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Artists of Inspiration
There are many artists that inspire me and that I gravitate to. However there are only a handful that I truly am deeply touched and inspired by.
Most painters in this category are artists whose personal lives, joys , triumphs, trials and tribulations are reflected in their work. Their painted image is not driven by the decorative or the trivial. The following artists are among the few that I strongly connect with.
Grace Hartigan, 1922 - 2008, abstract expressionist painter, has been of great influence to me. Her direct approach to painting , her fearless willingness to destroy a work in order to discover a new place is one that I subscribe to. I was fortunate to befriend this wonderful, masterful painter. .
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, 1746 – 1828, is unquestionably a master. He was a Romantic painter and printmaker. His life and work, his painted image are one. I have great respect, admiration for this genius , this man. His painted image does not require words to explain for they whisper , speak, scream and cry all on their own.
Chaim Soutine, 1893-1943, is a painter's painter. A master by any definition. His work is raw and direct. His work is magic emanating from within his soul. He is an artist, a creator ; the direct opposite of Jeff Koons and his contemporaries.
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes
Grace Hartigan
Chaim Soutine
"The act of painting is about one heart telling another heart where he found salvation. "
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes
Saturn Devouring Son
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes
"Now as before it is the vulgar and the vital and the possibility of its transformation into the beautiful which continues to challenge and fascinate me ... Or perhaps the subject of my art is like the definition of humor — emotional pain remembered in tranquillity."
Grace Hartigan
"Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure — that doesn't deter me in the least."
Grace Hartigan
Pallas Athena--Earth, 1961
Grace Hartigan
Crowning of the Poet
Grace Hartigan
'Once I saw the village butcher slice the neck of a bird and drain the blood out of it. I wanted to cry out, but his joyful expression caught the sound in my throat. This cry, I always feel it there. When, as a child, I drew a crude portrait of my professor, I tried to rid myself of this cry, but in vain. When I painted the beef carcass it was still this cry that I wanted to liberate'
Soutine, quoted in M. Tuchman, E. Dunow and K. Perls, Chaïm Soutine
Carcass of Beef, Circa 1925.
Chaim Soutine
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