Museum Moment!

The long awaited event is almost here! I will be the Featured Artist in the Huntsville Museum of Art Gala, opening this month. This event is beautifully orchestrated by the Museum staff and volunteers, and involves many, many months of preparation. Faithful readers might be interested in the story of how it has all come together...

Cultivated, 30 x 30, Oil on Canvas

I got the call in June of 2022. It was Pam Gann, one of the Gala Chairmen in Huntsville. The Committee was inviting me to be their Featured Artist for 2023--was I interested? Was I!! I was honored, excited, thrilled, and also a bit nervous. The commitment involved twenty three paintings of various subjects and sizes. That can be a tall order!

Venetian View, 8 x 12, Oil on Linen, mounted on panel

Pam and her Committee have been amazing to work with. Starting in September, I began to send them images of paintings from which to select. Some of the paintings had been completed prior to the call, others were still wet off the easel. The final selections cover a wide range of subjects and sizes, and they are a good representation of my body of work. You can see them all in the online digital version of the Gala Catalog.

Country Church, 16 x 12, Oil on Linen

Once selections were finalized, it was on to framing. Many thanks to Veronica, at Campania Fine Moulding, for her always spot-on advice on frames. Supply chain issues still plague the frame industry, but with some nimble footwork, Veronica was able to get it all done on time.

Support Group, 13 x 15, Oil on Linen

Next step: delivering the work to Huntsville. Enter Debbie, of Dilworth Packing. Debbie used the "white glove" treatment to personally courier the work from my studio in Charlotte to the Museum. It was a big moment to see all the paintings loaded in Debbie's van, and headed to their destination. Lift off: November 2, 2022.

Since November, the Museum has been photographing the art, as well as designing and publishing invitations, catalogs, and publicity materials--and handling a million other details. And finally hanging the paintings in the galleries. That's another "white glove" process, which requires precise work. Many artists are represented, so there are several galleries full of paintings. The iris painting in the photo below is by my friend Jill Steenhuis. So fun to "hang out" with friends!

The beautiful color catalog has gone live online. If you see something you love, how can you purchase it? The paintings are now available online in a "Buy Now, Take Later" format. If you "Buy Now", you secure the painting before the auction begins, at its normal retail price. That's definitely advisable if there is one you can't live without! To Buy Now, just register here. "Buy Now" runs through Friday, February 24 at noon (Central Time). After that time, the remaining paintings will be available through the Silent Auction (described below).

Draped, 19 x 10, Oil on Linen

You can also take your chances in the Silent Auction, and bid for the painting. Bidding begins at 70% of retail price. Everybody who participates in the Silent Auction (either in person or from a distance) will bid through an online process, for which you can register here. Silent Auction bidding begins Monday, February 27 at noon, and ends Saturday night, March 4, at 10 pm. I'll be attending the Silent Auction in Huntsville that Saturday night, and will be watching the clock as the closing hour draws nigh. Happy Bidding to all!

Small Works for the Holidays

 "Hillside", 8 x 8, Oil on Linen, Mounted on Panel, (c) Lesley Powell

Everybody else is doing it, so I decided to throw my hat in the ring too.  And what is "it"?  The annual Small Works for the Holidays project, of course~!  In the past I've held a "Small Gems" sale, and so I guess I am returning to my roots.

I'm offering a group of paintings that are sized and priced ideally for gift giving.  Whether it is a gift to yourself, or to somebody else, there is nothing like original art to add warmth to the home and the holidays.  Prices are below--if you'd like to purchase or get more information, just contact me through my website by clicking here.

"Sunset Magic", 8 x 8, Oil on Canvas, Mounted on Panel, (c) Lesley Powell

Here's the scoop on each of these paintings.  The top painting, "Hillside" was painted on location in Provence this past summer.  I can almost feel the hot, arid earth when I look at this one.  Lots of palette knife work--and I didn't event touch it up when I got home!  (Price: $325)

The next painting, "Sunset Magic", was also painted on location in Provence.  You have to be quick when you paint a sunset, because the colors change so fast.  I did this one a couple of years ago, and I have held it as a study to work from in the studio.  But I have finally decided to offer it to a new home. (Price: $295)

"After Corot", 5.5 x 9, Oil on Paper, (c) Lesley Powell

The next painting is a "master copy"-- painted from studying masterpieces of one of my favorite painters, Camille Corot.  This process is a time-honored way of learning.  The idea is not to reproduce a copy, but to interpret the master's work and to learn his thought process.  I learned a great deal from this project, and these one has informed some of my ongoing work. (Matted to 12.5 x 15.75, Price $300)

"Top of the Village", 7 x 10, Oil on Linen, Mounted on Panel, (c) Lesley Powell

Last but not least is "Top of the Village", which depicts the village of Gordes, in the heart of Provence.  This one was also painted entirely on location.  Those perched villages can be a challenge to paint, but a FUN challenge!  I love the cubist vibe that the buildings create as they tumble down the slope. (Price $350).

