Goings on at the LA FRIEZE Art Fair

This year the event took place in the Beverly Hilton Hotel’s gardens, everyone bustling with excitement. The people themselves as beautifully and artfully dressed as the paintings.

Large scale paintings, sculptures and instillations throughout the fair. A standout work among the scene was Chris Burden’s Dreamers Folly, a sculptural installation made of cast-iron structure that looks like a dreamy gazebo one may encounter in a dream, with lace curtains and life size so visitors could walk through and perch. There was a lot of buzz in the air and people were excited to interact with the art. There was a mysterious purchase of this art instillation made on opening day, and will be going to Europe to be on display in a prominent institution which is yet to be discovered.

I was drawn to the figurative art work, like Kay Donachie, a working artist in London UK. She is known for her portraits of women, who denote a sense of timelessness, and ethereal while bold quality. They are portraits of women who are mostly inspired by real people from the early 20th Century, of avant-garde women in history who contributed to culture and to the arts. Often the portraits represent women who look into the frame, towards the viewer, like they are doing so in this painting.

Her work can be seen here:

https://www.maureenpaley.com/artists/kaye-donachie

Kay Donachie, There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to, 2005, oil on paper

Another beautiful portrait by Kehinde Wiley, “Portrait of Aissatou Dialo Gueye” was very striking. Wiley is an artist from LA now based in NY. His work blurs the line between contemporary and traditional, painting larger than life portraits, often a commentary on socio economic structures, he started his career by finding photos of young men found on the streets of Harlem, represented in far-reaching stylised Western Ideals….representing the “juxtaposition of the old world, inherited by the new. “ (http://kehindewiley.com).

His contemporary representation of the subjects are emphasised with flowery backgrounds and colourful bold colours, the gaze of the subject often toward the viewer and direct, exuding power and boldness. I think of how Georgia O’Keefe painted large scale flowers so that people would have to stop to notice them, and each one’s particular beauty.

His website:

http://kehindewiley.com

Kehinde Wiley “Portrait of Aissatou Dialo Gueye” (2020)

“Empire of Glass” by Maria Berrio was another work I really enjoyed.

“Based in Brooklyn, María Berrío grew up in Colombia. Her large-scale works, which are meticulously crafted from layers of Japanese paper, reflect on cross-cultural connections and global migration seen through the prism of her own history.” (https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/226-maria-berrio/) Often portraying women, her work represents a place which symbolises safety or refuge, in a kind of dreamy Utopia with colours and kaleidoscope images, almost as if she is searching for a space where all can be in harmony. The portraits she creates of women are often idealised, dreamy and ethereal versions focusing on the feminine rather than the actual flesh or materialised version of the feminine. Her work seems to offer respite, a creative and dreamy ethos filled with a feeling of hope and refuge, including nature and our surroundings and an embodiment of the feminine figurative work, rituals and how to face unsettling contexts and difficulties. .

Her website:

https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/226-maria-berrio/

Maria Berrio “Empire of Glass II” (2022)

Maria Berrio “The Wayfarer” (2020)

Maria Berrio “Under Thatch and Autumn Star” (2022)

Danielle McKinney is another beautiful artist. She focuses on the solitary nature of her female protagonists, often portraying her subjects in moments of private reflection, when they are in leisurely narrative moments of their intimate life. Dreamlike spaces and ethereal reflections of self and Spirit, these moments are often placed in the domestic sphere of life. The work has a cinematic effect and uses the gaze to express these nuances symbiotically.

Her website:

https://daniellejmckinney.com/bio

Danielle McKinney “First Glance”(2022)

Danielle McKinney “Hermit” 2022

Danielle Mckinney “OCD and O’keefe” (2022)

Inspirations

Georgia Okeefe said, “To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage”

Watercolour by Georgia O’Keefe

Georgia O’Keefe’s work is inspirational. There is depth in her watercolour paintings of the figure, though seemingly quickly and thoughtfully rendered, express movement form and grace, and emotion. There is real clarity in her work, like a fleeting moment the sitter may not have been paying attention to being watched, she captures them in motion or dreaming in thought.

Watercolor by Georgia O’Keefe

Thoughts on sight-size

The site size process is a tradition of painting directly from life, to the scale of life and under natural light, passed down from the great masters such as Van Dyck, Velázquez, and Titian to name a few. It is the process of standing back and viewing the subject as a whole, so as to get the impression first and foremost. Through this technique we are able to learn in the footsteps of these great painters. Charles Cecil, founder and great artist of the atelier in Florence where I learned the sight-size method, passed down his knowledge of the craft to us with great inspiration. His teacher Ives Gammel, was taught by John Singer Sargent, who continues to inspire.

The process of learning this tradition allowed me to understand the nature of seeing in a new way, changing the way I look at the world I see. After nearly four years of inspiring training from Charles Cecil and wonderful teachers at the studio using this method, the passion for light and seeing enveloped my approach to painting. A key moment for me was grasping how the process of viewing nature didn’t depend upon what I thought I was seeing, but rather training my eye to see without trying to conceptualise nature, thus allowing for the overall impression, at a distance. One could argue the same is said for how we project our own impressions of thought in our day to day lives, which makes me feel there is a similarity between sight size and pure states of consciousness.

