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The Winter Aconite are in bloom in my garden, edging out the Snowdrops, and a good week or two before we'll see crocuses. These spots of yellow are always the first, peeking through late snowdrifts, and foretelling the more insistent yellow of daffodils and forsythia. With the glories of goldenrod in late August and September, these are the yellows that frame our New England Summer season. In the old days, Spring always meant spring cleaning, in the house, yard and garden. As an artist who produces abundantly, it also means deciding which paintings do not make the cut and should be recycled. Since I paint on panels which store very efficiently if unframed, this is not a necessary process physically, but it seems to be very important to me psychologically… Continue reading… 0 comments

Giclée printing usually refers to the process of reproducing art digitally. The giclée process includes several steps to insure that the reproduction matches the original as closely as possible while insuring the resulting print is of archival quality. Sometimes the term is expanded to include any print made in the giclée manner with archival media and inks, such as digital photography or computer generated art. And yes, each print is printed one at a time, or "printed on demand".… Continue reading… 0 comments

Elisa Pritzker World Famous Women Artist. Elisa Pritzker is an international artist, art curator and consultant. Elisa is also creating excellent contemporary art that quickly finds its way into private and public collections throughout the world. Elisa is one of the best prepared artists that I know and I hope this interview will help other artists benefit from her knowledge. To learn more about Elisa Pritzker please visit her website at www.PritzkerStudio.com Elisa please tell us about yourself and your art? I was born to be an artist. My art and myself are kind of a one thing… Continue reading… 1 comment

This is a subject I have worried around before (see for example "Significant Art: What does it Signify?") because it gets to the heart of those subconscious doubts I have about the value of my work. Though I am going to look at it here from the persepctive of art history, I clearly care about it as a kind of self-justification. My art is not an art of innovation. What uniqueness it has comes unconsciously and inevitably from the personal vision which each of us has, not from any attempt to break new ground. I am not even an experimental artist (a much less demanding standard); many artists who never break new ground nevertheless experiment with different styles and media, doing work that is new for them if not for art as a whole… Continue reading… 3 comments

Ever notice when you walk into a movie theater to see the latest blockbuster playing that there are movie posters all around informing everyone what's playing next week or next month? Sometimes it's a simple two-foot by three-foot poster framed on the lobby wall. Most of the time, however, it's a huge cardboard cut-out that takes up half the lobby. Whatever it is, it's something that catches your eye, and that's the artwork of movie posters. For over a century, movies have been advertised by the method of displaying posters depicting a character or a scene from the movie. It was_and still is_the way to sell potential audiences to come to the theaters and pay to see these films… Continue reading… 0 comments

We live in a world that wants things quickly. A drive through the suburbs is now lttered with fast food outlets that satisfies our craving for food as quickly as possible. Even 5 minutes in a fast-food queue will have us tapping our feet impatientlly! I believe art is going down a similar path. The lure of shortcuts to painting success is to be found in most art magazines. DVD s promise to have you painting like a pro in no time at all. Professional secrets are revealed that will make you a better painter, or so it is implied. Workshops abound in which artists can rub shoulders with professionals and perhaps gain some of that magic dust that makes them paint so well. I have done many painting demonstrations in which I have revealed all I know while I paint… Continue reading… 4 comments

BLOCH --Peter, 86, died July 31, 2008 in New York City. Beloved friend, noted journalist and historian and fluent in four languages. Born in Frankfort, Germany he left in 1939 as a teenager and joined the underground in Belgium. He later was interned in Switzerland. He came to the U.S. in 1949 and became a citizen in 1955. He was the founder and President of the Association of Puerto Rican-Hispanic Culture. He was the U.S. Representative of the French Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was appointed a Knight of the Order of Isabella Catolica in 1969 by the Head of the Spanish State. Published in the New York Times on 8/3/2008 It was a great Honor to have met such a great man in the Arts. I knew him long before we met through his book Painting and Sculpture of the Puerto Ricans (1978)… Continue reading… 0 comments

When you paint, make me believe. A painting attempts to take a flat plane and make us believe images of a three dimensional world. The artist, like the fiction writer, needs to create a willing suspension of disbelief. For years the wild sunsets often seen in paintings in British and American landscapes from the late 1800s struck me as a fantasy element. I had no problem enjoying the paintings because there was an internal consistency. Under those multihued sunsets and towering cloud formations, deep shadows and rosy or orange hued highlights built beautiful, larger than life landscapes… Continue reading… 3 comments

Hugo Sandoval Exhibition at the Union City Art Gallery at City Hall Yesterday February 18, 2010 I attended the exhibition of paintings by my friend Hugo Sandoval at the Union City Art Gallery at City Hall. Hugo Sandoval is an excellent artist who creates colorful paintings that are exciting and fun to look at. Hugo was born in Barranquilla Colombia and graduated from the Center for the Media Arts in NY in 1985. He has been creating, exhibiting and selling his works ever since. I had the honor of exhibiting with Hugo Sandoval last year at the Queens Museum of Art and I find his work beautiful and stimulating to the mind and soul. The Exhibition also had musical performance by Graciela Barreto the Union City Poet Laureate who sang some beautiful songs and recited poetry as well… Continue reading… 0 comments

