Julie T. Chapman - ArtBlog

Just a quick post this week, time crunched (agility last weekend in Spokane - we finished Suka’s Excellent Jumpers title - and travel for a commission over the next few days)…but wanted to share some terrific online art resources that I’ve discovered lately. Then again, maybe everyone already knew about these except me.

Art Scuttlebutt (www.artscuttlebutt.com) - run by the ArtCalendar folks. While it offers many of the features of the magazine, what is especially useful: a search mechanism that lets you check on shows, galleries, etc to see what other artists have experienced. I used the feature just this week when I received an out-of-the-blue gallery invitation from a NY gallery I’d never heard of. Turns out the gallery is a “pay to play” arrangement, though they don’t mention that in the email solicitation - but plenty of other ArtScuttlebutt artists had experience and advice about them.

Wet Canvas (www.wetcanvas.com) - a forum with gazillions of artists posting about their work in a huge variety of categories. Worth a browse for ideas or techniques.

Empty Easel (www.emptyeasel.com) - this gets my enthusiastic vote for one of the most useful art-oriented sites on the web. Besides how-to and review articles, it has an incredible wealth of information about selling art online. I can’t even begin to touch on the range of topics covered at EE, so I won’t. Go check it out - it’s worth it.

What other good artsites are out there?

So reading all these books on contemporary art gets me juiced up, and I’ve been messing about in a rather experimental fashion. Specifically, I’ve been slathering whatever’s left on my palette at week’s end onto 11×14 pieces of Yupo, and doing so with no particular intention aforethought. Yupo is sheet polypropylene, blindingly white and amazingly slick. (It also comes in a translucent form, which I haven’t yet purchased - but think of the possibilities!). Oils slide around, lift off, and can be manipulated in fabulous ways. You can see all the places I’ve scratched into the paint surface on this piece.

I’ve also been working into the paint surface with a graining comb - loads of fun! and messy. Only drawback is that oils take forever to dry since Yupo is a non-absorbent surface; I’m even using goodly quantities of Gamblin G-Gel in the paint, which usually sets up fast on a canvas.

So - comments? Have I gone off my rocker? Time for the padded cell?

What spawns this post is another library book (in this case, “Contemporary Women Artists”, by Wendy Beckett - Universe Books, 1988…30 years ago contemporary, anyway) celebrating Post-modern artists of the female persuasion.

There’s a piece in the book titled “Dark Green Painting” by Edwina Leapman, 168×183 cm (about 4 1/3 x 4 3/4 feet) which is pretty much what you’d expect: a dark bluish-gray-green surface with, possibly, some slight variations in hue (hard to tell) and texture (also hard to tell). Here’s a fragment of what the author says about the piece:

“‘Dark Green Painting’ can certainly hold the attention for a long period…there are hidden colours, an elusive pink that only reveals itself to the attentive eye; there are almost imperceptible brush movements, soft clouds that seem to drift to and fro on the surface and to swim up gently from the depths. Unforced depth is Leapman’s special gift. She has said: ‘The surface is both above and below’, a very profound observation… Alan Green, a Minimalist painter…has said of Leapman’s art: ‘Each work exists as a demonstration of human frailty…their strength lies in the doing. These paintings actually have to happen…the time actually has to be spent and mistakes actually have to be made.’ ….if the making of a work demands such ascetic concentration, it is not surprising that this manual prayer, as it were, soaks deep into the canvas.”

There’s more, but this seemed enough for our point.

So. If this same critic were to confront one of my rodeo or grizzly bear paintings, would she be in such raptures of bemusing description? (I’m guessing not). Which begs the question, is non-objective art - with no particular center of interest, and no drawing or other skill required besides manipulation of medium - perhaps more engrossing for a viewer? Does it allow for more interpretation on the part of, and therefore more involvement by, the viewer? And, ultimately, does that make it more worthwhile, or give it more longevity?

I’ve been promising a look at my library, so herewith commences the first in a sporadic series of posts about my propensity to collect art books.

At some point, I’ll take a photo of the whole shooting match (whenever I can get off my lazy butt to do it) and show everyone the large amount of shelf space in my studio that’s dedicated to books.

In the meantime, I’m starting with Da Man, Da Master. I have 4 books of his total - I don’t know if there are other Kuhn titles available - but could only find cover images of 3 of them online:

1. The Animal Art of Bob Kuhn, (no cover image available online) published 1973 by North Light, and apparently written by Kuhn himself. Mine is softcover. Has LOADS of his life sketches, arranged by topic (lots you’ve not seen elsewhere: dogs, apes, camels, cows…) along with natural history notes and his own drawing notes. Also has several pages on “the making of a painting” and his approach to same - invaluable. Then pages of sketches plus paintings and more of his charmingly informal information that an artist would appreciate more than a collector. The color and quality are not great, but this is as close as it gets to a Kuhn “how to” book for other artists - he even has compositional diagrams and drawings show he achieves some painting effects. I wouldn’t give mine up for anything.
   Cover: two bull moose in an Alaskan landscape
2. The Art of Bob Kuhn (Masters of the Wild series), Tom Davis, published 1989 by Briar Patch Press Inc. Sections of text and B&W photos (Kuhn’s family, Kuhn on safari) give personal and artistic history and philosophy (and plenty of that), and also include working sketches and life sketches. These sections are interleaved with plenty of gorgeous reproductions of Bob’s work, with a fair amount of story about each piece. Another of my treasures.
   Cover: “A Stillness by the Pool”, Bob’s amazing study in red and orange of a tiger over a kill
3. Wild Harvest: The Animal Art of Bob Kuhn, published 1997 by Chuck Wechsler (Sporting Classics, Wildlife Art Magazine). Much more a typical coffee table book, this is almost all color plates and the artist’s commentary on each. Absolutely wonderful as a compendium of some his best, but doesn’t replace the others.
   Cover: “Lair of the Cat”, a cougar painting that won the Prix de West purchase award
4. Bob Kuhn: Painting the Wild, published 2002 by the National Museum of Wildlife Art. This is a nice little softcover catalog that accompanied the retrospective exhibition the museum held for Bob that summer (2002). Has about 20 pages of monograph covering his history, style, approach, and so on, then about 40-50 pages of color plates. The museum may still have some of these books in its gift shop - worth a call to find out.
   Cover: “Pas de Deux”, a snowshoe hare and red fox in a winter landscape