Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Hello lovely young ladies!

 

Today it is gray and blah in NJ and there are feet of snow on the ground, so it occurred to me that we probably aren’t going to get any crocuses this year.   I think they normally come up in February, and by the time all that snow finally melts, it’ll probably be too late for them.  I love crocuses – the first sign of the earth waking back up after winter.

 

 

So I wanted to find some happy, lovely crocus paintings to share with you this week…except it didn’t work out quite like that.  As I was searching, I came across Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s flowers and loved them too much to move on to something else.

 

Now that’s a name, isn’t it?  Friedensreich Hundertwasser.   His whole name is “Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser”.  I’m going to guess his friends called him “Freddy”. 

 

Friedensreich was from Austria, and painted in the 20th century.   He was a young man when terrible things were happening in Europe – he was born to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, and had to pretend to be Catholic to avoid problems.  It must have been very, very scary for him.

 

He is also another artist who chose his name – although it’s a little hard to imagine choosing “Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser”!   It translates directly into English as "Peace-Realm Rainy Day Darkly Multi-coloured Hundred-Water".   And I have NO IDEA what that means, but it’s AWESOME.  It makes me smile just to think of it.

 

He was known for his work in architecture, as well as his painting.  Here are two of the buildings he designed – so fun, and cheerful and lovely, with those multi-colored columns!  I would like to live in the second one – it’s like a fairy tale castle with all that lovely ivy and the tower in the front!

 

But his paintings are what I like best.  This is a man who was not afraid to obsess!  His work has thousands of teeny tiny lines and swirls, and they’re very child-like in nature – very little emphasis on depth or shading, but so vibrant – I can’t stop looking into them, to see what other details I might find!  I love how he made the flowers in the second one – circle after circle after circle, and the way he chose to layer the colors makes them so pretty!  It makes me want to try and paint like this.

 

In any case, I hope you enjoy the work of "Peace-Realm Rainy Day Darkly Multi-coloured Hundred-Water", and have an amazing day today!

Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxo

 

Tamara De Lempicka

Hello fairest of them all!

 

How are you this week?  J  Life in New Jersey is good today.  It is still cold and snowy, but that’s no reason to be cranky, right?  Spring is just 29 days away, and I can work with that. 

 

This week I’ve picked a super fabulous artist to introduce you to (I mean, they’re all super fabulous, aren’t they?  But this lady is extra awesome).  Tamara De Lempicka was known as the “baroness with a brush” and was probably the first female artist to really be a glamour icon as well.  She lived in the 1900s and was painting as early as the 1920s. Her birth name was Maria Gorska, but she changed it to Tamara, which I just love…not the name so much as the fact that she changed it, which is something I’ve always wanted to do!  She lived a scandalous life, but her paintings have lines that are so strong and so clean – you can see the impact of cubism in her paintings, and she was supposedly friends with Picasso, and you can see that influence as well.  She was also notoriously cranky in her later years, which I always find kind of oddly charming.  When I am old, I will be cranky, too.

 

The first image is a photograph of Tamara – I love how glamour-y she looks! – but I really included it so I could point out something interesting that I’ve been told I do as well…in most of her paintings, she gives the subjects her nose!  It’s something you’ll see a lot of artists do, if you watch closely.  I think it’s because noses are so darn complex – they’re all curvy angles and tight changes without real hard lines, like eyes have, so when the nose you know best is the one you look at in the mirror every day, you stick it on everyone!  This amuses me.

 

But look at the richness of the colors, how each painting has one really dominant color, and how she uses those very hard lines and abrupt color changes to create soft curves and so much depth – I love the ladies hair, how the curls have light in the front and dark in the depths and waves; it’s so simple and clean, and so complex at the same time!  Also, look at the crazy angle of the hand of the lady in the green dress – the bottom one.  That is almost impossible to do and not have it look ridiculous.  All of these paintings are terrific examples of the art deco style, and I just love them.  I hope you do, too! 

 

In any case, have a beautiful day, and know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxoxo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alejandro Obregón

Happy Thursday, my lovely ladies!

