Studio Drift

Learn the Secrets of How to Create These Atmospheric, Geometric Landscape Paintings

January 24, 2024 (updated January 24, 2024) Published by artistvenu

Polish artist Luiza Niechoda infuses her expressive landscape paintings with a style that is uniquely her own. Her moody, atmospheric work mixes realism with geometric abstraction for an impressive result. Luckily, for students of My Modern Met Academy, Niechoda is happy to share the techniques she uses to create these pixelated landscapes.

In her Acrylic Painting Masterclass, students will not only learn how to paint her signature crisp edges, but they’ll also discover how she works with a limited color palette to great effect. As an artist, she is successful in mixing and matching hues due to her knowledge of color theory and the use of a hue matrix. By helping other artists understand her creative process, she’s also allowing them to expand their own creativity.

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The Slow Joy of James Siena’s Intricate Compositions

January 22, 2024 (updated January 22, 2024) Published by artistvenu

I was surprised how soon James Siena had his second exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery, following his first in late 2022. When I learned that the exhibition was devoted to Siena’s drawings, I surmised that it was either a survey or a look at a little-documented period in the artist’s career. I was wrong.

All of the show’s 31 drawings (made between 2022 and 2023) are procedural compositions in which the artist responds to the first line or band he makes in pencil, usually echoing it. However, Siena doesn’t stop there, as he once did. He goes back into the work and with another material does something to the negative spaces or the interior of the bands and shapes, resulting in dry lines and a liquid interior. None of the works are variations. He uses two or more materials in each, including graphite, charcoal, crayon, gouache, ink, and watercolor. The color of the paper becomes part of the composition in these visually dense works that I kept disassembling, as I tried to discern how the drawing was made.

Featured image: James Siena, “Ruckle” (2023), watercolor and gouache on paper, paper dimensions: 25 x 19 3/4 inches

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Loie Hollowell’s New Move From Abstraction to Realism Is Not a One-Way Journey

January 19, 2024 (updated January 19, 2024) Published by artistvenu

In the spring of 2020, Loie Hollowell gave birth, at home, in water, to her second child. The experience put the 40-year-old, California-born painter in touch with her body like never before and left her reconsidering the veil of abstraction that had, to that point, blurred the female forms depicted in her work.

Maybe “reconsidering” is too passive a word. “I wanted to make my paintings pregnant. I wanted to impregnate this masculine rectangle with full engorged breasts and pregnant bellies as a mothering act,” Hollowell recalled while munching—a little ironically—on a handful of nuts. She was sitting shoeless on a corner couch in her Queens, New York studio. The space is deceptively large and labyrinthian, but cozy—warmed in all sorts of little ways by hints of home life that have snuck in. An after-school project by one of Hollowell’s two kids is splayed out nearby; so is Felix, a rescue cat who purrs and preens as if under the impression that this journalist was there to interview him.

Featured image: Loie Hollowell, Standing in yellow, pink and blue (2019). Photo: Melissa Goodwin and Robyn Caspare. of Courtesy Pace Gallery.

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How Blue Paper Revolutionized the Art of Drawing

January 15, 2024 (updated January 15, 2024) Published by artistvenu

Blue paper has a niche but expansive part to play in art history. Originally made through a process of upcycling discarded blue rags (cenci neri or stracci tinti) into pulp, blue paper broke onto the art scene as a new material in northern Italy at the end of the 14th century. The forthcoming catalogue Drawing on Blue: European Drawings on Blue Paper, 1400s–1700s (Getty Publications, 2024) traces the introduction and adoption of blue paper as a drawing medium throughout Europe over the course of several centuries, presenting roughly 100 works united by its use.

Edited by Edina Adam and Michelle Sullivan — an assistant curator and associate conservator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, respectively — the book was created to accompany an exhibition opening at the institution later this month, which will explore the methodology of making blue paper, its dissemination throughout the art world during the Renaissance, and techniques developed by various artists to work with this new and exciting material.

