Portrait Painting Thibault

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I heard again recently painter Michael John Angel's lecture on the artist he knew, Pietro Annigoni here in Firenze, Italia. I like many of Annigoni’s works, mostly his portraits, but also his drawings after Firenze was bombed during World War II. I like the way he mixed media in his work in a very contemporary way. In fact, John Angel related that he once saw Annigoni paint with a brick!

But what I enjoy best about seeing his portraits is being reminded that a good design trumps a photographic likeness every time. On Monday, I started to paint a portrait of a young artist I know named Thibault (pronounced “T-bow). He is a good-looking French boy with dreadlocks and wears cool clothes.

Anyway, Mondays are typically my lesson exchange night: I teach anatomy to an Italian artist friend and he teaches me how to speak and understand Italian. On that night I was also making him dinner so that he could taste the new oil I had received from our weekend of olive picking in the Tuscan countryside. This is the Kelly length of telling you that I only had one-hour of a typically two-hour session with the model. So, I hope to improve upon this with more time. The third image is a close-up of the second image.

Compatibility Sculpture

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Most people do not know how shy I really am because when I was a teenager my mother enrolled me into the organization Toastmasters International that helps people conquer fears of public speaking (and also to learn how to do it well). I remember feeling unworthy of introducing myself to new people as an “artist.” Artists were cool people, I thought, and I am only me.

Well, that is one fear I rarely struggle with these days, since I have embraced who I am wholeheartedly. I am very happy to be celebrating this month my twelve-year anniversary for “taking the plunge” to full-time art. You may share in some of this joy, if you like, by reading my latest art newsletter about my visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, and noting how you may enjoy some of my sculpture (or my friend's -- the amazing Ukrainian-American sculptor Vasily Fedorouk).

Here is a sculpture I did of a couple of models who happened to be married … to each other. My favorite comment from them after our multiple sculpting sessions together was that posing for me was the best quality time they were able to find in their busy lives. I dearly hope they have continued to find more of that after the sculpture was completed! What a rare treat it was to be able to work with a couple of models in such an intimate pose! I hope you like the love in this composition titled “Compatibility.” For views from other angles, please click on the title “Compatibility.” Thank you for your interest!

"Compatibility"

bronze with wood base
9" h x 14" x 11"
limited edition of 12 for bronze
Price List

Also, terra-cotta original sculpture
artist's proof (one-of-a-kind)
11" h x 13" x 9"
by Kelly Borsheim
Price List

Painting the Female Figure Magda

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Back in October, I wrote in a blog post about my oil painting of Magda. And I shared with you some of the process of the painting I was creating as a study of a nude woman’s back. Here is the finished work.

”Study of Magda”
80 x 40 cm
Oil on Canvas
By Kelly Borsheim 2012
Available, just ask…

Also, a gentle reminder that if you enjoy the art of sculpture and are intrigued by the vision and work of my friend and artist Vasily Fedorouk, please see this once-in-a-lifetime offer to receive more art with his sculpture in this special offer in my latest art newsletter: http://www.borsheimarts.com/news/2013_01_GuggenheimSerraBilbao.htm

Taking the Plunge to Full-Time Artist

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Today is the anniversary date of the day I sold my beeswax candle business in 2001 and took the plunge full-time into an art career. It has been a bit of a roller coaster ride and I cannot say it is a life of security by any means; however, it was the right move for me. And the only one I could have made by that point in my life and even today, twelve years later.

As a thank you for helping me keep to this journey, I typically have a special offer in January to help you get more art in your life. This offer is detailed in my recent art newsletter that is posted on my Web site. In this newsletter, I have also shared some of my experiences and images while visiting the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In addition, I have written a bit about artists Richard Serra and David Hockney.

Whether your interest is in sculpture or travel or even 2-dimensional artworks, I hope that you will check out my latest art news: http://www.borsheimarts.com/news/2013_01_GuggenheimSerraBilbao.htm and help me celebrate TWELVE full years of art making! Thank you for reading and riding along!