Thanks for taking a look at these, and do feel free to reach me here for any further information.  Enjoy!

Provence Beckons

This post is an alert to faithful readers that my newest collection of paintings has just been uploaded to my website.  It's titled "Provence Beckons", and it features scenes from Provence that have inspired me over the years.

"Luberon Clouds"

6 x 6, Oil on Linen, Mounted on Board

(c) Lesley Powell 2021

(SOLD)

This year, for the second year in a row, the painting workshop In Provence with Maggie Siner was cancelled due to COVID.  I've only missed three summers there since 2011! To ease my longing for the fields and villages that I have come to love, I visited them through paint.  I worked from drawings, photos, and plein air studies.  Even memory and imagination played a part.  All of those ingredients went into the new collection. 

I discovered that painting Provence is the next best thing to being there!  If you too have wanderlust, I hope that you will enjoy looking at the new collection.  You can see all of the paintings by clicking here.

"Welcome Home"

9 x 7.5, Oil on Paper, Mounted on Art Board

(c) Lesley Powell 2021

And in case you wonder how one of the paintings might fit in your home, I'm illustrating this post with shots of a couple of the paintings in situ at my house.  The opportunities are endless for paintings this size.  And they make great gifts for art lovers or Francophiles. Enjoy!

California Girls

Oil on Canvas Panel, 5 x 7

(c) Peggi Kroll Roberts

A collector recently asked me what artists' work I personally collect.  Great question!  I could write several posts on this topic, but for today I will just take the theme of "California Girls" and talk about three of my favorites.

Oil on Canvas Panel, 6 x 8

(c) Peggi Kroll Roberts

When I collect from fellow painters, I seek work that is not only pleasing to look at, but that can also teach me something. The top two images are paintings by Peggi Kroll Roberts.  I have taken several classes with Peggi, and can vouch that she is a wonderful and generous teacher.  Just looking at the impasto paint on these canvases, I remember watching Peggi load up her brush and make her beautiful marks.  It reminds me not to skimp on my paint, and to be expressive with my mark-making. 

"Across the Fields"

Oil on Panel, 12 x 12

(c) Sandy Ostrau

Another California girl whose work I admire is Sandy Ostrau.  I have never met Sandy, but I have seen her paintings in several different venues, and find it stunning.  I think we both love geometry in paintings, and she is a master with geometric forms.  She makes simple blocks of color absolutely sing.  And although they are not "descriptive", in the sense of being detailed, her paintings still convey a sense of the time and space in which they exist.  Just looking at my two little Ostrau paintings (see bottom image) spurs me forward in the quest to simplify and to master color relationships.

"Red Horizon"

6 x 6, Oil on Panel

(c) Erin Lee Gafill

My most recent acquisition is a little painting by Erin Gafill.  It's called "Red Horizon".  Even though it's only 6x6 inches, it has a much larger impact.  To my eye, Erin's paintings have a definite meditative quality.  They convey the sense of being fully present.  Her still lifes, like the little cobalt jar I purchased earlier, speak of the majesty of simple things.  And they never look labored--they seem to flow organically off the brush.  I've never met Erin either, but I almost feel as if I know her, having watched her on UTube and having heard her talks.  Maybe someday!  Meanwhile, looking at her paintings creates a sense of serenity and reminds me to be present and quiet with my subject. 

Oil on Paper, 5 1/2 x 7 1/2

(c) Erin Lee Gafill

Hope you'll enjoy these paintings as much as I do.  I'm concluding with shots showing their placement in my home.  Thanks for reading!

When the Price is Right

 

A friend who is an interior designer advises her clients that original art can greatly enhance their homes.  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 over 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, and it has really stuck with me. 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. And yet pillows wear out. They get stained or faded, and go out of style. On the other hand, art lasts forever. Despite these facts, people can be reluctant to spend as much for a painting as for their decorative accessories.

"Lungfrauenmassiv"
F. Hodler

Here's another quotation worth keeping in mind. This is advice from the great artist Felix Vallotton: "A mediocre painting is ALWAYS too expensive; a good picture can be expensive at its price; while a very good one is NEVER too expensive."   

"Aloe at Cassis"
Henri Manguin, 1912

Vallatton should know. He was a guiding light for Hedy Hahnloser, as she and her husband assembled a remarkable collection of paintings. They purchased these works during the first quarter of the 20th century--often from artists who were relatively unknown at the time, but are revered today. In fact, some people credit the Hahnlosers with ushering French art from the 19th into the 20th century. I have illustrated this post with paintings from their collection. 

"The Sower"
Vincent van Gogh, 1888

Alas, not all of us have budgets that allow us to assemble a museum-worthy art collection. But if we look, we all can find art within our means that speaks to us, that quickens our hearts and enhances our homes.  

