Dan Miller was born in Castro Valley, California in 1961. He is an American artist. He is currently a resident at Creative Growth Art Center which is a studio space and gallery for artists with disabilities like Miller, who has Autism.
Dan MILLER untitled (ink w/circle), 2010, ink on paper, 22.01 x 30 inches
As a child Miller attended special education classes and summer camps. It was extremely important to his Mother that he got an education. Miller spent many nights working with is Mother and grandmother, whom are both schoolteachers, on learning to read and write. The time spent teaching Miller has stayed with him threw is life and often shows itself in his paintings. Meticulously writing the same words over and over again until he fills the paper up. The words are layered on so heavily that the often get lost in a mass of letters and thoughts. From a distance you may think it that the paintings are just lines upon lines scribbled on but as you get closer you begin to see the words and the time Miller spent laboring over his work.
Common words that show up in his work include Electrician, Light bulb and socket; Linking his work to his past once again. When he was a young, Miller would take apart Radio Clocks and overhead fans tinkering with tools and how things work. He was obsessed with tools and often looked through and studied is father’s catalogs Grainger’s hardware.
Miller has some lack of traditional communications alongside his Autism. But his art is a way he seems to communicate how he interacts with the world. These pieces of his memories of reading with his mom and taking apart clocks are very prominent in the paintings he creates. It is a window into his past and mind. As in the picture below of Light Bulbs.
Dan Miller Untitled, 2012 ,Ink and acrylic on paper,42.5 × 53.5 inches Dan Miller Untitled,2012, Ink and acrylic on paper , 42.5 × 53.5 inches
With the help of Creative Growth Art Center Dan has honed his skills and gone from using scrap paper and books to twelve foot talk canvases. Dan has been featured in solo exhibitions in galleries such as Galerie Christian Berst, Ricco Maresca, New York and White Columns, New York. He has also done goup shows at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Paris, and ABCD. Dan was featured at Frieze New York, The Armory Show, and NADA Miami. Dan has a feature in curator Christine Macel’s exhibition: Viva Arte Viva, in 2017. He’s the first artist with Autism to have his work acquired by the permanent collection of MoMA.
Dan MILLER untitled, 2010, watercolor, marker, coloured pencil on paper, 11.81 x 17.72 inches
Miller’s art makes me feel like I am seeing into a different universe. One that is similar to ours but chaotic and repeating. Where reality is bent and sense does not make sense. I feel his work truly conveys how he sees the world and what about it stands out to him. In Miller’s work the repetition is soothing and relating to me; it adds a uniformity and stability to life. And sometimes I need that reassurance that life does have a pattern and direction.
The fact the Miller has taken not a single drawing or art course and yet produces such visually stimulating work and having so much of his work featured in museums and exhibitions is truly inspiring and admirable.
Dan Miller Untitled, 2017, Embroidery and paint on fabric, 49 × 65 inches Dan Miller Untitled, 2012, Ink and acrylic on paper, 42.5 × 53.5 inches Dan Miller Untitled, 2016, Acrylic and ink on paper, 20.00 x 26.50 in
Vija Celmins is a multimedia artist who uses charcoal, paint,
several printing processes, and graphite. She is more known for her paintings
which is what quickly caught people’s attention and gave her rise to fame. She has
mastered the art of painting as she pays remarkable attention to detail, so
much so that she will spend months to over a year on one small painting. Patience
with her work is so unique that she will redo paintings several times until they
are to her liking. She paints over the existing painting or sands over the top
of it creating layers even if the layers do not show through, she believes it
adds a sense of depth and memory to the painting. While she tends to paint an
image from a photograph she will tweak the image to her liking on canvas. She
is sensationally attracted to void like images and will not paint an object,
that is on a photograph, that could obstruct the feeling of that void. Her recent
works have had low colorization as if only painting in values of black and
white. Even though her work seems to have a deep meaning and a sense of
connection to her they do not. This can not be said to viewers of her work who
frequently become emotionally connected to a piece for displaying their feelings
on a wall as if looking into a mirror of their deepest emotions. She is also
known for recreating her works over and over again using different mediums. She
creates a different view with every creation because some mediums bring more
detail to the picture while others lessen the detail. Recreating a work with
lithograph or other print process transforms the original piece into a
completely different image.