Featured image: Jean-Baptiste Oudry, “Landscape with a Staircase and a Balustrade” (c. 1744–47), black and white chalks with white opaque watercolor, pen and ink framing on the edge son blue paper, 12 5/8 x 20 5/8 inches

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Mutable Skies and Colorful Landscapes Come To Life in Bold Acrylic Paintings

January 9, 2024 (updated January 9, 2024) Published by artistvenu

Whether it is a clear blue horizon or a scarlet red sunset, the sky can take on a range of appearances. Minnesota-based artist James Musil captures the mutable phases of the sky with his distinctly painterly style. Bold blocks of color are combined with various textures to fill each skyline, imbuing the landscapes below with vibrant emotions.

Artist James Musil captures the phases of the sky in his acrylic paintings.

Musil began his career in technology, and did not formally pursue painting until he picked up a brush again in 2016. Since then, he has quickly filled out his portfolio, producing an average of one to two paintings per week. Since acrylic is a fast-drying paint, he is able to keep to this rigorous schedule. This medium also helps Musil add numerous layers to his pieces, visually building both depth and dynamism.

While the sky is frequently the focus, Musil captures a range of landscapes. This includes peaceful views by the lake, lush meadows, as well as dry and arid deserts. Even when the type of nature changes, Musil’s painterly style finds a way to make the environment his own. “A lot of my technique relies on the idea of reducing information down to just what is necessary,” he explains. As a result, sweeping brushstrokes and planes of color help Musil find the essence of each place.

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7 Questions for Lorenzo Vigas on the Lasting Legacy of His Father, Pioneering Venezuelan Modernist Oswaldo Vigas

January 6, 2024 (updated January 6, 2024) Published by artistvenu

This year, Hong Kong-based Kwai Fung Hin is presenting “Oswaldo Vigas: Return, Always Return,” an exhibition marking the first solo exhibition in Asia of the renown Venezuelan artist. Produced in collaboration with the Oswaldo Vigas Foundation, the show provides an overarching look at the influential artist’s life and practice that has come to be recognized as a defining moment in the development and proliferation of Latin American Modernism. The exhibition also coincides with the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth and engages with the broadening attention being given to 20th-century Latin American art—specifically within the context of Asia.

On view through January 31, 2024, the exhibition traces the development of the artist’s work, including how he was influenced and inspired by time spent in Europe amid the rise of the avant-garde, as well as by African and early South American artistic practices.

The preservation and promotion of Vigas’s legacy has been the core mission of the Oswaldo Vigas Foundation, which is chaired by the late artist’s own son, Lorenzo Vigas, an award-winning director and screenwriter. He won the Golden Lion at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival in 2015, and subsequently produced El vendedor de orquídeas (The Orchid Seller) (2016), a feature length documentary about his father.

Featured image: Oswaldo Vigas, Composición en Gris (Composition in Grey) (1954). Courtesy of the Oswaldo Vigas Foundation and Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery.

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How Artist Katharina Grosse ‘Accelerates and Compresses Time’ in Her Color-Filled Museum Interventions

January 5, 2024 (updated January 5, 2024) Published by artistvenu

Amid the vaulted ceilings and marble floors of the interior of Vienna’s Albertina Museum, slashes of vibrant color in every possible hue explode across the monochrome white walls. The chromatic intervention is courtesy of artist Katharina Grosse, whose contemporary artworks push the boundaries of form— collapsing structures, traversing corners and edges, spilling from wall to floor in exuberant motion. Wielding a compressorized airbrush allows the artist to achieve unparalleled force and dynamism, electrifying the staid white cube.

In an exclusive interview filmed as part of Art21’s Extended Play series back in 2015, Grosse explained the genesis of her practice, which has vaunted her to become one of the most respected artists of the 21st century.

“Interestingly enough,” the artist said wryly, “color is an element in painting that has always been discussed… as the female, less stable, less clear, and not so intelligent element… whereas the concept—the line, the drawing—is more the male, the clear, the progressive, and intelligent part of the artwork.” Of course, Grosse utilizes color to create a concept, as she noted, “in relationship to the crystallized and built and materialized world that is part of what I do when I paint in space.”

Featured image: Installation view, “Katharina Grosse: Why Three Tones Do Not Form a Triangle.” Photo: Sandro E.E. Zanzinger Photographie, courtesy of the Albertina Museum.

