Metropolis!

Just saw the re-released, extended version of Metropolis. Now these are some great dance moves, folks:

Lancaster.

Here are some more photos from the weekend's road trip to the wolf sanctuary and Amish country out in Lancaster County, PA:

I looove black-eyed susans

even Amish get the blues

little Amish piglets

EXTREME chocolate milk. EXTREME.

Dibs on this for a band name.

No matter how many times I see the Amish riding in their horse-driven buggies on the modern streets, it will never fail to look really weird - and kind of awesome.

Disapproving Amish rabbit

L'anniversaire.

Today = 8 years since I became a Feissel!!
These have been the best 8 years of my life - actually, the last 11 since I've been with the amazing Mr. John Feissel have been super-great.
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Here's the first painting I ever did of him, back in '99:

jf1, 1999, oil on board

Here's another one I did a couple of years later, a personal favorite:

nap8, 2003, oil and alkyd on linen, 11"x14"

Happy anniversary, baby!

Los lobos.

If you're a fellow northern hemisphere inhabitant, you may have noticed that it is summertime. As such, it has been hot, and under such conditions I find it difficult to focus on much other than having fun and taking one's mind off the heat. Now, I definitely have fun while painting – don't get me wrong – but keeping a tight working schedule with my painting has just not been happening in this weather. The mind wanders, the body moves with great slowness. The mind moves with great slowness. The body moves toward the nearest cold beverage (or the nearest purveyor of fine ice creams). All this to say, painting is going very, very slowly. Yet, there is inspiration a-plenty here in Philly and beyond... most recently, I have found some splendid nature-based inspiration, found at the Wolf Sanctuary of Pennsylvania. Wolves! Definitely expect to see some in my paintings in the future:

Also of interest: the Amish! Endlessly fascinating, and perplexing. Especially perplexing are the Amish dolls for sale at The Amish Village: spooky.

Mayo.

I may have mentioned that I'm in the middle of a bazillion painting projects at the moment, no one of which is getting the time it deserves, alas. Here's one I think I haven't posted yet, a small-ish (16"x20") painting, insprired by a photo taken a couple of years ago when I made a quick visit to see some friends at an artists' retreat on the west coast of Ireland - County Mayo, I believe it was:

work in progress, tentatively titled the long road to someone else's home, oil on linen, by me.

Sorry for the crummy photo quality, btw, it's not that yellow-ish in real life - bad lighting. I'll post it again when I'm done and have taken a decent photo.

Speaking of mayo (sort of), this new place in our neighborhood called Kraftwork is completely rocking my world, and my palate: their herbed fries with mustard aioli are to die for. Mmmmm.

Raiders of the lost art.

Hey! I'm slowly emerging from my bad birthday-related mood, and finding other things to get in a bad mood about. Haha! No seriously, this story in the NY Times about artist Leopold Seyffert is kind of sad - it's about an artist who was once acclaimed and much sought-after for portraiture, who has ended up being somewhat neglected and forgotten after his death (and probably even toward the latter part of his life). Yikes. It kind of reminds me, in a way, of the fate of the likes of Bouguereau - an artist whose ranking as a valued artist fluctuated according to popular taste. Ah, it's all so relative and subjective and ultimately fickle, this whole art thing... it's both disheartening and comforting to know that even extemely skilled and gifted artists are subject to the peculiar sort of groupthink of sorts which determines what constitutes Fine Art. Sigh.

Dutch fisherman, painting by Leopold Seyffert.