Lamp
This first image is one of her earlier works from nineteen sixty-four were she would just paint objects in the room of her work place. This particular piece was created with oil paint on canvas.
This painting, along with the rest of its’ series, is one of the few paintings that she used bright colors compared to most of her other works. The detail she is able to portray using acrylic and bronze paint is out of this world, it is no wonder why she is known for mastering painting. She has a collection of rocks that appear similar to these with the detailed speckles. The painting below of the night sky pairs a hefty resemblance to the appearance of the rocks if they were zoomed in with a camera.
Night Sky
In her series of Night Sky paintings she will take about one year to finish one painting, and there are several layers painted over top of one another.
Here is just one of the beautiful examples of how she will create another painting using the same image
Night Sky 1 Reversed
This is one of her lithography works that most likely will have a sister creation. All of her work have similarities to one another even if they are in a different series.
Some of her spider webs in its’ series she uses charcoal and eraser, but this one was created with oil on linen.
Tala Madani is an Iranian artist who uses a variety of mediums and art styles ranging from sketches and paintings to stop motion animations. Madani’s works are often satirical pieces that show how various aspects of society are in contrast with each other. Her pieces also explore various ideas about society, such as the way certain cultures are perceived, as well as artistic ideas and practices, like how light is portrayed and the importance of her caricatures and symbols.
Oven III, Oil on linen, 38 x 30 x 1 1/4 in, 2018.
Madani makes much of her works so that they entertain her and her audience while speaking on key themes that she finds important. One idea that Madani includes in many of her pieces is male interaction with society and with others. Madani’s pieces often have male figures interacting with other male figures or children, and she uses them to satarize the things that men do, analyzing both ideas that men have and social interactions that men are involved in. Although she uses them while depicting some of the more childish or absurd interactions in society, or in depicting other issues in a more surreal form, she has said that the caricatures of men she uses in her painting are not meant to belittle men, but to interact with them through her art.
Untitled, oil on linen, 18 x 24 x 1 1/4 in, 2015.Smiley Clean, Oil on linen, 16 1/8 x 14 1/4 x 3/4 in, 2015.
Much of Tala Madani’s inspiration comes from her upbringing. Madani was born in Iran and moved to the U.S when she was 15 years old. Madani then lived in Oregon for a while and experienced how people in rural areas of the U.S. perceived people from Iran. The experience opened her eyes to different perspectives, and the blending of the different cultures helped inspire many of Madani’s works.
Grand Entrance, Oil on linen, 15 x 12 in, 2012
The process that Madani goes through when making a new piece or series involves her making various sketches while pondering various ideas. Madani uses different kinds of “sketching” while she is making a new artistic work. Madani makes sketches of the ideas of her pieces and of the pieces themselves and sets them up in a way that is sometimes like a storyboard and other times like a collection of ideas that may or may not be used in the creation of another series. In addition to a regular sketchbook, Madani paints “sketches” that she also uses to quickly record ideas, and will pull them from a rack of painted sketches is she decides to continue expanding on whatever idea those paintings hold.
In a recent series, Madani explored ideas surrounding the iconic yellow smiley face. In her exploration of the face, she noticed that the face had a sort of force surrounding it. Madani saw that the face represented big ideas like peace, but that it also represented a certain conformity because of its simplicity, recognizability, and ubiquity. She used those ideas as a platform to make a series that dealt with ideas of conformity and cultism.
