Born in Boston in 1975 and raised in coastal Maine, I earned my degree from Maine College of Art and moved to rural western Maine where I currently paint in my studio in the woods. My mixed media paintings and collages are inquiries into the relationship between nature, science and spirituality, exploring the the tenuous qualities of memory and perception.

The meanings of images are broken down and assembled into new contexts to create mysterious narratives. The work evolves by layering paper ephemera and drawings with glazes and opaque oil paints, which simultaneously obscure and reveal. My art seeks to attain a deeper understanding of human perception, interaction with the natural world, and the ways by which we create our own realities.

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Louise Bourgeois was a renowned French-born American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, abstract sculptures, drawings and prints. She was in her 80’s when she created her iconic giant spider as part of the Maman series.

She was nicknamed the Spiderwoman and in 2012 her sculpture titled Maman, sold for $10.7 million, a new record price for the artist at auction, and the highest price paid for a work by a woman artist. Maman resembles a spider, is among the world’s largest, measuring over 30 ft high and over 33 ft wide, with a sac containing 26 marble eggs.

Why did Louise Bourgeois make the Spider sculpture?

“The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.”
— Louise Bourgeois

Though she holds a place in current art history with famous works such as Maman, it was only only late in a long career that she was seen as a profound and influential female artist. She fought hard for this and had a history of activism. During the 1970s, Bourgeois was a member of the Fight Censorship Group, a feminist anti-censorship collective founded by fellow artist Anita Steckel that defended the use of sexual imagery in artwork. Her sculptures were viewed as intimate and overtly sexual, and were created during the most controversial period of American art.

Early Years and Trauma

Bourgeois was born on 25 December 1911 and was the middle child of three born to parents Josephine Fauriaux and Louis Bourgeois. Her parents owned a gallery that dealt primarily in antique tapestries. A few years after her birth, her family moved out of Paris and set up a workshop for tapestry restoration below their apartment in Choisy-le-Roi, for which Bourgeois filled in the designs where they had become worn.

By 1924 her father, a tyrannical philanderer, was indulging in an extended affair with her English teacher and nanny. According to Bourgeois, her mother, Josephine, “an intelligent, patient and enduring, if not calculating, person,” was aware of her husband’s infidelity, but found it easier to turn a blind eye.

She was eleven when she witnessed her father’s betrayal of his wife and three children and this had a lasting effect on her. During this period, Bourgeois attended to her mother, who had succumbed to the Spanish Flu. This triangle of sexual infidelity and illness cast the young artist in the most inappropriate of roles—as voyeur, accomplice, and nurturer—the combination of which left her with life-long psychic scars.

This marked the beginning of her experience and pain with double standards related to gender and sexuality and this theme was expressed in much of her work. She recalls her father saying “I love you” repeatedly to her mother despite infidelity. She remarked, “He was the wolf, and she was the rational hare, forgiving and accepting him as he was.”

Bourgeois published a photo essay in Artforum magazine that revealed the impact of childhood trauma on her art.

“Everything I do,” she exclaimed, “was inspired by my early life.”

Her diaries, which she has kept assiduously since 1923, indicate the tensions between rage, fear of abandonment, and guilt that she has suffered since childhood. It is through her art, however, that she has been able to channel and release these tensions.

In the Business of Pain

“The subject of pain is the business I am in,” she said. “To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering.” She added: “The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.” Yet it was her gift for universalizing her interior life as a complex spectrum of sensations that made her art so affecting.

A Long Expressive Life

Bourgeois died of heart failure on 31 May 2010 at the age of 98. She had continued to create artwork until her death, her last pieces were finished the week before.

The New York Times said that her work “shared a set of repeated themes, centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world.”

Her husband, Robert Goldwater, died in 1973. She was survived by two sons, Alain Bourgeois and Jean-Louis Bourgeois. Her third son, Michel, died in 1990

More on Bourgeois
wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Bourgeois

arttattler.com/archivebourgeois.html

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I am a self-taught portrait painter. About 4 years ago, I was traveling again with my husband. Waiting in the hotel room for him to come back. There was paper and a pen in the room and suddenly I thought I can paint a portrait. It just came to me. So I started, later bought a watercolor set. Then I challenged myself to paint one portrait a day, just to see where I would be in a year or so. Experimented with coffee and red wine. The latter did not work. About a year ago, I started painting with acrylic.

