 |
|
© 2021 Hector Viveros Lee |
Happy Holidays
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Sunday, December 5, 2021
Friday, December 3, 2021
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Saturday, November 27, 2021
Monday, November 22, 2021
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Monday, November 1, 2021
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Thursday, October 28, 2021
Monday, October 25, 2021
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Saturday, October 16, 2021
Friday, October 15, 2021
untitled
 |
|
© 2021 Hector Viveros Lee |
Congrats on your new house Lindsay and Christian! We'll miss you.
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Friday, October 1, 2021
Monday, September 27, 2021
Saturday, September 25, 2021
Thursday, September 23, 2021
Friday, September 17, 2021
Saturday, September 11, 2021
Joan Mitchell
When Yoriko invited me to see an exhibit of Joan Mitchell, an artist from the late 20th century, I was unfortunately unfamiliar with her work. As someone who is drawn to representational art, I have come to appreciate the genius of this remarkable abstract artist.
What is remarkable about Mitchell is that while her paintings are inspired by real life, cityscapes, gardens, fields, flowers, trees lakes, what she paints are the feelings and memories of these things. She translates a particular aspect of an encounter with a natural phenomenon but as it is seen but as it is experienced, the dark boughs of hemlock into swaths of viridian and black, the vista of a harbor into blues and red shapes held together a net of white paint, or the pathos of loss of her sister in up steaked greens and pinks. She does this paint as the tool and language, masterfully layering paint on a canvas in transparent washes and watery drips, bold gestures of pigment, thick. buttery layers of paint, stipples and dribble so of viscous paint, carefully choosing her palette, composition and form. When examining her painting, one can see her movement in the gestures she used to apply the paint or the thought behind the layers of washes and impasto. She often spoke of the painting determining where she would lay paint or it revealed her own inner dialogue with paint, brush and canvas.
 |
 |
| This is the last figurative painting Mitchell painted. |
 |
|
Evenings on 73rd Street
This painting takes is name after the many unruly evenings Mitchell spent with her friend Hal Fronden and their circle of painters and poets at his 73rd Street Apartment. The art here is carefully built up. “The freedom in my work is quite controlled. I don’t close my eyes and hope for the best…. I want to know what my brush is doing.”
I’m always up against a wall looking for a view… I carry my landscapes around with me.” Often working meticulously and intentionally, she layered muted colors to create interwoven spaces that were not representational, but “accurate.” |
 |
|
To the Harbormaster
I wanted to be sure to reach you; Though my ship was on the way it got caught up In some moorings. I am always tying up And then deciding to depart. --Frank O’Hara, “To the Harbormaster” |
 |
|
Blue Tree Mitchell once ”saw this cypress tree against an ochre wall… It was so blac ant the ochre wall was a pale, pale ochre and it moved me.” |
 |
|
Ode to Joy
We shall have everything we want and there’ll be no more dying/ on the pretty plains or in the supper clubs --Frank O’Hara, “Ode to Joy,” 1958
The solitude I find in my studio is one of plentitude. I am enough for myself. I live fully there.
You put color down and you look at it. This has to do with seeing… Once I start painting I make a painting. Painting takes over at one point. --Joan Mitchell. |
 |
|
Sunflower VI
Mitchell enjoyed how the sunflowers rose above her like trees and studded her property haphazardly, at odds with her formal French gardens. “They look so wonderful when young, and they are so very moving when they are dying. I don’t like fields of sunflowers. I like them alone, or, of course, painted by van Gogh. |
 |
|
La lande
La Lande hung in Mitchell’s dining room for years, often with a vase of flowers nearby. The painting feature the bold colors that match the vivacity of nature in bloom: the composition is roughly divided into tree bands: white, marigold and a mix of lavender and greens. While much smaller and more intimate, it has the shares the same emotional power of her more expansive works. |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)