Joan Baez, painter

  Joan Baez 1941-

by Joan Baez

Malala Yousafzai, 2017

Acrylic on Canvas, 30 × 24 in | 76.2 × 61 cm

Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums.

Born: January 9, 1941, Staten Island, New York

From the beginning, Joan Baez’ life’s work was mirrored in her music and now in her painting. At a point when it was neither safe nor fashionable, Joan put herself on the line countless times. She sang about freedom and Civil Rights everywhere, from the backs of flatbed trucks in Mississippi to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963. She withheld a portion of her income tax from the IRS to protest military spending in 1964, and participated in the birth of the Free Speech movement at UC Berkeley. A year later she co-founded the Institute For The Study Of Nonviolence near her home in Carmel Valley. She stood in the fields alongside Cesar Chavez and migrant farm workers striking for fair wages in 1966, and opposed capital punishment at San Quentin during a Christmas vigil.

2018 saw the first solo exhibition of Joan’s paintings presented in Mill Valley, CA. She called the exhibit “Mischief Makers” – portraits of risk-taking visionaries who have brought about social change through nonviolent action. The bulk of the collection was subsequently purchased by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and donated to Sonoma State University, where it will eventually be displayed at an envisioned new social justice learning center on campus.

Norah Nelson Gray

 

October in the Highlands (date unlisted) by Scottish artist of the Glasgow School, Norah Neilson Gray (1882-1931) considered, at the time of her death aged only forty-eight, the foremost Scottish woman painter.

Watercolour on paper, 46 x 34 cm, 18 x 14 in approx

Norah Neilson Gray was also one of the Glasgow Girls, along with Bessie MacNicol, Jessie Marion King, Margaret and Frances Macdonald, Helen Paxton Brown, Stansmore Dean, and Annie French. The term ‘Glasgow Girls’ was coined by William Buchanan in an essay he contributed to the catalogue for a 'Glasgow Boys' exhibition held in 1968. Though he was using this title to indicate that these artists were the female equivalents of their well-known male counterparts, it does not reflect the personal and professional complexity of this group. They pursued different styles and worked in a range of art forms, experimenting with mixed media in a way that the Glasgow Boys generally did not, their works often being far more challenging and unusual. Some formed discreet groups while others chose to work alone. Even residence in Glasgow was not a unifying factor as many lived and worked elsewhere in Scotland. They were connected, however, through shared experiences and their continued efforts to support one another.

October in the Highlands strongly evokes the ghostly Celtic Revival influences also visible in Margaret Macdonald’s glasswork.

Edouard Manet

 Happy birth anniversary to...

" painter Edouard Manet, born on the Left Bank of Paris (1832). He's known for his scenes of Parisian cafes and bars, paintings which were controversial for their time: for example, 1863 "Luncheon on the Grass" depicted two clothed men and nude women."

Writer's Almanac

Illustrator, Inga Moore

 

by Inga Moore Anglo-Australian author and illustrator of books for children, Captain Cat 2012

Some enjoyable illustrations for Wind in the Willows.

--------------

Born in Sussex, England,  in 1945, at the age of eight Moore emigrated with her family to Australia, where she went to school in Adelaide. 

fter leaving school, Moore took a variety of jobs. Raymond Briggs’s book Father Christmas (1973) inspired her to want to illustrate books, and she began to look for work as an illustrator.^[2] An early work, Aktil’s Big Swim (1980), tells the story of a Dover mouse who decides to swim the English Channel, not understanding how wide it is.^[3] In the early 1980s, Moore returned to live in England, settling in Hampstead, while still working on picture books. Her Six-Dinner Sid (1990), an illustrated book for children about a cat, took six months to complete^[2] and won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize in the under-five category,^[4] but during the recession of the early 1990s her flat was repossessed. This had a happy outcome, as Moore then found an apartment in a large but decaying Palladian house in a Gloucestershire village, with good light in a room she planned to use as a studio. Not far from the River Windrush, the countryside around the house inspired the illustrations for Moore’s edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, which went on to sell more than a million copies.^[2] Her editions of other children’s classics include Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost.

As of 2010, Moore was still living and working in Gloucestershire. 

SOURCE: Wikipedia

Betsy Morningstar

 Charlie Cumming's Gallery (Gainesville FL) has wonderful ceramic art displayed, and I'm fortunate that they send me an email of art. Here are a few pics of Betsy Morningstar's work.

