Portraits and a little Mystery
I’ve now finally made a start on something for the Ottawa School of Art Portrait Competition (details below). Actually my plan is to have a couple of options and see which one pans out. I should have taken my own advice and just started a while back – because now that I am painting, I feel energized of course!
With portraits, as with all subjects, I strive not to over finish, to leave a little mystery:
“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist” said René Magritte and Edgar Degas: “A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people”
Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way maintains, “Mystery is at the heart of creativity” and in my studio I often recall a quote from from Francis Bacon: “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery”.
Ottawa School of Art Portrait Competition
The Ottawa School of Art is thrilled to be kicking off their 145th Anniversary with a Portrait Contest! This contest is open to all OSA members (and joining the OSA is easy): https://artottawa.ca/portrait-contest-2024/
Ottawa School of Art Spring Term Registration is Open – Courses & Workshops
Registration is open! This Spring we’re looking forward to a full program of courses and workshops, both in-person and on-line: drawing and painting portraits and painting in all media, both in-studio and plein-air!
Check out the details on our website: https://www.davidkearn.com/workshops/
And on the OSA Registration Site: https://registration.artottawa.ca/
ART CREDO Exhibition – 45th Year
Submission Details – closing date for submissions is Friday, 15 March 2024: Click Here
150 Years of Impressionists
Paris 1874, saw the first exhibition of the Impressionists, and the start of a movement that swept the world.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/01/26/impressionism-150th-anniversary-exhibitions
In Praise of Cool Colours
Following some portrait exercises, one artist commented: “These were very interesting exercises for me as I realized that I mainly use a warm palette for all my paintings.” This set me to thinking about the way I generally paint and it’s clear that I gravitate to cool-variant colours and build most of my paintings with them…adding warm towards the end as an accent.
For example, circling around the primaries, I tend more often to use cooler variants, particularly with reds and yellows: Alizarin Crimson more than Cadmium Red,
Lemon Yellow more than Yellow Cadmium Yellow. This certainly has served me well with portraits (where skin tones invariably contain a little blue) and I don’t really change my approach with other subjects. Maybe it’s because cool colours are a little more subtle; less in-your-face, leaving something to dwell upon. There’s that Mystery again!
Break-a-Brush!
David & France