The mental landscape of an artist is a wonderfully mysterious place to explore. In this blog, we take a light, wistful stroll through the process of various types of artisans to grasp at a better understanding of how the art we love is created. The Painter The artist at work is a curious study. She doesn’t always seem completely cognizant of the social energy around her. She’s not highly confabulatory in this moment, no. She is in a zone — focused, enraptured with a world that only lives in her mind: her soul. Her hands are speckled with paint from past excursions. Her eyes focus on the clean blank surface. She has become almost oblivious to the aroma of inks […]

Part 1 of two illuminating conversations with contemporary sculptor, Shray. Read Part 2 here. Fine artist and sculptor Shray is a woman of immeasurable emotional depth, and at the same time, ideas that soar to dizzying heights. She is a prophet of the insightful and profound. On almost any topic she sails through conversation with an air of confidence mixed with a mindful whimsy. Just like her sculpture, her presence is both refined and imposing. One confabulatory jaunt with Shray will start you down new avenues for thought and imaginative consideration. Sure to invigorate your mind and fire your creative engine, she is a sculptor, painter, drawer, thinker and aspiring physicist. Really? Well, yes. Pre-Launch Years As a young girl, […]

Watercolor is such a universally accessible medium, yet it’s not often thought of as a fine art form. Indeed, when novices and appreciators new to fine art think about acquiring desirable pieces, watercolor may not come to mind. The implements of watercolor painting are so common and familiar to everyone, memories of such emanating from childhood, it seems that almost anyone could and has used them. One might be prone to think their accessibility diminishes their impact. That is, until you experience this common medium executed with uncommon precision and grace. While painting with watercolors may be an activity familiar to preschoolers, it’s an unbelievably difficult medium to master. Watercolor paints have a propensity for wandering off into unintended areas […]

Cubism as an art genre defies literal perception. It makes us feel, at first, confusion. But then, as though ascending from a hidden-but-familiar, dark place, (or might we consider, descending a staircase) the comforting sensation of realization drifts into focus. “AH! I get it!” we might say, the longer we look. For many, Cubism occupies that defined status of being challenging to enjoy and interpret. Still, there are masters of the form with whom most would be familiar—by name if not by works. Chief among them are Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Their early exploration in the techniques of observing, dismantling, re-faceting and reassembling time, space and matter function as the very foundation of a genre with influences reaching all the […]