**Some things are worth repeating:  parts of this post appeared previously in this blog.

Mudheads

 

What, you might ask, is a "mudhead"?  No, it's not a derogatory term for a dull person.  In the world of art, a "mudhead" is a particular type of painting, one that shows faces and figures in a quasi-abstract, often colorful manner.  The term originated with the great artist Charles Hawthorne, who founded the Cape School of Art in Provincetown, MA, right around 1900.  Nowadays, vintage mudheads painted by Hawthorne's students are prized, and are highly collectible. 

Hawthorne era mudhead; Anonymous 

Hawthorne taught a revolutionary approach to painting the figure.  He had his students paint from live models, in bright sunlight on the beach.  The students were told to paint only the broad patterns of light and shadow, and not get bogged down in details.  This approach allowed the painter to capture the color, value and form of people, without rendering their facial features.  In many ways, it became the backbone of modern painting, emphasizing the fact that the impact of a painting comes from the big shapes, not fine details. 

Carole Smith Myer

A mudhead is usually backlit by very bright light.  With such strong backlighting, the heads and faces appear to be a fairly uniform, warm, muddy color.  Thus the term "mudhead".  To me, the charm of the mudhead is that fact that it is specific, despite also being anonymous.  I love the way these paintings are built from abstract shapes of color.  The big shapes are put down first, and although they may ultimately be refined somewhat, they are never detailed.

Untitled

15 x 14, Oil on Linen

(c) Lesley Powell 2021

I'm illustrating this post with some vintage mudheads, and also an effort of my own.  My painting is from a photo I took in Italy many years ago.  The ladies on the park bench were very strongly backlit, and the features were not discernible.  But I think you can tell a lot about them, nonetheless. I couldn't decide whether to call this one "Support Group" or "Support Hose".  Cast your vote here!

Going Public

"Passerby"
Oil on Cardboard, 7 7/8 x 11
Félix Vallatton, 1897

Whenever I visit a special exhibit at a museum, I always catch my breath to see a previously unexhibited painting that is on loan from a private collection. Such a rare treat! I marvel at the luxury it must be for those private collectors to live every day with paintings by Manet, or Bonnard, or Vuillard--right there in their dining rooms. 

"Yellow Gable"
Oil on Cardboard, 11 7/8 x 10 5/8 in.
Maurice Denis, c. 1895

Occasionally, through the great generosity of a collector, an entire collection comes into the public realm (rather than being parceled off and auctioned to private purchasers). One such occasion is being heralded now, at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. The Nabis collection of Roger Sant and his late wife Vickie Sant has been pledged as a future gift to The Phillips Collection, and the works are now being shown in a special exhibit that runs through January 26, 2020. The exhibit is entitled "Bonnard to Vuillard: The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life".

"Apprentices"
Oil on Cardboard, 12 x 9 in.
Édouard Vuillard, c. 1891-92

You don't have to have been reading this blog very long to know how much I love the Nabi painters, and especially Vuillard and Bonnard. The Nabis were a loosely organized group of avant-garde French painters working in the 1890's. They rebelled against the old-line, classical academies of art, as well as against the new-fangled Impressionists. 

"Street Scene"
Oil on Cardboard, 10 1/4 x 133/8 in.
Félix Vallotton, 1895

Although their styles were diverse, the Nabis were united by certain common factors. Their paintings tended to focus on scenes of domestic life, and they employed abstracted shapes of vibrant color. They often disregarded the rules of vanishing point perspective, so that their scenes were "flattened" into into an arrangement of color patterns. In fact, the words of one of the Nabis, Maurice Denis, became a sort of rallying cry for the group:

Remember that a painting--

before being a bottle horse, a nude woman,

or an anecdote of some sort--

is above all a flat surface

covered with colors

arranged in a certain order.

"Sleeping Woman"
Oil on Cardboard, 10 1/2 x 10 1/2 in.
Édouard Vuillard, 1892

The term "Nabi" is from the Hebrew word for prophet. Some say that these painters paved the way to what we know today as modern art. And yet their diversity and the quickly changing times led to an early disbandment. The Nabis held their final exhibit in 1900, and then went their separate ways, each going on to develop his own style and body of work. But the Phillips exhibit shows the group at its zenith.  I can't wait to see it.  If you can't make it to the exhibit, the book that accompanies the exhibit is excellent--well worth a look. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the Sant family for this transformative gift.

PS: It seems that the Nabis are having "a moment"--another Nabi, Félix Vallotton (some of whose works are pictured above), is the subject of a major current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York....

