Uglow and The Diagonal

                                                      The Diagonal Homage to Uglow by Nancy Blum
I recently have found (online see Painting Perceptions) the art of Euan Uglow.  He's probably well know to many artists -- especially British, and has influenced the work of figurative and still life artists.   He used devices to measure and order the canvas and felt it was important to leave those lines and angles in the painting.  Models posed for long periods of time, and even the fruit or vegetables had to stay in place to accurately be painted.  The changes in the fruit would be painted right over the original painting.

My small painting, on the other hand, was painted just over a period of a couple of days.  This was long enough for my beautiful carrots to undergo quite an aging process.  Not having a model on hand, I had to make do with the carrots and a toy chair I came across.  The carrots looked quite like legs to me...

So here is Uglow's Diagonal:

March Still Life

Latest Still Life

Less is More

From Arcadia Gallery (NY)'s blog Less is More
two wonderful artists,

Malcolm T. Liepke  

and

Aron Wiesenfeld

                    Here are two recent paintings inspired by a model session:

Once Upon an Evening

Here's another figurative painting that I began at a recent model session:

Palette Knife Painting

I've enjoyed painting with some new palette knives.  In this painting I painted first with brushes and then combined brushes and palette knife work in the final (?) stages.   One of the nice features of palette knife painting is their ease of cleaning.

Children's Watercolor Portraits and Oil revision

I'm working on a new portrait:  the family has the wonderful tradition of having the children painted when they are ten years old.  It's a lovely thing to pass on to generations and to cherish the family connection.   Probably ten is a perfect time for a portrait, before children are too grown up.   This beautiful young lady was a pleasure to get to know

Oil Portrait Painting

I've been working on a portrait of the parents of the children I posted last time:

Once again the colors didn't translate too well. 

An interesting article recently in the Atlanta paper, taken from the NY Times, on using fake heads and/or bodies in print ads.  A scientific term "uncanny valley" theory applies to this with regard to using unreal faces:  "People will tolerate only so much artificial human likeness before attraction turns into revulsion.  If they added a super realistic but not-real face, they'd become uncanny, and therefore frightening, eerie and creepy."   I wonder if this applies to how people view art.  Are hyper-realistic faces viewed as eerie?  What about other alterations and abstractions?