Window Pane, Oil on linen, 16 1/8 x 12 1/8 x 1 5/8 in 2015.Love Doctor, Oil on linen, 16 x 14 1/4 x 3/4 in, 2015.Goldon Pour, Oil on linen, 16 1/4 x 14 x 7/8 in, 2015
Jamian Juliano-Villani is a thirty-one year old painter from Newark, New Jersey. Now living in New York, she draws inspiration from a wide variety of subjects ranging from things like art history to fashion. Her parents were both commercial painters, so growing up, Jamian spent quite a lot of time in their silk-screening factory and learning about graphic design. She later graduated from Rutgers University in 2013. Jamian had her very first solo art show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2015.
She typically works with acrylic paint and uses airbrush techniques to create her eye-catching, colorful masterpieces. Approaching her work with a sense of humor and light heartedness, Jamian compares her art to jokes. She claims that the paintings are tricky and need to be made weirder or dumber or smarter. “You just paint a snowman in the desert… Thats it? Really? Like, there’s no other step, you know? It’s like some stupid one-liner.” As a notorious chain smoker and drinker, she says her body is just a vessel. She believes she should do and experience things now while she has the energy. This just adds to her unique character.
The Prophecy, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 48 × 40
In her teenage years, young Jamian Juliano-Villani remembers watching a documentary called Painters Painting (1973), which featured artist such as Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella. She was so inspired that she decided to movie to New York City. She now has a studio in Ridgewood, queens. Her montra for advancing in her art? “You’re only as good as your last painting.”
Roommate Trouble, 2013 acrylic on canvas 36 x 40.5 inches
After her very first solo exhibition, Me, Myself and Jah, in 2013 at Rawson Projects, she did an interview with Johnathan Griffin. Featured on ARTnews is a quote of hers about her own work. She says, “My paintings are meant to function like TV, in a way. The viewer is supposed to become passive. Instead of alluding or whispering, like a lot of art does, this is art that tells you what’s up. It kind of does the work for you, like TV does.”[
The Breakfast From Hell 2014 acrylic on canvas 20.00 x 16.00 in
She has recently had an art show in early 2018 called Ten Pound Hand that earned grand reviews such as this one from critic Zoë Lescaze, “In Gone with the Wind (all works 2018), a cartoon fish gluts itself on Coca-Cola while a helpless-looking firefighter floats above burning California. October depicts an ash-choked Pompeian infant blowing across an empty school hallway. The linoleum floor is littered with shattered glass, in an eerie evocation of recent school shootings. Together, these works convey a loss of control, of entropy overriding security, idealism, and best-case scenarios.”
Shut Up, The Painting, 2018 acrylic on canvas 40 x 48 inches
My personal favorite quote of hers is about deadlines in art. She states that “Stress assassinates creativity.”
Self Portrait in Greece, 2017 acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches
Louise paints landscapes that inspire her to forever capture a moment in time. Her aim is to reflect the way the elements of nature combine to create a particular mood or energy. The light, season, weather, scenery are always changing: so her ambition is to paint my impression of that moment in a beautiful piece of art. She loves to work with oils as they are fluid but also rich in movement, texture and color. She paints en plein air or in her studio from photographs she has taken of the places she has visited. She travels extensively throughout the world and she frequently finds impactful subjects to paint.
Louise has always been interested in art but initially decided to pursue a different path that enabled her to travel and experience the world. After finishing a Bachelor of Commerce at Curtin University and qualifying as a CPA, she worked in the UK and US for 15 years. She decided to paint full time 4 years ago, following a highly successful exhibition in New York in 2013. Louise is mainly self taught but has studied with artists such as Rebecca Schweiger at The Art Studio of New York, award winning US Plein Air artist Joe Paquet and renowned Australian Landscape Artist John Wilson.
Returning to Australia has opened up a world of new landscapes, and the extremes of WA are a huge inspiration.
Surrounded, View From Hayman Island
Kathrine Gorge At DawnCastle Rock After the RainCherry Blossoms II
View to El Questro GorgeOn the Rocks, EsperanceMorning View, Conto SpringsConto Beach Dunes I
Opera House At Night
Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse II
My reason for choosing this artist is fairly simple. With all of the crazy artists listed, a fair bit of them being abstract, Louise really stood out to me and caught my eye. Her first painting I listed really made me like her art more than any of them. I feel her style is a simple enough to be spectacular in its own right, and if I had the money I would buy some for myself. But unfortunately, I’m a college student with no money.
