Part 1
These are the people who inspire me and make me want to paint.
If you could chose 5 people from any time frame to be in your “squad” or inner circle, who would it be? They say you are a combination of the five people with whom you spend the most time, so choose carefully.
While you think about it, here’ s my art squad:
From his wiki:
John Singer Sargent was an Italian-American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings.
Why I love him:
He does it all. Oil painting, drawing, watercolor. He travelled the world. What’s not to love? I could stand in front of his work at the Art Institute of Chicago all day. The way he does fabric in oil is mesmerizing. The line quality in his drawings is crisp and fresh. His watercolors are not my favorite, truth be told, but sometimes, they are fantastic. I’d Love to have more of his watercolor and line technique in my sketchbooks. He was also very prolific. I want to travel and fill up sketchbooks with work like he did.
His Quotes:
Cultivate an ever continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. Store up in the mind… a continuous stream of observations from which to make selections later. Above all things get abroad, see the sunlight and everything that is to be seen.
An artist painting a picture should have at his side a man with a club to hit him over the head when the picture is finished.
I do not judge, I only chronicle.
From her wiki:
Artemisia Lomi or Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter, now considered one of the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists, initially working in the style of Caravaggio. She was producing professional work by the age of fifteen.
Why I Love Her:
She’s the OG feminist. She was raped and when the rapist was put on trial they put her in thumbscrews. Then she painted about rape and the male gaze. Holofernes in her “Judith Slaying Holofernes” has the face of her rapist and both women are her. She was just damn good. She’s resilient and she does not tolerate fools.
Her Quotes:
I have told the truth and I always will, because it is true and I am here to confirm it wherever necessary.
…with me Your Illustrious Lordship will not lose and you will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman.
As long as I live I will have control over my being”
His wiki:
Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter, a founder of French Impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement’s philosophy of expressing one’s perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air landscape painting.
Why I Love Him:
His colors. Duh. His light. His inventiveness. His obsessiveness. It’s all wonderful. I love that he was so prolific while struggling with depression. He was my first artistic love. I had so many prints on my bedroom wall. I miss those prints.
His Quotes:
Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
Try to forget what objects you have before you – a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, ‘Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow,’ and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you.
Etretat is becoming more and more amazing. Now is the real moment: the beach with all its fine boats; it is superb, and I am enraged not to be more skillful in rendering all this. I would need two hands and hundreds of canvases.
I was definitely born under an evil star. I have just been thrown out of the inn where I was staying, naked as a worm.
My life has been nothing but a failure.
Now it is your turn. Tell me in the comments who would make up your squad. I will give you the rest of mine tomorrow.
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