برچسب: Colors

Thomas Paquette – Haven – Lines and Colors

Thomas Paquette has long been one of my favorite contemporary painters. Since I discovered his work and wrote about him back in 2007, I’ve featured him on Lines and Colors five additional times (see links below); this post makes seven overall.

Paquette has a unique style I find particularly appealing. On one level, his work appears naturalistic, beautifully composed scenes of woodlands, lakes and roadways and wilderness areas, that seem to sparkle and glow with color. On closer inspection, you can see that he is accomplishing this with ingenious juxtapositions of colors, often complimentary, at the edges of forms. These accentuate the forms, send the colors vibrating and give everything a scintillating glow. Somehow, Paquette manages to corral these elements into harmonious compositions filled with brilliant light and deep shadow.

Paquette works both at a large scale in oil, and at an intimate scale in gouache.

Both will be on display in an upcoming show titled Haven at the new location of the Gross McCleaf Gallery, which has recently relocated from Center City to the Manayunk section of Philadelphia.

The show opens this Saturday, May 3rd, 2025, with a reception from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. I have long considered the Gross McCleaf to be the most prestigious, and certainly most interesting, gallery in the city.

Paquette has also just released a new book reproducing his recent small gouache paintings, titled The Intimate Landscape. I have Paquette’s earlier book titled Gouaches (which is still available), and as a gouache painter myself, I have enjoyed it many times over. I’m very much looking forward to the new one.

If you like the sample images above (all of which were drawn from the gallery’s preview of the show), I can’t recommend the show (and the books) highly enough.

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04/05/2025
Carl Theodor Reiffenstein castle – Lines and Colors

Weite Landschaft mit idealer rheinischer Burg (Wide landscape with an ideal Rhenish castle), Carl Theodor Reiffenstein, oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches (45 x 36 cm)

This landscape painting by the 19th century German painter is a perfect example of counterchange — the reversal of value relationships between a shape or object and the background against which it’s set. In this case the dark against light at the top of the castle becomes light against dark in the center of the base.

See James Gurney’s excellent explanation of the principle in his 2008 post: Counterchange.

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22/04/2025
Brock Larson – Lines and Colors

Brock Larson is a contemporary American painter living in Minnesota. On his website you will find landscape and still life paintings along with portrait drawings.

In his landscapes, Larson often pulls us into the shadowy depths of deep woods, while at others times leading us out onto broad fields and expanses of water.

Brock Larson is the son of well-known painter Jeffery T. Larson.

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22/04/2025
LearnFromMasters YouTube channel – Lines and Colors

If, like me, you enjoy YouTube videos about art and artists, you may have come across a number of slideshow style videos showcasing the art of historic painters.

In many of these, if not the majority, the creator of the videos seems compelled to add motion — panning, zooming and using transitions that flip, swipe, rotate, dissolve into blocks and otherwise try to be “entertaining”. It’s a video, so things have to move, right?

While I appreciate the effort invested in gathering and presenting the images in these presentations, as soon as I realize it’s one of those, I click away in search of another. I like viewing art images whole, or with simple close crops, without them squirming around on my screen! (Sigh.)

Fortunately, there are other options. One of them I enjoy is a YouTube series under the name of LearnFromMasters.

The channel offers an extensive selection slideshows of varied and interesting artists that are mercifully free of unnecessary motion. They are arranged as simple straightforward slides of the full image separated by basic jump cuts. (What a concept!)

In addition to the regular YouTube listing of the videos, there is a text list here of all of the videos posted to date. The channel has a Patreon account for those who wish to support the effort.

The LearnFromMasters videos are engaging and plentiful enough that I will issue a Timesink Warning.

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21/04/2025
Happy Leyendecker Baby New Year 2025! – Lines and Colors

As I’ve done every New Year’s Eve since 2005, I’ll wish Lines and Colors readers a Happy New Year with one of J. C. Leyendecer’s New Year’s covers for the Saturday Evening Post, in this case marking the arrival of 1925.
For more Leyendecker to while away your New Year’s day, check the list of Lines and Colors J C. Leyendecker posts at the end of this article.
I wish you all a new year rich with artistic exploration and inspiration!

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21/04/2025
Philip de Laszlo – Lines and Colors

Hungarian born painter Philip de László, who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, spent much of his life and career in the UK, where he was noted for his portraits of royalty and the wealthy.

The de Lazlo Archive Trust website features information about the artist, as well as a catalogue raisonné of his work.

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21/04/2025
Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring – Lines and Colors

Hopefully — even if only for a moment — you got to see in the top two images Vermeer’s iconic painting with fresh eyes. The images are reversed left to right.

It is not an uncommon practice for artists to pause in the process of working on a painting or other artwork and view the work in a mirror. This briefly provides a fresh view of the work, a contrast to the the kind of familiarity that makes it difficult to see something objectively.

We can use the same effect to view images that are so culturally familiar they are difficult to see in the way we might have when first encountering them. The effect doesn’t last long; we soon become accustomed to the “new” view, but it’s nice to get a fresh view of something so familiar.

I’ve included an image of the painting in its normal orientation at the bottom.

Wikimedia Commons has a high resolution image of the painting, available from this page.

I did the same thing back in 2006 with Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and in the process, I believe I gained some insight into her enigmatic smile/not smile.

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20/04/2025
Kay Wyne Fine Art Blog: Desert Colors

Desert Colors

10″ x 10″ Oil on RayMar Panel

(Framed, 13″ x 13″)

Contemporary Landscape

This painting is all framed up ready for a new home! The colors of the desert and Tucson foothills is amazing. I wanted to paint a trail with all of it’s scrubby, natural growth. This painting is available. Contact Kay for more info. Thank you, KMW

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20/04/2025