The Northeaster.

Hey there, world. Sorry for the dearth of bloggage here, but John and I have been on a wee journey northward. In a whirlwind of train and Chinatown bus and subway and zipcar, we covered some of DC, Philadelphia and NYC and have lived to tell the tale. There was art, family, friends and lovely little animals abound – so let's tell that tale in photos. First, for DC:

Here's fellow artist Julie Niskanen while hanging her solo show at the Washington Printmakers Gallery in Dupont Circle. The show looked awesome, and will be up through August 30... check it out if you're in DC.

Caught some other art of course, including this special exhibition over at the Phillips Collection entitled "Paint Made Flesh" in which I got to see (and drool over) the first Jenny Saville painting I've ever seen in person (in the flesh, haha! So to speak) as well as some Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and some John Currin – I had never seen his work in person before either. Then I did some sketching and wandering around at the National Gallery, and finally found a bench from which to sketch a Rodin bust:

... a little sketch (by me) of a Rodin bust of Katherine Seney Simpson, 1902-1903

Also at the National Gallery: a really lovely Géricault (speaking of "Paint Made Flesh" I suppose):

I also did a quick zip-through of the Freer Gallery, just to get myself my RDA of Whistler and Dewing, here are a couple:

This one is by Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Here's a Whistler landscape

This one is a portrait of Charles Freer himself by Whistler...

In between art-time and going out to the wilds of Virginia to see Depeche Mode, I got to see the newest member of our extended family, little J.T., already six months old. Yay! Here he is with his lovely mamma:

Stay tuned for some more random images from the DC leg of the trip. Yay for our nation’s capital! Woot! Also soon to come: NY and Philadelphia. Check back in the coming day or two...

Woman blogging about women painting women.

Yes, hi there, I'm still trying to catch up on portrait stuff. Sigh. Hence the absence from this here blog. In the meantime, during my non-portrait painting time, I've been really really enjoying posting artists to my friend Sadie's blog "Women Painting Women." There's an amazing variety of work out there, so many women artists, so much great work being made. Super-inspiring. Anyway, along the way, I've collected some observations (nothing profound, just thinkin'):

1.   A lot of the paintings I post, coincidentally, are self-portraits by the selected artists. I don't know if this is a factor of gender – if women are more likely to self-reflect in this way than men, for example – or if it's just a part of being a figurative artist... because it sure makes it easier to find a model, after all. Hmm.
2.   Maybe I'm dense and missing something, but I find most often that if you put a painting of a female figure in front of me, I'm not able to correctly guess whether it was done by a male or female artist. You'd think there'd be subtle context clues - but if there are, I'm missing them. What do you think? Does the fabled "male gaze" manifest itself differently in the actual finished image than the female gaze? Let me know if you have thoughts on this.
3.   It's awesome how many great artists we're finding from all corners of the world... South America, Australia, you name it. Recently I found a pocket of Dutch painters who are making great stuff – three of my favorites were Lique Schoot, Francien Krieg and Caroline Westerhout, click on their names to go to their websites.
4.   Though I haven't gone this route yet – because I feel each selected artist's work should stand on its own - some days I find I'm inclined to post images that fall into certain themes, as if trying to "curate" the day's posts (albeit in a loose and lazy way). Such as, historical/allegorical paintings, self-portraits (that alone would take up a lot of days), paintings with figures and animals, porn-ish images, images with "twins," etc. But then most times, I feel like I want to mix it up each day, and cover more of a variety of styles/approached. Anyway, I'm not used to thinking of things in any sort of quasi-"curatorial" sense, so this is all new to me. Whee.

So in case you're interested, here's my favorite painting from what I've posted in the past week:

Painting by Dutch artist Caroline Westerhout: de werkelijke wereld bestaat niet meer (the real world does no longer exist), oil on canvas, 70cm x 70cm, 2009.

It's beautifully painted, and deliciously creepy. And it also reminds me of a painting I did a couple of years ago, so maybe I'm relating to it in some other way as well:

restraint, oil on canvas, 24"x30", 2004, by me, Diane Feissel

Seven!

Celebrating seven years of state-sanctioned wedded bliss with my waayyyy better half today. Whoooo!!! I'm very happy to be a Feissel, and to enjoy the infinite awesomeness of John Feissel.

July 20, 2002 in Healdsburg, California

It's a draw.

Started to get my motivation back this weekend, and went to Alia's place for a session with the live model on Saturday, here's what I came up with:

I've been having a hard time with shading recently... well, actually, all of my life, but I only just realized it last year when I was in a drawing class at Studio Escalier. I seem to get the value scale out of whack, and my figures then end up looking wrong, or hairy. Sigh. Alas, always a work in progress...

Dormant.

This week has been a not-great one, motivation is low and paint activity is slow. Sigh. I think a couple of things are getting to me, not the least of which is our current geographical limbo. Anyway, since I have little to report on the painting front other than ongoing struggles with portrait projects and my own work, I'll make this a "flashback" entry to a painting I did back in '06:

Botzaris, 2006, oil on panel, 20"x16" by me, Diane Feissel.

Phew x 2.

Ok, bullet dodged. Data is fine, hard drive recovered. Backup external hard drive on its way to me. Wallet is lighter after this computer debacle/escapade, but so it goes. Now I need to decide if I can afford another laptop... sigh.

In the meantime, hope everyone out there had a great 4th of July. Mine was spent cursing the trend of planned obsolescence in the field of electronics. Happy Independence Day!

Phew.

Okay, the painting got in (see my previous post). Phew.

And now for the other anxiety: my laptop died, and I'm now waiting to hear back whether or not a resurrection is possible. Stay tuned. Though blog posts may be less frequent until computing issues are resolved. Sigh.