Monday, January 17, 2011

Venice Practical

Venice Practical
5" x 7"
Pastel
Casey Klahn
pas


I've never painted Venice before - at least that I can remember.  This was a practice piece, copied from a detail of a painting in a magazine.

7 comments:

Brian McGurgan said...

Very nice study, Casey - I like the sense of light and the gentle motion of the water here, as well as the softly defined meeting of water and distant buildings.

Laurel Daniel said...

Hey Casey - nice to meet you and find your blogs. Great work!

Casey Klahn said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Casey Klahn said...

Hi, Laurel. Thanks for the compliment and the visit.

Hi, Brian. I appreciate your view.

It took me 6 hours to get back to your comment! Internet foibles.

harry bell said...

Very interesting to see you tackle this - for you - unusual subject. I know you said you were uncomfortable with it and I think this may be due to the traghetto being in quite deep perspective which runs contrary to your normal flattening of forms. But what do I know?

Casey Klahn said...

Thanks for searching this one out - that's a compliment. I can't even pronounce traghetto, and now I'm painting one.

I am under the heavy influence of Wolf Kahn, who said in an interview in the Brooklyn Rail a few years ago that he eschewed perspective like all good modernists, but not always. That really got me thinking.

The thing I like about perspective is the beauty, and especially the beauty of aerial perspective, which van Gogh pointed out one time.

So, I agree with your astute observation. It is queer of me to paint some perspectives. The other funny thing for me is the hard realism of the object (boat) and I even stood it out with some drama.

What fun.

harry bell said...

Thought I'd pop back for a language lesson ;0) In Italian each letter is pronounced, but to make the "g" hard in "traghetto", the "h" is introduced. So -- "trag-hetto". But I should point out that I paint better than I speak Italian.