 

So today, let me tell you my favorite thing about art…knowing that I’ve probably told you ten other favorite things about art…but today, THIS is my favorite thing about art; sometimes, through something completely random, you’ll learn about an artist you’ve never heard of before, and their work will be so beautiful it makes your knees get weak.  And that person, whoever they are, might be just “meh” to somebody else, because we all see things in the context of our own lives and experiences, and we all love different things best…and we’re all right.  That is so utterly amazing to me.

 

So…yesterday at work, your Auntie was talking about culture with some friends, one of whom is from Colombia.  So since I was going to be writing to you today, I thought I’d see if I could find a Colombian artist that I like – and it turns out I like lots of Colombian artists whose names I know well, but since I rarely know off the top of my head where an artist is actually from, I hadn’t made that connection.  But as I was looking up names, I read that the man who is considered to be the father of modern Colombian painting is Daniel Alberto Alejandro María de la Santísima Trinidad Obregón Roses, (but he’s known as just Alejandro Obregón)…I’ve always loved Catholic peoples’ names, because they get to have so many, and each piece has meaning and symbolism, so his name made me happy and I decided to look up his work…and it’s AWESOME.  It’s amazing and beautiful and for me, this is the kind of work that connects to my soul.  I would like to stand in front of one of his paintings someday, so that I can see the brush strokes on the canvas. 

 

A little bit about Alejandro…he painted mostly in the mid-1900s, and lived all over the world.  He was married 3 times, and – my favorite thing - he painted a LOT of condors; there were condors in over 50 of his paintings.  The condor is in the Colombian coat of arms, and also represents liberty and vitality…and since so many of my paintings include birds, I can relate to finding a connection to a winged thing and choosing to paint it often!

 

A lot of his work is a little dark – there was significant political turmoil when he was painting – so I won’t put images of those here, but I am including a few of my new favorites that are also beautiful – the first is a condor (look at how he painted the feathers by layering in all those geometric shapes and colors – I can’t get over that; I love it!), and the second and third are more abstract.  I love the third one so much – I was part of an art project about “the following sea” a while back –that’s an expression for when you’re in a boat and the waves are going the same direction you are – and that piece looks to me like a man in a boat; his head is down and he’s tired because he’s been rowing a long time and is still far from shore, but the following sea is coming up behind him to help bring him home.  I’m sure that’s not what Alejandro was painting, that’s just what it says to me.  The last one is the one I NEED to see live someday – it’s so beautiful it makes my heart ache with the love of having seen it.

 

In any case, that’s all for this week, and I hope that you find artists whose work you love, and who inspire you to be bold and beautiful and brave today!

Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxoxo

 

 

D Westry

Hello ladies!

 

Since I was complaining about never having time in my last note, today I’m going to introduce you to D Westry from Georgia.  Actually, first I wanted to write you about elephants that paint, but then I started reading up on it and it turns out that most of the time when someone has convinced an elephant to paint it is NOT a happy thing for the elephant, so I decided to stop thinking about that before I got too sad about it.  Art should be joyous and done because it’s fun and wonderful, and I am wishing horrible things on the kind of people that would be mean to an elephant to get it to paint.  I do not like that there are mean people in the world.    

 

But, because I can’t fix the world right now, I moved on to D Westry, who I saw do his thing on TV once or twice and have always been incredibly impressed with.  Some of his pieces are below, but I’m also attaching a link to a video clip, so you can see that this guy is FAST….and he also paints UPSIDEDOWN sometimes (like the one in this video), which is just ridiculous.  Even if I don’t worry about being fast, I can barely paint a portrait that looks like the person it’s supposed to look like…this guy creates paintings that look like the people they’re supposed to be, in just a few minutes, and upsidedown!  It’s a fascinating talent.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8AkjWQ3P-M

 

D. Westry was one of the first people to get famous for this particular skill – he paints a lot of celebrity portraits, and almost always does it live in front of audiences (so that they can be impressed with his amazing speed) – lot of pressure in that, though – you can’t hide it if you mess up!  His paintings are pretty big, too…although in this case, I think bigger makes it easier, because you can be a little bit off on something big and it’ll still be ok, whereas if he was painting tiny portraits he’d have to be very precise.

 

So that’s this weeks’ artist.  I hope you’re having a wonderful day,

Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

Xoxoxoxo