An interesting period when women ruled for a period of time in European countries, Elizabeth I, Catherine de’Medici, Anne of Austria, and Mary Queen of Scots to name a few. This book looks at, examines, the archetypes of the times and the idealization of women as wives, mothers, heroines, virgins, the goddess, the warrior, etc. The paintings also display the wealth of leaders: Queens wearing their riches.

Painters have continued to play on this idea, i.e. what do we consider rich in terms of the material we possess. How do we represent leaders in photos or paintings with portraiture.

I remember working on an annual report with a friend as a young graphic designer in a design firm. The lighting in the photos of the CEO, other officers, in the end pages gave the men (no women) a glowing aura. They appeared as gods. I remember questioning it, not surprisingly, not getting anywhere with it. I was young, inexperienced, what did I know, right? Things have changed or are changing, haven’t they?

I asked questions, and didn’t, and would or would not get called on it, sometimes. I left the field of graphic design, and chose education and publication design instead, and left that too eventually.

Women Who Ruled, has essays by Annette Dixon, Merry Wiesner Hanks, Mieke Bal, and Bettina Baumgartel, that cover areas on the topic of women in Rennaissance and Baroque Art, paintings and printmaking, coins, and drawings.

I haven’t seen Collins’ works other than on the internet, and this is part of the loss over the internet viewing; the paintings are encaustic, beeswax and paint, and has a waxy 3 dimensional and visceral element. You get a sense of it on the Art Sync video interview clips to the paintings.

Collins doesn’t use the word encaustic, and in the interview I think it comes across that it is for her just another medium that carries the color pigments, and is a efficient preservative for 1,000s of years. Metaphors to history are made by the artist in her use of wax and her painting and using textiles like burlap or jute threads. She layers, scrapes off, pulls off, replaces wax and paint layers in her recent work.

Breaking Black, 2011, wax, pigment and rope on canvas and board, 72 x 96 in

Click image to go to Art Sync video interview.

The artist’s Web Site.

Dates: March 9 to April 29, 2012.

You can see the first notice here.

What to make of the art work of this young woman painter and performance artist. This was the best video I found to really get a sense of her working hands-on. She applies the paint with her hands onto the surface, and is self taught. She won a top award in Tokyo at an art fair which launched her career. She also has a daily blog. I will be watching what art critics and art historians write about her art work. You can read more about her and see more paintings and mural projects at her web site. An Art Star in the making.

The large murals where she collaborates with children are wonderful community development projects. I like that her practice fits so well into art fairs the way it does, she paints/performs at the art fair, and community projects, and lets see if it fits as well in the oh so adult art world. (It already has.)

References to Basquiat, De Saint Phalle, Twombly, Hockney, Pollock, Francis, Warhol, Morgan…

Aganetha Dyck, Closest to Her, 2007, Courtesy Michael Gibson Gallery

Bees Wax

I was thinking about encaustic paintings today. Russell Thurston’s paintings (below) caught my curiosity as they appeared in the documentary, Mining the Unconscious by Marcelina Martin Painting with pigment and bees wax can point back to medieval iconic (religious) imagery on boards planked together before canvas or fabrics and conveys links to nature and the environment, and as a great preservative that harkens back to 800 B.C. Thurston uses it in personal/universal spiritual images and meaning. When I was introduced to the medium in a workshop, the smell of bees wax that lingered intriqued me for days later, weeks. When the painting lost its smell, so did the process of encaustic painting appeal to me. I cannot forget, however, the medium leads to the phenomenology of bees.

Aganetha Dyck, Sports Night in Canada: Helmet 2000, helmet, honeycomb, Kelowna Art Gallery.

Interview with Aganetha Dyck @ Candian Art.

Jasper Johns' most emblematic, Flag, 1954-55, Encaustic, oil, collage on fabric on plywood. 42 x 61 in. Museum of Modern Art, (USA)

To see more of Russell Thurston paintings.

All Things Encaustic, Toronto.

Helen Frankenthaler in 1956. Photograph: Gordon Parks/Getty Images (as in The Guardian, UK)

Another passing of the painter and the review of her life and work over the last week. The photo above and another one from the same sitting at The Telegraph caught my attention. Not because of the color coordination, matching colors of clothes and painting, but the enclosement and surround of paintings. Frankenthaler saw the paintings each as their own, independents, and that is how I’ve seen them in museums. For the first time, I really SEE the paintings, or at least, fragments of them but together to see them working together, areas of color and lines of color, overlapping and spills. This is not the way the artist worked on them, thus saw them. The video below was made for an Award, however, Frankenthaler talks abit about painting in it.

Click on the book above to find out more about it at IB Tauris. It is an interesting read, worth a read.

Click on the image above to go to a review in The Atlantic, and Brain Pickings (web site), by author Maria Popova.

Simply the King; (click on image to go to Siglio Press), from Tantra Song by Franck André Jamme, Siglio Press, 2011.

Getting a lot of web attention are the images from the book Tantra Song by Franck Andre Jamme, and Siglio Press. Jamme’s journey to find the paintings he saw in Paris, 1970s, are part of the attention getting too. You can read about it at the Siglio Press site. The paintings isolate and are meant for meditation. They are so different from the highly decorative and colorful drawings, paintings, and architectural sculptures of India and Tibet and similarity to modern minimalist paintings. Many people are taking a look out for the book.

Paul Alexis Reading to Emile Zola, c. 1869-1881

Still life with teapot, c.1869

This review (comments) appeared in the Guardian, UK, Monday 12 December 2011.

Cézanne: paint it black: After decades of writing about art, John Berger thought he knew Cézanne. But a Paris retrospective proved a revelation.

The Musee de Luxembourg’s Cezanne and Paris exhibit web site for a glimpse of what Berger saw. I have been reading and re-reading his review, which is lovely to read, and let linger or hover about.

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The work/paintings/sculptures/installations of Jessica Stockholder heightens the awareness of the body, your body, in space, I think. You walk through a painting in the way she puts elements together, and I think that is why she paints. I came across her home web site, stumbled more like, and was blown away with the info available there, that is provided. I’m including it as a post because of that, have a look and enjoy!