(Her personal site/gallery http://www.lclarkeartist.com/gallery.html)
Katharina Grosse was born in Germany in the year 1961. She has been an artist for many years, studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, a fine arts academy in Germany. (Art21) She now teaches at this institute. Katharina paints using a spray gun with acrylic paint. It allows her to cover large areas with paint in unique designs, unlike any other artist. She references the spray gun as an extension of herself. She believes it gives her a larger reach, enlarges her body, and helps her paintings be completed faster. She uses many distinctive techniques, often using warehouses to hold her works of art. She can cover the walls and floor of buildings, in and outdoors, with paint. Using a spray gun this way allows her to transition between different surfaces fast and seamlessly. She chooses to paint with an entirely different style. Katharina proposes different ways to look at space of a room with her artwork. It is her goal, and a challenge to make painting visible and a regular part of our life. (Artist Interview with South London Gallery) When she paints, she says everything around her slows down. By using one tool, and only several colors of paint, she has minimal options. This allows her to slow the mental strain of making art, and flow within her gift of creativity. She said, “the architecture space is materialized, and painting is psychological” in an interview. She uses architectural surfaces like windows as components of her art. She uses windows to create techniques so that her paint stops at the edges of windows or other architecture causing her audience to wonder how the painting got there. (Artist Interview with Moca Cleveland) She uses a psychedelic and dynamic way of painting to create illusions. Each piece of art is abstract so that the audience is immersed in the art. Rooms are coated in layers of rainbow paint which gives the viewers a distinctive viewpoint of each section. The art is all about perspective, so the same work can be viewed from different places and have different sizes and interpretations. In her work, “One Floor Up More Highly,” she has spray painted sand and rocks within a building. She is experimenting with texture and materials to create unique images and sculptures. In another exhibit, she has a work titled, “Two Young Women Come and Pull Out a Table.” This piece contains spray painted spheres hanging all over the room. In “Things They Had Taken Along To Eat Together,” there are a spray-painted couch and large rock sculptures in different colors. The title sparks the idea that the couch could represent a love interest that she no longer has. It causes the question ‘why’ to be asked. Why would someone spray paint a couch? She leaves these questions to those enjoying her exhibit. I think a part of her doesn’t know why, but it works. Other pieces have the same oddity to them, and many are untitled. Others have very odd names, shapes, and locations.“Shadow” looks like large disks that have been cut and spray painted. Like all artists, she hopes to convey emotion, yet she does so in a unique way that is all her own. (Application for Curatorship; Katharina Grosse) Explosions of color litter surfaces. By spraying her acrylic paint in sometimes abandoned locations, it resembles vandalism. She is using the urban setting and idea of graffiti in a modern way.
Georgia O’Keeffe was part of the post World War I American Modernist Movement, which attempted to prove American exceptionalism. The movement was part of the growing emphasis on nationalism in this country. O’Keeffe was a leading female painter who was first well-known for her representational depictions of “flowers, leaves, shells, bones, and other architectural and natural subjects” but was also a huge influence upon abstraction as an American aesthetic (Lynes 1-2). O’Keefe was strongly influenced by the “curvilinear and organic vocabulary” of the Art Nouveau movement, by anti-traditional, individually expressive and sensual Japanese designs, and by photography’s use of space, perspective, and line (2-3).
abstraction White Rose (1927)
Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was born in November of 1887 to dairy farmers in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her parents considered art to be an important part of her education from elementary to high school. In her early life, she was tutored in art at home and by a local watercolorist. Throughout high school in Madison and then in Chatham, Virginia, her teachers encouraged her art. After high school, she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then became part of the Art Students League in New York, where she first met Alfred Stieglitz who later became her husband. The Art League granted her a Still-Life Scholarship in 1907 to attend the Outdoor School at Lake George, New York. She spent two years in Chicago from 1908 to 1910 as a commercial artist prior to teaching art in Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina.
