Paul Butzi recently showed this photograph on Art & Perception. I fell in love with it at first sight. There was no discussion of the image in the post itself. I asked Paul if he could write something about the picture, and he did. At that point, I decided to buy the print.

This weekend Paul’s print arrived in the mail. I was not sure exactly what to expect, because Paul uses an Epson printer to produce his prints, and I had no idea what the result would be. Now that I have it here, I am surprised but pleased with the result. The print is crisp (despite my lousy photo of it above) and has lovely gray tones. It is not like a “normal” photograph, however — it is matt rather than glossy. This does not diminish its beauty, but does give it a different feel — say, like a fresco as compared to an oil painting.

Am I ready to “upgrade” to the 40″x50″ print for $2500? I’d like to Paul, though I’ll have to wait on that one. But I am most encouraged with my first foray into the online art market.

Still life by Hanneke van Oosterhout, detail

Last Friday I helped Hanneke and Maurice set up the exhibition at Galerie de Provenier. While doing this, I started to ask myself, “What does it take to be an art dealer?”

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Artist and writer Jannie Regnerus has collected three paintings by my partner, Hanneke van Oosterhout. I went to Jannie’s house today to make a photograph of one of the paintings and to see if there was any chance that she would consider reselling them.

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KARL ZIPSER: Jennifer, why did you marry yourself?

JENNIFER HOES: I married myself at the moment I was prepared to embrace my own life and agree on the responsibilities that come with that. I married myself at the age my father died, I decided not to stay in the shade of his death at thirty. More »

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Walter Bartman was my art teacher in high school in 1984-86 in Bethesda, Maryland. Students of “Mr. Bartman” were ten times more likely to become Presidential Scholars in Visual Arts than students in other art classes in the United States. Although he retired from high school teaching in 2001, Walter Bartman continues to teach landscape painting in Maryland and in workshops across the U.S. and in Europe.
Artwork in this post is plein air painting by Walter Bartman [click images to enlarge]. This interview was edited for publication together with Leslie Holt More »

Walter Bartman was my art teacher in high school in 1984-86 in Bethesda, Maryland. Students of “Mr. Bartman” were ten times more likely to become Presidential Scholars in Visual Arts than students in other art classes in the United States. Although he retired from high school teaching in 2001, Walter Bartman continues to teach landscape painting in Maryland and in workshops across the U.S. and in Europe.

Artwork in this post is plein air painting by Walter Bartman [click images to enlarge]. This interview was edited for publication together with Leslie Holt
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A drawing on paper (click image to enlarge):

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Underdrawing on panel:

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Underpainting with acrylic:

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Overpainting with oil:

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Overpainting with oil, second day (click image to enlarge):

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Comments?

Haarlem is a major art center — in historical terms. When the genres of landscape and still life were revolutionary and new (in the 17th century), Haarlem artists were the key players. The Haarlem portrait painter Frans Hals is one of the most influential artists in history. Much of what is best about Manet‘s work he borrowed directly from Frans Hals. Van Gogh was hugely influenced by Frans Hals as well.

Haarlem also has one of the greatest Michelangelo drawing collections in the world. But this is a dead collection, in a sense: in a recent major exhibition in Haarlem, artists were not permitted to study Michelangelo’s work in the only way that makes sense, drawing within the exhibition itself, looking directly at the master’s work. Although there was a huge volume of visitors to the show, there was almost no serious critical analysis of the art or the exhibition (here are exceptions: 1, 2).

Thus, Haarlem is a cultural graveyard. Haarlem’s living inhabitants treat the past with silent, uncritical reverence. The tombstones of the old masters (native and foreign), cast a long shadow over contemporary artwork and creativity.

Artists in Haarlem today can be divided into two broad categories:

• those trying continue past traditions (especially in still life painting)
• those trying to be part of the great international art scene.

In the first category are some talented painters achieving commercial success with their neo-17th century still life paintings. But in this endeavor, they are little more than expert craftsmen. [Hanneke van Oosterhout is flirting with the idea becoming one of these, but I think she will pull out before it is too late].

In the second category are artists who are in denial about their place of residence. These artists would probably be better off if they moved to the real international art centers of today — New York, London, Berlin. How can one be a great international artist living in Haarlem, of all places?

Before we all pack up and move to New York, I’d like to point out that the action in the great living art centers of today is not all that impressive. I’ve spent a lot of time in New York and Berlin, with an eye to moving there for the sake of my art career. I was singularly unimpressed by what I saw in the living art culture. I might move to New York for its great museums, but not for its contemporary galleries.

