Tuesday, March 28, 2017

10 Lessons I’ve Learned from Henri Matisse - Color!





Use color with feeling!

Henri Matisse’s name is synonymous with colorist art. His strange use of color, his mounting of colors to their full power, and his use of surprising combinations of colors unlike anyone else before, set him apart. The key to his color use was his disinterest in referencing objects by their identifiable, or common, colors. Figures could be fleshy colored, or bright blue and yellow-green instead. What mattered was how the colors interacted one to the other, not what signaled to you that here was a human being. 

The Modernist era turned art inward; art was to now have a language of self interest, which means that lines, shapes and colors matter at least as much as the objects in a painting. For Matisse they mattered more! 

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty. Henri Matisse.



The Renaissance imperative of describing depth of space by graying colors as they recede became unimportant-that was too yesterday! Matisse and his rebel gang of artists were describing the new era without limits, and with the explosive forces of ultramarine, cadmium yellow and vermilion.





Odalisque With A Turkish Chair, 1928
Henri Matisse
o/c
Dimensions: 73 x 60 cm
Location: Georges Pompidou Center, Paris, France



Read this post at Medium.

Friday, November 28, 2014

A Thank You for 2014




Teaching an impromptu lesson at a student's easel, in Goshen, New Jersey (on Cape May). This barn is the studio of Stan Sperlak at his Crow Creek Farm art school.


2014.

Thanks to all of my hosts, venue organizers, and especially all of the artists I met this year at workshops and demo events in Everett, WA, New Braunfels, TX, Ann Arbor, MI, Ponte Verde Beach, FL, Spokane, WA, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, Kemijärvi, Finland, Florham Park, NJ and Goshen/Cape May Courthouse, NJ.

In the next two years I look forward to scheduled and proposed workshops in France, Germany, Italy, Dakota Pastels in Washington; also the DC area in Virginia, New York City, Boston, Denver, southern California, South Carolina, Maine and I may be forgetting some.




Friday, October 3, 2014

iMovie Colors













This is my first effort with iMovie. I had lots of fun! The artworks are late 2014 works; the "paint on them is still wet."

Monday, September 29, 2014

Recognition

Pastel Gems: A Monthly Round-Up, by Gail Sibley.

Thanks, Gail, for curating my work, The French Modernists, into your blog post.  There are some lovely works to see in the post!


The French Modernists. 2014. Pastel, Oil & Graphite. 11" x 9." Casey Klahn. Note: soft pastels, oil bar (which is oil paint - not oil pastel) and pencil, on archival rag paper. I think I put some gesso on there with my fingers, too.


Friday, September 19, 2014

Hatless Russian Busker


The Russian Photo Busker Who Wore No Hat. 2014. @11" x 9." Graphite, tinted with Compressed White Charcoal, Conté, and Pastel, on Blue Saint Armand Old Master Drawing Paper. Casey Klahn.