Philadephia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of my favorite museums. I went there to sketch on Sunday, but after two drawings I was told by a guard that there was no sketching allowed, that I could only take photographs.

At first I was disappointed, but then relieved, because I was free to spend the rest of the afternoon just looking, and not feeling like I had a job to do. I especially love the drawing just above, titled: "Celestial Woman with Mangoes."

Nelson Shanks

At the top is a portrait Nelson Shanks painted of his son during a three hour demo. The blurry photo doesn't capture the myriad of colors he used. At the bottom is Nelson's palette. He borrowed my turp jars. They are just beaming about getting to hang out on his palette. I hope that they will tell me some secrets.

Splendor in the Grass

Students and instructors hob nob on the lawn, I enjoy a madras. A parting glimpse of my favorite sculpture as we depart the estate. This lifestyle felt quite right to me.

Sculpture and Light

The art collection at Chelwood is amazing. I fell in love with the sculpture at the top, of the woman and deer next to an orchid, and the way the light danced through the room.

Love is a loaded word. I use it freely on my blog because it is my own, and I truly do love so many things. I Iove them differently and for different reasons, though the flowing, welling feeling of love is the same.

I know the Japanese have many words for beauty, and I've heard that Eskimos too have many words for ice and snow. In "Balancing Heaven and Earth," Robert Johnson says he is only half joking when he notes that India has ninety-six words for love but none for nuts and bolts (they have imported our Western terms for these practical things), while we have ninety-six words for nuts and bolts but only one for love.

Chelwood

Studio Incamminati was founded by world renowned painter Nelson Shanks. On Saturday, we were invited to dinner at his home. I'd packed a pair of high heeled shoes for the event, but learned the day before that we would be dining outside in the grass, and flats were advised.

I found a pair of gold flip flops just in time, and waited in the sweltering heat for the trolley to take me from my 'hood in West Philly to his estate on the Delaware River. I was enchanted by his stunning art collection, and the blue glass that embellished the buffet.

Chowder and Hope

I remember the day I sat at the counter at Reading Terminal and had chowder for lunch. It was a day I was in despair. No matter what I learned or how hard I tried, I just could not rise up from the streaks and mud of oil paint. The chowder helped a bit, and after getting lost in the delicacies of Reading Terminal, I found the courage to go back and try again.

Later that night, I came across this, in one of the handouts we'd received during the course. It's an excerpt from the book: A Way of Seeing and the Spiritual Search for Visual Truth in Painting: The Teachings of Hensche, Hawthorne, and Chase, by Barbara Faulkner, PhD.

Richard Kelso believes that the lifelong "learning curve" of the painter means that every day the painter gets out of bed knowing "they're going to get whipped that day". For him, the daunting prospect of daily failure is balanced by hoping and imagining "that one day you're going to be able to paint well."

Color Study Samples

Two samples of color studies. At the top is a demo by Ja Fang Lu. Natalie Italiano created the one at the bottom.You can see here how a color study is not a finished painting, but is an exercise to understand the way colors relate to each other, in order to capture the feeling of illumination of your subject.

Colours should not be tormented. Colours should be applied simply, directly, and separately.

Rubens, "De Lumine et De Colores:" 1635