P.S. Many thanks to my friend Anna Laura in Mexico who took this silly shot of me pole dancing among friends when we had “The Blob” to ourselves this past July. I enjoyed getting to be friends with her as she lived in Firenze for a short time. Charming girl. [The Blob is a horrible little nightclub that is one of the few open till 5 a.m. in Florence, Italy. There are more images from that party on Facebook, my “Friends – Album V” in case you are curious.]

Happy birthday, Aunt Patsy! Let’s dance some more!

Guggenheim Serra Bilbao

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Friday 11 January is my 12th anniversary for taking the plunge into full-time art. I have been busy writing my next art newsletter for those on my list. The main subjects will be the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, as well as the architectural sculptures of Richard Serra that are part of the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. I include a few of my images here as a wee bit of a teaser.

Also included in the newsletter will be my annual special offer on my available artworks. (I am still dreaming that up!) If you would like to receive this newsletter and have not yet signed up for it (the list is a different one from this blog subscription), please visit my contact page to subscribe. You may also read past newsletters to see if you would enjoy receiving your own copy, click on my art newsletter table of contents page: www.borsheimarts.com/newsletter.htm.

Thank you for sharing this artistic journey with me. And stay tuned . . .

Buon compleanno, Tomaso!

Castles in the Air

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I find it amusing to learn which modo di dire or expressions are common between countries and cultures, compared to what is not even translatable. Here in Firenze, Italia, I find myself having friends not only from Italy and America, but also from many other countries as well. One of my dearest friends, Caroline, is a Brit. She called me on New Year’s Day (and thankfully on this particular morn, not before noon!) and invited me to meet her and our Italian friend Doria at Palazzo Strozzi. We went to see the exhibit "The Thirties. The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism".

It was more interesting than I expected it to be and I am not even sure how to explain what my expectations were other than I did not really have much of any. Like the Frances Bacon exhibit in the side gallery Strozzina, I had been riding the fence about whether or not I wanted to bother (I have not on the latter). I like to see art of all kinds, but I have a strong drive now to do my own thing.

I was amused because Doria and Caroline decided to share an audio guide, each taking one fork of the earplug microphones, in the same way that the kids share sounds on an iPod. They found themselves often being pulled back towards the other as their interests diverged, like a leash that kept them hostage. I rarely bother with the audio guides. Granted, they serve to give someone(s) a job, but much of talk seems like rubbish to me, or information that might be interesting, but omits what I really wanted to know about a work of art. I was able to roam about more freely.

I find that I really enjoy going to museums and exhibits in a foreign country in which English is a strong second language. I could have stayed longer at the Strozzi that day because I find it interesting how the Italian is reconfigured into English. It is a great way to learn a new language as well as appreciate anew the subtle beauties in one’s own. And so I languished among the artworks that I mostly felt little connection with, until Caroline psssstted me over to see one she thought I needed to see.

Once I arrived at her side, it was obvious why. She pointed and said, “Look at the title!” This painting (shown below) by Osvaldo Licini in 1936 is titled “Castello in Aria” (Castle in the Air). It is one of our running – and affectionate – jokes between ourselves: my ability to build many “castles in the air” (envisioned improbabilities) from one phrase, sometimes even one word (Hello?), uttered by another. What DOES it all mean? Ahhaha … Doria confirmed that not only do I do this, but Italia has the same expression. [Or as my former husband use to say, “Kelly, you could ‘What if’ me to death!”]

An exciting perk about attending group exhibits is to discover an artist that you would like to learn more about. In this mostra about the 1930s art in Italy, the one who struck my curiosity most was next to the Castle. It was a painting by Tullio Crali. Not only, like my father, was the artist an avid pilot, but his art uses mathematics in a beautiful and creative way and I was hooked! Crali’s work in this exhibit at the Palazzo Strozzi was titled “Horizontal Spin” and is shown here.