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My work is essentially in the expressionist vein but characterised by a visual language that has over the years emerged from stark expressionist mannerisms to constitute a wider variety of brushwork, tonalities and textures.

I have learnt to give a wide berth to the medium, allowing the paint and the canvas/paper itself to determine the trajectory of the work as it progresses, sometimes to the point of all but altering the colour scheme, the mood of the painting or the focal points.

I have always seen myself as a student and I will keep doing so until I die. This is not modesty. On the contrary, I believe it is a struggle to keep one’s spirit childlike enough never to fossilize into staid routines, or a mere going through the motions.

The excitement of dabbing colour onto paper must never die. This is one of the very few things I know to be true, absolutely.

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I’ve always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It’s people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.’

-Lucian Freud

Freud, a grandson of the psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin in 1922 and fled to Britain with his Jewish family in 1933, when he was 10. Lucian Freud is a master of figurative painting and related subjects’ characters through stark portraiture. His work drew comparisons with equally shocking works by Courbet, Titian and Picasso, the feelings exposed registering as both brash and profound. In 1987, the critic Robert Hughes nominated Freud as the greatest living realist painter.

Here are a few of his portraits that are especially deep, intuitive and profound.
The portraits of Freud don’t necessarily come across as pretty. They are fleshy, raw and seem to capture an essence of humanity in an undressed state of vulnerability, and sometimes ugliness. With the eye of the artist, he definitely saw beneath the exterior.

Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, a life-sized nude portrait of Ms Tilley, set the world record for the highest price paid at auction for a work of art by a living artist when it sold for $33.6 million in 2008 at Christie’s in New York. – a world record for a work by a living artist. More about the painting here.

Francis Bacon – The Three Studies of Lucian Freud

Francis Bacon was a close friend and admirer of Lucian. They met in the 1940s and when they weren’t painting, they spent much time drinking, gambling and arguing. Inspired by Lucian, Francis painted the Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which was his most famous painting. The painting fetched £89m in 2013. A profitable ode to friendship.

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Take a look at Artist John Roscigno’s abstract art work which has elements of melody, movement and energy.

John Roscigno is an acrylic / mixed media artists in Los Angeles, California. A relative new comer to the world of visual art, he spent much of his career as a classical musician and an orchestral conductor. While his works might be described as “abstract” he believe his works are exactly what they seem to be – a careful but sometimes improvisational blend of color, texture and movement based on personal emotion and inner energy.

John currently has over three hundred works. Many of his pieces are strictly acrylic with many incorporating creative use of the palette knife into the creation. Other works are mixed media, utilizing various Indian Inks, Gels, Gesso, and Salts to create depth of texture.

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]]> https://artanddesigninspiration.com/meet-featured-artist-john-roscigno/feed/ 0 https://artanddesigninspiration.com/portrait-inspiration-we-cant-stop-looking-at-these-artists/ https://artanddesigninspiration.com/portrait-inspiration-we-cant-stop-looking-at-these-artists/#respond Sat, 09 Feb 2019 04:53:55 +0000 http://artanddesigninspiration.com/?p=9575 We have compiled a list of inspiring artist that you might enjoy. While all artists inspire, we can’t stop looking at the portrait artwork...

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]]> We have compiled a list of inspiring artist that you might enjoy. While all artists inspire, we can’t stop looking at the portrait artwork of these eight artists.

Here you go, take a look and see.

1. Marco Grassi
Reminiscent of classical art with Rembrandt chiaroscuro, we love the expressive portrait work of Marco. Luminous skin that has a mysterious presence is expressed through exquisite brush strokes. Discover more here

2. David Kassan
We’ve been following the work of David on Instagram and his series documenting holocaust survivors and the Resilience Exhibition – Paintings of survival.

His sensitivity and insight while capturing the lasting effects of trauma, is expressed through painting mastery. His work tells a story of legacy, empowerment and vulnerability. One can’t help but be drawn into the stories of the survivors. He captures a connection, a moment in time from each of his models that will never be forgotten.
Discover more here

3. Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen
Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen is a Norwegian oil painter. His work is categorized as classic figurative painting; expressive and transcending.  Henrik explores the dark sides of life, nihilism, existentialism, longing and loneliness, juxtaposed with fragile beauty. Surreal, emotional and present, his work captures essence, private moments and the space between a breath.
Discover more here

4. Cuong Nguyen
Classical perfection is defined in the work of Cuong. His pastels are luminous and expressive. We discovered his work on Instagram and are intrigued by his realistic style and under painting techniques that he uses to achieve realistic portraits.

