It is inevitable. Each time I pull into my driveway from the grocery store, my subconscious brain seems to recall an item that I have forgotten. Funny how that works. The Saturday figure drawing workshop at Summit Artspace took me by surprise. I had pictured a small intimate gathering. The crowd was considerably larger and, in my anxiety ridden reaction, I forgot to mention several things....the most important being the artists who have influenced my work. The first artist I studied in detail was Andrew Wyeth....not a surprise. His moody works reflected my inner workings. My favorite impressionist is Edouard Manet. I have several favorite contemporary painters: Burton Silverman.....power beyond words. Alex Powers, primarily watercolor, from whom I discovered the marvelous principle of shared shapes. Alex Someone-or-other, a Russian painter who lived and showed in San Francisco and was the recipient of one of the Vodka promotionals. He seems to have dropped off the radar. I was inspired by his layering and distressing of the paint surface. The emotional content of Alice Neel. The push and pull of Hans Hoffman....I love his abstractions as much as his realism. Zhoaming Wu's work spins my fan. You can see some of his drawings at: http://www.lilipubsorders.com/prodinfo.asp?number=9787806748220
His charcoal portraits are soft and say so very much. His process reflects my own. And my newest favorite is Alex Kanevsky....love his paint quality and his subject matter. His work can be seen at:
http://www.somepaintings.net/ And, of course, it goes without saying that I am always influenced by the wonderful artists who live and work around me. Whoa...........I just noticed something. I seem to enjoy the work of artists named Alex.