Lay of the Land

"Field Study"
Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019
(SOLD)

An art purveyor told me recently that her clients liked landscapes that were "ambiguous". She said that ambiguity allowed her clients to imagine the scene to be anywhere they wanted it to be. I was a bit taken aback, because I invest a great deal of myself in painting landscapes that are very specific--landscapes that immediately inform the viewer whether it is morning or afternoon, hot or cold, windy or calm. Landscapes that you feel you can walk into and breathe the air of.  Landscapes that tell you just how far away that mountain range is. Landscapes that trigger a gasp of recognition.

"Atmospheric Hills"
7 x 14, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

But. As I reflected further on the art dealer's comment, I concluded that she might simply have used the wrong word. I would prefer to say that the landscape is "universal". In fact, it is the universality of the land that makes it something we can all relate to. We are all creatures of the earth, all gravity bound, all oriented to a certain horizon line. We all breathe the air, feel the breeze, smell the rain, hear the rustle of the leaves. We all feel the warmth of the sun, and the cool of the shadow.

"Road to Petaluma"
18 x 18, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

These universal aspects of the landscape are ones I try to capture in my paintings. The land has a gesture, or movement, just as a person does. To paraphrase Kimon Nicolaides, the clouds in the sky are practically all movement, reflecting the movement of the wind. Roads move up over hills, and down into valleys. This sense of movement is universal, whether the landscape is at the coast or in the mountains. 

"Two Fields"
9 x 16, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

I'm illustrating this post with images of some recent landscapes that are part of my "Earth, Water & Sky" collection. Hope you can see a bit of the universal in them...

The Gallery Wall

Wall by Artspace

Some ideas never go out of style. The gallery wall is one of them. It's one of my favorite ways to display artwork. A gallery wall can be created to suit the minimalist (see above), or it can be "over the top" (see below), or anything in between. You can create a gallery wall from work you already own, or you can start one and add to it as you collect over time.

Gallery Wall by Jeffrey Bilhuber

Sometimes hanging art in this manner is called "salon style", because it first became popular in 17th century Paris, in the days of the grand salons. Here's a bit of history, from the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College:

Image from Somerset House, London

"The “Salon-Style Hang” is a method of hanging and displaying paintings that originated in 1667 with the beginning of the annual Royal Academy salon in Paris. The major entertainment events of the year, salons were juried showcases exhibiting the best of the best work of the year, by both students studying in the Royal Academy and by established masters. Because so many works were to be crammed into the exhibitions, walls were hung floor-to-ceiling with paintings on many scales and of many different genres. Usually the largest paintings with the grandest subject matter (history and religion) were hung highest on the wall, while more intimately-scaled work like still lifes were hung at eye-level or below."

Photo from West Elm

Well, over three centuries later, the style is still with us--and it has recently taken the decorating world by storm. A recent article in the Washington Post interviews experts on various approaches to gallery walls. They discuss using a subject matter theme, or a consistent framing theme, or even abandoning all rules and just hanging what you love! I like the interesting color theme in the grouping just below. It really sings.

Gallery Wall from Ace of Space

Whatever your personal preference, don't be afraid to give the gallery wall a try. It's not as hard as it might look. And it's a wonderful way to make a big statement, without breaking the bank on a single huge painting. You can even incorporate objects other than artwork, such as mirrors or sconces. Let your imagination run wild!

Photo from Better Homes and Gardens

Open Studio!

Photo courtesy NY Times

It's that time of year again--my studio building is hosting its Spring Open House. Join us at Dilworth Artisan Station, this coming Friday, May 3rd, from 6 to 9 PM. Over twenty artists will hold their studios open to the public. It's a great opportunity to take a peek behind the scenes, see what's fresh off the easel, and meet the painters themselves. 

Lesley in her studio...

I'm reprinting below parts of an excellent article from the New York Times about collecting art. (Thank you William Grimes and Robin Pogrebin!). This excerpt discusses how to take advantage of Open Studios. Hope you'll enjoy it, and please come on down on Friday the 3rd! Details here.

Some of my still life props--lots of pieces of fabric!

KNOCK KNOCK! Open studios are annual events in art districts. Individual artists, or buildings housing multiple artists’ studios, join forces and hold an open house for a weekend, with maps and websites to aid navigation.

ENGAGE. The point of an open studio is to let the public see work outside the gallery system and promote dialogue. This is your chance to get the inside scoop on the art and the artist behind it.

"Beakers with Azaleas"
20 x 10, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

EDUCATE YOUR EYE.  Go see as much as you can--at galleries, museums and art fairs and by trolling online. The more art you see, the more you will develop clear judgement  Knowledge can  help put things in context, but expertise isn't a prerequisite. 

GET WHAT YOU LOVE.  All sorts of people will give all sorts of advice about what to buy and when and where to buy it. But the bottom line is, you have to live with the painting or sculpture or installation, so you should like what it looks like, how it feels to have it in your home. 

“Buy fewer, better works of art. Buy the best you can afford. Take your time. There is no art emergency.” — Liz Klein (art adviser)