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The Year in Africa: Art Scene Grows Dramatically in Lagos, Accra, and Other Hubs

January 4, 2024 (updated January 4, 2024) Published by artistvenu

Prices at auctions this year have been shaky, leading to questions about whether there is a market slowdown, but that didn’t stop Julie Mehretu from setting and resetting records.

In October, the Ethiopian-born, US-based painter set a new record for an artist born in Africa when an untitled work from 2021 sold for $9.32 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. It beat the previous record, set by South African artist Marlene Dumas’s The Visitor (1995) in 2008, when it sold for $6.33 million at Sotheby’s London. Then, in November, Mehretu broke her record with a new one: her 2008 work Walkers With the Dawn and the Morning (2008) sold for $10.7 million at Sotheby’s New York.

Mehretu’s records were a sign that the international market for African art was hot this year. That was also evident in October at Sotheby’s London when British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s auction record was reset by her painting Six Birds in the Bush (2015), which sold for $3.6 million—more than $1 million above its estimate.

The spotlight builds on the momentum gained in 2022. A 2023 report by the insurance company Hiscox revealed that Ivory Coast–born Abdoulaye “Aboudia” Diarrassouba was the top-selling artist in 2022, with 75 works sold at auction, beating out Damien Hirst. And an Artprice report issued in March stated that “contemporary African art has become a staple element of the global art market,” with top auction houses working to meet the demand. Hiscox estimated that $63 million was spent on works by artists born in Africa in 2022, compared to $47 million the previous year.

Featured image: El Anatsui’s commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. PHOTO MIKE KEMP/IN PICTURES VIA GETTY IMAGES

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Year in Review: How Community Museums Continue to Serve as Models for Local Engagement

January 4, 2024 (updated January 4, 2024) Published by artistvenu

Featured image: Community leaders Juana Campos and Carmen Torruella-Quander at the 1994 exhibition “Black Mosaic: Community, Race, and Ethnicity Among Black Immigrants in Washington, D.C.,” at Anacostia Community Museum. PHOTO HAROLD DORWIN/ANACOSTIA COMMUNITY MUSEUM ARCHIVES, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

In 2022, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a membership association that creates ethical standards for museums, adopted a definition for museums that such institutions should “operat[e] ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities,” hewing closely to a concept French historian Hugues de Varine, a former ICOM director, proposed decades ago: that at the center of a museum lies “not things, but people.”

A year later, mainstream museums are still grappling with this shift, as they have indeed historically prioritized the study, display, and preservation of objects in their care, and not the communities that surround them. Exceptions to these are community museums, which arose from a desire for museums to put people and local communities first, which can take the form of building collections or organizing exhibitions together.

In the US, the foundations of these museums date back to the late 1960s, when three now prominent community museums—the Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C., (in 1967), the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle (1967), and El Museo del Barrio in New York (1969)—were founded as dedicated spaces for communities marginalized by mainstream institutions in their respective cities.

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Floral Designer Lindsey Taylor on Finding Inspiration in Art and Nature

January 2, 2024 (updated January 2, 2024) Published by artistvenu

Winter – Seasons have a way of yielding to the next just when I seem to need it. Some people like to hold on to summer and lament the coming of fall and winter. I’m not that person. I’m always ready for the change, and winter may be the most welcome after a busy growing season. Solitude and a sense of repose permeate, and a blanket of snow covering the landscape and garden that have performed to their fullest is a relaxing sight.

Since I know it won’t last, that spring will come again, winter offers its own beauty. I embrace it. On a sunny winter day, the light can be so clear and sparkly, crisply illuminating the world. On a gray day, the lines of trees against the sky are like nature’s pencil drawings. Deciduous oaks, beeches, hornbeams, and some witch hazel do their best to hold on to their crunchy, taupe-y leaves, withering while still on the stem (a phenomenon called marcescence), providing an earthy tone against all the neutrals.

Featured image: Lindsey Taylor, author of Art in Flower: Finding Inspiration in Art and Nature, gathering her materials. Photo: Ngoc Minh Ngo.

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