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art, art studios, artists, creativity, inspiration, photography
Aside from her paint brushes, we don’t see much of Georgia O’Keefe’s studio here, but I couldn’t resist including her as the lead photo in this post based purely on the strength of her face and that hypnotic gaze: as if she can see right through you. There’s no doubt she’s an artist that commands attention.
By contrast below, Miro seems quite content to lean back in his rocking chair gazing serenely at the lifetime of artwork surrounding him. These two photos and the ones that follow say so much about what it means to be an artist.
I found them in a wonderful spread produced by Artists Network: 125 Artists and Their Historic Studios. I’ve gathered a few of my favorites here. But if you like this sort of thing, there’s a treasure trove more to explore at the link above, which also includes a bit about each artist’s life and work.
The photo above is my favorite in the collection. A woman in command of her world, poised gracefully on a barbed wire fence post to capture her vision! How does she ever stay balanced long enough to do so?
Looking at her poised on that fence, it’s not surprising to learn that “she challenged oppressive Victorian conventions by embracing individuality and independence” as noted in the article Over 100 Years Later, Photographer Alice Austen Is Finally Being Recognized as an LGBTQ Icon. The photo below that she created of herself and a friend “wearing masks, corsets, and calf-length skirts, their arms intertwined” and smoking, “an act women could be arrested for,” perhaps says it all about this amazing, talented artist.
I love seeing these incredible artists, Wood and Sorolla, surrounded by their art. Each so different, and each so prolifically talented.
Wood, I learned, had inspired the character of Rose in the film Titanic after Cameron read her autobiography I Shock Myself. She famously shared in a love triangle with Marcel Duchamp and Henri-Pierre Roché, two famous men in that time, an artist and author. She lived to be 108. So did Rose, in the film, I believe.
Sorolla has been one of my favorite artists for a long time now. Quite the opposite of Wood, he was a staid, devoted family man. This black and white photo does not do justice to his work. For a better look at the way he infuses his paintings with light you might want to take a look at another one of my posts: The Luscious Light of Sorolla’s Paintings.
I found the strength of Bourdelle’s Hercules and the fierceness in the artist’s eyes mesmerizing. Both seem to challenge the viewer with their ferocity. He was a protege of Rodin and a teacher of Matisse, a “fiercely independent'” artist who resisted formal training and eventually started his own free-school of sculpture.
Bourgeois below, in contrast, has the calm, studious appearance of the serious craftsman at work, all her tools in perfect order. You wouldn’t guess that her most famous sculptures are gigantic spiders, who she sees as both predator and protector, symbolizing the mother figure.
I love Dali’s face above and Gorey’s cat below. They make me laugh.
I fell in love with Dali’s work when I visited his museum in Bruges, Belgium. I was especially captivated by his illustrations of Alice in Wonderland. He himself seems something of a Cheshire Cat figure. You can see more of his work at my post Down the Rabbit Hole with Dali.
Gorey, below is also an illustrator of children’s books, and something of a Cheshire Cat himself. He created books with no words, books the size of match boxes, and surreal books he classified as “literary nonsense,” adding: “If you’re doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there’d be no point. I’m trying to think if there’s sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children—oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that’s true, there really isn’t. And there’s probably no happy nonsense, either.”
Something about the faces of these two women artists next to their paintings of other women speaks to me. They almost seem like self-portraits.
Stern, below, traveled the world and was a major South African artist who achieved national and international recognition in her lifetime. Wyeth stayed close to home, a wife and mother. While a noted artist in her time, her fame was overshadowed by her father’s and brother’s, as happened to so many women artists back then. And too often today too, sadly.
The patience and persistence, the quiet dignity, captured in this photo of Hunter above, complemented with the sheer joy and exuberance of Pollock in his photo says all that needs to be said about the making of art!
You can make art no matter your social class, your gender, your personal challenges, and often these are part of your art and what makes it unique. But what is truly needed is the pure love and joy of art-making, which inspires the patience and the persistence, whether fame and fortune follows or not.
Recently I discovered the 
Immersed in that chaotic noise, the eye is too dazzled, too overcome with the busyness and beauty of it all to separate out all the chaotic details. One sees only the mass and movement, the lines and curves, the dazzling light and cool shadows. That is what Sargent captures in the watercolors here. Immersion in the moment. When I enter his scenes I’m immediately transported back in time. I’m there standing on the docks with him . . .
. . . or approaching the scene from a dinghy.
You see the wide sweep of sky and sea. You feel the heavy humidity in those clouds and the heat from that dazzling brightness. You see a crowded deck with people raising sails. You see an unfamiliar distant vista. You see a story unfolding. And while you see only one moment of that story, his paintings invite you to imagine more.
In Homer’s painting, the viewer is right there–we feel the heat, the hot sky, the warm water, the hand gripping the deck–but like a reader immersed in another’s story, not like we are there personally ourselves.
Or as dreamy and wistful.
And that’s a criticism made of each. How so many of Sargent’s paintings, while artistically masterful, fail to evoke human emotion or even a sense of what he sees as “beautiful,” as one critic complains. While on the other hand many of Homer’s paintings can be seen as nostalgic, or bordering on the sentimental.
