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[superpaintgirl]

“Crest and Fall,” oil on beveled wood panel, 8.5 inches x 9 inches, 2011, © Amanda Besl (Lyons Wier Gallery, private collection)

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Tiny Bubbles

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This is one of my paintings from "24/7: Always On," a group show at Lyons Wier Gallery. I recently got an email asking how I painted the mesh on the swimmers top.

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It's just one circle at a time with a very small brush! I lay down a few contours in tiny circles to understand the structure underneath the clothing and then I fill in a section at a time. I clean up with a wedge if the hole needs to be bigger. I stop when I get a headache, get some coffee and start again. I really do enjoy projects like this. It's actually very meditative. I think it took about 9 hours doing the mesh on this one, but the painting needed it, so that’s what I did! (Yeah, I don’t get out much!)

[superpaintgirl]

Painted Toes (and a Little Bit of Naked)

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This week I thought you might be interested in a naked painting. Did that get your attention? I’m finishing up a piece for a client of Lemberg Gallery in Ferndale, MI. I thought you might enjoy seeing this…but then I thought it might be interesting to see it before it was a painting, hence a naked painting!

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After teaching a semester of painting at SUNY Fredonia and harping on my students about color theory, I decided to take my own advice to heart. I previously employed a monochromatic under painting. However, of late I’ve been taking advantage of simultaneous contrast, or to use layman’s terms, complimentary color, to increase the value and sense of volume before I add the local color.

Here’s the under painting and here’s the finished painting:

“Sleepover,” oil on beveled wood panel, 4.5 inches x 6.25 inches, 2011, © Amanda Besl (Lemberg Gallery)

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I love these little painted toes! Feet are so sculptural and this technique really lends itself to describing the many planes. I also love the private narrative evoked by this piece and how ambiguous it is! Not so quiet is this “kitsch-tacular” find I scored at a garage sale last weekend. It’s an inflatable (and de-flatable) footstool from the 1950’s filled with Astroturf and plastic roses. It’s kind of god-awful, and I totally LOVE it! (It will have to end up in a painting!)

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Also gaudy wonderful is my hot pink toenail polish, don’t you think? Tomorrow is officially the first day of summer. I couldn’t possibly be expected to start off the season with naked toes!

[superpaintgirl]

Seems a Little Fishy

  Pssst!

  Want a sneak peek at a brand new painting? This piece is one of several works I’m sending to Lyons Wier Gallery in NYC for 24/7: Always On, a group show of gallery artists divided between the 24th Street and 7th Avenue locations this summer. The show opens June 16th.  If you’re in Manhattan, go check it out. It’s up until July 16th.

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  Many, many, Swedish fish lost their lives in the creation of this painting. (I struggle for my art. I really do.)

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 “Fish Face,” oil on beveled wood panel, 4.25 inches x 5.75 inches, 2011, © Amanda Besl (Lyons Wier Gallery)

[superpaintgirl]

Model Behavior

  Today is the birthday of one of my dearest friends and favorite models.  Happy Birthday Marlayna and thank you for being lovely you!

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 “Spanish Moss,” oil on beveled wood panel, 4.25 inches x 5.75 inches, 2008, © Amanda Besl (Lemberg Gallery)

[superpaintgirl]

Tea Time

  This evening I taught a work shop at the UB Art Gallery to conclude “Figuration and Its Disconnects” a group show that featured 38 of my paintings.  It involved a tour of the show and a demonstration on complimentary color acrylic underpainting, a technique I’ve been using to help create volume and establish value in my paintings.  It was a small, congenial group and a wonderful way to wind down from the past semester.

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  In truth, I've been too busy this past weekend finishing up work for an upcoming group show at Lyons Wier Gallery in NYC this summer to really wax poetic about the passing of the school year.  However, I did respond to this article on Apartment Therapy’s sister blog, The Kitchn .  The piece discusses how change, even positive change, can leave us on edge. We grow nostalgic for the things we are moving away from.  It's the power of simple things, like a morning breakfast ritual of tea and toast with jam, that can help you stay grounded.  Sounds quite Proustian, doesn't it?