In my last post I dealt with the subject of multiple levels of meaning in an image. I realize that there is another way in which we use levels of meaning which I had not even touched on, the way which is most natural to me: the pun or double meaning. This can be a double meaning between the image and its title - word play - or within the image itself, which I will call image play. I am a punster from my earliest years, much to the dismay and suffering of my friends and companions. The earliest pun I remember (except maybe "what is black and white and red all over?") was the riddle "when is a door not a door?" "When it's ajar". What makes a pun so appealing (to a few of us!) is that we have that moment of connection between "ajar" and "a jar"… Continue reading… 2 comments

How to Purchase a Giclée Fine Art Print By Nancy Bryant Beautifully decorated homes are not complete until there is art on the walls. In the past, homeowners had just a few options. One could purchase original works of art, often at very high prices. For some this was an investment and for others it was for the satisfaction of having something of beauty in their homes. The alternative was to buy a reproduction or art print. The cost of a print was usually considerably less than an original work but the quality and appearance of the print just did not look like "real art". Beginning in the early 1990's new technology created a third alternative. … Continue reading… 2 comments

In the field of art I work on the most_comic book art_there are numerous artists I look up to and see as a bit of inspiration to help me go on as I work on a certain piece. Whenever I see the artwork of these individuals, it either takes me back to when I was a child reading comic books for the first time or it just simply mesmerizes me, putting me in a zone as I view their works. You'd be surprised to know that some of them aren't just simply pencilers or inkers of the trade, but go further with painting and even create a lucrative business with their established name. So without further ado, let me list the artists I look up to… Continue reading… 0 comments

Join me at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina the week of April 4 for a unique class in designing with Roman Letters… Continue reading… 1 comment

Email Contacts - What's Real? Occasionally on ArtId, we get a person or company that contacts a number of our members through the contact page in their ArtId galleries offering artists anything from representation to licensing deals. Sometimes these offers are legitimate and, unfortunately, sometimes they are not. Because your contact page is open for anyone to use, these emails cannot be dealt with as spam. An email received through your ArtId contact does not mean that we have endorsed the company or person. So, we'd like to give you some tips on how to discriminate between truly interested business people and those whose real goal is to get you to pay them a lot of money for nothing. How to Compare… Continue reading… 2 comments

TO ALL ARTID ARTISTS : Please be sure to send us an email to info@artid.com with a link to your blog post about upcoming art shows or exhibits. We will post it in our Member Art Shows blog so art collectors have one central place to look for information… Continue reading… 0 comments

The Calder Game -- Not Just for Kids It's a mystery...How could a children's book could be so compelling? Perhaps it speaks to kid in all of us who, no matter how we dress ourselves up, still lives. Now and then a great mystery gets written and it is just plain enjoyable. No sex, no nudity, no romance, just simple code encrypting, mayhem and suspense. Author Blue Balliett is on to something. Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3 and The Calder Game give the ten to twelve-year-old set an inside track on the art world, while speaking the language of intrigue. The characters, three emerging sleuths, are empowered by the adults in their lives (most of the time) to help solve different art thefts… Continue reading… 2 comments

Back in my days as a student of Architecture, I read with interest the writings of Charles Jencks on Le Corbusier, one of the giants of the modern movement in the 20th century. In advocating for the greatness of Le Corbusier, Jencks did someting much more ambitious: he propounded a theory of value to be applied to all art, based on multiple levels of meaning. All works of art, he says, fall somewhere on a spectrum from "Univalence" (single-leveled) to "multivalence" (multileveled), and truly great works are always multivalent. He compares in detail Le Corbusier's apartment block in Marseilles, the "Unite d'Habitation", with a contemporary church design (of which I could find no image) in the form of a cross of thorns… Continue reading… 2 comments

There are no self taught artists, but there are many lessons beyond the formal walls of the classroom. Museums have long been places where artists can sharpen their skills, and many welcome students with sketchbook in hand. Some paintings within the museums you frequently visit may become old friends that you must spend time with even when you are there to view a special show. At Stockton's Haggin Museum "Sophistication", a 1908 work by Harry Wilson Watrous, is such a work for me. So are the Albert Bierstadt works in the museum's permanent collection. My fascination with "Sophistication" led a young friend to give me the box pictured here from the Haggin's gift shop… Continue reading… 0 comments

When will our Museums learn to give back to the surrounding communities? Museums look for support from the communities that surround them but often give little back to the area artists and arts organizations that support them. I do not know if this is typical in all areas of the country or just the few Museums that are close to where I live in New York? Still I do not feel that Museums in general do enough to help enrich the lives of the artists and arts organizations around them. For one example I would take the DIA Museum in Beacon, New York the DIA has a wonderful building with a beautiful art collection in an area of New York that has a flourishing arts community and lots of artists.Still the DIA Museum does nothing to create shows for area artists or other area arts organizations… Continue reading… 2 comments

A million years ago before there was electricity, I studied ballet. I was a late bloomer, starting in my early twenties and ending in my mid thirties. I had no dreams of being on the stage, I was too old and at 118 pounds, too fat. I just wanted to dance. My teacher was a wonderful Russian gentleman, Alexander Dunaeff. Just when I was considering taking lessons, in my head, he found me. I was at the counter of an instant printing place and I stood up for some reason, not looking, when I went to sit back down, there was someone in what was I thought was still my seat. So there I was sitting in a strangers lap, totally embarrassed, but he was laughing and we struck up a conversation. Ballet Teacher? Is that so? I started lessons the next week.… Continue reading… 7 comments