February20 newsletter

TimmonsArt 
newsletter  February 2020
website: timmonsart.com
    email: timmonsart@outlook.com

A word from the artist:
For those of you on my email list and those who don’t engage in social media, I’m starting a quarterly newsletter so my almost daily missives are not clogging your inboxes, and I can (snail) mail a hard copy to anyone who prefers it. Works in progress, upcoming shows and other news, an art history section (I lean towards painters), interesting tidbits from the worlds of architecture and interior design (who knew I attended interior design school for all of six weeks? raise your hands!), and random thoughts about the art world are some of the things I’ll be including. So prop your feet up with your beverage of choice, and in the immortal words of Gypsy Rose Lee, “Let me entertain you.”

News and Views
Last year, I became involved with Art Design Consultants, a gallery and art consulting firm in Cincinnati. I had a full page in ADC’s Blink Art Resource, an impressive catalogue that is distributed to galleries and to commercial, hospitality, and residential buyers nationwide. ADC also offers opportunities through the year for artists to exhibit in its two Cincinnati galleries. During the last quarter of 2019, ADC sold this painting for me:

‘Broken’ acrylic on canvas, 36x36”

For this year’s Blink catalogue, I submitted six images from my ‘Variations’ series, and the art director put together this page:


The “placement” of the work in an environment that everyone can relate to is very effective. The publication will be available the first week of June, and there will be a special exhibit to introduce it.

New Work
In the past few months, I’ve painted several portraits of the moon, and I have been playing around with them in Photoshop, merging them with drawings of women by Leonardo da Vinci. They’re my ‘Moon Goddesses’. I’ve had them made into note cards, and they turned out beautifully. If you want some, let me know, and I’ll order them for you. I’m considering making some prints too.




I finished this portrait last month:
 ‘Red Turban’ oil on canvas, 24x24”

I thought I was giving myself a break with this image, since I didn’t have to paint ears or hands. Then I got ready to tackle the turban and remembered how difficult fabric folds can be. About five hours later, after proclaiming my progress “a big hot mess” at numerous points, I had something that satisfied me. Then I photographed the canvas – details I hadn’t noticed tend to pop out in a photograph. I’m very pleased with this piece, and there are probably more women-in-turban paintings on my horizon.

In Design: the Pantone Color of the Year for 2020 is Classic Blue. Expect to see it on everything from walls to luggage. Find out more at: pantone.com/color-intelligence/color-of-the-year/color-of-the-year-2020.

Art History Moment
I’m going to start things off with my favorite painting by my favorite artist – Henri Matisse’s ‘The Piano Lesson’ oil on canvas, 245.1 x 212.7 cm (1916). Here it is hanging in the Museum of Modern Art:

In 2004, Graham and I went to Paris to see a Matisse/Picasso exhibit that was going to make only one stop in the US, in New York. So let’s go to Paris! I did not fully research which paintings and sculptures were going to be there because I like to be surprised. Anyway, I turned a corner in the Grand Palais, and there it was. I’m not ashamed to say I burst into tears, but in all fairness, I do that a lot in the presence of works I love.
The boy at the piano is Matisse’s son, Pierre, who grew up to be an important art dealer in New York in the 1940s. This work is sometimes described as Matisse’s answer to Cubism, as it appears to utilize the Cubist grid developed by Picasso and Georges Braque. The painting also incorporates some images from previous Matisse works, like the statue in the lower left corner and the seated figure on the right, which may be the teacher, but is most likely, since the painting depicts Matisse’s home, his canvas ‘Woman on a High Stool’ (1914). One of my favorite elements in the painting is the iron railing outside the room. You can read a great analysis of the work here: smarthistory.org/matisse-piano-lesson.





Comments

Popular Posts