2022: Chroma, The Vault, IX Art Park

This

How to find joy in Climate Action. Avoid burnout. Find your purpose.

This video.

Euskera

A storybook illustration

Going to a happy place. And then getting out there to fight. No stealing my joy. Joke’s on them.

Brandi Carlile

You're feeling nervous, aren't you, boy?

With your quiet voice and impeccable style

Don't ever let them steal your joy

And your gentle ways, to keep 'em from running wild

They can kick dirt in your face

Dress you down, and tell you that your place

Is in the middle, when they hate the way you shine

I see you tugging on your shirt

Trying to hide inside of it and hide how much it hurts

Let 'em laugh while they can

Let 'em spin, let 'em scatter in the wind

I have been to the movies, I've seen how it ends

And the joke's on them

You get discouraged, don't you, girl?

It's your brother's world for a while longer

We gotta dance with the devil on a river

To beat the stream

Call it living the dream, call it kicking the ladder

They come to kick dirt in your face

To call you weak and then displace you

After carrying your baby on your back across the desert

I saw your eyes behind your hair

And you're looking tired, but you don't look scared

Let 'em laugh while they can

Let 'em spin, let 'em scatter in the wind

I have been to the movies, I've seen how it ends

And the joke's on them

Let 'em laugh while they can

Let 'em spin, let 'em scatter in the wind

I have been to the movies, I've seen how it ends

And the joke's on them

UNDERGROUND MODERNIST: E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER

His later, mod, work

UNDERGROUND MODERNIST: E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER

At the Cooper Hewitt, saw an exhibit of the graphic designer’s work and wow can I relate. Clear to see how I vibe with the travel poster/fruit labels but also the dip in his creativity as the ad agency system got underway and his design choices were constrained by the usual: money; focus groups; executives.

Here are some goodies:

Spring green

Apologies to William Morris and his workshop, of course the original wallpaper this image is from was more subtle but out my window, after the spring rain, this glowing green is what is going on in Virginia right about now.

Virginia State Parks

They are excellent and some have historic log cabins. Many happy memories.

New poster, actually five years old

I never settled with this one, yet coming across it now it looks very good - as a small graphic. Have to work on the details before it gets printed full size.

New poster

Reston, VA

Albert Pinkham Ryder

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, completed by 1887

Flying Dutchman. Ryder inherited some kind of psychedelic mind from his fellow New Bedford born Herman Melville? He carried on after Eugene Delacroix died? The glowing ship forever doomed to sail turbulent seas. The dead communicating urgently with the living. The Flying Dutchman theme appears in many art forms, famously in Wagner’s opera of the same name.

Ryder’s paintings are always small, thick and cracking from careless technique and nuts. Gloriously so.

Cooper Hewitt exhibit of a commercial artist omg

Yay for the Cooper Hewitt, which is the Smithsonian’s museum of Design. It is exhibiting the work of Kauffer and I am here for it!

from the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt exhibit; The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the designer, 1939 Thanks for letting me show this, for educational purposes and for admiration purposes I do not intend to monetize it in any way Thank you

E'rybody watch this movie

So joyful and full of life. This is a great way to start the New Year! LOVED it

https://www.biggestlittlefarmmovie.com

Wayne Thiebaud

A painter’s painter. Brilliant colorist, the definition of a California artist. Thank you for your genius.

In his paintings there will often be a fascinating and surprising line of vivid color that I very much thought of when doing some recent landscape-oriented pieces (The Early Mountain vineyard, and the Dyke Marsh) in this perhaps the ultramarine shadows

Photo is from Smithsonian? I was googling around, and this is really a photo of me googling around . . .

An oldie but a goodie

LTBL 2021 animals of Virginia silhouettes

Pastels

Luscious colors, messy dust - did this sketch in the shed. Chilly!

When is an artwork finished? - see updates 12/18/21

It is a question that all artists I know of wrestle with from time to time. This is one that I keep tinkering with. I think it’s where I want it to be - it gives an idea of the diverse, eclectic and small scale feeling of this area that we have gotten to know and become fond of. I deliberately leave out the items that would really make it ‘real’ - people, cars, busses, signs - so it is a bit of a fantasy? Do we often tend to ‘ look through’ those of omnipresent parts of our everyday existence?