Twenty-Four Hours

Joaquin Sorolla, Vision of Spain 

Thursday was a full, wonderful day of inspiration and the joy of great friendship.  I headed to Philadelphia so that Diane Feissel and I could meet up with our other dear friend Sadie Valeri in New York City.  We started our day in upper Manhattan at the Hispanic Society of America.  This Museum/ Research Library, founded by Archer Milton Huntington in 1904, is devoted to the arts and literature of Spain, Portugal and Latin America.  The beautiful Beaux Arts building, constructed in 1904 on a farm originally owned by artist John James Audubon, was created specifically to house the Hispanic Society of America's impressive collection.  In May of this year, they finished renovating the fantastic Bancaja Gallery which has housed Joaquin Sarolla's Vison of Spain murals since 1926.  These 14 monumental canvases (commissioned specifically for the Hispanic Society) surround you when you enter and each represent a different facet of Spanish life.  This free museum is a real hidden treasure.

 Diane in the center of the Hispanic Society of America

 

 

 Joaquin Sorolla's Vision of Spain Murals

After feeling full on inspiration, we set out to fill our stomachs before heading to Arcadia Fine Arts a gallery in SoHo, at 51 Greene St NY, NY.  Sadie has one stunning piece included in their Small Works exhibit.  It was a wonderful opening reception for a beautiful show filled with small jewels of paintings, drawings, and photographs.  Small Works will be on exhibit thru October 13, 2010.

Sadie Valeri, The Wave, oil on panel, 9" x 12"

 

 Sadie, Me, Diane at Arcadia Fine Arts Small Works exhibit.

We ended the evening with more food and friends.  It was a truly wonderful twenty-four hours!

Green Hill Opening Photos

Here are a few photos from the Opening Reception of the Drawing Revisited exhibition at the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art.  It was a lovely night with some friends from Raleigh and a huge turn out for the show.  It was so packed I wasn't able to get any decent shots of the show overall.  I will however be going back and will take more shots of some of my favorites from the exhibit as well as the beautiful space.  Thank you to artist Susan Martin for taking these few .photos.  Her net drawings are really beautiful and intriguing as well as very hard to photograph.        

To see a previous post on Drawing Revisited you can click here.  Thank you to Edie Carpenter, Mario Gallucci, and Emily Shank for this wonderful exhibit.    

Artist Kiki Farish and myself

Autumn Fun: Part III

I am so excited to share the last bit of fun I will be having this Fall!  Perhaps you are aware that I am a contributor to a fabulous site called Women Painting Women?  If you haven't all ready, please make your way over to this wonderful online collection of high quality figurative paintings that happen to all be done by women artists.  The WPW site sprung from an online conversation, that prompted San Francisco artist Sadie Valeri to highlight contemporary women artists working in the figurative tradition.  Soon after, Diane Feissel and myself became contributors to the blog to help maintain the ever growing collection.  We are so excited to announce the first ever Women Painting Women exhibition which will be held November 5-31, 2010 at Robert Lange Studios, an amazing gallery in Charleston, SC.  There are over 45 artists included from across the globe!  RLS really has pulled out all the stops on this show, making sure that the Art comes first!  I am so proud to be hanging in such great company!  Here is a post on the gallery's blog that lists all the artists included as well as mentioning a six page article featured in ArtMag.  And here is one more brief article on this exhibition in the Charleston City Paper.

Jennifer Balkan, Poof, oil on birch with map fragments and ink, 30" x 30"

As if that weren't exciting enough, we at WPW have been working hard to coordinate a weeklong painting retreat for a dozen women artist whom have all been featured on the site.  We will be staying on Sullivan's Island, just outside of Charleston to paint the figure in the beautiful marshes and beaches of the Low Country.  Then in March of 2011, the works created during or inspired by this trip will be exhibited at Notion Fine Art in Laguna Beach, CA!  

The artists included in this inaugural Women Painting Women retreat are:

Alexandra Tyng - Narberth, PA
Catherine Prescott - Harrisburg, PA
Cindy Procious - Chattanooga, TN
Diane Feissel - Philadelphia, PA
Linda Tracey Brandon - Phoenix, AZ
Lisa Gloria - Aurora, IL
Mia Bergeron - Chattanooga, TN
Rachel Constantine - Philadelphia, PA
Sadie Valeri - San Francisco, CA
Stefani Tewes - Laguna Beach, CA
Katherine Stone - Toronto, Ontario
Alia El-Bermani - Cary, NC

I hope you will be able to join us for the opening reception at Robert Lange Studios on November 5th from 5:30-7:30!  It is sure to be a stellar event.

New Figure Painting

Becoming, oil on panel, 24" x 24"

Here is my most recent figure painting.  I literally just finished it last night.  For those of you who have found me on Facebook, you may have seen a very early stage of this painting (even earlier than the grisaille below), and then again last night I posted the "finished" version on there.  However, if you look closely there are a few tweaks I made after seeing it on Facebook.  Often times, I don't see errors within my paintings until I see them condensed for me on the computer screen.  Another good tool for finding problems in paintings is to look at them in a mirror.  Now, if only I could remember to use these tools before I share my work with the public.  Ah well.

  Becoming, oil on panel, 24" x 24" (in progress)