Laura Jeanne Grimes, artist
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Those Who Were Truly Great, and the Rest of Us

10/19/2010

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"I think continually of those who were truly great," begins British poet Stephen Spender (1909-1995).

in my family, less than an "A" on the report card was failure.  I graduated 5th in my large high school class and thought myself a failure.  In our entertainment-driven culture, we celebrate the Big Stars, forget the Has-Beens, and pity the Wanna-bees.  
I made a B+ in my first college drawing class.  Therefore, I believed I was a no-talent failure.  So, I majored in art history instead of studio art, as I had planned.  
 
About 5 years later, I returned to school and earned that BFA in Studio Art.  "So there!" I could tell my past self.

Twenty five years later, am I famous?  No.  Does it matter?  Not at all.  Will I achieve the stature of a Leonardo, a Michelangelo, a Raphael?  Extreeeeeeeemely doubtful.  Will I ever even be a big fish in a small pond?  Does it matter? What matters is to keep at it, despite the lack of glory, fortune and fame.  

Perfectionists get very little done, you know.  Sometimes a "good enough" job really is good enough, if you put your heart and soul into it.  I give you a Leonardo.  And, one of my small paintings.  His is magnificent.  And mine?  Well, it's good enough.



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Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci (as if I really needed to tell you)
Picture
Senalka, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12 inch, by Laura Grimes


And, here is Stephen Spenders poem, in its entirety:

 I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
 What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
 Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.
 
~ Stephen Spender ~












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The Portrait

10/18/2010

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"A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth."  "Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend."  Both quotes by American Impressionist painter John Singer Sargent.


After 32 years of marriage, I can draw a recognizable picture of my husband from memory.  But it is still going to be a much better likeness if he poses for me.  Imagine how frustrating it is to try to get a likeness of someone you don't know.  For example, a model at an open studio session.  Some artists have the ability to capture a likeness quickly.  For me, what a struggle!  I get closer and closer to a likeness the more often I have the same model.  My favorite model is Senalka, who, alas, moved to San Francisco.  

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Here is one of my first drawings of Senalka.  Not much of a likeness at all.

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A later version.  Beginning to get closer.

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From the same session as the one just above.

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I believe this one succeeds as a drawing and perhaps come a little closer.

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Still not there.  Dang!

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Perhaps the closest of all.  But still not quite right.  And, she has moved away.  Alas.

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Americans and The Figure

10/12/2010

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For over 25 years now, a lifedrawing open studio has met on Tuesday mornings at the Dougherty Cultural Arts Center in Austin, TX.  I attended this studio in the 80's, intermittently in the '90's.  In this, the first decade of the 21st Century, I became more regular.  Dorothy Billman started this endeavor, and she stayed on as the studio monitor for 25 years.  Aa few years ago, at the age of 83, she fell and cracked her pelvis.  I substituted for her, expecting her return.  She planned to return.  But, she did not get back to driving.  No one was willing to take it on, and I wanted to keep drawing, so I stepped in officially.  The group has grown, so much so, that I opened up another open studio at the Austin Visual Arts Association on Wednesday mornings.  I put us on MeetUp.com, where I promote, not only my group, but every lifedrawing group in the Austin area, at least the ones I know about.

When I returned to UT in the early '80's, this time as a studio art major, freshmen were required to take two semesters of lifedrawing.  A friend from church rebuked me for taking the class, as it was a "sin".  Now, UT doesn't even offer freshman lifedrawing.  For budgetary reasons.  Less lifedrawing classes means less budget going to pay for the models.  It's no secret in the art world that the best way to learn to draw is lifedrawing.  Why?  My theory is that we are hard-wired to notice the human face, the human body -- expression, body language.  This captures our attention in a way that a still life never will.  With the attention captured, we focus on the line, the form, the volume.  As we master the figure, the skill transfers to other subjects a well: the landscape, the still life, etc. 


Even in the liberal city of Austin (Austin is not really part of Texas, it is its own little world),  the nude still shocks people.  This dynamic baffles me.  Americans, who watch R-rated movies with both nudity and truly pornographic violence, still find a painting, a drawing, a sculpture of the nude scandalous.   When parents say, "I let my child watch that R-rated film, because it was "only" rated R for violence," I am perplexed.  As if violence in movies doesn't numb us to violence in reality.


Sheesh.  I blame the state of art education in our country.  Few people have even a passing familiarity with art history.  They know of Michelangelo's David, and would probably visit it if they found themselves in Florence.  Perhaps they have seen images of Botticelli's Venus, from his painting "The Birth of Venus".  They could visit her in Florence as well, at the Uffizzi Gallery, the house of so many of the greatest works of Western art.  Would they flinch, seeing these works?  The David was commissioned to stand in the public square, as a symbol of the city of Florence.  Men, women and children walked by for centuries.  Did they shield their eyes?


So, I offer images of both works.  Judge for yourself.  And make the pilgrimage to Florence before you die.  You won't regret it.



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Gestures

10/9/2010

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Lifedrawing sessions normally begin with gestures.  The model does very short poses, usually one-minute ones, poses that could not be held for much more than a minute.  Gesture poses are active, dynamic.  My favorite part of lifedrawing studio is the gestures.  I could do an all-gesture class of 3 hours, but, even with breaks, the model would collapse with exhaustion. 


I believe gesture drawings are similar to calligraphy.  When we watch a master of Asian calligraphy at work, we do not see the years of practice, the honing of skill over time.  We see deft strokes of the brush, quick, yet somehow without haste.  Perhaps the brush moves for a minute or less.  Yet,  the artist's hand produces great works of art in that small space of time.


So I offer you, the reader, just a few of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gesture drawings I have done in the last 25 years or so
I will not claim they are great works of art.  They are a record of a moment, a moment that is gone, but not lost.
 

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The Poetry of Abandoned Objects

10/7/2010

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We still have some undeveloped property here in the suburbs.   What used to be scrub land, good only for goats, has been sold, a parcel here, a parcel there.  I walk my dog and we explore these places which will someday soon be eradicated.  One such spot of land was completely bulldozed a few months ago.  They turned it into a moonscape.  I'm sure it's cheaper and easier to just scrape the land, fill in where needed, compact the dirt and put up the buildings.  Then, plant a few puny trees.  Maybe even a flower bed.  As they have been erecting the building, I believe it is turning into an office space.  We have plenty of vacant office space around here.  But, no matter.  And, how can I criticize?  Our house sits on what was once such a place.  But, we should stop now and then to remember that something was lost.
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This abandoned loveseat sits under a cluster of cedars on just such a parcel of land.  I had to make my way thru some brush to get to it.  I have some scratches, but, darn it!, I wanted the picture.  It is extremely shady in that grove.  This was the best I could do with my iPhone camera.


I see it and wonder: how did it get here?  Did the trees, the brush grow up around it?  Perhaps a couple once sat in it, when it was new, and enjoyed the sun.  Now, old and worn, crumbling, paint flaking, it sits in deep, deep shade, empty and forgotten.  


I think of how our culture treats the elderly.  We see them as old and worn.  We forget them.  And in doing so, cut ourselves off from wisdom, from perspective, from history itself.  Barring illness or accident, we will all be aged one day.  "Respect your elders!"  Once, we rolled our eyes at that sharp rebuke.  But, our time is coming.

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