Online Art Exhibition

Today, I went to a Alastair Gray Solo Show in 6 Burnsall Street, London, all the way from my comfy house, online. Here's a brief introduction to the exhibition:

Following the success of his previous show Gray returns to the gallery with an equally exciting new collection. In these strong abstract canvasses the artist's imagination has been captured by the contrasting landscapes of Switzerland and New Mexico.

In this body of new works Gray also pursues another interest - man's intervention in the landscape. Industrial scars in the form of pylons and cables lend themselves perfectly to Gray's imagery. The scoring of the canvas, layering of the paint and the oily glazes help create and reinforce the mood of the places he paints.


Here are some of the works presented in the exhibition


Rio Cuale
mixed media on canvas


Bandillo
mixed media


The Peninsular at Dawn
mixed media on canvas

The paintings of Alastair Gray gives me a warm. fuzzy, cosy sort of feeling through his warm and rather cool colours. I really like his style of painting, I want to learn how to paint like that.

Artist Review : Andre Derrain

André Derain




Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Île-de-France. In 1898, while studying to be an engineer, he began to attend painting classes at the Académie Camillo[1] and studied with Eugène Carrière. In 1900, he met and shared a studio with Maurice de Vlaminck and began to paint his first landscapes; Vlaminck also introduced him to Matisse.

Derain made his first impact on the Paris art scene in 1905, when he and Matisse displayed their highly innovative paintings at the Salon d'Automne. This exhibition led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to dub them les Fauves (the wild beasts).

In March 1906, the noted art dealer Ambroise Vollard sent Derain to London to compose a series of paintings with the city as subject. In 30 paintings (29 of which are still extant), Derain put forth a portrait of London that was radically different from anything done by previous painters of the city such as Whistler or Monet. With bold colours and compositions, Derain painted multiple pictures of the Thames and Tower Bridge. These London paintings remain among his most popular work.

In 1907 he experimented with stone sculpture and moved to Montmartre to be near his friend Pablo Picasso and other notable artists. His work increasingly showed the influence of Paul Cézanne and of African art. Derain supplied woodcuts in primitivist style for an edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's first book of poetry, L'enchanteur pourrissant (1909), and illustrated a collection of poems by Max Jacob in 1912.

At about this time Derain's work began overtly reflecting his study of the old masters. The role of color was reduced and forms became austere; the years 1911-1914 are sometimes referred to as his gothic period. In 1914 he was mobilized for military service in World War I and until his release in 1919 he would have little time for painting, although in 1916 he provided a set of illustrations for André Breton's first book, Mont de Piete.

After the war, Derain won new acclaim as a leader of the renewed classicism then ascendant. With the wildness of his Fauve years far behind, he was admired as an upholder of tradition.[2] In 1919 he designed the ballet La Boutique fantasque for Diaghilev, leader of the Ballets Russes. A major success, it would lead to his creating many ballet designs.

The 1920s marked the height of his success, as he was awarded the Carnegie Prize in 1928 and began to exhibit extensively abroad — in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, and in New York City and Cincinnati, Ohio.

During the German occupation of France in World War II, Derain lived primarily in Paris and was much courted by the Germans because he represented the prestige of French culture. Derain accepted an invitation to make an official visit to Germany in 1941. The Nazi propaganda machine naturally made much of Derain's presence in Germany, and after the Liberation he was branded a collaborator and ostracized by many former supporters.

He died in Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France in 1954.
Today, paintings by Derain sell for as much as US$6 million. The London paintings were the subject of a major exhibition at the Courtauld Institute in 2005-06.

Art Techniques

Impasto



The word "impasto" is actually an italian word which means "dough" or "mixture". This style of style of painting refers to a style by which paint is laid on an area of the surface thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting knife strokes are obvious.

Italian usage of "impasto" includes both a painting and a potting technique. According to Webster's New World College Dictionary, the root noun of impasto is pasta, whose primary meaning in Italian is paste.

Oil paint is most suitable to the impasto painting technique, due to its thickness and slow drying time. This enables the artists to have sufficient time to manipulate the paint to his desired style. Acrylic paint can also be impastoed. Impasto is generally not possible in watercolour or tempera without the addition of thickening media such as Aquapasto™, due to the inherent thinness of these media.

Impastoed paint serves several purposes. Firstly, it makes the light reflect in a particular way, giving the artist additional control over the play of light on the painting. Secondly, it can add expressiveness to the painting, the viewer being able to notice the strength and speed applied by the artist. Third, impasto can push a painting into a three dimensional sculptural rendering. The first objective was originally sought by masters such as Rembrandt and Titian, to represent folds in clothes or jewels: it was then juxtaposed with more delicate painting.

Much later, the French impressionists created entire canvases of rich impasto textures. Vincent van Gogh used it frequently for aesthetics and expression. Abstract expressionists such as Hans Hofmann and Willem De Kooning also made extensive use of it, motivated in part by a desire to create paintings which dramatically record the "action" of painting itself.

Still more recently, Frank Auerbach has used such heavy impasto that some of his paintings become almost three-dimensional.

Because impasto gives texture to the painting, it can be opposed to flat, smooth, or blending techniques.

Some artist include Montecelli and Aja

Mixed Media



Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium ( or technique ) has been employed.

There is an important distinction between "mixed media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct visual art media. For example, a work on paper or canvas that combines paint, ink, and collage could properly be called a "mixed media" work - but not a work of "multimedia art." The term multimedia art implies a wider scope than mixed media, combining visual art with non-visual elements (such as recorded audio, video) or with elements of the other arts (such as literature, drama, dance, motion graphics, music, or interactivity).

When creating a painted or drawn work using mixed media it is important to choose the layers carefully and allow enough drying time between the layers to ensure the final work will have integrity. If many different media are used it is equally important to choose a sturdy foundation upon which the different layers are imposed.

An old rule good to remember is "Fat over lean." In other words, don't start with oil paints. Plan to make them the final layer.

Many interesting effects can be achieved by using mixed media. Often, found objects are used in conjunction with traditional artist mediums, such as paints and graphite, to express a meaning in the everyday life. In this manner, many different elements of art become more flexible than with traditional artist mediums.

Some famous mixed media artists include Miriam Schapiro, Dieter Roth and Lorne Beug