For example rather than drawing the outline of an eye with details eyelashes and a dark iris, a line for the form and so on, the overall connection between each value becomes the area of focus. The impression the subject reflects while viewing it at a distance (or if up closer with blurry quick overall squinted eyes), via movement and light, there is something almost mystical in the impression we receive without trying to find a definite hard line to grasp onto. To me this also felt like a way to surrender to the present moment, and be totally immersed in the flow of life. The concept of the language of visual grace is more likely to occur without effort of breaking down too much analytically. It feels like the spirit of the subject, or person, is able to come through onto the canvas. Nature and landscapes also dance with light and movement when seeing it as a whole picture and allowing for what we see to be expressed. The mysterious becomes expressed through the catalyst of the impression, giving form and expression to the invisible on the canvas. The artist Alberti wrote “know that a painted thing can never appear truthful where there is not a definite distance to seeing it” which really embodies the notion of sight size painting. 

After my training at Charles Cecil Studios I started painting in a beautiful old Florentine studio with other painters, under a large north facing window and playing with the light using giant sails of fabric. I am currently working on still life paintings, and portraiture in the studio and love going outside to paint en plein air. I also love sculpting which I learned hand in hand with painting, in the historic Romanelli Studio Gallery taught by the very talented sculptor Raffaello Romanelli, who also teaches using the sight size method. He is a portrait painter and sculpts in his atelier, as well as creates other projects and commissions for clients. His brother also a talented sculptor taught students how to sculpt animal figures and I learned a lot about the process of creating via a 3 dimensional perspective and fundamentals and subtleties of sculpture. I continue to sculpt and learn in the beautiful studios there and working on some sight-size portraits in clay.

Here in the image below is fellow artist and my close dear friend Josie who let me paint her in the cast room at Charles Cecil Studios, one of the last (and most fun) portraits I would paint there.

Entry No.1: Discovering Bronze casting in Sculpture

Sculpture is beautiful and tactile process. I was inspired to sculpt a whale and I had a special time creating it.

Working at the Galleria Romanelli was like a dream where the old beautiful world of history and passionate artistry was still alive, the very building where Pascuale Romanelli made his studio right at the entrance of the door to Porta San Frediano. The large entry made way to the monumental sized sculptures coming in and out of his laboratory and a small window from the top of what used to be a Church, was then turned into his private office. The Gallery downstairs now has works from Napoleonic times and commissions and pieces from the Romanelli family during its history. Raffaelo Romanelli teaches and works from the studio and the tradition and love of the craft is alive in everything you see. I was lucky to be able to work there alongside his guidance, as well as his brother Vincenzo an animal sculptor, and other artists who come to learn and work there too.

Florence may not be the centre for marine life and whales not often depicted in high Renaissance art! Though the inspiration I felt in my environment invoked a desire to create something meaningful on a personal level. I created a sculpture of a whale because I truly love these beautiful animals, and I suppose symbolically there was something I was needing to create almost a totem animal for the period of life I was in! My passion for marine life I find whales mystical and wise and pure. The depths of the seas are so fascinating and I’d love to honour its habitat.

This whale I created was about 80 cm long and standing on a base, so as to give the appearance of swimming or floating just above the surface. 

The incredible part of sculpting is how many different stages there are. From the idea comes the armature and figuring out dimensions and welding a strong base and bones made of iron and scraps of metal for the clay to be able to rest upon without falling, which takes a lot of measuring. Once the armature is secured one can add the clay on and slowly but surely the form starts to take shape. Sculpture is very tactile it’s incredible how vision also interplays with the intuition of your hands to make an object. Even the subtlest indentations and shapes of the clay can express something, and continuously transforming. Once finished in clay it I created a mould with a lot of help and guidance form Raffa, and other artists in the studio. Once the mould was cast, the sculpture in clay recycled and the mould brought over to Gaetano at the Fonderia Artu in Grassina nearby, and his team at the foundry. He uses the lost wax casting method his grandfather taught him and the foundry is impressive to be in and see how everything works. Once cast, the bronze comes out shiny like gold and once the acid and patina are fired onto its surface an incredible alchemy of beautiful tones and colours appear.

As the great masters would say said, sculpture is born in clay, dies in plaster and reborn in bronze. 

Fonderia Artu is one of the oldest bronze foundries of Florence. The owner, Gaetanos’ grandfather used to make the bronze sculptures for the artists of Tuscany, one of them being Pascuale Romanelli who was one of the most important sculptors in Florence. The link between the studios felt like the hands were all connected which was a powerful feeling for me, who had never experienced this kind of artistry and history before.

The colorful blue acid washes and the beauty of the metal really transformed the piece. Being one of the first pieces I made in bronze was elated to have later been accepted to the Marine Life Society of Artists  competition at the Mall Galleries in London. Very excited to continue my series of marine life and to experience the transformative process of creating a sculpture!