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  For me painting is my tea with toast and jam. As long as I can paint, the world will hold together for me.  I am so very grateful for this.  I hope you have something that keeps you grounded too.

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[superpaintgirl]

Good Day, Sunshine!

  You might have noticed that I took a brief hiatus from my blog.  There was a series of unfortunate events…thankfully Count Olaf was not involved, and now things are looking up again.  First there was a very lovely article in this weekend’s Gusto by art critic Colin Dabkowski featuring my painting Repose and some very kind words. You can read it here. Secondly I no longer need to get up at 5am, at least, not for a while. (Next semester’s teaching schedule is only 2 days a week and no 8am classes!)  And finally, the sun is out and will be all this week!  That makes for both happy cats and a happy painter.   

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[superpaintgirl]

A Few Of My Favorite Things…

  I’m counting down the days now. The students are restless. I’m restless for a big change that’s on the cusp. Squid the cat is racing through the apartment in full blown “wack-a-doo" mode because of the crazy weather changes we’ve had the last few days. It’s like a full moon all the time. So how is one to make it through the next few weeks? Let’s channel Julie Andrews, shall we? When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when you’re feeling sad, maybe one of my favorite things will help you not feel so bad!

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Here are some things that I love right now:

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Starbuck’s Hot Apple Chai Infusion

It’s not quite cider. It’s not quite tea. It’s not actually on the menu, but if you ask very nicely, usually someone will make it for you. I once got a free one in the Indianapolis airport on the way to Portland, OR to see Daniel and Erich.

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Non-yappy little dogs that are the same size as my Maine Coon

(Rooey is 14 lbs.)  Actually, since I’ve started teaching, my cats meet me at the door like a pack of dogs when I get home!  It’s not quite the same thing as a canine companion, but I do appreciate the effort.

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Feta cheese (but not the kind from goat’s milk, because that smells like goats)

Everything savory is yummier with a little feta in it.  Carrot ginger soup with feta in it? Heaven.

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Woodland/Alpine Kitsch

Cue the singing smurfs and buy me a one way ticket to the Austrian wilderness!  I know, I know, I’m setting myself up to be vastly disappointed if I ever do get there and it’s not all cuckoo clocks, gnomes and meandering fawns.  

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This obsession goes way back. This is me and my sister. She’s the cuter one. I don’t know why I’m holding the deer like that, but it was a fairly constant companion.

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Thrift stores, but especially the outlet thrift store

 My favorite one we affectionately call “The Crap Shack.” My mother pointed out that if I loved it so much (and to be honest nothing cures the blues like a treasure trip to “The Crap Shack”) that it wasn’t nice to call it that. Now we call it “The Shack” even though that doesn’t sound nearly as good when singing its praises improve style to the tune of the B-52’s “Love Shack.”

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Looking at art 

Okay, so that one is kind of a dead giveaway, but honestly it’s so exciting to see what my students come in with each class and to be surrounded by youthful creative energy. Art is a means of communication and we all have something a little different to say and a unique way of saying it.

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  Wait, was that last entry one of your favorites things too? Are you wondering where you can see some of my art? If you want to check out some of my work in person, it’s not too late to see my work in MARK Making at Artspace in downtown Buffalo or my room of 38 paintings at UB Center for the Arts which is up until May 14th.  For those of you living downstate, look for new work at Lyons Wier Gallery this summer.  And of course, you’re always just a click away from my website, www.superpaintgirl.com

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  (Thank you Kathy Sherin for the photo.) MARK Making, Artspace, Buffalo

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  Whatever your favorite things are, I hope you have them close at hand! Meanwhile, enjoy this version of an old classic.

[superpaintgirl]

This blog brought to you by the letter M

M is for MARK Making, the exhibition I’m in with 10 of my NYFA MARK10 class friends at Artspace in Buffalo this month.  Here’s a picture of the opening. (I’m gesturing so wildly in this picture with friends Ray Bonilla, Ray's girlfriend Jamie, and Timothy Frerichs that my hand appears to have turned into a bird in flight. Tim finds this amusing.)

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M is for marmalade, just because I like marmalade.  It’s delicious and jewel-like and never really tastes like oranges even though I always expect it will. Like life, it’s just more complicated than the sum of its parts. And it’s yummy.

