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.

Painting Daniel Greene & Life in the Rockport Art Colony '79/'80 (Flashback Fridays #3 )

Watching Dan Greene teach, demonstrate, lecture and share day after day and week after week back in 1979 and 1980 was a rich education.  I observed his demos, listened to his lectures as well as each item he would share with us as his students. I also observed him as a subject for painting.  I looked at his gestures, poses and expressions and could not help but want to paint this man I learned so much from and respected as a gentleman. 

The first time I painted him was on a handmade board made by someone in NYC that has since passed away. He  made handmade boards from Museum board and he made them for Dan as well as the Wyeth's and other famous artists. The boards were beautiful and held a great deal of pastel and were made in very large sizes. I remember using a 40 x 60 in. custom board for a pastel portrait commissioned by the late Nancy Smedberg from Cheshire, CT of her and her two children. The pastel board man died with his secrets for making his special boards.

Anyway I had a small  10 x 12 in. piece of this fabulous board and created a pastel painting of Dan Greene in front of his easel in his typical theatrical stance and the entire Gloucester, MA studio in the background! I framed it and brought it to show Dan one day and he took it away and came back and said he wanted to swap paintings and would like I like the demo pastel he did of my son Adam for the painting I did of him. Yes!  I certainly would swap with Daniel Greene. So my little pastel painting of Dan is in his private collection and has been for many years now. Here is a small photo of it midway in it's creation.

I then proceeded to create another pastel of him, larger and more dramatic, on a handmade paper I purchased at New York Central Art Supply in NYC. I used an image of him after visiting his NYC apartment when picking up pastel surfaces. Here it is below....

This pastel is about 24 x 30 inches. It is very open and not tightly rendered but the color in the background is a favorite of Dan's. It is monastral green and it is a pigment we used when Dan taught us how to make our own pastels from scratch. I worked diligently on making purples, golds, darks and of course this incredible monastral green! Back then all of these colors were non existent in most pastel brands and there was a great need for these. So I had these little treasure boxes full of these rare colors I made. After a weekend of seriously making pastels at my own studio, my lungs were caving in and I realized how dangerous all of this could be. Thankfully today, we can  select and purchase large assortments of darks, golds, purples, and intense pigments. 

I remember one time Dan actually used chimney soot to create a good dark black pastel! Honestly I don't know why we call these wonderful pigments "pastels"  That implies they are light in color and value. Instead, I think they should be called "Pigments" and we should be "Pigment painting"

The young girl  in the photos below is Lisa Sue Smedberg.  I had painted her in a family's commissioned portrait and also a couple of other times as she gladly modeled for me, spent time with me and even visited me for a few days in Gloucester when I was studying. I was and am very fond of Lisa Sue. She visited me recently just before her beloved mother Nancy died. She grew into a gorgeous woman who works in the art field by the way.

Here is the pastel portrait commissioned back in 1979 of the Smedberg family, all from sittings! 40 X 60 in. and on that special custom made pastel board .

Lisa Sue resting and modeling for me 1980

Oil Painting of young Lisa Sue. How I loved to paint this young girl. She was delightful. After all I had three rugged boys, this was a change of pace. I always seemed to have an extra young girl with me, either art student, model or surrogate daughter!

Below is Lisa Sue posing with Daniel Greene 

I posed a second time for one of Daniel Greene's Oil Demonstrations and it was a profile of me. I never found my profile very interesting but he did. It is located on the right side of the photo above (next to Lisa Sue) and was very colorful I remember. 

Now I must tell you the story of the fisherman model on the left side of the above photo with the hood on. He had bright red hair with a large red beard and Dan of course found his looks intriguing and used him for a demo. It was spectacular and the fisherman wanted to buy the portrait. He couldn't afford the full price so Dan arranged to have a huge load of fresh fish delivered to my place! He asked if I would be willing to have a fish fry because he knew I not only liked to cook but knew I could pull this thing off! So I got busy inviting some other artists I knew in the area as well as whoever was renting out space in the cottage I had for the summer classes. What a group!

Top photo (below) shows a young hungry Charles Movalli in the center, Dan carefully choosing his cuisine, behind him a doctor who took classes, on the far left my son Aaron who will eat any fish anytime and out of the photo was artist David Hatfield, and the late artist and my dear friend Michael Stoffa! 

I think this happened to be a time when Greene, Movalli and Stoffa were all single and never refused a good meal!

Bottom photo is the well known Cape Ann painter and writer Charles Movalli thoroughly enjoying the local catch of the day and at far left is Joel Englehardt who was a local stained glass artist and close friend of the late artist Zygmond Jankowski who later became a very close friend of Charles Movalli.

Portrait of Joel Englehardt 1980

I remember one time someone caught some large squid and Joel and I decided we should cook them up, you know, calamari! We did not however know how to cut it up for use so we asked our "resident art student doctor" to help us out with it. It was like real surgery to get this squid dissected for the kitchen. It did end up a very good meal but we all laughed so much in the progress.

