Marie Matthews

Jester

The next artist is a watercolor-er. Her name is Marie Matthews, and is from the beautiful peach state of Georgia! Her work was first shown 7 years ago and has been becoming better well-known ever since.



Her watercolor pieces tell stories. And you know how much I love stories! She seems to focus on describing where she's been in her stories, whether that be in a cemetery, or New Orleans, or Atlanta. She describes where she's been by the people and things in those places. When there are people to show, she shows them in a portrait style, but includes accessories and poses that helps give the idea of WHO each of them is. 

Grandpa Elliot

What's funny about the painting to the left is I actually recognized the man portrayed in it! The painting is from Matthew's New Orleans collection. When I saw it, it reminded me of this youtube video I saw of different people around the world singing "Stand By Me." SO I figured I'd watch/listen to the video while I blogged, and it turns out it was the same guy! Haha! If you don't believe me, check it out, yourself! (http://youtu.be/Us-TVg40ExM)

Oakland-- Ivy Garland and Bell Tower Ridge

So like I said, she tell's stories and portrays the people in a way that shows their personality.



I enjoy the watercolor medium because it can have precise edges, but also leave some to the imagination. I also love that the negative space becomes the highlights. Matthews uses it well in her pieces.

I would like to practice with it more and see what I can do...


-Maria


http://mmatthews.com/cats/new_orleans.html <-- check it out!

Silent Shouting

So this time I decided to look at Ali Cavanaugh's works. She is a talented realist artist, who communicates through what is seen and unseen. Her works tend to consist of a female figure with looong knee socks covering her arms or feet. The girl's face is often times covered or not shown, too.

This art expresses Ali Cavanaugh's experiences and views. When she was around the age of two, or younger, she came down with spinal menangitis, which costed her a lot of her ability to hear. She considers this to have been "a blessing in disguise" because it forced her to rely more on her ability to see to understand what was going on around her. It made her fluent in body language.

The Water Surrounds a Space I Keep to Myself

I'm not sure what the significance of the socks are. They are colorful, and one is easily able to see the form of the arms or legs in them. But they still add a sense of ambiguity or make them not as personalized. They seem to almost separate the limbs from the body, as though they are not "related."


 I love that it combines realistic portrayal of what the artist is seeing (her daughter or nieces modeling for her), but also expressing a deeper message. Apparently her works express "images and ideas" from her past. She uses ideas that are common, such as hide 'n go seek. Cool :)

-Maria

6, 7, 8, 9... 10

The Yellow Flower

Okay so one of the ideas I have been toying with to possibly use for my senior seminar has something to do with taking things we are typically familiar with, and even by which we recognize people (specifically their facial features), and cropping in so that they look more abstracted designs than the features we are used to.

On that train of thought, who better to look to for inspiration in cropping in and abstracting familiar things than Georgia O'Keeffe. Specifically I am referring to her flower paintings. Actually she was really my inspiration for the technique in this new possible idea for senior sem.

Red Canna

O'Keeffe was an American artist, who started out in Wisconsin and finished her memorable life in New Mexico. She went from a farm in Wisconsin, to the Art Institute of Chicago, and other places such as taking classes at UVA in Charlottesville, and teaching classes at Columbia College in South Carolina. An influential person in O'Keeffe's art was Arthur Dow, who said "the goal of art was the expression of the artist's personal ideas and feelings and that such subject matterwas best realized through harmonious arrangements of line, color, and notan (the Japanese system of lights and darks)" (www.okeeffemuseum.org).

Along her journey, she met Alfred Stieglitz, a man who shared her heart for art, and encouraged and supported her in her development as an artist. They eventually got married and lived in New York. It was in New York where she worked on her huge flower paintings.

Poppy

Her later works reflected her love for New Mexico, in the animal skulls and desert landscape portrayed in them. However, the works that I want to look at in this blog, is her paintings of flowers.

I love how even though it's more difficult to recognize the flowers, themselves, the paintings and compositions are still aesthetically pleasing.


 -Maria

http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/biography.html

White Flower

Is This Real Life??

So if you haven't figured this out already, I love details and I am absolutely fascinated by the way different artists depict water. I also favor photo-realistic art; the more life-like, the better. That's my motto. So when those three elements come together in a piece of art, you can count on it that I will be geeking out.

Relinquishing

Eric Zener's work contains all three of these elements, therefore I'm geeking out. I don't know why I am so fascinated by depictions and illustrations of water, but I am. I love the way that water refracts and reflects light, and good artistic depictions really capture those attributes of water. I know that to achieve really photo-realistic work, one needs to pay A LOT of attention to detail. And boy does Eric Zener pay a lot of attention to detail!

How to Disappear Completely

Zener is an American artist. He does photorealist paintings. His focus is on expressing the "collective desire for transformation into something ideal." He says he strives to "create a sense of sanctuary, often using the figure in water, sleep, journeys and nature as a metaphor for renewal and reprise."

I think he definitely captures that sensation in these paintings. Not only is the water peaceful and seem to give the viewer a sense of tranquility in many of the pieces, but even in the pieces that there's more movement implied, it still feels "safe;" not threatening.

Cusp

 I also love his attention to detail for the whole composition. I guess that's what you have to do to be a truly photorealistic painter. I know I often get into the habit of paying a lot of attention to detail in one part of a painting I'm working on, but then that will usually take up so much time that I lose patience and don't go for the same amount of detail for the rest of the painting.

Safety Net

His attention to detail is definitely a challenge to me to strive for the same level of detail, as well as consistency of detail throughout the piece. And I accept, and hope to live up to the challenge in future pieces of mine.


-Maria

*Here are some links where I found these pictures and information about him. Enjoy!

www.ericzener.com/water.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Zener