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M is for maverick.  I have a soft spot for those art bad boys: Caravaggio and Courbet, even Fragonard, hiding dirty little paintings under a fringe of Rococo sugar icing.  I’m really loving this self-portrait by Courbet right now.  Wouldn’t you have guessed it was Johnny Depp for one of those pirate movies?  Gustave Courbet painted this in 1845.

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M is for mermaid.  I’ve been thinking about doing some studies on paper of girls underwater.  I’ve done a few underwater paintings before and am really excited about employing a double underpainting technique I’ve started doing for some new pieces.  I love the “mermaid phenomena” of a girl’s loose hair under the water and the physical and color distortions are really exciting to tackle.

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  “Mermaid,” oil on beveled wood panel, 10 inches x 10 inches, 2008, © Amanda Besl, (private collection via Lyons Wier Gallery, NYC)

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M is for Mocking bird, To Kill a, Southern Gothic novel by Harper Lee that I listened to during my commute and made me cry in the car.

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And finally, M is for Mandy.  A little out of order, but admit it, if you read this far you knew that was where this was headed. This is my blog, after all.

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Mmmmmmmmmmm!

[superpaintgirl]

  Last Saturday was the opening of Mark Making, an exhibition celebrating the work of the Buffalo MARK 2010 class. Check out this video of the ten of us and our show. (I come in around 4:16 discussing Circe, a character from Greek mythology remembered in Homer's Odyssey, and my painting of the same name.) 

  If you missed the unveiling, the gallery is open weekends from 12-4 until April 24th.  Still available for sale are packaged and signed artist trading cards with an essay by the re(MARK)able Gerald Mead.

[superpaintgirl]

Seeing Red

  This past weekend Robin took me to see “Red Riding Hood” at the Regal Theater. I’m a sucker for that whole Jungian girl in the woods thing. (Some of you might recall my “fairy tale” inspired exhibition at Lemberg Gallery in 2008.) There’s a universal appeal to these stories. At their roots they are bawdy oral histories of inevitable adult situations but we relegate these texts as childhood niceties. Little Red is a coming of age story, or, at least, a coming to puberty story if you’re reading between the lines. It’s bizarre to think that people were actually carried off by wild animals; that an adult (read: menstruating) woman could ever be considered a liability for your household’s survival. It’s just not something you think about these days unless maybe you’re planning on hiking alone along some more desolate areas of the Appalachian Trail!

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  Anyway, the movie was fun, (any movie with Robin is usually fun,) but having waited so long to see it I was a little disappointed by a somewhat formulaic storyline. I suppose that is the style of fairytales and why they are important as psychological building blocks. (Thank goodness for a myriad of red herrings.) However, the many similarities to M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” and the masterful retelling of this story by Angela Carter in her fantastic collection, The Bloody Chamber, left me feeling just a little disappointed. (Also, the characters were really well groomed in an unnervingly contemporary way for folks living in the woods of Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages.)

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  Don’t get me wrong, there were some really beautiful and cinematic psychological moments, like the shots of Red wandering a frozen alpine landscape with a cloak that seems to grow longer over time. (It reminded me of a Depeche Mode video.) For me it was swept too clean for a story that, at its center, is just a little gritty. Within the Hinterlands of our contemporary adulthoods we sometimes step off the path. The world is full of wolves but also of girls who have outsmarted them.

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 “Hoodie” oil on beveled wood panel, 9.5 inches x 6 inches, 2008, © Amanda Besl for Lemberg Gallery (private collection).

[superpaintgirl]

Seeing Red

  This past weekend Robin took me to see “Red Riding Hood” at the Regal Theater. I’m a sucker for that whole Jungian girl in the woods thing. (Some of you might recall my “fairy tale” inspired exhibition at Lemberg Gallery in 2008.) There’s a universal appeal to these stories. At their roots they are bawdy oral histories of inevitable adult situations but we relegate these texts as childhood niceties. Little Red is a coming of age story, or, at least, a coming to puberty story if you’re reading between the lines. It’s bizarre to think that people were actually carried off by wild animals; that an adult (read: menstruating) woman could ever be considered a liability for your household’s survival. It’s just not something you think about these days unless maybe you’re planning on hiking alone along some more desolate areas of the Appalachian Trail!

