Tempest
Tempest ~
Painting
Teal and magenta abstract ~
Teal and magenta abstract
Orchid palette ~
Orchid palette
RiNo ~
Bar patio, upper Larimer Street
Bass player portrait on bay door
Denver Central Market
Detail of mural on 27th Street
Office building view no. 1
Mural, 2900 block of Larimer Street
Parking lot, 2800 block of Larimer Street
Office building view no. 2
Shake Shack
Odell Brewing Co.
Today I dropped off a photograph for an exhibit at RedLine Contemporary Art Center in Denver (yay! finally got into a Denver show!). Afterwards I headed up Larimer Street for a bite to eat and found myself in what is now called the River North Art District (RiNo for short). It appears to be a rundown industrial warehouse district now partially converted into a trendy, edgy place full of brewpubs, coffee houses, smoke shops, and clubs, many of which host little art shows. It’s the kind of place where you may need to know by word of mouth that there’s an entertainment venue behind a particular unmarked door.
I got a burger at Denver’s recently opened Shake Shack, a chain I hadn’t heard of until the local news channels trumpeted this arriving business as if the second coming was at hand. Then I wandered a few blocks down Larimer Street to Denver Central Market, which houses various eateries and places to buy gourmet foods. In between I took photographs of some of the abundant street art in this district, mainly vibrant murals many of which take their style and inspiration from graffiti.
RiNo seems to be a rapidly changing area. To help label some of my images I consulted Google Maps, which had photos dating to June 2017 and September 2017. Already some of the murals have been reworked and many more appear to have been added. I hope someone is systematically documenting the street art in this area. It would make an interesting book.
Let sleeping cats lie ~
Despite the recent elevation of Norman Rockwell’s reputation in the art world, he’s still not my cup of tea, and I still see him more as an illustrator (albeit a superb one). But there are definitely things to admire about his art. For example, in his painting “Facts of Life,” which shows a father telling his embarrassed son about the birds and the bees, he has included a sleeping cat (shown above) under the father’s chair, and kittens playing on the boy’s chair. It’s subtext par excellence: a sly way of directly depicting the very topic—sex and reproduction—that is being so earnestly discussed in the abstract. It also cleverly pairs the adults (man and cat) and the young’uns (boy and kittens): experience on one side of the painting; innocence on the other. The boy might well envy the kittens for not having to endure an explanation of what’s eventually coming (pun intended).
This work is in the collection of the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum of Art. See the full version at https://www.wikiart.org/en/norman-rockwell/facts-of-life.
The hand that holds the handkerchief holds the power ~
This is a small detail of another painting in the collection of the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas. The painting, done sometime between 1610 and 1628, is a portrait of Maria Maddalena, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Archduchess of Austria. The duchess and her mother-in-law ruled Tuscany as co-regents for several years after the death of Cosimo II de Medici. In this detail I especially like the exquisite depiction of the lace bordering the handkerchief.
Crawfish, I guess ~
I’m going to return to museums for a few posts now. This is a small detail of a large painting by Cristoforo Monari (1667-1720) titled “Still-Life with Dog and Fruit.” Given the scale of various objects in the painting, I’m assuming these are some kind of crawfish rather than lobsters. (Someone more familiar with crustaceans will undoubtedly be able to set me right.) I must say, the one in the front looks rather fearsome. The work is in the collection of the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum of Art.
Blue moon ~
This cool mural is on the side of the Aims Community College building in downtown Loveland. The letters are shorthand for the four DNA bases (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine); the numbers are the Fibonacci series through double digits—89, to be specific. Perhaps the doves are meant to represent human aspirations, since this is an educational institution. I’m guessing this mural was designed and painted by students, since Aims focuses on degrees in art and graphics.
Do I dare to eat a peach? ~
I did. But I painted it first.
Palette 4/4/2016 ~
This is a copy of “Stormy Day,” the Isaac Levitan painting that I posted to my Facebook page recently. I applied a watercolor filter to the second palette crop. Actually, I think this palette is for another painting I’m working on that I’ll probably paint over. Whoops!
In searching for a photo of the Levitan painting, I came across many other paintings of his that I admire. See this site for a rich sampling of his work, especially “Shadows, Moonlit Night,” “Vladimirka Road,” and “Footpath in a Forest, Ferns.” The latter seems especially remarkable as a sort of Impressionism/Realism hybrid. Wow! Plaudits to I Require Art’s Facebook page for bringing to our attention the work of little-known artists such as Levitan, as well as lesser-known works by widely known artists such as van Gogh..
VAPOR AND FLOW 