My friend and I had just left at Steven Assael exhibit at the Naples Museum of Art in Naples, FL. “Don’t you just want to stop painting,” she continued. “I mean, Steven Assael! Does it get any better? Helen, tell me you can top that,” she challenged. “Steven Assael, I’m in love! No, I’m in awe,”

she dropped her voice reverentially and whispered once more, “STEVEN ASSAEL!”

I was startled by the notion that seeing great art would prompt me to clean my brushes for the last time, give my supplies away and, finally turn my attention to the long neglected duties of dusting and writing thank you notes. Seeing great art makes me eager to return to my studio.

My art is abstract. It emerges as I work. It starts in one direction and ends in another. It appears to me that Steven Assael starts with an idea, a feeling, a concept and grows it through masterful craftsmanship into a powerful painting. I can stand gazing at a Steven Assael painting for a very long time. I am thrilled by his technique, his palette, his subject matter. Perhaps it’s corny to say so, but it makes my juices flow.

When I go to a show of work that strikes me as dull, poorly done or uninspired, I get depressed.  I don’t want to return to the studio. I think, “why am I painting.” It doesn’t really make sense. It seems like seeing bad art would make me want to show I can do better and great art make me feel I should pack it in. But that’s not the case. When I saw the work of Steven Assael, I was inspired. It took my breath away and renewed my resolve to be the best artist I can possibly be.

Fortunately for those living in south west Florida–or those needing an excuse to visit–Steven Assael is teaching a four day workshop in Ft. Myers.  Here are the details:

4-Days Oil Painting March 6,7,8,9, 2012

Time: 9:30 am to 4:30 pm (1 hr. lunch flexible)

Place/Location: Covenant Presbyterian Church, 2439 McGregor Blvd. Ft Myers, FL 33901

(next to the Edison Estate)

Contact:  Renate M Reuter, tel: 239-481-2081, e-mail: nadi@nadifineart.com, www.portraitandfigure.org

This is a 4-day Oil Painting Workshop satisfying the needs and special requests of participants’ incl:

Total Portraits – head to full size , skin tones and various material texture on models – old/young, face, hands, feet, special features, more.

The Wikipedia article on Steven Assael says:

Steven Assael (born 1957) is an American painter recognized nationally as one of the leading representational figurative artists of his generation. His portrayal of the human image is empathetic, ennobling, and psychologically penetrating. Assael’s figure compositions synthesize the characteristics of the past masters with a selective eye for the present, suffusing elements of naturalism and romanticism to blend contemporary techniques with those of the past.

I’m sure I’ll continue to do my own abstract paintings, but I’m also sure Steven Assael has a lot to teach me as well as artists who work realistically.

Martin Johnson Heade

I would like to hear from you.. An important American painter Heade was often associated with the Hudson River painters, but Theodore Stebbins, art historian and curator of American Art at the Harvard University art museums wrote, “If the paintings of the shore as well as the more conventional compositions…might lead one to think of Heade as a Hudson River School painter, the [marsh scenes] make it clear that he was not.” (reference from Wikipedia)
It appears to me that a

wide variety of painters have been influenced by Martin Johnson Heade whose exquisite paintings

have thrilled viewers for more than one hundred years.

Boston artist Gail Boyjianconfirmed her love of

Gail exclaimed over the exquisite hummingbirds Martin Johnson Heade painted. The first painting of Gail’s that I saw was in the collection of Bill and Nancy Osgood. It was a small beautifully painted scene with a Chaffinch, a bird common in Europe. In the misty background are two tiny military helicopters coming over the horizon. I found the painting beautiful and disturbing. It was quiet but packed a punch. I loved it and it made me look more seriously at Martin Johnson Heade and his range of subjects.

As a painter of abstractionsI have been most influenced by Heade’s seascapes and marsh scenes and in particular “Thunder Storm on Narraganset Bay.” It has been the foundation for a series of paintings I’ve done over the last several years.

Several of these including “On the Edge of the Known” which is above,  ”In a Sigh of Thunder” currently in Kobalt Gallery in Provincetown, “Believing is Seeing” currently in West Branch Gallery in Stowe, VT and “Getting Away from the Got There” which is in Pryor Fine Arts in Atlanta 

It appears there may be paintings by Martin Johnson Heade that haven’t yet been found. At least Wikipedia reports some wonderful discoveries–people who found Martin Johnson Heade paintings in garage sales, purchased them for a song and sold them for a full length opera. I guess we should all be on the alert. Works by Martin Johnson Heade are treasures in more than one sense of the word!

I like the gallery system.

It works for me. It’s a successful partnership.  But sometimes I’m tempted to get into their business.  Once in awhile someone comes across my web site and contacts me directly.  A long time ago I decided I wanted my web site to be a venue for showing work to galleries, not a storefront.  But when I get a lovely email from someone who tells me they think I’m wonderful, I not only fall in love instantly, but I want to be their agent.  “Well,” I say, “they’ve identified what they want, I have it.  All I have to do is ship it.”  Earning 100% of the sale instead of 50% has a seductively pleasing tone to it.
It happened again just a few days ago.  A wonderful letter.  An available painting.  A potential sale.  It seemed pretty clear.  I could handle it myself.

