Part One: The Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists presents A Daniel Greene Festival 2012

After attending another excellent Weekend Symposium given by CSOPA, (The Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists),I thought that I should blog about the fine experience and to commend the President and Founder of the Society, Jeanine Jackson, CSOPA CoChairs Deborah Howland Murray and Nancy Stember, the Event Chairs, Patricia Boes and Joel Spector and the many others who put this event together and volunteered for one job or another.

For those artists interested in Portraiture, it is a must to attend an event like this. It is a marathon of talks, lectures, demonstrations, and visits by significant members of the art community in this state as well as throughout the United States. Jeanine Jackson succeeded in presenting to the Portrait Community a most interesting and thought provoking look into the portrait and the portrait painter.

For those of you who missed this great weekend I would like to recap some of the activities and events that I benefited the most from.

The Weekend began with a  portrait exhibition juried by Artist Steven Assael , known for his contemporary realism and figurative work. The opening reception was on Friday Feb. 3, 2012 and began only after a fine "Paint off Trio Demo" that took place at 4:30 by artists Joel Spector, William Nathans, and Jesus Emmanuel Villarreal.

Each stood at their easels painting the same model from different angles in the corridor of the UCONN Campus just outside of the main exhibition called "Faces of Winter 2012". Artists came early to watch the artists demonstrate and to kick off the Opening of the Portrait Exhibition which began at 6pm. Many wore red or at least a bit of red for the occasion being so close to Valentine's Day.

Each artist painted in their own style, using their own unique palette and all painted in oil here. One artist on the right used a pochade box style easel that has a palette that drops down right in front of the artist almost at a right angle so that you can look at your paint and mixing right below the painting you are working on. Many of the artists in the crowd came from all over our state of CT. as well as several other states. Most artists were older with a great deal of experience, but there were some young talents there in attendance as well. The portrait demos were sold to the highest bidder when the working time finished.

 The show was hung by Artists Sandra Wakeen and Diane Aeschliman and was well attended. The far wall was hung with paintings by faculty members of CSOPA chosen by Ms. Jackson for their noted accomplishments as instructors and painters. The middle of the faculty wall hung a beautiful intense oil painting of two young women by Daniel Greene, who was chosen to receive a lifetime achievement award that weekend. The oil painting on the right side of the wall of a young woman in intense blue with her hands folded was painted by Dan's talented wife and artist Wendy Caporale. I couldn't keep my eyes off of these two paintings. They sang to me!

At the opening reception of the show I met "Facebook Artist Friend" Alan Dingman and his lovely wife. In the photo above, me, Alan's wife and my artist/friend Jan Blencowe  who came down for the opening and brought with her two of my young talented atelier students.

This is Artist and Pastelist Alain Picard from CT. with me, my student Anna, artist/friend Jan and her daughter and my fine atelier student Shannon Blencowe.

These were this years award winners for the "Faces of Winter 2012" Exhibition and you can find me in there back row on left in back. I painted Dan Greene's portrait in pastel for my entry into the show this year to pay my appreciation and respect to him as the artist who was most important in my career of over 45 yrs now. I did not have him to sit for the pastel portrait I did of him and found it necessary to paint it from a small snapshot I took just two years ago while he was at a portrait event. It was well received and most importantly by Dan himself.

This is my husband Daryl and I standing in front of my portrait of Daniel Greene called "The Mentor"

It was a thrill to stand in front of my pastel painting "The Mentor" and have Dan Greene right along side of me. One of my pastel paintings I painted of him years ago is in Dan's own private collection.

Part Two next week

" Lessons the art student and the artist must learn" -Flashback Friday #5

Pastel Painting called "Bird Wall" and in the process of painting this, I learned a very important lesson.

When studying with Daniel Greene in his large classes, art students felt a great deal of pressure on the first day of each two week period as it was the day to call off your name and or number (in a sort of lottery) in order to choose your easel . If you were fortunate enough to have a last name at the beginning or end of the alphabet, you were more apt to have a better selection of spaces or easels to choose from. There was a morning model for 3 hours and an afternoon model for 3 hours. Two different models  for 14 days total in the same pose. So basically two paintings of figure or portrait would be completed in two weeks. In my opinion, it was really necessary for an art student to have at least 2 weeks of study.