Mug, "May 5 Capture that rage and turn it into action," $95

----------------

Betsy Morningstar

Featured Artist

Betsy Morningstar makes memorable porcelain pottery not quite like anyone else's. In the fineness of porcelain she masterfully crafts crumpled, folded, stained, and scribbled-on pieces of notebook paper. Frayed edges of porcelain seemingly torn from a notebook or binder become exquisite details. Doodles, dates, and notes become archival and indelible. Stains from tea or coffee and those familiar blue and red printed lines become delicate surface decorations that make the surfaces of these seemingly weightless forms sing. Some of the written notes are poignant, some humorous, some meditative. All are compelling, making us think of mundane, yet powerful moments when we are left to our own thoughts. These humble notes capture snapshots of life and affirm our humanity as they simultaneously serve as eye-catching vessels and light-as-a-feather companions at the table.

Betsy Morningstar earned an MA in Ceramics at Hood College in Frederick, MD as well as an MA in Curriculum and Teaching at Fresno Pacific University in Fresno, CA. She earned a BA in Art Education with a K-12 Certification at Mercyhurst University in Mercy, PA. She is a High School Art Teacher in the Howard County Public School System in Columbia, MD and shows her beautiful porcelain nationally.

Artist Statement

Lined paper has been in my life for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I drew all over it. I scrawled lists and scribbles. I have carefully folded it into love letters, wrinkled it with use, and torn bits for silly notes and gum wrappers. I use it to organize life and store memories in journals. Lined paper is familiar, nostalgic, and comfortable, but it is often unacknowledged in day-to-day life.

I enjoy the magic of trompe l'oeil as I manipulate porcelain to mimic the normalcy of notebook paper, creating the comfort of blue and red lines, the placement of binder holes, and the inevitable frayed edge. I find beauty in the folds, wrinkles, and waviness of used paper. I started creating porcelain notebook papers out of a need to find and see importance in each day and communicate outside of myself in a physical way. Each porcelain paper features journaled notes and fleeting moments from a day in my life, now forever special and permanent. The notes vary on the emotional spectrum of life, but all are significant moments I never want to forget. They are my brain and my heart in physical form.

Shop Betsy Morningstar's pottery here.

I actually have a friend and a granddaughter who live in Gainesville. I wonder if either has ever heard of this gallery, or visited it! Must ask.

Death and Life by Klimt

 Death and Life - 1915

Gustav Klimt (1862 ~ 1918)

Oil on canvas (180 x 200 cm)

Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria

is an oil on canvas painting by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. The painting was started in 1908 and completed in 1915. It is created in an Art Nouveau (Modern) style by use of allegorical painting genre during Golden phase. The painting measures 178 by 198 centimeters and is now housed at the Leopold Museum in Vienna. This is one of Klimt's central themes, central also to his time and to his contemporaries among them Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele. Klimt makes of it a modern dance of death, but unlike Schiele, he introduces a note of hope and reconciliation, instead of feeling threatened by the figure of death, his human beings seem to disregard it. The imagination of the artist is focused no longer on physical union, but rather on the expectation that precedes it. Perhaps this new found serenity is rooted in Klimt's own awareness of aging and closeness to death. But before the moment came when he chose to depict nothing more than moments of intense pleasure or miraculous beauty and youth.

Aram Hunanyan

 I had "liked" a Facebook post of an angel several years ago, and it showed up in "memories" today. I this time delved deeper into finding out who the artist was, and here're some of his works.

Aram Hunanyan

He is carried only by the one gallery in California, Lusinet Collective. Here's a description they offer:

Aram, the renowned artist hailing from Armenia, captivates admirers with his exquisite ceramic colorful angels. Each delicate creation embodies a harmonious blend of beauty and spirituality. Adorned with vibrant hues, these angels gracefully hold small pieces of heartfelt symbolism - a tender blossom, a soaring bird, or a warming hearth. Aram's mastery lies not only in his deft hand at shaping the ceramic forms but also in infusing them with profound meaning. Through his artistry, he invites viewers into a realm where the celestial meets the earthly, where colors dance and stories unfold in the palms of divine guardians.

This was the angel I saw in 2018.

The larger angels are finished on the back also, but I had trouble downloading those photos from the gallery. You can click on the gallery's photos to see the reverse details.

I think my guardian angel must look like one of his creations.