Author: ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

https://www.instagram.com/wolvesofgray This blog is a refugee and a survivor of the Great Tumblr Inquisition of December 17th, 2018. I am gay artist, who received training at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now, a retired high-end fine art framer living in Maryland, USA. My interests and studies in life run a wide gamut from art to history and from the scientific to the esoteric. I have been building this blog of images and texts for the last eight years. My wish is that my posts pique the interest of viewers and encourage them to experience more.

Maréchal-Ferrant …

Maréchal-ferrant …

The term “Marshal” comes from the Old French “Marhskalk” that comes from common Germanic “Markhaz”, itself derived from the Celtic “markh” (horse), and Germanic skalkaz “servant”,   

Literally: the servant charged with the care of horses, which designated a servant who tended the horses.  The word then took two different meanings, designating the craftsman responsible for shoeing horses, and also the officer in charge of the horses. The word “farrier” was created to distinguish these two trades.

Bernard Gilardi

Paintings by Bernard Gilardi, Self-Taught Magical Realist Artist

When Bernard Gilardi died in 2008 at the age of 88 he had made nearly four hundred oil paintings. The fruits of a more than forty-year effort, these works were tucked away in the basement studio of his Milwaukee home, neatly stacked amongst files of preliminary sketches and the magazine and newspaper cuttings from which he drew inspiration.

During his lifetime Gilardi hadn’t publicly exhibited any of his work. Ironically, it was Gilardi’s funeral that eventually brought his paintings out of the basement. A family friend attending the funeral at the Gilardi home saw his studio and told daughters Dee and Mary they should show their father’s work. This suggestion prompted the sisters to take photographs of a few paintings and send them to various galleries in the Milwaukee area.

Debra Brehmer, director of Milwaukee’s Portrait Society, was one of those who received the photographs. A contemporary art gallery, Portrait Society showcases both current and historic artists who work in portraiture. Brehmer called to inquire about the paintings immediately after looking at them. Soon she and artist Richard Knight, her assistant for the excursion, were descending into Gilardi’s basement studio and excitedly uncovering painting after painting. “We were down there with our mouths open,” says Brehmer. The two spent months in Gilardi’s basement studio, cataloging and photographing his paintings.

According to Brehmer, Gilardi is a rare example of a self-taught artist who, painting in his spare time, crafted not only a prolific amount of work—more than some professional artists—but work whose style and subject matter evolved over time. It’s even more incredible when one considers that he had no support group or critical audience from which he received feedback. His devout Catholic family mostly ignored his painting—to them it was simply “Bernard’s pastime”—or found the figures and faces he painted a bit too strange for contemplation.

Douglas Bourgeois

Douglas Bourgeois, “Saint Anthony Appears to Tony”, Oil on Panel, 1989

Douglas Bourgeois is an American sculptor and figurative painter who was born in 1951 at Gonzales, Louisiana and grew up in St. Amant, Louisiana. He received a BFA from Louisiana State University in 1974.

Douglas Bourgeois’s transcendent, fantastical images of pop icons as religious icons, set against southern Louisiana scenery, are inspired by his rural life and his homages to what and who inspires him. The lush, but flattened foliage of Henri Rousseau and the detailed, surrealist portraits of Frida Kahlo are clear artistic influences in Bourgeois’s work.

Jimmy Scott, “I’ll Be Around”

Jimmy Scott, “I’ll Be Around”

“This man is all about feeling. He defined what ‘soul’ is all about in singing long before anyone was using that word!”- Ray Charles

He first rose to prominence as “Little Jimmy Scott” in the Lionel Hampton Band when he sang lead on the late 1940s hit “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, recorded in December 1949, and which became a top ten R&B hit in 1950. Credit on the label, however, went to “Lionel Hampton and vocalists”, so the singer’s name did not appear on any of the songs.

This omission of credit was not only a slight to Scott’s talent but a big blow to his career. A similar professional insult occurred several years later when his vocal on “Embraceable You” with Charlie Parker, on the album One Night in Birdland, was credited to female vocalist Chubby Newsome.

Lionel Hampton gave him the stage name of “Little Jimmy Scott” because he looked so young, and was short and of slight build. However, it was his extraordinary phrasing and romantic feeling that made him a favorite singer of fellow artists such as Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Frankie Valli, Dinah Washington and Nancy Wilson.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)