Home Land Security

Home Land Security

This powerful and thought-provoking installation is presented at Fort Winfield Scott in the Presidio of San Francisco. 

Curated by Cheryl Haines of FOR-SITE Foundation, the show brings together 18 contemporary artists from all over the world whose work explores the themes of identity, fear, exclusion, surveillance, and displacement in our unstable world. The military setting overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge adds to the impact of the art, its messages and questions.

Every single piece of art I saw was visually and conceptually arresting. One frightened me, and another reduced me to tears. But because I love drawing my blog pick for today is: Concourse by Tirtzah Bassel.

  

Bassel draws directly onto the walls, over pipes and windows, with duct tape. The gestural marks, staccato application, and limited palette conveyed the anxiety and confusion of going through the security area at an airport. It was the most wonderful drawing I’ve ever been in!

Old Sinks - Open Studio

   

    Open Studio

Saturday / Sunday November 5th & 6th 

11.00 - 6.00pm

Preview: Friday November 4th 6.00 - 9.00pm

1890 BRYANT ST # 204

SAN FRANCISCO CA 94110

If you have been following my blog over the past few years thank you for your time and interest. I will soon be transitioning to a blog which is built into my new website. I hope you will continue to follow my musings and announcements there by filling in the sign-up form. 

Ai Weiwei and Franz Xaver Messerschmidt

I recently visited the Belvedere in Vienna to see works by Klimt and other Austrian painters. 

Upon entering the formal gardens I was faced with a collection of strange bronze animal-head sculptures around a traditional ornamental pond in which floated an enormous lily-pad made of life jackets. Something was up! The frisson between the refined architectural backdrop and the brutality of the life-jackets was exciting. Ai Weiwei was in town and his installation, "Translocation - Transformation" was occupying several spaces in and around the main buildings. My expectations of a calm morning were quickly adjusted.

I was particularly entranced by the three mythical creatures suspended above the staircase of the Upper Belvedere. Hand-made in the fashion of kites, with white silk stretched over a fine bamboo framework, these beings seemed to fade in and out of visibility against the white marble background and, depending upon your vantage point, sometimes interacted with the architectural details of the space. 

After the excitement of these unexpected floating sculptures I headed to the galleries and spent a couple of hours in quiet contemplation of paintings by Klimt, Munch, Schiele and others. I then entered a small room containing a circle of "character heads" by the 18th century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. The discovery of these seriously contorted faces by an artist previously unknown to me was as exciting as the life-jacket-lily-pad in the pond outside!  I was told by a very stern gallery attendant that I could not take photos so I tried to capture some of the expressions in my sketchbook. 

These drawings were done with colored pencil over yellow ink.

   

Horses v. Camels

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted. As more and more time has passed I have become increasingly intimidated by the unspoken expectation of important thoughts and witty delivery. So the time has come to pose an important question with which I have been much occupied:

Why is it harder to draw horses than camels?

I recently went to the Sierras for a couple of days to watch the Tevis event – a horse and rider endurance race over a hundred miles of mountain trails between Squaw Valley and Auburn CA. I was surrounded by horses and I had taken my sketch book so was expecting great things. Wow, was I disappointed! Most of my attempts at catching a likeness of these beautiful animals were so bad I will not post them.

 Yet…. when in Morocco two years ago I came face to face with camels – literally – and really enjoyed sketching them. And, if I may say so, I don’t think the results are too bad.

So the horse, a beautiful animal common in our culture, is much more difficult for me to draw than the camel, a strange-looking creature not usually seen on the West Coast of the US.

I consulted with a fellow artist who grew up on a horse ranch and rode Arabians daily and she confirmed that she too finds horses difficult to draw.

So perhaps odd things are easier to draw? (I do quite a bit of figure drawing and I admit to struggling with beautiful models.) Do we pay more attention to seeing those things with which we are not familiar? Does the beauty of a horse lie in subtle proportions much harder to capture than the camel’s bumpy pre-historic weirdness?

Of one thing I am certain – I could never draw a kitten!

Productivity

Collage and acrylic paint on panel (unfinished). 42" x 72"

I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity.

I’ve been to local galleries, art fairs and art museums recently and have seen successful artists who work quickly and sell healthily. I scold myself for only producing 15-20 paintings a year. I like what I do, but it takes a long time.

So, a few days ago, I’m at my worktable gluing old posters to my panel (see photo) when it hits me:  I’m spending a lot of time on the layers which eventually get obscured.  Making a living is hard. If I cut my process time I would produce more. Couldn’t I just gesso the panel and get straight to the final image? Or perhaps get an assistant to do the under-layers while I paint the final layer? I have been having this argument with myself for a while.

In defense of my process:

• ·      Each layer is considered and informs the next layer.
•      Each layer feels like a piece of art in its own right.
•      I have a lot of fun building the layers. I feel like I am “growing” the painting.  
•     The viewer gets little hints, but only I know what lies underneath and what has helped me to get to the final painting.
•     I LOVE my process.

The productivity/income formula is still not right but I guess I’ll be sticking with it for now.... and perhaps buying some lottery tickets.

Thanks for reading.

Homage to 1890 Bryant St.

This weekend I will be opening my studio to the public as part of the Mission–wide Open Studios event.

I’m lucky enough to have a space at 1890 Bryant St. which many consider to be the jewel in the crown of San Francisco’s artist community. Over the last eight years, as my work has developed, the neighborhood and the building have changed too.  This corner of the Mission district now accommodates Heath Ceramics, fashion designers, small businesses, and a host of new restaurants and bars; while the building, though still scruffy on the outside, now boasts elevators and a complete new top floor of artist studios with fabulous views of the city.

During the building’s painfully slow metamorphosis its tenants had to put up with working in what was essentially a building site. Dust, noise, piles of building materials, asphalt-stained water pouring through ceilings, no elevators - all part of our daily life. It was hard and many of us grumbled.

But for me there was a good side to all of this. I love building materials and holes in walls and I get excited about spaces in a state of change - scars left behind hinting at things ripped out. I started to go into the building on Sundays and sketch quiet corners which seemed to be taking a breath between the noise and chaos of weekdays.

At my Open Studio this weekend I’ll be showing sketches and paintings of 1890 Bryant in 1890 Bryant - the building which allowed me to start my life as a full-time painter. There’s a good feeling there.

Open Studio

April 16^th & 17^th

12.00 – 6.00pm

1890 Bryant St. @ Mariposa

Studio # 204

San Francisco, CA