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Artists I Love: Wendy Orville Upcoming at Davidson Galleries!

March 16, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Refelected Poplar by WendyOrville
“Reflected Poplar,” ©Wendy Orville

If you appreciate fine landscape and monoprint I strongly urge you to put Wendy Orville’s upcoming solo show at Davidson Galleries on your calendar (and get on the preview list!). I first saw Orville’s work on a tiny postcard 15 or 20 years ago. I kept the card on my refrigerator for a decade, and became an instant follower, when there were very few opportunities to see her work. Now, fortunately, she has found the perfect home in Seattle’s Davidson Galleries, and next month you can see nearly 40 pieces of her newest landscapes in one place.

To call this work “landscape” is a misnomer. More apt would be “astonishing events of ink and erasure.” These incandescent monoprints have a sense of atmosphere that takes my breath away. From a distance the flawless gradations of value look photographic. As one comes near the surface dissolves into exquisitely subtle marks and layers of ink that exist purely as abstraction. This is mastery. I adore Orville’s work both as a printmaker (who knows just how difficult this kind of work is to do!) and as a collector. The cloud-scape that lives in my house lights up the room, a reminder of what presence looks like.

Fallen Tree by Wendy Orville
“Fallen Tree” ©Wendy Orville

 

Sitka Monoprint by Wendy Orville
“Sitka” ©Wendy Orville

I should caution you that if you are interested in this work it will likely go very fast. I had fallen in love with numerous prints from Orville’s last show and did not have the luxury of choice, as they were snapped up by collectors well before the opening. Perhaps I will see you at the preview!

An occasional feature from Iskra Fine Art: Artists I Love. Encouraging you to love art, support artists, and build the collector community.

Filed Under: Art Reviews, Living With Art Tagged With: artistsI love, Davidson Galleries, monoprints, spring art openings Seattle, Wendy Orville

The Artful Life: A Visit with Patti King

June 20, 2016 by Iskra 6 Comments

An artful life

With the Solstice the weather in Seattle has shifted full-tilt into summer. It is hard to go inside and work in the studio when the sky opens to a clear blue. Today I am taking time away from work to reflect and write about influences and inspirations, in particular the  inspiration that comes from time spent with other artists in their studios and homes.

To prepare my mind for a writing project I like to close my eyes in the garden under the dogwood tree by the pond. There, as prisms of light sift down through the leaves onto my eyelids, I can let my thoughts wander until, with a few nudges, they begin to collect around a subject and form into sentences. This morning before starting the process of contemplation I had begun to eat an apple, and I took it with me and set it down on the arm of the chair. I settled back and drifted on the breeze of summer sounds: the clatter of lawn mowers, the whir of dragonflies and the soft shush of pampas grass. A thought emerged and with it the immediate habitual impulse to reach for my phone. So of course, eyes still shut, I reached for. . . . [Read more…]

Filed Under: Artist Studio Visits, Living With Art Tagged With: art in interiors, artist home, artist studio, fabric artist, island life, museo gallery, Patti King, shibori, whidbey Island artist

The Patra Passage Opens to the Public, Museum of Glass February 15

February 6, 2015 by Iskra Leave a Comment

It’s hard for me to believe, but it has been a full year since I attended the launching of the Patra Project and received the gift of the patra, the exquisite bowl gifted to me and 108 other people on condition that within three months we pass it along to someone else. The past year been a time of big changes for me, and the energy of this extraordinary project by artist Lynda Lowe has permeated my life in many ways. (You can read about my experience of the patra here.) I passed my patra on to photographer Rosanne Olson, and this is what she did with it:

Photograph copyrighted by Rosanne Olson.

She also took it down the Grand Canyon on a raft: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Living With Art, Meditation & Buddhism Tagged With: Lynda Lowe, Michael Meade, museum of glass, Patra Passage, phil cousineau, rosanne olson

The Painting in the Attic: A Mid Century Mystery

December 14, 2014 by Iskra 1 Comment

For as long as I can remember my father had a painting of a man hanging in his study. As a child it seemed huge to me, larger than life: a wall-sized man. Surrounded by books on every side the man was, appropriately enough, reading a book. As I grew older I got tall enough to reach eye-level with him, and my appreciation for the painting grew. His profile was a jumble of brushstrokes that distilled only at a distance into a face. Such gravity and focus, the page held down with his burnt orange thumb, the air vibrating with color and stillness: the man was thinking. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Living With Art, Object Lessons: Essays and images inspired by "A History of the World in 100 Objects.", Painting Tagged With: Al Friedman painter, Kenneth Callahan, living with art, man thinking, mid-century painting, mid-century painting in interiors, northwest painting, Painting of a Man Reading, remembering the '50's

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Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: I added baking soda to my gesso. Pretty wild texture here, not sure yet how stable it is. You can see the test of the edges in the second piece— the rugged edge only works if I get a pristine background and unfortunately the tape I used to mask it did not work consistently. Hello tape, my old friend and nemesis. You work differently on every surface. These little barn structures give me great comfort as the bigger structures of our government and nation seem to be crumbling.
Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the fields somewhere, on the road to Edison. Acrylic on prepared ground, sketchbook.
MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai We MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei at Seattle Art Museum.
I am thinking this morning about the phrase Americ I am thinking this morning about the phrase American Heartland. Learning to paint a barn means studying the neutrals. Our political discourse has pitted the barn people against the city people and there are no neutrals, just shouting. But if you walk out into the horizon lands, all you hear is the wind and a kestrel. Walk in boots, hard-pressed against your toes, walk on stubble barefoot and get acupuncture for a lifetime. Study the intervals: how the clouds can be in the upper one third neatly or one sixth, precarious, the future disappearing with the sun as it falls making the barn your whole world if you’re three years old and looking up; one big triangle with a square in the center, and so many mysteries inside the square. 

There is also the question of what kind of light seeps between the verticals and is the light coming in the evening or at midday when you can finally begin to make out all the other tiny squares within the big square, which would be called hay. Reach for the rope and swing out over the canyon, that great big canyon from bale to bale.

Collage studies: painting neutrals
A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yor A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yorker this morning, about the global population crash. This will upend urbanism, for sure, though it will very good for veterinarians and dog groomers:
“Only two communities appear to be maintaining very high fertility: ultra-Orthodox Jews and some Anabaptist sects. The economist Robin Hanson’s back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that twenty-third-century America will be dominated by three hundred million Amish people. The likeliest version of the Great Replacement will see a countryside dotted everywhere with handsome barns.”
First Thursday. Such a beautiful night. First Thursday. Such a beautiful night.

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