Lemley House Art Guild

Artist Spotlight - Hooper Turner

2012-02-15T07:48:00.000-08:00

"I love and hate advertising. Advertising targets suckers, the naïve consumers who are convinced they can purchase the fantasies in the richly printed catalogs or imagine themselves the protagonist of arousing editorial spreads in fashion magazines.

The truth is that desire doesn’t function rationally; I can’t sit calmly analyzing the semiotics of commercial imagery, carefully dissecting the palette of references that some photographer and creative director have decided will sell the season’s line.

Like every other sucker, I get too involved. I have to make paintings of the images that fascinate me and of the many objects I can’t afford. By painting them, spending many hours looking and remaking, I learn the image, explore the details, and hope to see the pictures with new eyes.

The paintings become larger than the source and much more materially present. Sometimes I notice the Old Master reference in the pose or the unforeseen crops and strange angles found only in photographs. I wonder why the doorknob for purchase looks so much like a piece of coral instead of like a doorknob. I wish I knew what the woman with her head turned away is contemplating and realize that if someone were voyeuristically watching me, they would see me in the same absorbed reverie.

I am honest with my paintings and paint what I like. They are not my private vision but rather a collection of our ideals and archetypes. I often include the text, which can create a dissonant note when juxtaposed with the image.

Words and pictures coexist in tension, and the strain is intensified in a painting. In the best of my paintings, the stress is enough to force both artist and viewer to confront our desires. Rather than anxiously judge them, we learn more about ourselves". - Hooper Turner,March 2011

via Skidmore Contemporary Art and Hooper Turner

Feature Friday

2012-02-10T07:40:00.000-08:00

They said there would be a sit-down meal, but all they served was light hors d'oeuvres.

by Beth Whitlow

Jeannie Stone and Beth Whitlow will be having a joint show at the River Valley Arts Center in April! The opening reception is April 1 from 1-3pm. Hope to see you there!

Creative Space

2012-02-07T10:35:00.000-08:00

traditional home office design by chicago design-build Avondale Custom Homes

The Next Stroke

2012-02-06T14:37:00.001-08:00

via Draw I will

Fun Flowers

2012-01-24T16:52:00.001-08:00

via Lulie Wallace

Artist Spotlight - Bill Braun

2012-01-22T18:15:00.000-08:00

"The work of Bill Braun will not only fool you, but will utterly amaze you.

"Trompe l'Oeil" is the formal term, meaning to trick the eye, and viewers are always amazed to discover that these works are purely paint on canvas. His childlike subjects range from beach and snow scenes to deserts, homes, multitudes of flowers, and so much more. Take another look... You Will Be Fooled !" via Vickers Collection

"I don't like to give an artist statement because it undoes the premise of my work, trompe l'oeil painting. Literally from the French, trompe l'oeil means “trick the eye”. An artist's statement might undo the fundamental aim of convincing the viewer, at least for a moment, that what he sees are actual objects and not a painting.

The basic rules of trompe l'oeil painting are that objects are rendered in real scale, and totally within a shallow painted space.

This type of painting has always been a minor branch of realist painting, but with a very long history. The Athenian painters Xeuxis and Parrhasios in 5th century B.C. (as told by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History) and Roman murals of the 2nd century A.D., 16th century Dutch vanitas painting and the 19th century Philadelphia School painters, Harnett, Peto and Haberle, are examples. Today there are still trompe l'oeil painters around; I am happy to be one of them." - Bill Braun

Studio Space

2012-01-19T16:13:00.000-08:00

Since we may be moving to a new studio space soon, I've put together a few ideas to add a little style to our nooks.

Studio Space 1 by zestynest featuring wooden tops

Studio Space 2 by zestynest on polyvore.com

Artist Space 2 by zestynest featuring Free People

So Fashionable

2012-01-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

Artist Spotlight - Britten Roetzel

2012-01-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

The artist: Known simply by her first name, Britten grew up in San Francisco where she learned to appreciate art at a young age. She’s lived in the Vail Valley for 14 years and works at C. Anthony Gallery where some of her work is nearly always hanging. Britten has painted many murals in the valley, including one she just finished at the Yoga studio at Dogma Athletica in Edwards. She’s also painted “everything from bathtubs to ski clothes,” she said.

Britten calls painting her “gift” — both to give and to receive — and strives to translate her emotions into a visual language.