Untitled-West Lawn of UVA (ca. 1912)
Abstraction (1946)
O’Keeffe began dabbling in abstracts with charcoal in 1915, and her husband-to-be included these as part of a group show in New York at his famous gallery 291 in late spring and summer of 1916; he arranged the first one-artist exhibition of her work in April of 1923, simply entitled Georgia O’Keeffe. Working with abstracts made O’Keeffe part of a small, elite American group of artists, and she considered abstraction to be her primary style. However, when critics misinterpreted her work as a representation of her sexuality, she turned to “recognizable subject matter” for which she is most known(www.okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions).
Banyan Tree (1934)
Flowers as the subject of her paintings became an obsession beginning in 1924 and continued for decades. O’Keeffe created paintings of all sizes, and she emphasized the center of a flower and its sexuality. The critics really had fun with this, and later O’Keeffe would boldly tell the critics, and I loosely translate, “Get your minds out of the gutter, because my mind is not in there.”
Petunia No. 2 was first exhibited in the famous “Seven Americans” show organized by Stieglitz in 1925 and was one of O’Keeffe’s first large-scale paintings. The painting illustrates her fascination with the principles of photography and her respect for mentor Arthur Wesley Dow’s focus on composition as all-important. The influence of Asian expressionism is also indicated (www. okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions). O’Keeffe’s mastery of color is highlighted by the “two-dimensionality (rather than focus on perspective)” in her flower studies (Stern 3).
(1924)
In December of 2011, O’Keeffe’s Canna Red and Orange (1926)was auctioned at Christie’s for $1.43 million. It was a a very colorful 20 X 16-inch oil on canvas.
This sale was totally eclipsed by Christie’s auction in 2001 of Calla Lilies with Red Anemone (1928) for an amazing $6.17 million. In an article in 1989, art expert Nicholas Callaway wrote that some found O’Keeffe’s flowers to be “sensual” and others found them to be “chaste,” but the most amazing fact is that the paintings were done by a woman “at a time when the art world was almost exclusively male.” One fact is painfully but blissfully true: controversy brings notoriety (“Big Art” 2).
(1928)
Leaving his wife of 25 years, Stieglitz moved in with O’Keeffe in 1918 and married her in 1924. Stieglitz, a prominent photographer, began a study in portraiture of O’Keeffe which spanned nearly three decades (www.okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions). During this time, Stieglitz made more than 330 photographs of O’Keeffe, including her hands, face, feet, and torso. His aim was to show her humanity–the “strengths and vulnerabilities.” She was depicted both “clothed and nude, intimate and heroic, introspective and assertive.” He “almost singlehandedly defined her public persona for generations to come.” The pictures were radical with unique angles, lighting, close-ups, colors, and abstractions; and the world perceived O’Keeffe as radical, also (Celebrating three giants 2-3).
Georgia O’Keefe-hands (1918) photo by Stieglitz
Georgia O’Keefe- Hand and Wheel (1933)
O’Keeffe and Stieglitz spent the seasons in New York City and at Lake George, but she spent brief times each year working in New Mexico. In New York, she worked with oils to capture her impressions of flowers, leaves, and trees. Throughout her career, she loved depicting trees as “living and lifeless.” Her love of photography influenced her to study scale, perspective, and color. She painted buildings with “optical distortion” (www.okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions).
Above The Clouds (1962)
After her husband’s death in 1946, O’Keeffe settled down in New Mexico, living at her homes in Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch and also making trips into Navajo territory. The hills, cliffs, and mountains, the cedar and cottonwood trees, the dessert bones of her collection, the very simple architecture of the homes, and the various landscapes became the subjects of her work for the next 40 years. She was also inspired by traveling the world. During this time, she continued representational and abstract works using oil paints, watercolors, pastels, and charcoal. She continued to strive to build a “body of work whose aesthetic [was] modern in its precision, clean lines and elegant simplicity” (www.okeeffemuseum.org/art–exhibitions).