More interesting to me than moving is to look at this cultural graveyard I live in, and see what are the weeds growing besides the tombstones. What is the new life here? Might it grow into something for the city to be proud of?

Where do you live and work? Could your city or town become an important art center? Or would you rather move to New York?

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In a future post, I will profile what I consider to be the most exciting contemporary Haarlem artwork.

Hanneke van Oosterhout recently showed this painting in earlier states. She got valuable suggestions from Rex, David, Colin, Jon, and Jewel as to how to improve the picture. Rather than respond in words, she has responded by modifying the painting itself. The latest version is shown above [click image to enlarge].

Is the painting finished?

by Hanneke van Oosterhout

Recently we looked at one of Hanneke van Oosterhout‘s finished still life paintings. There were a number of excellent critiques. The painting was already sold, however, so comments could have no further impact on that picture.

Now Hanneke is in the progress of making another still life. It is not yet finished, which means that your comments could help her make this painting better.

We can follow the painting’s development over several days. More »

This landscape painting by Tracy Helgeson caught my eye. This work is something of a new departure in Tracy’s work, I think. She often works on the border between abstraction and reality, but in this painting there is a cross-over, albeit a subtle one. The result is almost unsettling, but I like it. A question for her is, does she want to go further with this? There is also a psychological element to this landscape painting, as I see it, which captures my attention.

Tracy’s blog raises interesting questions about what it means to be an artist today. In the past, artists liked to cloak themselves and their work in mystery. Tracy is open about her work (good, bad, unfinished) and her difficulties in the process of creating and selling. There is a refreshing and direct quality to her writing style that makes mysterious 20th century artists seem a bit comic in comparison. Is Tracy a good example of what 21th century artists will be doing, or should she hide her unfinished work and cultivate a more refined public image?

Sometime in the 14th century, Cennino d’Andrea Cennini wrote Il Libro dell’ Arte. The book is a treasure because of its detailed information about a wide range of artistic techniques. For Cennini and his contemporaries, using natural mineral pigments was the best option available to create intense and lightfast blue colors.Mineral azurite yields a handsome blue pigment, somewhat “warm” or inclined slightly towards green. Ultramarine was purified by a labor-intensive process from the lapis lazuli stone, and yielded the most pure blue available. Although the stone itself was semi-precious, the purified pigment was considered a treasure.

These natural blue colors are intense, but not so intense as modern synthetic colors. This meant that painters of past centuries could strive to produce the strongest blues possible, and still arrive at results that were poetic, rather than garish. In contrast, the modern painter, working with colors from a tube, must often fight with the colors, to take away some of their overpowering intensity.

The painting here is an “imaginary portrait” which I painted with oil on panel in 2002. The blues here are underpainted in azurite, and overpainted with natural purified ultramarine, using varying admixtures of white. Differences in the pigment particle size and the degree of purification have an important influence on the colors.

Below are two magnfied views of the painting. In each detail, there is small regions of the warm blue azurite underpainting visible, where the ultramarine (darker blue) does not cover the underpainting completely. Notice the granular quality of the blue pigments, compared to the more uniform mixtures in the skin colors.

(first posted 14 March 2006; update with magnified views, 3 November 2006)

This ceramic vase is based on an ancient Greek form, known today as a Stamnos.

This vase is made from four separate pieces: the body and foot; the mouth; the two handles.

Using a yellowish clay, I threw the body/foot on a potter’s wheel, then set this aside to become leather hard. Next I threw the mouth, a short cylinder. When it was leather hard, I attached it to the body with clay slip. I put the vase back on the wheel and refined the form using a wire loop tool. I then burnished the vase with a smooth stone as it rotated on the wheel. The handles were pulled from a lump of clay. When these were leather hard, I attached them to the body with clay slip, then burnished these also.

I drew figures on both sides of the vase with pencil, then redrew the design with a fine clay slip called terra sigillata, which here is brown. After painting the remainder of the vase with this material, I polished with a cloth to give it a metallic shine (click images to enlarge).

I learned how to make vases by reading the book Athenian Vase Construction by Toby Schreiber.

I learned about painting them from the book The Techniques of Painted Attic Pottery by Joseph Veach Noble.

I learned critical information about terra sigillata from Vince Pitelka’s website.