Consider Yourself An Artist
I wonder how many of you have stopped short of dabbling in some form of art just for the sheer pleasure of it. Self doubt, societal training and a lack of cultural education prevents many people from thinking they could ever be an artist. But aside from being a bright and colorful way of having fun, creating has many positive side effects. Perhaps you’ve heard of the term ‘art therapy.’ Art therapy is a credentialed professional discipline that helps people use active art-making and the creative process to explore a lot of non-verbal things that might be going on during a health crisis or a trauma due to violence or loss of a loved one.
According to the American Art Therapy Association, research show that art therapy helps people feel more in control of their own lives, and helps relieve anxiety and depression, including among cancer patients, tuberculosis patients in isolation, and military veterans with PTSD. In addition, art therapy assists in managing pain by moving mental focus away from the painful stimulus.
It might be worth a try for the fun of it and you just might uncover some things beneath the surface. A few weeks ago I wrote about how the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who is known for such precise work in her paintings, found so much excitement and freedom in using watercolor, making bold marks and letting the water and paint interact with the paper. It’s an expressive medium and lots of fun.
Watercolors: Go With The Flow
You don’t have to start out with a drawing or composition – choose colors that interest you and see what happens. A set of inexpensive watercolors, paper and a few brushes are all you need to explore. I’ve written about how the painter Georgia O’Keeffe found a lot of freedom working with watercolor. It’s fun to not be so precise and just let the paint and the paper interact. From The Museum of Modern Art, artist Kia Sung refers to O’Keefe’s work and demonstrates how she achieves different effects by using less paint and more water for light tones and washes, or less water and more paint for saturated colors and more control. It’s a great 15 minute art lesson!
The main allure of abstract art for me is that there are no rules. Well, I do have rules about color, form and composition but I’m not usually bound by the rules followed by most figurative artists. It’s a world I conjure. Everything we’re taught about physics, streets and cities aligned to cartesian grids, the measurement of time – it can all temporarily be put on hold. It’s a fascination shared by a lot of abstract artists.
Beatriz Milhazes: Layers of Abstraction
Beatriz Milhazes is an abstract artist who finds things in her environment such as tropical fauna or ocean waves, and then layers and juxtaposes them into something new. Milhazes Milhazes emerged in the 1980s as a leading figure in the important Brazilian art movement Geração Oitenta (1980s Generation), which moved away from the austere conceptual art of the previous decade and embraced painting as a form of energy and expression. The works that she creates using collage and mono transfer techniques come alive with shape and color that suggest nature’s ability to renew and restore.
SONHO DE JARDINEIRO, 2021 Acrylic on linen, 250 x 182cm
A survey of the artist’s work, Beatriz Milhazes: Maresias is on exhibit at the UK’s Turner Contemporary Gallery through September. You can see more of Beatriz’ artwork on her website.
The Allure of Abstract Art
In 2023 a survey of art dealers and gallerists showed that the largest percentage found abstract paintings most important to their businesses. Of course, there are varying levels of abstraction and figuration in art, but how is it that art lovers respond so positively to abstraction? A new exhibition at Gagosian’s London gallery, To Bend the Ear of the Outer World: Conversations on contemporary abstract painting, brings together works by over 40 abstract artists spanning three generations in a show that examines what artists are able to communicate with abstract art and the emotional responses people have to seeing it. Exhibition curator Gary Garrells writes:
Abstraction allows artists to “more fully engage subjectivity, emotional expression, decorative embellishment, complex metaphors, spiritual connection, and philosophical inquiry. They demand that the viewer be in the present moment, while inspiring reverie and an opening of the mind and imagination.
In this way a viewer’s reaction to a painting in the moment defines an instant connection to the art. So what’s your first impression of these paintings?
Joan Mitchell: Cypress, 1980
Later in his life Claude Monet developed cataracts, his art took a turn toward abstraction and influenced the work of abstract expressionist painters Elaine DeKooning and Joan Mitchell, raising the question of whether a few aging artists failing vision altered the course of art history!
Claude Monet: The Japanese Bridge at Giverny, 1918-24. © MUSEE MARMOTTAN MONET, ACADEMIE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS
Both painters nevertheless drew imagery from the same garden and deliberately abandoned horizon lines, that hallmark of landscape painting. They both created all-over effects, though with Monet, you might glimpse a fuzzy arch that’s supposed to be a bridge, or a hazy tree that orients you ever so slightly in space. It seems undeniable that Monet’s vision helped free him from some of painting’s conventions, the ones instilled in him during his time at the French academy, and that this freedom prompted Mitchell and her peers to forsake them more emphatically. – Emily Watlington, Art in America, “Monet/Mitchell” Shows How the Impressionist’s Blindness Charted a Path for Abstraction
Charleston’s International African American Museum is Now Open
The International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina is home to 12 permanent exhibitions that include 9 galleries and “tells the unvarnished stories of the African American experience across generations, the trauma and triumph that gave rise to a resilient people.” The museum pays tribute to Africans and African Americans who transformed our country through labor, resistance and ingenuity. A special exhibition, Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth blends the historical with the contemporary in presenting authentic stories of history, politics, art, culture and activism. If you’re in the Low Country, it’s definitely worth a visit.
Iconic multidisciplinary artist Yayoi Kusama brings her work to San Francisco with the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love opening October 14th at SFMOMA. Her use of bright colors, repetitive mark-making and organic patterns have made her a star among fans of pop art and psychedelia.
Source: Yayoi Kusama Courtesy of the artist
That’s a look at some of what’s happening in the art world this week. You can get a better view of the photos in this post by linking to the web version on my Substack at markgould.substack.com.