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  Anyway, the movie was fun, (any movie with Robin is usually fun,) but having waited so long to see it I was a little disappointed by a somewhat formulaic storyline. I suppose that is the style of fairytales and why they are important as psychological building blocks. (Thank goodness for a myriad of red herrings.) However, the many similarities to M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” and the masterful retelling of this story by Angela Carter in her fantastic collection, The Bloody Chamber, left me feeling just a little disappointed. (Also, the characters were really well groomed in an unnervingly contemporary way for folks living in the woods of Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages.)

[superpaintgirl]

Minus The Ham

  There can’t be progress in a foundations class without learning a few things the hard way.  That probably applies to my students as well, but I’m referring to the large portion of my break that was spent grading portfolios. I’ve learned a lot, what I will, and especially what I won’t, be doing next time!

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  So today I was back at school bright and early. I do actually enjoy my drive. I listen to a lot of audio books. Some are really good, and some are, well, to be honest, things I know will keep me awake on the drive.  This morning I started rereading (re listening? I just pretend to be well read) Harper Lee’s classic novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  It’s a novel to be enjoyed on so many levels; as an outcry of racial injustice, a coming of age story of the loss of innocence, a window into the climate of the South during the Great Depression and a humorous yet poignant story of a girl and her father.  

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  As Scout, her brother Jem, and Dill raced past the Radley place, I wondered if we don’t all have a "haint" like “Boo Radley” in our lives. Is there something you’ve avoided and feared with no real justification that might actually, like Mr. Arthur Radley, be the thing that gets you to a better place? I avoided teaching for a long time, but it’s work in my field that leaves me time to make artwork, (at least in theory.) That’s kind of a no brainer, right? Besides, I make paintings about adolescents and now I’m around them four days a week. It’s source material! In addition, it makes my studio time more precious and therefore more productive. (And I didn’t have to wear a giant cured ham costume to come to this realization.)

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The movie "To Kill a Mockingbird", directed by Robert Mulligan, based on the novel by Harper Lee. Seen here from left, Phillip Alford as Jem and Mary Badham as Scout. Initial theatrical release December 25, 1962. Screen capture. © 1962 Pakula-Mulligan Productions and Brentwood Productions. Credit: © 1962 Pakula-Mulligan Productions, Brentwood Prod.

[superpaintgirl]

Making Our Mark

  A year ago I had the privilege of participating in the NYFA MARK career development program for visual artists in New York State focusing on the professional and business side of creative practice.  Twelve Western New York artists from different backgrounds and art making practices were chosen to participate.  In a few weeks ten of us will be exhibiting our work together at ARTSPACE (1219 Main Street, Buffalo.) 

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  The exhibition is called MARK MAKING - MARK 10 ARTISTS and opens on Saturday April 2, with a reception from 6-9 pm.  If you miss the reception, gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday from 12 - 4 pm and by luck, chance or connection!

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[superpaintgirl]

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted…

  It’s midterm time and I am so ready for spring break!  The Go-gos had the right idea.  I'm even up for the whole crinoline and tiara ensemble they're rocking, but forget the beach. Ten whole days in the studio sounds like heaven right now.  In the meantime, there’s a whole lotta grading going on.

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Sigh.

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“Spring Break” oil on beveled wood panel, 5.5 inches x 4.25 inches, 2007, 

© Amanda Besl (private collection)

[superpaintgirl]

An Homage to Tom

  I have a confession to make.  I have a really big art crush on Tom Thomson and the Canada Seven.  No, they’re not a 70’s rock band. Thompson was a very influential painter who worked in the early 1900’s in the wilds of Canada. Last week I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario to see their permanent collection of Canadian landscape painting and soak up Thompson’s vision of our northern neighbor. It was almost ten years ago the last time I saw a Thompson in real life, and the trip was kind of to celebrate the show I’m in at the UB Center for the Arts, but also I hadn’t been since the museum was renovated in 2008.

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Early Spring, 1917, oil on wood Tom Thomson,  born Claremont, Ontario, 1877; died Canoe Lake (Algonquin Park), Ontario, 1917. 

