Month: November 2016

Edward Willis Redfield

Edward Willis Redfield, “The Burning of Center Bridge”, 1923, Oil on Canvas, 127.6 x 142.9 cm, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doyelstown, Pennsylvania

Primarily a landscape painter, Edward Willis Redfield was acclaimed as the most “American” artist of the New Hope school because of his vigor and individualism. Redfield favored the technique of painting en plein air, that is, outdoors amid nature. Tying his canvas to a tree, He worked in even the most brutal weather. Painting rapidly, in thick, broad brushstrokes, and without attempting preliminary sketches, Redfield typically completed his paintings in one sitting.

In 1923 Redfield created the nocturnal scene that would be recognized as one of his most important works. “The Burning of Center Bridge” depicts the 1923 fire that destroyed the bridge connecting Center Bridge, Pennsylvania, with Stockton, New Jersey. Although Redfield took notes on an envelope as he observed the scene, he departed from his practice of capturing a landscape en plein air and painted the scene when he returned to his studio.

Within two days, Redfield created this canvas, which captures the heroic efforts of firemen trying to extinguish the fire as spectators stand by helplessly watching the burning wooden structure glow against a black sky filled with plumes of smoke. The destruction of the region’s oldest Delaware River covered bridge was a monumental event for local residents. News of the incident appeared in the Washington Post and in the headlines of the local Bucks County Intelligencer, which recounted the drama of 25 firemen falling into the river as they fought the fire while “the banks of the river were lined with a crowd aggregating thousands of spectators.”

Huynh Jet

Huynh Jet, “Hats Off”, National Geographic

“I was drawn to an older woman who was working very hard on crafting these hats,” writes Huynh Jet, who captured this photo in a traditional dwelling in Duc Hoa, Long An Province, Vietnam. “I climbed on a ladder and stood there until I caught the moment when she put the threads into the hat. A big traditional family in Long An has made and sold hats for over a hundred years.”

Yayoi Kusama

The Art work of Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist and writer. Throughout her career she has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, scat sculpture, performance art, and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychedelic colors, repetition and pattern. A precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, Kusama influenced contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg] Although largely forgotten after departing the New York art scene in the early 1970s, Kusama is now acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan, and an important voice of the avant-garde.

Kusama’s work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. Kusama is also a published novelist and poet, and has created notable work in film and fashion design.

Major retrospectives of her work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1998, the Whitney Museum in 2012, and Tate Modern in 2012. In 2006, she received a Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, Christie’s New York sold a work by her for $5.1 million, then a record for a living female artist.

Vladimir Semensky 

Four Paintings by Vladimir Semensky

Born in 1968, Russian artist Vladimir Semensky creates paintings with a vibrant sense of spontaneous movement and naturalistic, individual gesture.  Dynamic poses and unguarded scenarios characterise his work.  Semensky’s paintings are large scale canvases and are born of the same spontaneous unique body movements he articulates in his compositions.  The movements of a person are almost eccentric in their singular relation to that person’s personality, surroundings and state of mind.

Semensky describes this with disarming frankness and allows a strangely intimate view that would never be afforded by a photorealistic painting.  This results in a chaotic and exciting sense that is usually absent in static imagery or posed, formal painting.  He captures the transience of things, private fleeting moments that we are usually only sensitive to in those we are closest to.

Thomas Jackson

Thomas Jackson,  “Emergent Behavior”, Tree and Cheese Balls

Photographer Thomas Jackson has continued his “Emergent Behavior” series where he photographs airborne swarms of common objects like Post-It notes, cheese balls, and plates in environments where you would least expect them. He also reverses the concept, shooting items from nature like sticks and leaves against an urban backdrop.

“I have struggled with the role of Photoshop in my work. I can’t make my images without it, yet I don’t really want it to be an integral part of my creative process. So I’ve set up some rules of the road for myself, and I’ve stuck to them while creating all my recent images. Basically I want the images to be as “in camera” as possible, so instead of employing PS to composite or more things around, I simply use it to remove elements I don’t want to be there.” -Thomas Jackson