Abstraction & Jazz

Song - Take Five by Dave Brubeck

Earlier this week I took a workshop in Orinda from Sandy Ostrau. She is an incredible artist from Palo Alto. 

Sandy painting a figure

As I seem to have hit a plateau with my painting and I needed to shake things up a little.

So I have been thinking lately that I would like to paint a little more abstractly and more impressionistically instead of being so "fussy".  You know the fussy thing I mean? It's when you paint everything down to the last minutiae so the viewer doesn't need to think about much.

Sandy's landscape demo

But when you paint more abstractly, the viewer knows it's a landscape or a figure but it is done in such rich colors and lovely form that the viewer becomes a participant.

One of my favorite figuratives of Sandy's done from the rendering below

Pretty amazing, huh?


Sandy had asked us to bring along several painted canvases that we would then paint over. I have lots of those!!!

Unfortunately, I don't have a "before" photo to share but trust me.....this was rendered fairly realistically but just didn't knock my socks off. But now it sings....not like Sandy's but hey.....it was my first attempt!

So at lunch we got to talking about how a lot of people just don't "get it", meaning abstract work.  People walk by and say "Oh my kid could do that!"  But amazingly it is difficult to break down all of the components into large, strong shapes!

I compared it to Jazz.  There is the kind of jazz that is melodic and you kind of know what's coming next.  But there are other kinds that I have trouble following.  I think abstract painting is kind of like that.  Some abstracts will blow your mind because you can't seem to get it (and maybe you are not supposed to!) and others you can follow and recognize as a landscape or a figure.  Somehow that feels a little more settling to me. 

Love this one of Sandy's as well!

It was a great workshop and I actually had fun playing with my paint!


Please check out Sandy's work here - www.sandyostrau.com

 
 "Ah, swing, well, we used to call it syncopation, then they called it ragtime, then blues, then jazz.  Now, it's swing.  White folks - you'all sho is a mess!"  --Louis Armstrong talking with Bing Crosby

de Young and de Old

Om - Skyspace

Sunday a friend and I went to the Diebenkorn exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.  Richard Diebenkorn's painting style is not really my taste but I do appreciate his style. Most of his work was done in Berkeley in the 50's & 60's.

It has a lot of great energy, color and form.  Mostly I enjoy the idea that he painted exactly how he wanted to paint without caring what others thought.   

Seawall

Two of my favorite pieces were "Sleeping Woman" and "Untitled (Still Life with Iris)".

It must of appealed to some people though because Berkeley #5 was auctioned off by Christie's for over $6 million dollars!

Berkeley #5

After enjoying the show, we had lunch at the Museum Cafe and my friend, Melinda told me about this outdoor "bunker" that was really interesting and meditative.  Sounded claustrophobic to me but decided to give it a try.

We walked to the back of the garden, along a bamboo path and around the outside of a dome with high walls on both sides.  When you reached the back of the dome there was a open door and an open circular sky space with benches around the sides.  It sounds kinda weird but it was very Zen like.  So we sat with several other people on the benches and watched the sky float by.

It made me feel like a kid laying in the grass, having nothing to do but watch the clouds float by.  Remember when we had time to do such things?

Centered in the floor was this beautiful rough-hewn stone.

 

When I returned home, I Googled the space and found out that it was created by a California artist
James Turrell and is called a "Skyspace".

Just a few minutes of feeling like a kid has such a "lightening" affect on me.

Why don't we do kid-like things more often?


 "Abstract literally means to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract... a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts."-- Richard Diebenkorn