Chris Erskine
chriserskineartist@gmail.com
@erskinec
Month: January 2015
Christina Sealey At Carnegie Feb 6th – 7pm
Christina Sealey’s opening reception for her new works is Feb 6th, 2015 at the Carnegie Gallery in Dundas, Ontario. This should be a very interesting show because it will display a bit of a re-think on her approach to painting.
The reception starts at 7 pm and runs until 9:30 pm. The show, itself, runs from Feb 6th until Mar 1st.
I am a big fan of Christina’s work. I have followed Christina’s development since her Hamilton Artist Inc show back in 2002. It is an amazing experience to be able to follow the development of an artist that you admire for both her technical and creative skills.
As many of you know, I commissioned a portrait painting of my oldest daughter and we happily received the work into our home this past December.
So, I strongly recommend that you make the time and see the show. I would also urge you to attend the opening.
Openings are always nerve-racking. You spend months, even years, in the studio, trying to create something that people will appreciate as original and deserving of their attention. Suddenly, the magical night arrives and you wonder if anyone will show up.
Reward yourself and see a great artist!
Chris Erskine
chriserskineartist@gmail.com
@erskinec
Art Post No.11
Chris Erskine
chriserskineartist@gmail.com
@erskinec
Max Beckmann Book Review
Beckmann by Reinhard Spieler provides an excellent overview of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
Max Beckmann (1884-1950) was an amazing artist who experienced three period of fame: the pre-war period, the Weimar Republic years, and the late 1940s. After suffering a nervous breakdown during the First World War, Beckmann re-invents his art to reflect the new conditions. During the 1920s, he is often associated with other social critics of German society like Otto Dix and George Grosz. Beckmann’s art, however, reflects a deeper struggle with self. As a result, Beckmann continued to grow and develop even when the Weimar period came to an end.
With the rise of the Nazism, Beckmann falls out of favour and goes into seclusion. This isolation allows the artist to develop independently from the influences occurring elsewhere in the world.
With the end of World War Two, Beckmann moves to the United States and starts his finally period of success. Beckmann dies suddenly of a heart attack in December 1950 at the age of 66.
Over the years, I have read a lot of books on Beckmann and this 2011 work by Taschen is one of the best. Not only does it includes excellent quality reproductions, but it also reflects some of the latest research on Beckmann’s landscapes and still life portraits, works that represent almost half of his artistic output.
I would strongly recommend the following books: Max Beckman: the Still Lifes by Anna Heinze and Simon Kelly (Nov 2014); and Max Beckmann: the Landscapes by Hans Belting and Berhard Mendes Burgi that was published in Dec 2011.
Spieler did his 1997 Ph.D. thesis on Beckmann’s triptychs and was recently appointed Director of the Sprengel Museum. Hopefully, Spieler will find times to write additional books on Beckmann’s self-portraits and his prints; two areas that have not been recently examined or published in English.
As an artist, I would hope someone would publish a book on his materials and techniques. If you are interested in Beckmann then the above mention books are essentially readings.
Chris Erskine
@erskinec
Interview with Artist Justin Lincoln
Another interesting interview by artist Christopher Healey.
This is the fourth in a series of 11 artist interviews I conducted in 2014 titled “a new space; artists and social media”. You can learn more about this academic research project at http://artistsandsocialmedia.tumblr.com/
April 2014
Lincoln is an experimental artist and educator whom I have been following on Tumblr for about four years. He is a well known artist using social media and his recommendations to me on who else to contact for this project proved invaluable. Lincoln is concerned with how we are dealing with, for the first time in history, such huge influxes of data due to online networks. He describes the information we have now as “atomized” and, as artists, we take this information and combine them in new and meaningful ways. His practice is to incorporate other artist’s blogs, as well as own content, into a series of “blogmix” videos. This process started when he…
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Art Post No.10
Chris Erskine
chriserskineartist@gmail.com
@erskinec
Hunter and MacNab Urban Landscape
Chris Erskine
chriserskineartist@gmail.com
@erskinec
