Orchestra Concert

This painting is quite large, and was entertaining to paint. The faces of the audience, in particular, reflect the gamut of feelings that individuals have as they listen and soak in the atmosphere of the music. Some like it, and some just don't. I enjoy creating works that do not exist and never have existed in reality. It's a challenge to figure out your viewpoint, and of course that can change as you paint. Like the cubist, the artist can shift the viewpoint to reflect how she thinks the musician might best be rendered. In the end, I go for the liveliness and try to create the feeling that you just might want to be there. I particularly like the faces of the audience.

That's What I Like About Art!

I have friends whose art is so stunningly painted from reality that you try to reach out and touch the fruit just to see if it is not, by some chance, real. It is magical that their artwork represents reality so beautifully.

I do not try to represent reality in my work. For the most part, these scenes do not exist until I make them up. It's wonderful that artists can make up and share their own worlds with an audience. So, while I appreciate the wonder of a beautifully painted landscape that transports you somewhere, it's not something that I am driven to paint or draw.

 They have asked me how I invent my ideas and carry them from my mind to the artwork. I don't know! I take for granted that what I know of reality can be changed and mingled with what does not exist, and appear together convincingly on canvas. And that is what I like about art!

An avatar for Barbara

This is an avatar that I  doctored up in Photoshop. It is still pretty flattering. But avatars are generally blemish and wrinkle-free; I had to add some details.

An Interesting Perspective on Men and Cigars

This is a painting of a group of people crammed into a small space having an interesting discussion.  The female is a violinist at this black tie affair; a note of color.

I had fun with perspective in this painting. The top-down approach added anote of humor, as we are able to see the balding patterns of these distinguished men. The feet are intentionally small, and the focus is on the cigars and hands.

Teachers Can Relate to This Collage-check it out!

Everyone who has ever taught will recognize the characters in this collage about teachers and their students.

The teacher is trying very hard to present an interesting lecture (yes, of course physics can be very interesting...). The student on the left holds the chalk, ready to come up to the black board and fill in an equation if she is asked. The student on the right is very busy inspecting her nail polish job, which she began right as the teacher began her lecture. Ah! Such a great nail polish job. Not such a great job on her upcoming exam though....

This collage was so much fun to put together. I only had a vague sense of where I was going with it when I started, but when I finished, I really liked this one.

Pamphlet created in Photoshop

Working in digital media with Photoshop software elicits an entirely different type of end product. Because this was done for commercial needs rather than creative only, it is much more structured than my "usual" work. Playing around with color, layers, transparencies and overlapping shapes is challenging. The end product should be different from that produced by the readily available templates provided by software. Each pamphlet or business card I design is created with the client's needs in mind and with a creative eye.

The dog's name is "Cappy" and is the pet of Dr. Nadine Hackman who runs the Vet Program at Harcum. I took the picture in Nadine's office, after moving away some clutter (and they say that artists produce clutter!). The students are in Harcum's program; the girl in the back is supposed to be studying Vet material on-line.

Different media force different styles

This is a collage-that is obvious at first glance. I love the way the various media that artists use to work in effect so much change in the style of the finished piece. Were I to paint this scene in acrylic on canvas, it would look so different that it would look as if a different person created the two pieces. For this reason, I think its so important to vary size, media, and time limits for your artistic output. You discover things about your art that wouldn't be possible by sticking to the same size and media all of the time. When you return to your series of same size, same media, I think there is a new richness to these pieces.
I hope you can appreciate the humor in all of the works that I produce, even the ones not intentionally humorous...

The Art Opening

This painting is made up from memories and from my imagination.
It's got an interesting rhythm that moves from black shape to black shape; not much rest here at this art opening. I had alot of fun using an analagous color scheme; putting limits on the colors allows for a more activity -packed scene. If I had, for instance, put in greens and purples and blues, the result would be psychedelic and over-stimulating.
The details become more prominent in the foreground, fading to shapes and more abstraction in the background.

Making a Collage about Teaching

Thoughts behind this Collage entitled: Disruption

Sometimes I'm in the mood to put together a piece of artwork, and rather than painting on canvas, I'll start working on a collage.

These always end up as more of a surprise than a painting does, as it's so easy to pick up pieces and move them around, or change a background. This particular piece started with the woman in the background. If you look closely you can see that her face combines animal parts with human , and the mouth and teeth are upside down as is one of the eyes.Clearly ( I hope) you can see how aggravated she is. She's a teacher, and her students are misbehaving in class; actually only one is, the other has the chalk in hand and is ready to go to the blackboard. She actually looks rather smug, because you'll notice that the teacher is pointing to the student who is caught in the act of staring at her fingernails.(though she really doesn't care, does she?) She is disrupting the teacher's thought-stream, which disrupts the thought stream of the students who are paying attention.

Creating a collage allows the artist alot of freedom to place things irregularly or skewed, and combine different media in the piece. Most of this collage was painted with watercolors on watercolor paper that was ripped or cut .