The doctor rented a room in my cottage for two weeks to study with Dan. He wanted to stay another week but I told him I had no more room. My cottage was bustling with artists, great art talk, good food and it was the happening place that summer. So I told Doc that I could offer him a cot in the hallway, and by God he took it! I rented a hallway!

FLASHBACK FRIDAYS #1 January 6, 2012

FLASHBACK FRIDAYS #1 (January 6, 2012)

The Best Art Career Decision I Ever Made
http://claudiapostartist.blogspot.com/
www.claudiapost1@hotmail.com

 

1979,  Here we are from left to right Jason Mathew Freitas, my youngest son who died in 1988 at the age of 20 years, my middle son Aaron Christopher Freitas, me and Mrs. Reilly and my eldest son Adam Garret Freitas.

I have been remembering and telling stories about my life as an artist and the experiences I have had both in the art field and as a woman artist for some time now. When others hear my stories and hear about the artists and people I have known, they become seriously interested, some learn what to do or what not to do and find humor in them. My experiences can inspire, teach, give hope and direction, stir emotions of anger, joy, love, and share wisdom.

Working in my studio 2011

I will be celebrating my 67^th birthday next week on January 11, 2012 and with all of those years behind me, it is a difficult decision  to know just where to start. I have decided to start almost smack dab in the middle of my life when I was 34 years old, back in 1979. I have been an “artist” all of my life. It has not been just a vocation, job or profession. It has been a lifestyle chosen either consciously or unconsciously as I found myself with both the gift I was given (by God I believe) and the consistent desire to draw, paint, observe and feel emotionally about things I saw and experienced as I grew from childhood to adult. I will go back to those times in my weekly Flashback Fridays but for now I will begin at a place where I was divorced and single mother of three sons and supported us all solely on my art. Yes, that's right on my art. I taught, painted, executed portrait commissions, demonstrated my abilities, conducted workshops (which were not popular back then!) and created my living as I went along. I did not even have a brother , so raising three sons alone was the challenge of my lifetime, believe me. There was no child support back then that was being enforced and the state did not chase down the support in our fair state of Connecticut or out of the state as they now enforce it  today. So I was left to my own resourcefulness. I remember the divorce judge having no problem in pronouncing me as sole parent and provider but then he had to nerve to say “now go out and get a real job, not as an artist!” Well that was not the thing to tell me, I had to prove him wrong. I was spunky, strong minded and determined to do things my way.

I proceed to build up an art school which I called “Post Academy of Fine Art” located in Cheshire, CT where I raised my boys. It took time and many trials and errors and lots of hard work to get to the point of owning a huge old house in the town that could be a place for us to live as well as an entire floor for an art school with studios, office, supply room etc etc. I worked daily to make this happen. The town knew me and supported me in many ways  enabling me to be self sufficient and independent with my children. Back then I had to go to a woman's adviser at the local bank to apply for a mortgage. Can you imagine the looks on their faces when I said “ I am self employed, an artist and a woman alone applying for this mortgage.” The bank even had me submit a large portfolio of my work and a resume to secure this for me. Impossible today!

This school of mine had classes going 7 days a week and I hired 5 artists other than myself to teach classes. I had two lovely women who were my students who worked the office and the supply room for me. My sons were raised with artists and art students coming and going and saw the world slightly different than their classmates and their families. I remember when my son Adam was just about in third grade and I heard him talking to his buddy outside my window. His friend asked” What does your mother do, does she work?” He replied, “ No she doesn't work, she does draws and paints all day!”

After operating this art school for a few years, it grew so much that an accountant/adviser told me that I had to make a decision either to incorporate or dissolve ( I had grown too fast and too big ). I sat and cried. I did not want to run a large art school and I wanted to paint! I was teaching others to draw and paint but there was little time for me to work, grow and increase my own skills.

 My mother who was a great porcelain artist in her own right sat with me and comforted me and asked me what it was I really wanted to do? She always taught me that if there was a will, there would be a way! I just needed to figure things out for myself and for our little family.

I told my mother there was one artist I thought I needed to study with and that his work moved me and inspired me.

This artist was Daniel Greene. He was one of the original serious pastelists of our time. He had a book that I looked at over and over again and his process of drawing from the inside out to achieve a likeness was just like what I naturally did all of my life. I wanted and needed to find a way to make this happen. I needed to keep increasing my skills and better myself to continue earning the finances I needed to take care of us. My mom listened to me through all of my tears and broken emotional words. She said “ OK, how can you do this?”

Yes it is black and white photography and the kind that needs developing! This is Dan when the cigarette was almost as important as his pastel.