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  Maybe it’s because I’m leaving at sun rise and coming home in the gloaming, but since taking this teaching job, I’ve become so much more aware of the color around me. That probably sounds funny, since I’m a professional painter, but between my beautiful (albeit long) drive to and from campus I’m driving through the very color theory I’m trying to teach. It is exciting and humbling to see these real life examples. It’s made carving out studio time for myself an essential priority despite a busy teaching schedule. Maybe I’m not at a place in my life where I’ll be running off to Algonquin Park in Ontario to create plein aire studies from a canoe like Thompson, but I can’t help but wonder what effect this exposure and awareness will have on my pallete.

[superpaintgirl]

Finding Love

  I’m sure my students are already sick of hearing me say this, but I really believe that drawing, or really any observational art form, is an act of love.  In order to understand what you’re looking at you need to look with a gaze that’s so intense and all encompassing that you lose track of time and your surroundings. It’s the gaze you would reserve for your beloved; for getting lost trying to memorize every detail of their face. It's falling into what you're looking at and finding something you never expected.

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  My foundation students, however, are not passionate about observing eggbeaters.  That's why I gave them these this morning in celebration of the day and as a reminder to look for the beauty in the overlooked: 

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  (Also they just started charcoal this week, and this way nobody could tell me they didn’t have an eraser.) 

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 Unfortunately, I don’t have enough of these for all of you, but while trolling Design Sponge (a little addiction of mine) I came across Paul Price’s graphic design love letters. Just in case you needed a little reminder Buffalonians:

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 Check out more of his work here.

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  Did you want to show me a little love? Well it would be great to see you this Thursday at the UB Center for the Arts for Figuration and It’s Disconnects.  I’m showing 38 paintings in my own little room, and let me tell you, I’m really excited!

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   This is me laying out my room with Sandra Firmin a few weeks ago. Yeah, my handwriting is usually better than that!

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 The opening is from 5 to 7, but come early. Word on the street is they’ve got a pile of Paula’s Donuts, and you know how hungry art students can be!

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  Mmmmmmm. Donuts. And art. And donuts….It’s really a win/win situation!

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  Happy Valentines everybody!

[superpaintgirl]

Perfectly Imperfect

 Those who know me know that I’m very type “A” and a pretty typical Virgo.  I like getting my own way, even if it means going without sleep and sometimes making some unusual sacrifices to get it. It’s a family trait. My sister is the same way and my perplexed brother-in-law has questioned whether our childhoods weren’t spent in a sweat shop. (Actually I think it’s caused by a lifetime of clocked in hours watching PBS DIY programs.)

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  Anyway, what I’m getting to realize is that perfect doesn’t happen, even when perfect is our purest goal. It’s not even an attainable goal, just an abstract concept. I’m realizing that it’s more important to be open-minded and adaptable. I just can't do everything. After all, imperfect results have taken me in new directions that I never would have taken. A painting that is coming out all wrong keeps me in the studio until I can get it “right.” A presentation for a class that meanders slightly could be the way to connect with a student who isn’t quite on the same page as the rest.  Besides, who’s to say the rest of the world shares my definition of perfect?  I’m pretty sure, in fact, that it doesn’t. Yes it’s an honorable goal to strive for, but irregularities can be beautiful. I fall in love with imperfect things all the time, like these beautiful 1930’s folding theater seats currently at Buffalo Reuse.  Why can I embrace imperfection, except when it comes from me?  How does one learn to do “good enough” or at least “good enough for now?”  

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 Pretty, pretty chairs!  I would never dream of reupholstering you!

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  Have you heard this poem by Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins? It’s called Pied Beauty.  My mother used to quote the first line often.  It’s a bit didactic, but Hopkins was a priest.  It’s also written in a mathematical form called a curtal sonnet which he invented.  Perhaps Hopkins was also struggling with his own perceptions of perfection; trying to create an ideal form in order to praise the beauty of irregularity?  Regardless, the poem has been hitting home for me lately:

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 Glory be to God for dappled things

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscapes plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

    All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise Him. 

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So glory be to “imperfect” things! Actually, that imperfectness just might be a better kind of perfect.  (Or am I justifying?)