of Frida Khalo.  Just because I love her.

More soon.  I am sort of promising.

Let's Learn about: Vermeer!

Believed to be a self portrait of Johannes Vermeer.  

This is the Art History Paper I wrote about Dutch Golden Age Painter Johannes Vermeer and his painting, "Girl with a Pearl Earring."  For more information about Vermeer, please link to n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer




From a smoky shadow, a youthful woman of indeterminate age turns to meet our gaze, illuminated by an intense, yet diffuse light.  Perhaps it is late in the evening, or at sunrise, but time seems immaterial at this, the first moment of our encounter.  Her clothing offers no clue as to the hour, or even the location of our meeting.  A greenish golden robe, shadowed and modeled in the dusk, is draped loosely around delicate shoulders, hiding the barest glimpse of a snowy collar.  It is impossible to tell if the robe is opened, closed, or in a dual stage of invitation.  Her hair is wrapped in an ultramarine turban, which is tied over the crown of her head with a spill of yellow silk.  From her left earlobe hangs a shimmering pearl of improbable size.  But these adornments are not what catches our eyes; our focus, like a moth flying fearlessly toward the light, is drawn directly into the luminescence of her soulful gray-blue eyes.  The three quarters profile that we see her in softly highlights her straight nose, high cheekbones, and perfectly proportioned chin.  Her long neck, hidden partially by the collar, is held just between the light and shadow, intensifying the delicately shimmering movement of the pearl as she turns. Her ripe mouth is held barely open, pursed on the edge of forming what must surely be a welcoming word of invitation.  She is Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Painted in 1665 in the City of Delft, this work, which has been called the Dutch Mona Lisa, has become one of the most beloved of all of the paintings produced during the Dutch Golden Age.  And, like the Mona Lisa, it is not a large, significant History or Religious painting.  It serves no didactic purpose, or any purpose other than the enjoyment of the viewer.  It is essentially nothing more than an extremely lucky snapshot - had it been rendered during our own time, it would doubtless have been a profile picture.  But that is the intimate charm of these visages (of both the Dutch girl and the Italian woman); they are each mementos, requerdos of girls we thought we once knew.  

Despite her great importance in our own age, Art Historians believe that Vermeer painted this unknown young woman as a "tronie" (Dutch word for "head), which was essentially a painted sketch, typically of an unknown or purely imagined model. Many of the Dutch figure painters rendered these tronies, as a way of working out how best to capture a specific facial expression or character. The figures in tronies are typically dressed in an exotic, unknowable fashion; their clothing is the imagined fantasy of the artist.  The first to utilize tronies extensively was Rembrandt, who painted a number of them throughout his career, using himself as a model.  Combined, they offer us a life portrait of his growth and decline, both artistically (in terms of contemporary popularity) and within the confines of his own mortality.

Perhaps because it was considered to be little more than a sketch, the Girl with a Pearl Earring did not always exist in the sheltered protection and adoration which envelops the work today.  At the time that Vermeer was painting, the Dutch mercantile economy was thriving, but Vermeer was not.  Making his sparse living primarily from income as an innkeeper and art dealer, Vermeer died insolvent at the age of 43, leaving behind a wife in debt, 11 children, and a catalogue of only about 36 paintings which he had produced and sold throughout his career.  The Girl had vanished until 1881, when she surfaced at an auction and was sold for two guilders and a buyer's premium of thirty cents.  The buyer, Arnoldus des Tombe, was a serious art collector, and he often invited like minded friends to view the collection in his home.  There, the painting was admired by Abraham Bredius, who would become the director of the Mauritshuis Museum in the Hague.  Upon his death in 1902, des Tombes' estate plan left the Girl and 11 other paintings to the Museum, which catalogues the work as one of the most important of it's collection.

Vermeer was known as the painter of quiet, contemplative, radiant light, and he had an unsurpassed ability to render a softened, tender, and impossibly beautiful world.  Shade and shadow melt exquisitely in his cinematic paintings, which reveal the mythic Dutch Golden Age of Vermeer's imagination.  The Girl with a Pearl Earring is surely Johannes Vermeer's most enduring and transcendent dream. 

Sources:  

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis, Edited by Lea Van Der Vinde, with contributions by Quentin Buvelot, Emilie S. Gordenker, Petira Noble, Lynn Federle Orr, and Ariane Van Suchtelen, Published by Fine Arts Museums of San Fransisco - Delmonico Books - Prestel

ART - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE GREATEST ARTISTS AND THEIR WORKS by Susie Hodge, Published by Quercus 

I was so inspired by my study of this work that I made my own "Girl with a Pearl." (crewel embroidery on black velvet.)