Monthly Studio Update - January, 2004

 

Happy New Year.

 

Studio Update:

Ok, work is going great in the studio. I am keeping crazy hours, after a long day of painting last night I went to bed around 10:30 p.m. woke up at 2:30 a.m. and then painted until 6:30 a.m....I love that.

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Though this acrylic still life is not finished, I hope one or two full days of painting, you might be able to see the development from left (or top) to right (or bottom). I have added more detail and light. Painting the light's reflections on the surface of the water in the glass jar is wild! While looking at the real life reflections if I move a millimeter or breathe deeply all the shadows and lights wiggle out of sync. To finish the painting I will look at it from a great distance and evaluate if the forms hold up well; if they dissolve into shapelessness I will continue to clarify them.

 

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I am almost done with Little Goddess perhaps a day or two of intense work away. The additional details of the sky and vegetation were painted by real life. In real life, on the ground, there were rust colored patches in-between all the green, instead of using rust color paint I used the colors of her body which went a long way to integrating the landscape with her.

 

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I did a lot of work on Venus. Repainted all the background. The details on the mountains are beginning to lock in. It's an incredible feeling when this happens because it feels like I am in the rythm of the universe. I significantly darkened the foreground, which results in the effect of more light on her and the rocks. I have to finish detailing the mountains, detailing the rocks, and finish her hands, face, and knees.

 

I finished this second of two pastels of the glass jar. It is the same set up as the acrylic above but from a different angle and different light.

 

Non-Studio Updates:

There are several things on the books:

Either this month or next I will be delivering the painting, Artemis, to a collector in Brussels, Belgium.

I am invited to exhibit at an arts festival in Alabama in May. While visiting there I met up with several talented and sophisticated artists and I look forward to working with them.

In April there are plans for me to exhibit and to give a lecture to philosophy and art students at Rockford College.

Also in April, though no date is set, the Foundation for the Advancement of Art, of which I am the director, will hold a conference in London.

It is confirmed that I will give the talk, Innovation in Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, at the Objectivist Center's Summer Seminar in Vancouver, Canada.

Recently I was interviewed by architect, Peter Cresswell, for the New Zealand cultural magazine The Free Radical. A possible highlight from that interview could be my take on the difference between photography and painting: "...photography transfers reality through a machine and painting transfers reality through a soul."

 

If you enjoyed something of my Studio Update or have an interesting comment to make I would love to hear it. Newberry@MichaelNewberry.com

 

Best wishes for a creative new year.