Some hot shots would come into the class so intent on working fast and showing what they could do already that they missed the point of the study. It was to take time, study what you were looking at and who you were looking at and to take each step of the proportioning, composing, drawing the likeness, massing in the darks, middle tones and lights and building up the warm and cool and ochre colors finishing this process somewhere around the 14th day on each art work. I was relieved that my commitment was for an entire season and I could take my time and learn as much as I could in the time given and the expertise of my teacher.

When your name would be called off to go and select your easel for this two week period of time, there would be so much anxiety about picking the most artistic position of the model and the best view possible. Yes, I was one of those who always had such a tenseness about choosing the right spot for the best painting possible! I learned so many lessons that first summer with this process. Shamelessly I will share with you two lessons learned by me.

One fine Monday morning about 45 anxious art students gathering in the third floor Gloucester Studio for the morning lottery and with all of them carrying boxes of pastels, oil painting boxes, canvas', brushes and pastel paper and boards, I noticed that almost all of the easels were taken by the time my name was called out . I was so upset and thoroughly convinced myself that I could not find one more spot in that studio that would suffice for me to succeed in the making of a painting. So I quietly took a vacant easel along the side of a wall and put it completely opposite of the entire class of 45 people.

I found a dead pheasant hanging on a wall in the place and thought to myself, poor me I will just paint a dead bird and Dan might notice I did not secure a good place in class.  I was upset, and felt badly about my position but I took out my pastels and set up my supplies for my drawing. The more I studied that pheasant the more that I saw. I saw it's shadows (all three of them) on the wall and also the warm and cool color differences within each of them. I put in the lines of the wood work on the wall and the wing span of the bird  so delicately flaring out in the air. By the third day, Dan finally walked over to me all alone working with my back to the rest of the class and I expected him to say something about my choice and ask me why? Instead, he calmly approached me with his methodical and orderly comments about the accuracy of my drawing and my ability to see and put down the triple shadows there and continued right down the line giving me a thorough and informative critique of my work. I had forgotten all about the easel I did not get in class for the posed model. I found beauty and life in something completely different and expressed it with discipline and skill and a good composition. Dan taught me lessons in art and in life over and over again and I learned so much about my attitudes and prejudgements and frustrations.

In those days, learning a lesson just once was never enough for me. I needed  to learn it 2, 3, 4, or even 5 times before it really made an impression on me.

Here is another time I was totally crushed to find myself without what I thought was a good view of our model. Here we had a full length nude model and I was given a totally back view of the model almost completely in shadow with hardly a glimpse of her face! I thought, How bad could this get? I begrudgingly set myself up at my easel with the uninspiring view of the model and began to draw and proportion out the figure from head to toe. Needless to say after the third day, studying my subject intensely I saw things I had never seen or observed before. I saw such an array of warm and cool colors within the dark shadows, I carefully drew her hands and feet with loving care and their delicacy put me into a state of mind beyond belief. I continued each day with enthusiasm and inspiration that grew from nothing.

To add to this story was the fact that my 12 or 13 yr old son Aaron was with me for that month of study and I signed him up for a "whale watching class" at the Gloucester's Whale Museum just a few blocks away from the studio. I tried to keep my son busy while I was working to keep him out of trouble and learning something. He went to the museum each day for two weeks and the finale was a real boat trip out in the ocean to see the whales!

One day at lunch time, he came to the studio to meet me and have lunch together and our figure model I had been working on each day emerged from the model's stand wearing nothing but her birthday suit and guess what? Our model was my son's whale watching teacher from the museum!! He didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to say but "Hi. I am Aaron's mother"

Aaron's trip on the high seas with my good camera to capture the whales jumping out of the waters turned out to be a sickening experience for him as he was very sea sick during his final exam at Whale Watching School!

This pastel figure painting was accepted into a national juried exhibition in upstate New York around 1980 and it never returned from the exhibition. It was stolen!

Anyone ever see this painting? If so please let me know. I would love it back.