I’d been painting when the letter arrived and the familiar ding from the computer drew me to see what was going on.  I was working well that morning.  Things were actually flowing reasonably smoothly.  I had been enjoying myself.  I went back to work planning to take care of this easy transaction later.

But then I began obsessing.  I stared out the window.  What if she didn’t like the painting when she got it?  What if the payment didn’t go through?  What if she wanted to see more work?  What if she turned out to be a terrific person who might deserve more attention?  What if  the painting got damaged? What if she didn’t like it after all?  What if, what if, what if?

I got anxious.

I stopped painting.

I obsessed some more.

I decided after wasting way too much time that I don’t want to be my own agent.

I wrote the person and said, after I’d thanked her, of course, that I’d, with her permission put her in touch with my gallery (I referred her, as I’ve done in the past, to the gallery geographically closest).  I said the prices are the same and the gallery can offer service which I can’t

I held my breath.  I realized my self importance when I fancied I might be the only person with whom she wanted to deal.

She was delighted to hear from the gallery.

I was relieved and humbled.
The gallery owner and the client hit it off.    The gallery owner did the driving, the transport, the listening and the talking.  She’s a master at it.

I’m back in my studio painting away.  I’m not exactly peaceful all the time, but what is agitating me is the challenge of the painting rather than all those things the gallery already knows how to do.

Later I received another lovely letter from the client. We’re looking forward to meeting each other at my show this summer.

It is worth 50%?  Absolutely!

Although I’m an abstract painter. I love to draw the figure. Each week I go to an open figure drawing session. When I paint I look inward.

When I am drawing I look outward.

In my paintings I strive to express an inner reality.

When I’m drawing  my goal is to make the image look like the model.

Additionally I want  to create a drawing that is an interesting arrangement on the paper and to give myself something that will provide the foundation for a painting.
Here are two examples of recent drawings that I am currently transferring onto a panel. The first drawing below will be developed with burnt sienna, I will use a grey green to develop the second drawing. In some cases I’ll use a single drawing and in others several.  Eventually all traces of the drawings will fade as they gradually evolve into an abstract painting with a landscape feel.

Figure Drawing 1

Figure Drawing 2

The annex gallery is hung with Helen Shulman’s Vivid Memories of Things That Never Happened, a series of seventeen abstract oil paintings on board, in which modulated color fields take on three-dimensional qualities enhanced by being painted on their side as well as frontal surfaces.

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one of the most compelling images in the show is Helen Shulman’s, “Waiting for Champlain,” which presents the lake in three indistinct,dreamlike views, united by their warm,earthy palette. As the title hints, this is Lake Champlain as the great French explorer might have himself encountered it: wild, undeveloped,both beckoning and slightly ominous. The largest view here is of a reedy wetland where banks of autumn-hued reeds open to a water passageway. Vignettes within the larger composition show hazy views of a wooded bay and the open lake nestled among surrounding mountains. The painting captures both the sense of mystery and wonder that Champlain must have felt as he first entered this huge lake, and the sense of vague discovery that we contemporary viewers sometimes encounter in dreams…

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Orange koi swim in graceful circles beneath the smooth surface of a pond. While lilacs, their heads heavy with blooms, nod easily over a canoe; it’s wooden ribs arch in the high grass. This is the quiet world where Helen Shulman lives and paints warm, eargh-toned oil paintings alive with the Quechee landscape that inspires her.

Shulmans’s studio is a single open room, with a screen corner facing the pond. Standing beside a large vertical painting, Shulman is a striking contrast to her works. Her paintings…

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Faith is the key that unlocks the gate and allows what has been misunderstood and in some instances suppressed to be seen and to light the way into the next millennium.
–Ronnie Landfield

Helen once said, “I paint to keep Psyche happy.” As a psychotherapist, she works to ease the soul and psyche of others, but with her painting she sooths her own internal state. One would be remiss to categorize Shulman’s paintings with other artists who subject the public to self-indulgent, narcissistic creative endeavors. Such painters claim “art is therapy”, by which they mean art is their therapy and we should pay attention to them because, put simply, they want attention. Shulman offers the viewer a substance far greater than these self-indulgent marauders who plunder our interest and give back nothing in return. Shulman is aware of the fact, “While the act of painting is an entirely private affair, the result isn’t”…

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Story By Joan Altabe

AAbstract painting, often a style that devotees of traditional painting decry, is traditional, too. Picture-making without recognizable subject matter dates back to China’s 11th-century Song Dynasty, which held that anyone who talked about painting in terms of likeness deserved to be calassed with children. Celts and early germanic peoples, likewise, could care less about painting the world the way it looked. Clearly these folks understood that abstract art is no less real a reflection of life than its more concrete counterparts.

You can appreciate this ancient thinking by seeing the art of Helen Shulman…

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