I found that my favorite part of the exhibit was the collexion of side posts that contained memories of people from that time period. The world was changing so dramatically and so quickly. The black and white hands drew me in (each panel had a different image of hands) and I read quotes such as this one:

“When Hitler came to Florence I was sent off with the Avanguardisti from heaven knows where, but still, all that orchestration was impressive. Yes, the city had been heavily “made up” for the event. You still couldn’t feel it, we only realised afterwards . . . And all this showing off, there was this business with the aeroplanes, you never knew how many were flying by; it seemed like a hundred, but it was only one flying by a hundred times. It was all about hiding things which there was nothing to be ashamed of.” ~ Lapo Mazzoi (Firenze 1925)

And this one:

“It was a crystal set, or cat’s whisker receiver, which as a very odd-looking little instrument containing a pin that was moved on a stone—it was a galvanic stone—and it managed to set up a contact with radio broadcasts. So the movement of the pin on the stone made it possible to intercept radio broadcasts, which you listened to through headphones connected to this little machine. It was technologically fascinating for those days. And then of course there were the radios, which were far simpler.
But the idea was that we could partly build them ourselves, using small parts. It was lots of fun.” ~ Franco de Peverelli Luschi (Firenze 1928)

It was interesting to note that various prestigious artistic awards of this time and place (such as the Bergamo Award and various Biennale) were caught up in politics. Perhaps not unlike today, but since that world of high-end contemporary art is still so foreign to me, I hate to comment on it. I found myself revisiting the chicken-and-egg question of whether art imitates life or life imitates art. We are all a product of our times and there are so many things happening at once that I doubt we individually have much control over what influences us. For example, in my world, it seems that there is a growing interest in “realistic” art (not even sure what that means since I see everything as relative and interconnected). Can we artists help this? Should we rebel or embrace? Should we consciously worry about these things or should we just move ahead, creating art in whatever means we are inspired to do? I am inclined to think that latter – that even if we try to remain spontaneous, we will inevitably record some part of the times we live in. That is not a bad thing, in fact, is perhaps what we are intended to do!

Links of interest :

• Palazzo Strozzi: The Thirties. The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism The site is actually pretty cool and you can get a good idea of what the exhibit was intending to demonstrate. Click here… then click on ‘English’ in the top left corner. Then on the right column, click on ‘Exhibition Walkthrough’ and scroll to your heart’s content.
• Live with Art: blog post by Nora Buñuel about this Strozzi exhibit

Sleeping Angel Pastel Painting Art

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Well, it seemed like a fun idea for me to start a tradition of creating and exhibiting a work of intentionally erotic art for a wish of abundant joy while heading into the New Year. But I seem to be getting tamer as each December arrives! Still, I at least have a new pastel painting of a MALE FIGURE for you! This one is called “Sleeping Angel” and was inspired by light and also the famous Italian artist Caravaggio and his "Sleeping Cupid."

If you would like to read more about the inspiration for this work of art that I have created, please click HERE to read my latest art newsletter. However, I have made a few changes to the 18” x 24” pastel painting and thus, here is a newer image of the ”Sleeping Angel.” I hope that you enjoy him and that you have at least a year of joy, peace, and above all, love.

Links to the other New Year’s Eve posts:
• New Year’s Eve 2011: Art and the Nude Artist poses in front of composition by artist Darryl Pottorf for Roberto Rauschenberg, in Robert and Darryl’s beach house in Florida
• New Year’s Eve 2010: “Anthurium” Nature repeats the patterns she enjoys
• New Year’s Eve 2009: “Tesoro!”
  freely offering our own vulnerability to another is quite a turn-on!

P.S. I am delighted to be able to announce now that my original stone carving "Kiss Me Blue" has been given to a very enthusiastic young woman in America as a Christmas gift (by her parents). So lovely to end the year with a sale, and for a new collector of my work!
”Kiss Me Blue”

In addition: There's a Caravaggio exhibit at Los Angeles County Museum of Art which continues through February 10, 2013. [Thanks to blog reader and art model Andrew Cahner for this tip.]

“Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and His Legacy”