The evolution: “I have painted as long as I can remember. I have always felt more comfortable expressing myself with a paint brush in hand. My mother eventually gave up and let me paint on the wall of my room, even my clothes. Now people pay me to do that!

“My art was very representational/realistic/more traditional until about two years ago when I decided to simplify and try to find my true expression. It has been a process ... unfolding on my canvas. At this point, I am truly at my most ‘real,’ even though my paintings represent what some would call an ‘alternative reality.’”

The medium: Mixed. A base of acrylic paint followed by oil paint and resin, with gold, silver and copper leaf layered on canvas on a three-inch box frame.

The process: “My inspiration comes from being present in the moment. Whatever that moment is. I try to stay with it wherever it takes me. My medium has evolved with me. I like the layers (and) depth of different mediums, so I am constantly trying new things. My style is ‘evolution’ — maybe that sounds bold, but I mean it in a sense that it is fluid, up for interpretation and changing.” via Vail Daily

See more of her works here.

Feature Friday

2012-01-06T05:39:00.000-08:00

by Ruth Birch

Artist Spotlight - Simon Birch

2012-01-02T16:23:00.000-08:00

“[Simon] Birch is interested in universal ideas of transition, the ambiguous moment between an initiation and a conclusion, the unobtainable now and the future, inevitably crashing towards us. For Birch these ideas translate easily from oil paint, to film, to installations, which engage with myth, history, circus and science fiction, connection and disconnect. He chooses to explore these themes in an enveloping environment of theater and spectacle, where the process of viewing becomes experiential: overwhelming and complex, yet as spectacle and adventure, also approachable.” (via Daily Art Fixx)

Artist Spotlight - Christian McLeod

2011-12-11T21:12:00.001-08:00

"Painting is my way of remembering and interpreting beauty and destruction. I begin by viewing reality as composed of layers of colour and shape, observing the way light reflects off an object, and the tension objects generate when placed next to or on top of each other. Landscapes from a great distance become a single object.

I try to capture the shift between perceiving the landscape as an organic whole, and seeing the particles that comprise it – buildings, rivers, vehicles, birds, harbours, roadways, minerals, machinery, aircraft, farms, data cables, people in movement.

Heaps of paint are placed, plotted and pushed. For some works this process can take years. For others, the image forms within days.

I love the tactile movement of paint across the canvas, but fully half my time in the studio is spent looking, searching the surface of the painting for points of entry. Paintings are worked and reworked, images accumulate. I tend to work on several pieces simultaneously, exploring different themes in each one.

This exhibition, ‘Passing Over,’ contains works created within the last several years. The title refers to my interest in the shift between macro and micro views –

a century and a half ago, photography liberated painting from the task of representation; today, satellite imagery redefines how we perceive our landscape and environment, and thus blurs the line between abstraction and representation.

I operate in that gap between abstraction and representation, between the bird’s-eye view and the microscope."

- Christian McLeod, March 31, 2010

View his website here

Feature Friday

2011-12-10T15:10:00.001-08:00

by Susan Jackson

Remember...

2011-11-20T15:10:00.001-08:00

Source: graphic-design-blog.com via Zesty on Pinterest

Feature Friday

2011-11-18T09:45:00.001-08:00

by Sandi Whitlow

I Have Never Seen More Beautiful Clouds....

2011-11-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

Source: mockingbird-gallery.com via Joy on Pinterest

by Joseph Alleman

Feature Friday

2011-11-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

by Sarah Keathley

Get Inspired - An Apple a Day

2011-11-01T15:57:00.001-07:00

via

Get Inspired - Under My Umbrella

2011-10-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

images via pinterest

The Stand

2011-10-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

via Black Sketchbook

I'm amazed at the realism of this! It has just enough "painterly" qualities that you know it's a painting, but it's so very photographic. Wow!

Feature Friday

2011-10-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

by Rita Goodman

Artist Spotlight - Karen Jurick

2011-10-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

If you have time, check out more of her work here!

Feature Friday

2011-10-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

by Sherry Killingsworth

Feature Friday

2011-09-30T08:26:00.001-07:00

by Susan Jackson

Art Opportunities

2011-09-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

by Laurel Daniel

Up until recently, I wasn't sure how to find out about art competitions and shows. I asked Rachel and she gave me some links that I thought I'd share with y'all. Good luck!

Arkansas Arts Council

Art Show (dot)com

Art Deadlines

Guild members - Check your inbox. I've forwarded some stuff from the ALA to you!