A Man From The Desert (1941)
Rams Head Blue Morning Glory (1938)
Without a doubt, Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the most prolific painters in history, having painted over 2,000 pieces. Hundreds of her works are exhibited in more than 100 public art galleries in Asia, Europe, and North and Central America. President Gerald Ford presented her with the Medal of Freedom Award in 1977, and President Ronald Reagan awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 1985. Even though she is shown all over the world, O’Keeffe’s passion was a personal one: “I have but one desire as a painter–that is to paint what I see, as I see it, in my own way, without regard for the desires or taste of the professional dealer or the professional collector” (www.okeeffemuseum.org/art&exhibitions).
Anything (1916)
Alligator Pears (1920)
Early in 1971, Georgia O’Keeffe lost her central vision and was left to struggle with limited peripheral vision. Surprisingly, she was able to work in watercolors and charcoal without any assistance until 1978 and with graphite until 1984. From 1972, she depended upon an assistant to help her paint with oils until 1977 when she had to give it up. Juan Hamilton, a potter-sculptor, was that assistant. Juan became her traveling companion, editor, and close friend until O’Keeffe’s death in 1986 at the age of 98 years old.
3 Zinnias (1921)
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“Big art in the big apple: two major New York auction houses put classic paintings front at
center at December sales.” Antiques Roadshow Insider Jan. 2011: 4+. General OneFile. Web.
3 Dec. 2014.
“Celebrating three giants of photography.” USA Today [Magazine] Jan. 2011:50+. General OneFile.
Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Lynes, Barbara Buhler. “Georgia O’Keeffe: abstraction.” Veranda Mar. 2010: 24+. General
OneFile. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Stern, Fred. “Legendary modern American artists.” World and I Nov. 2013. General OneFile.
Edgar Mueller is a street artist. His work is three dimensional. His tools of the trade are paint, chalk, and a sidewalk.
He was born in Mulheim an der Ruhr on July 10th 1968. He grew up in Straelen, a small city on the edge of Germany. The beauty of his home town inspired him to paint.
While in high school, he entered a street art competition. He was sixteen the first time he entered. When he was nineteen, he won the competition with a copy of “Jesus at Emmaus.” He still holds the title maestro madonnari (master street painter).
His paintings are incredibly technical and takes anywhere from three days to a week to create. He has to work fast due to weather conditions. If a drop gets on one of his paintings, it is ruined.
There is a science to his artwork. He paints a three-d picture on a flat surface. Below, is a picture of one of his paintings from the “wrong” angle. Above, is the viewing point of the picture. There is really only one viewing point to admire the painting the way it was meant to be seen.
This painting was done for the movie Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It was painted on the pavement at the Westfield Shopping Center in London. It broke the world record for the largest 3-D painting; it was 3,440 square feet. It took six days to complete. Edgar said, “I’m not a record hunter, but because I want to change public areas into a different look, to look different from daily life I have to go huge. If I want to change a street, then I have to cover the whole street, so that’s the reason my paintings are so big.”
His paintings are interactive and meant for pictures!
He can turn a simple sidewalk into a winter wonderland.
The shark painting was created for the Illusion of Art Festival in Hong Kong.
The video below gives us a glimpse into his process.
Edgar Mueller is truly a great artist. He takes an everyday object that everyone is too busy to notice and turns it into a remarkable piece of art. I am in love with his artwork, but as much as it makes me happy, it makes me sad too. The art is temporary. Something as simple as a rain shower could remove his masterpiece that took hours to create.
Impressionist Master of Color, Light, and Atmosphere
“The Lesson of the Swinging Pendulum”
By Kendra Martin
Claude Oscar Monet was the central figure of the Impressionism movement from the late 1860’s. Artists like Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, and Monet were part of the Society of Anonymous Painters, Sculptors, and Printers who shared a common impression of the “natural world” and a common intent to break from classical methods. Their very first exhibition in April 1874, and the debut of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1873) which depicts the foggy harbor of his boyhood home gave a name to the new art form and to the new school of artists (Claude. biography 1-2).
