A Talisman

Oil painting class with Danny Adams, mid-July, four days of bliss: it IS possible without going to Paris!

I don't think this painting is finished, but the longer I don't work on it, the less I can remember about how to get back to where I was in my head while working on it. In my head or out of it: wherever that was.

At the end, Danny said, "there's a painting on a cigar box lid..." and until that moment I had not even thought of Serusier's "Talisman." I had seen it a month earlier in a small dimly-lit gallery in the Musee d'Orsay; Serusier (one of the "Nabis") is said to have painted it under the guidance of Gauguin. I can just imagine. I am not a fan of Gauguin, though I may have to give him another look, prompted by Martin Gayford's "The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence."

Thinking about drawing

More drawings from a few days of class. Not great, but not bad considering that I was taking "Beginning Drawing" less than four years ago. Yeah, okay, if I'd been 16 then I'd expect more progress and refinement by age 20! But after decades of "I can't draw; I wish I could draw" it is deeply satisfying to get even this far!

Looking

Drawing ahead

Life drawing class with Danny Adams, mid-July, 2008.

Raven mask

Amazing to go from Paris museums to, a few days later, Seattle art museum and see work by Morisot, Manet, Goya, Velasquez, Renoir. After the "Inspiring Impressionism" exhibit (go! closes mid-September), Tim and I went downstairs to look at the astounding northwest coast art. I drew some masks; here is Crooked Beak of Heaven (raven).