Life Imitating Art - Baumann

Life Imitating Art - at the Gustave Baumann Exhibit, 36x18

I have been working on two paintings simultaneously over the past several months but they were interrupted because of the welcome pet portrait commissions. I just received the final approval on a dog portrait so it is now drying awaiting varnish.

If you saw the link going around on Facebook from a photographer who took photos of people imitating the art they were looking at, I just want you to know these two paintings were started and this one almost finished, when I saw his collection. I did feel a bit gypped. This has happened to me before...where I get this idea and am in the middle of a painting and then something manifests in some form taking the uniqueness right away. I guess there is nothing new under the sun even when we want to believe it!

What captivated me about this scene is how she is standing like the trees she is looking at as well as the colors matching from her sweater and her skin tone. This one is from a now defunct art museum in Pasadena. It just recently closed its doors. It was a unique concept in that it showed only artists who painted in California, even if they did not reside there for long. There was no permenant collection. It was three galleries and there was usually one contemporary exhibit and two from the past. I had not realized that the Gustave Baumann exhibit was in the second gallery, so it was a very pleasant discovery to be sure! He is best known for his woodcuts of Taos. This exhibit actually included the press he used for his wood cuts as well as examples of the different color blocks. The pictures she is looking at were gouache, I believe. I wrote about the main gallery show, Joseph Kleitsch, if you care to check his amazing work out.

The second painting in this particular series is from NYC. The contrast is striking...to be continued.