(Impression, Sunrise)
Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840 but moved to the port town of Le Havre when he was just five years old. His father was stern, but his mother was supportive. She shared her love of music, poetry, and art with Monet. His mother died when he was sixteen, and during this time he was introduced and mentored in plein air (outdoor) painting by landscape artist Eugene Boudin (Claude. The Art Story 2). Monet served for two years in the military and observed, “you cannot imagine…how much my ability to see improved” (Claude by himself 3). Afterwards, he went to study at a Parisian academy. It was here at school that he met Jongkind, another landscape artist (3-4), of whom Monet said, “I owe the definitive training of my eyes” (4).
(Poppy Field in Argenteuil)
At the premier Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, the artists responded to the contemporary Parisian culture. Paris was becoming the hub of industrialization (Claude, biography 2). French impressionists painted the town red! They used rich colors and new techniques to depict light and movement. Monet and his friends captured Parisian landscapes and painted cameos of middle-class citizens (Modern Art). Monet was a master of improvisation with “surprising interpretations of common scenes,” creating with vibrant and neutral colors with oil on canvas (2).
( Boulevard Capuchines)
Since childhood, Monet had loved the outdoors. One of his earliest paintings Women in the Garden was painted totally outside. It was nearly two and one-half meters. To manage this task, the artist dug a trench in the garden and installed pulleys to achieve height. A friend who visited Monet reflected that his friend would not paint a single leaf if the lighting were not perfect (Monet 1). Because of his perfectionism, it is said that Monet destroyed up to five hundred of his paintings by burning, cutting, or kicking them! (Claude, biography 1).
(Women in the Garden)
Although the painting had numerous women, and a man, in the composition, only Monet’s wife Camille Doncieux modeled for Monet.
(The Stroll)
The Paris Salon refused to accept the painting, because they favored romanticism. To get even, Monet forced the French government to purchase the painting in 1921 for the extravagant total of 200,000 francs (Claude, The Art 2). Camille’s death plummeted the artist into a depression that prompted him to produce a dismal series entitled Ice Drift after 1878 (Claude, biography 2).
After Camille’s death, for over two decades, Monet traveled a great deal to Norway, Venice, London, and around France. He is especially known for a series of paintings of London and the Thames River (Claude. The Art 2).
(The Houses of Parliament)
Monet is also very famous for a series of forty paintings of the Rouen Cathedral in France which emphasized the changes of natural light upon the building: morning light, midday, gray weather, etc. (Claude, biography 2).
(Rouen Cathedral)
Monet remarried and livedin Giverny until he died in 1926. Here, in his own garden that he created, he was continually inspired. Most of these art works exclude human forms and are considered to be in his late period (Claude. artchive 2). The painter was experimenting with smaller strokes that built up to broader color palettes (Claude. The Art 1).
(Garden at Giverny)
In an interview, Monet was asked about the colors that he used. “What’s so interesting about that?” he asked. Then he continued by giving his color palette: “White lead, cadmium yellow, vermillion, madder, cobalt blue, chrome green. That’s all.” (Cauderlier 1). It is certain that Monet nearly eradicated his use of black—even in shadows. The shadows appear purple as in Venice at Twilight. At Monet’s death, a friend forced the removal of a black shawl on the coffin and replaced it with a flowered one; impressionists rarely used pure black (1).
(Venice at Twilight)
Despite his success, Monet was plagued by depression and poverty for most of his life (Claude.The Art 2). A severe case of cataracts led to near blindness. Although he did have surgery on one eye, he lost his ability to see colors clearly. With cataracts, colors yellow and details fade (Cauderlier2). His final commission was a series of twelve water lily paintings for a Paris museum. He wanted the paintings to be a “haven of peaceful meditation” (Claude. biography 1).