Cuong Nguyen’s paintings reveal a fundamentally optimistic view of the world and a sense of wonder towards the beauty that surrounds us.
Discover more here

5. Alyssa Monks
Alyssa Monks work is intriguing, emotional and deep. Capturing private moments with a feel of desperation (or perhaps empowerment), her work blurs the line between abstraction and realism. She masters layering space and time in her paintings.
Discover more here

6. David Gray
A Classical artist with contemporary vibes, his painting evoke a sense of mystery and contemplative.  A timeless essence is expressed that explores the divide between the natural and divine.
Explore more here

7. Kelvin Okafor
With each stroke of the graphite, Okafor masters his portraits in large format Hyper-realism techniques. His work transcends realism and captures an essence of awareness, oneness and connection.
Explore more here

8. Louise Camille Fenne
Reminiscent of classical art with subtle curiosity, her portraits are expressive and unique. With a remembrance feel, she implores whimsical touches that draw the viewer in.
Explore more here

 

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]]> https://artanddesigninspiration.com/portrait-inspiration-we-cant-stop-looking-at-these-artists/feed/ 0 https://artanddesigninspiration.com/fresh-inspiration-jessie-rasche/ https://artanddesigninspiration.com/fresh-inspiration-jessie-rasche/#respond Fri, 03 Aug 2018 09:25:43 +0000 https://artanddesigninspiration.com/?p=2121 Meet Featured Artist Jessie Rasche. I think you will find her work as fresh, inspiring and real as I do. Jessie – What inspires...

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]]> Meet Featured Artist Jessie Rasche. I think you will find her work as fresh, inspiring and real as I do.

Jessie – What inspires you?
What inspires me? That’s a great question. I have had the need to make art for a long time. I went to art school at 18 (and loved it). I loved drawing and painting pretty much anything, but figures especially. Moms and babies bonding, portraits, figures outside, birds and cows. Colors and light and emotion are the first things that catch my eye in a scene or figure and make me want to paint it. And I hope that what excites me in a scene will be conveyed in my paintings and will connect with people.

As for who inspires me, I have had great teachers. At PNCA the (now) late print maker Gordon Gilkey was my mentor and was incredibly inspiring, and I adored him and his passion for prints. He had a great collection of prints as well as riveting stories about how they had been obtained. He let me hold an original Picasso print on one of our adventures perusing his collection. He handed the print to me and at one glance I knew what it was…I remember the sensation of holding something so special.

My first profoundly inspiring museum exhibit was a Monet exhibit in 1990. I had seen Monet lily pads in books, but in person it was a completely different experience. His water was so deep and lush I felt like I could just sink in and live in the painting. That’s when I knew what affect a great painting could have on a viewer. What the real goal of painting is, for me at least.

Paintings that I get the most excited about are the ones where you see but you don’t see. Where the draftsmanship is perfect, but there is an abstract quality to the painting and the subject is almost hidden. Hopefully you will see some of that quality in my paintings. That’s the direction my art is going – more accurate and more abstract. I am driven by a need to improve. To see more accurately, to make my brush strokes more meaningful.

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]]> https://artanddesigninspiration.com/fresh-inspiration-jessie-rasche/feed/ 0 https://artanddesigninspiration.com/i-find-it-amazing-that-something-so-common-as-a-pencil-can-make-such-an-impact-visually/ https://artanddesigninspiration.com/i-find-it-amazing-that-something-so-common-as-a-pencil-can-make-such-an-impact-visually/#respond Wed, 14 Mar 2018 02:39:28 +0000 https://artanddesigninspiration.com/?p=2624 Meet: Emily McGee I have always been impressed by graphite and its simplicity. I find it amazing that something so common as a pencil...

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]]> Meet: Emily McGee

I have always been impressed by graphite and its simplicity. I find it amazing that something so common as a pencil can make such an impact visually. I have a degree in Business Management and have been working full-time in construction/higher education, but my heart and soul comes from my creative side and I am so happy to finally be investing my time and energy into it.

“My artwork is primarily portraits and my focus is “family”. With every piece I complete there is a story, a connection, a memory, or lost loved one. There is so much history that is overlooked or forgotten and I hope my images evoke those memories and create heirlooms that can be passed from generation to generation.”

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