Van Gogh's "Stillleben mit gelbem Strohhut" ("Still Life with Yellow Straw Hat")

We are all familiar with van Gogh's masterpieces like "Starry Night", "Sunflowers" and his self-portraits, but Vincent van Gogh was an incredibly prolific artist who painted dozens of still life canvases as well as his more famous landscape and portraiture subjects. In the painting "Still Life with Yellow Straw Hat", we see that the artist has chosen objects that came easily to hand, including the hat off his head and his pipe. Grouping these together with the pots and bottle in the background makes a pleasant repetition of curved and rounded shapes, which compliment the squared, angular shapes of the matchbox and the table, as well as the object to the right that looks for all the world like a miniature bale of hay...your guess is as good as mine.

Of course, the straw hat is the star, being front and center in placement, as well as being the largest single object in the picture and a brightly-colored one, as well. The matchbox is as vibrant a yellow, but in a much smaller size and in a more secondary placement. But what really draws the eye to the hat is the use of strong contrast--the black band against the yellow body of the hat creates a snappy focal point that commands attention. Once the eye is drawn initially, the viewer then wanders around the rest of the painting, noting the different shapes and textures. The overall color scheme is warm oranges, yellows, and browns, which lend a cozy feeling. Loose brushwork also lends a rather casual, but comfortable, air. Van Gogh's painting shows that you can depict very common subjects, yet still make them quite interesting and inviting!

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Image from Wikimedia Commons  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_-_Stillleben_mit_gelbem_Strohhut.jpeg

Beware the Decorative-Compulsives!

Some people enjoy the beauty of nature so much that they just have to capture it...and then torture it to death with craft supplies. 

Some years ago, I was making my regular weekend commute on the highway one day in December when something off the side of the road caught my eye. Someone, apparently caught up in the holiday spirit, had festooned a small pine tree growing by the side of the highway with all the trappings of Christmas cheer: tinsel garland, icicles, ornaments -- the works.

 At first sight of the little tree all decked out, my immediate thought was, "Oh! How cute," but I started to wonder why I thought so. We humans enthusiastically admire the beauty of nature: we devote calendars, books, songs and stories to its exaltation. We are constantly plundering flowers from the landscape, and there's our funny tendency toward deforestation at this time of year -- I guess people, wanting to feel close to nature, bless 'em, find it more convenient to hack down some nature and haul it indoors, where it can be admired in carpeted, climate-controlled comfort. So, I'm struck by this question: if we admire nature so much we go out and kill some just to have it near us, what in the world possesses us to decorate it? 

After all, instead of just driving by, seeing the little pine growing by the roadside, and thinking, "Ah, what a neat little tree," as many of us, hopefully most of us, did, there was somebody driving by who thought, "Ah, what a neat little tree --I must hang shiny stuff all over it." And they were gripped enough by this thought, my friends, to follow up by actually purchasing said shiny stuff, driving back to the scene of the crime, and dedicating some time to the festooning process. This strikes me as Decorative-Compulsive behaviour.

You know the Decorative-Compulsives: they manifest all through the year, tying little hearts, then plastic eggs, then little ghosts on the defenseless trees in their yards; they carve faces in pumpkins, throwing away the useful food parts in order to make bizarre, perishable candle holders from the shells; they pick delicate, fragrant blooms and press them under heavy books, turning them dark, dry, and --well, flat. When they visit the seashore, they not only admire the beautiful shells washed up on the sand; they not only collect them to admire at home, as well; it's also necessary to glue them around a picture frame, perhaps accompanied by a spray of (flattened) flowers found growing nowhere near the sea.

Ah, but Christmas is the ultimate festival of 'enhancement'. So many little pinecones to coat with gold spray paint! So many poinsettia blooms to dip in glitter! Even a pine garland is nothing without a big red velvet bow, a string of intertwining lights - let's see, why don't we add some sprigs of plastic mistletoe, varnished holly, and -- hmm, yes, the gold pine cones! Perfect.

But the very best thing about Christmas is that it is the season of giving. What better time to show how much they care by presenting their friends and loved ones with these wonderful decorative items they have created? The Decorative-Compulsives spend many pleasant hours twisting, drying, dyeing, painting, gilding, glazing, flocking, varnishing, manipulating, molding and otherwise altering the natural wonders of our land with only one aim in mind, and that is to see the finished product in your house. Enjoy!

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Photo from freeimages.com http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1111023

Welcome to My New Blog!

I am a bit of a blogging neophyte, still, with my one other blog, What's Good in Greensboro?, only a few months old. But now that I feel I'm getting the hang of it, I wanted to branch out into another area of interest to me, which is art.

As a professional portrait artist, I produce artwork, but as an art teacher and general art admirer, I also like to talk about art and to write about it, as well. I intend for this blog to be a place in which I can share my own work, but also to talk about other artists' work and other art-related subjects. Hopefully, it will be enriching and informative, and maybe fairly entertaining, as well (I do have my moments)! I also have a Facebook page of the same name, which you can visit here, but I do plan for this blog to eventually be much more thoroughly developed. There is a very large gallery of my work on the Facebook page, though, if you would like to see it. 

The illustration above is a portrait of my friend Doris's pet great horned owl, named Owlvin (yep). Doris is a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, so don't go thinking that anybody can have a pet owl. The rendering was done in pen and ink on bristol board. Owlvin is also the mascot for my Etsy shop, All Sorts of Art. 

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