(Water Lillies)
Monet’s last interview in 1905 was a reflection of his life work. He spoke of his tough beginnings, the rough waves that kept his career afloat. Then he considered his acceptance and fame, seeming to recognize life’s destiny, and concluded after all: “The pendulum was in motion” (Claude by himself 5).
William Cochran is an American artist, sculptor, and visionary. He creates works of art using paint, stone, steel, bronze and glass. He and his wife, Teresa often work together in the creative process of his designs. He also works with community leaders to accomplish projects that help to unite neighborhoods and bring new life to the area. One such project was the “Community Bridge” of Frederick, MD., where he used the creative power of people of all ages and walks of life to transform a concrete bridge into a work of art. What started out as a project to beautify and correct a flood prone area in the town of Frederick ended up touching the lives of people all around the world and drawing a once divided community together. The project seemed to take on a life of its own and is now brings people to a once abandon side of town.
Taking on social issues is a theme of Cochran’s work. To the right is a photo of “Pillar of Fire”, a 2000 pound glass sculpture that pays tribute to the AIDS healthcare workers in Washington DC, during the early 1980. In the early years of the AIDS-HIV pandemic, little was known about the disease. These dedicated healthcare workers gave compassionate care to those afflicted with the virus. The workers faced opposition and almost no funding as they worked tirelessly to help those who’s very life were at stake. Pillar of Fire is lit from inside and well as out to symbolize the pillar of fire at night and a pillar of smoke by day that led the Hebrew children through the desert to the promised land. It is a symbol of hope to those afflicted with the AIDS virus and a tribute to those who cared for them when others turned their backs.
One of William Cochran’s best known works is that of the Community Bridge in Frederick MD. He used the trompe l’oeil (French for fool the eye) technique to turn a plain concrete bridge into an old stone bridge complete with statues and ivy. Unless the observer looks closely they will never know they have been fooled. The city still gets complaints from the concerned public about trimming back the ivy that is overtaking the piece of art. Below is the video of the “building” of a community through art.
Cochran is one of a few artists living today to use the Renaissance technique of anamorphic projection, which creates an illusion of depth when viewed from certain angles. The perspective changes from the viewer’s vantage point; this technique was used in the painting of the archangel on the side of the bridge. When the viewer is on the bridge looking over, the angel appears to be leaning out of the bridge and watching over the community. His artwork has helped the city of Frederick win the Great American Main Street Award in 2005 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Below are photos of three of the best known paintings on the Community Bridge.
The Caiedral represents the Samaritan woman at the well and it speaks of how no one should be looked down upon because of the ethnicity. She was selected to become part of the bridge painting to make the statement that the bridge was for all people regardless of which “side of the bridge” they found themselves.
The Hidden Door, is another popular image on The Community Bridge. The viewer must go up to the painted gate and look “inside” through the ironwork to see the hidden door. This part of the bridge is another area that has hidden symbols. The city of Frederick often gets complaints by the public that something needs to be done about the ivy that is taking over the bridge, but it is doubtful the hand painted ivy will grow any larger.
The Archangel, is probably the best known work on the bridge. Cochran used the Renaissance technique of anamorphic projection. Standing at the base of the bridge, the angel looks mis-shaped. The observer has to stand on top of the bridge and look over to see the true image. When seen from the correct angle, the angel appears to be leaning out of the bridge and looking at the viewer.
Below are some of the awards and honors bestowed on William Cochran:
Award for Excellence, National Glass Association
Core Values Award, International Association of Public Participation.
International exhibit, architectural art glass, University of Mexico in 2007.
Public art consultant and design team artist for National Endowment for the ArtsMayor’s Institute of City Design grant for City of Rochester.
Project of the Year Award, American Public Works Association.
Identified in a recent art history textbook as significant figure in public art in North America.
Great American Main Street Award, National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2005 – Frederick, Maryland
There is really only one viewing point to admire the painting the way it was meant to be seen.