The first thing I did was write a letter to Daniel Greene. I heard that he was going to begin teaching serious students in Gloucester, MA for an entire summer. He had always taught at the Art Students League in NYC and I knew that would be an impossibility for me. However, I did have friends on Cape Ann Island where Rockport, Gloucester, and Annisquam are located and I could find a way to arrange something there. I remember writing this awkward letter to Daniel Green explaining that I only had enough money for 2 weeks of his classes but wanted to stay for the entire summer to benefit from his teaching. I told him I was a single parent of three boys 10, 11 and 12 and I was the sole supporter of my family. I don't know why I told him that other than I wanted to let him know just how serious I was as a woman artist and that I would have to sacrifice in order to make this happen.  I got a letter back from him that said to come and take classes and all will work out. I was so excited and hopeful and hearing from Dan in person was a sign for me. Now I had to figure out just what to do to close down my school for the summer, find a way to have each son taken care of for a month. I arranged a  revolving schedule of caretakers for them. My mom took one son, my sister and brother in law took one son and I took one son with me to Gloucester. I rented a little apartment for us in an area with a cute seaside neighborhood above a young family with a little boy and a huge dog.  The tricky part of this venture was that I had to rent out a floor of my house to pay my mortgage in CT and figure out what to do with our family pets.

We had three cats and a big Irish Setter (with my color hair) named “Mrs. Reilly”  Two cats summered at my mother's house and a cat and Mrs. Reilly came up to Gloucester with me. This was no easy feat as I packed my old station wagon with art supplies for the summer, my son and my clothing and personal things and two adequately sedated animals that were like dead weight  with their eye lids swollen shut on the 3 ½ hour drive to our summer destination and my 12 weeks of art study. The wagon was so over packed that I could only see the lower half of my tires. Off we went and life for me was never the same again. One of the best decisions I made!

Meeting Dan Greene for the first time was awesome for me. His seriousness, his discipline and his patience and skill was just what I needed. I know that he respected me for what I was doing and sacrificing to study there. I respected him for that.

I loved Dan's posture and his method of measuring and making evaluations with arm outstretched.

Here is the historical old brownstone on Pleasant St. and off Main St. in Gloucester that Dan Greene first held his summer classes in.  We loved to go on the roof for the views of the ocean, the fishing boats and the fragrances of the sea and Gorton's fishery! Sadly the church in the background burned down one day while we were in class and it was devastating to watch.

On the rooftop it is Tom Dillon and I (at top ) and Jakki Kouffman and I (below).

Dan's monitors from NYC,  Jakki Kouffman and Tom Dillon became my friends and it put a smile on my face to show them Cape Anne and the casual seaport lifestyle there. Unlike monitoring at the league in NYC, the skies, seas, ships and landscapes did not stay still as the subjects did in the portrait and figure studio. It was funny the first time I brought Tom and Jakki outdoors to Lanesville (a favorite location for my old friend, the late Michael Stoffa)  to paint boats floating at the dock and the owners moved their vessels and the subjects of our paintings were gone from view! The looks on their faces were priceless. How dare they move the models! Jakki and Tom were outstanding painters. Tom was a skillful oil painter and Jakki a one of a kind pastelist. She was and still is inventive and original. She is located now in the South West and her website is http://www.jakkikouffman.com/  I did some nice portraits of each of them when they each modeled for Dan's classes.

I loved to get up early in the morning go down Main St. and get a big loaf of homemade Italian bread fresh from the oven (at Virgilios) with some butter and coffee and show up for class at 8:30 to be ready to work at the easel by 9 am all day until 4pm. What a treat to spend that kind of time with a model, looking, seeing, feeling and making decisions and finding solutions for proportions, compositions, drawing lines, values and of course the one thing I needed most was to finally see Color as only I could!

I had arrived finally at the place I should be to learn what I knew I needed to know !

1979, Here we are Daniel Greene and me Claudia Post, now master pastelist and portrait painter. I knew after 12 weeks, painting in pastels, that I had to return the next year to paint in oils and study more.

Dan's classes were exciting. Sometimes as many at 45 students in his class. The anticipation of getting a good spot at an easel for a two week posing period was stressful. Sometimes if you name began at the beginning of the alphabet you chose your view of the model first. Sometimes the end of the alphabet. The students came from all over the United States and I met some good friends there. I knew if I returned the following year I would rent a house and rent out rooms to students coming in. Dan supported me and directed all inquiries to me first, especially if they needed reasonable accommodations. Oh Lord, my place was booked solid and sometimes I accidentally overbooked and Mrs. Reilly and I slept on the sofa!


more stories to come next Flashback Friday #2

The Maple & Main Holiday Exhibit

 

Claudia Post, Jan Blencowe, Bivenne Staiger, Ishita Bandyo at the opening of the Holiday Exhibit, Maple & Main Gallery, Chester, CT

As part owner of Maple & Main I'm delighted to report that we had a wonderful full house with over 300 guests and we sold 4 pieces of art including my own pastel,  Good Harbor Beach

My lastest piece Figure with Reflections, 38x48, pastel  is also in the Maple and Main Holiday Exhibit

Along with....

Still Life with Silk Cloth, oil, 20x24

The Western Wall, Jerusalem, pastel

Peppers on Emerald, oil

If you're in the area please be sure to stop in and see the show or visit the Maple & Main Website.;