Provence, Distilled

"Road above Bonnieux"
6 x 8, Oil on Paper
(c) Lesley Powell 2018
$195

With this post, I am excited to unveil a new series of paintings! I have been working on these for a number of weeks, and want to tell you a little bit about them. Faithful readers know that I love strong, straightforward shapes. I am also drawn to the beauty of simplification.  But as one of my posts is titled, "Simple isn't Easy". That's an understatement, for sure! It has taken a great deal of study, thought and work at the easel to bring these concepts to fruition in the new paintings.

"Provence, Distilled: Amber Waves of Grain"
5 x 10, Oil on Paper
(c) Lesley Powell 2018
$225

My mantra for this series comes from Maurice Denis, a founder of the Nabis. Denis wrote, "Remember that a picture -- before being a battle horse, a female nude, an anecdote or whatnot -- is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order." In modern parlance, I would say "A painting is made of shapes of color". In the new series, I wanted to let the shapes speak out. I avoided too much modeling, or detailing of the objects.

"Provence, Distilled: Sunset Afterglow"
6 x 6, Oil on Paper
(c) Lesley Powell 2018
$150

The new series also springs from a concept that Felix Vallotton (another Nabi) used with great success. He called it the "paysage composé", or, loosely translated, the "put together landscape". Vallotton would make sketches of landscapes and take notes on location. Back home in the studio, he would put together paintings using various elements from different sketches.  He thus created landscapes that did not actually exist in nature, but represented something universal.  I have taken a page from Vallotton's book, freely moving trees or fields in some of my paintings in order to make a painting that hints at the universal aspects of the landscape. 

Paintings (c) Lesley Powell 2018

But my paintings are far from imaginary. They are all based on plein air paintings I have completed on location in Provence. I have used the colors seen with my own eyes on location, and put those colors into shapes that tell the gesture of the land. I have simplified a copse of trees into a simple dark block, a vineyard into a stripe of green. I call this "distilling" the elements of the landscape. Hence my title of the new series, "Provence, Distilled".  Despite the simplicity of these paintings--or maybe because of it--I hope that the viewer will feel a sense of distance and appreciate the sweeping character of the landscapes.

Paintings (c) Lesley Powell 2018

These are small paintings, on Arches oil paper--a beautiful, archival paper, specially made for oil paintings.  Most of them are priced between $150 and $195 (unframed). I think they make very handsome pairs or groupings, such as the ones above. I'm even including a photo (below) showing a frame treatment that would look fantastic. You can check out the full collection by clicking here--thanks for taking a look!   (PS: Flat rate shipping of $10 per painting).

Frame option (Artist Unknown)

How Much?

A young friend of mine who is an interior designer told me that one of her clients posed this question: "How much should I expect to pay for an original painting?" Hmmm. We all have widely divergent budgets for home decor and also for artwork. My friend mulled on the question a bit, and replied: "Well, it all depends, but as a rule of thumb, certainly more than you pay for your throw pillows!"

"Esterel"
Felix Vallottton

I thought this was a great response. One can easily pay big bucks for a pair of custom throw pillows in a designer fabric. Even more if you add some special trim. Throw pillows wear

Coming Attraction

Nicolas de Staël in his studio, 1954
(c) Denise Colomb

You can hardly imagine my excitement when I realized that I would be in Aix-en-Provence this summer in time to see an exhibition devoted to one of my favorite artists, Nicolas de Staël. What good fortune! The exhibit, aptly titled "Nicolas de Staël in Provence", will show eighty of his paintings and drawings. All of them date from the period between July 1953 and October 1954. This is regarded as one of the most important periods of de Staël's  career--and it's my personal favorite.

"Menerbes"
Oil on Canvas, 16 x 22 cm
Nicolas de Staël, 1953

De Staël was born into an aristocratic Russian family in 1914. In fact, at age two, he was already a page at the Court of Emperor Nicolas II. One year later the Russian Revolution forced his family to flee to Poland. The details of his biography are fascinating, but too long to explore in this post--you can learn more here.

Due to various twists of fate, de Staël remains unknown to most people, especially in the US. But as Michael Klein (a NY art dealer and curator) has written, "For many painters, he is just this side of a minor saint." De Staël's work is often characterized as abstract, but de Staël himself resisted that classification. He insisted that there was always a subject. Like Richard Diebenkorn, he evolved away from an early period of more abstract painting, and came to paint real "things". I have read that sometimes de Staël even took his gear out on location and painted en plein air.

"La Route"
Oil on Canvas, 65 x 81 cm.
Nicolas de Staël, 1954 

After a rather nomadic life, de Staël was ultimately drawn the the warmth of the South of France. He bought a house in Menerbes, a small hill town in Provence. (Menerbes is the subject of the first painting above). It is the work done here that will be featured in the exhibition in Aix this summer. I love these paintings! When he moved to Menerbes, de Staël had just returned from a trip through Italy, where he was particularly taken with Sicily. He wrote about evenings with yellow skies, red seas and violet sands. Back home, de Staël  worked furiously to recreate these amazing landscapes. He worked from memory and from notes taken on the trip.

"Agrigente"
Oil on Canvas, 35 x 51 1/2 inches
Nicolas de Staël, 1953

De Staël created these landscapes by applying thick slabs of brilliant colors. He used a strong vanishing point to hold all the shapes in place.  He was a master at capturing the essence of a vista using simple shapes of color. Some might call these works "abstract",. But I see in each of them a particular landscape, portrayed very believably, yet without detail. Here's what one critic, Brett Baker, wrote about de Staël's painting "Agrigente" (pictured just above):

 "Agrigente...initially appears to be an abstract painting loosely influenced by landscape. This painting changes, however, before your eyes into a carefully observed, specific view. The unreproducible orange of the sky doesn’t hold a spatial plane the way it would in an abstract painting - as a wedge of space - rather it conveys the infinite, and does so as convincingly as any blue ever has. The same orange, cut with nearly imperceptible additions of red, holds both discrete middle and foreground spaces in the picture. In this painting, de Staël’s color is not color, it is light and heat as they travel across space. The effect can only be experienced in person."

"Sicile (Vue d'Agrigente)
Oil on canvas, 114 x 146 cm
Nicolas de Stael, 1954

If you too want to experience the works in person, here's the scoop. Of course, I don't know exactly which paintings will be included in the show. I hope that some of the ones pictured in this post will be there--several of them are from private collections. I am always excited to see works from a private collection, because they are available to the public only for a rare glimpse. Closer to home, the Bechtler Museum in Charlotte has a de Staël painting, and the Philips Collection in Washington, DC, has a number of them. For the time being, we can enjoy these images online. And see more of my thoughts on de Staël here. Thanks!

"Soleil"
Oil on Canvas, 16 x 24 cm
Nicolas de Staël, 1954