The Colorist

Interior. 2016. Pastel, Graphite, Dry Ground & Oil. 18" x 14." Casey Klahn.


Colors have a beauty of their own, which must be preserved.
Henri Matisse.

Seeing Differently, as posted by Jackie Simmonds.

Many thanks, Jackie.  It does pay the artist to see differently, because if you can say something authentic, the world will beat a path to your door. 

Jackie Simmonds is a very accomplished artist who resides in the United Kingdom.  She is the author of multiple books on art, sketching and and pastels.

There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand.  A painter doesn't see everything that he has put into his painting.  It is other people who find these treasures in it, one by one, and the richer a painting is in surprises of this sort, in treasures, the greater its author.

Harvest Photo: Lorie Klahn.

Sippican Cottage said:

My Intertunnel friend from the wrong coast, Casey Klahn, at work at his easel. He is a very fine artist. He exhibits a kind of bravery in his work. Boldness.
It is a solitary thing to make things, and it's always piquant to get a look at people when they're working at it. Link and video.

Matisse said:

Color exists in itself,  (and) has its own beauty.

I said:

See my works for sale here.

New website.

“Trust your feelings entirely about color, and then, 
even if you arrive at no infallible color theory, you will at least have the credit of having your own color sense.” John F. Carlson.

Colorist Art at Pinterest.

I just ordered a book of essays by and about Henri Matisse.  This quote is from the essay, The Role and Modalities of Color, 1945.

There isn't any magic method for working in the colorist style. So, what is there to teach in a workshop setting? Much! Because in your pastel bag, in addition to your supplies, you also carry around a set of conventions. They are your tried and true, "works every time," methods of working on your pictures.


I want to press those out of you.  The things you see when you search for painting subjects are ever new and fresh.  Can your paintings be new, also?

Hoquiam River Bright 10" x 14.75"Pastel & CharcoalCasey Klahn

Henri Matisse wrote, "We move towards serenity through the simplification of ideas and form.......Details lessen the purity of lines, they harm the emotional intensity, and we choose to reject them. It is a question of learning - and perhaps relearning the 'handwriting' of lines. The aim of painting is not to reflect history, because this can be found in books. We have a higher conception. Through it, the artist expresses his inner vision." Reference.


Workshops.


Next Workshop:  Oakland (El Cerrito), California.  November 5 & 6, 2011. Contact me via e-mail.

Aperture Bright 11" x 14" Charcoal & Pastel Casey Klahn

Wolf Kahn:

I’m not so involved in description because I think that the greatest sin an artist can be accused of is telling people things that they already know. And you can write that down and put it in italics. Our aim as artists is to use ourselves as agents for expanding possibilities; and if you’re just doing something that’s conventional and everyday, you’re not doing it right. Of course, we constantly struggle against our own conventions because that’s one of our worst difficulties—trying to avoid doing something that we already know how to do.

Here is a link to a new exhibition of one of my Abstract Expressionists, Helen Frankenthaler. It's at the Ameringer-Yohe Gallery currently.

Her school of art was known by some as Post Painterly Abstraction. Whatever. She painted in New York, she knew Jackson Pollock, she studied with Hans Hofmann, end of story. I will still place her in Abstract Expressionism, at least until I write my doctoral thesis on schools of art.

The following wisdom from Frankenthaler should be burned in your heart if you want to be an artist who paints well and freely:

"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." (In Barbara Rose, Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1975, p. 85)

I will not post any paintings of hers, since she still holds rights to them. Here is some link love about the master:

CONNECTED BY JOY, 1967-70, via the Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle.
Wikipedia entry on HF.
Googleography (my own word for a list of books on Google).
What amounts to a resume on HF at World Wide Art Resources.
Bio from the NGA.