Howard Hodgkin - Painter

Reading the Letter, Howard Hodgkin

"Howard Hodgkin is a British printmaker and painter, born in London. He studied at the Camberwell School of Art and the Bath Academy of Art. He began exhibiting seriously at the age of 30. Hodgkin works in generally a small scale, often painting in a gestural style with flat colors. He often refers to memories and private experiences, but deliberately avoids the illustrational. Though his works are small and appear spontaneous, they are the result of a constant process of over-painting, sometimes extending over many years.

Hodgkin has also produced many prints, with a preference for screen-printing and lithography in his earlier works of the 60's and 70's. However, for his more recent work, Hodgkin has favored etchings and aquatint, as these provide a greater emphasis on texture. To further create a layering effect in his prints, Hodgkin sometimes hand-colors the image after printing.

In 1985, Hodgkin won the Turner Prize and took part in the Venice Biennale. He taught for some years at the Charterhouse School, then the Bath Academy of Art, and finally the Chelsea School of Art. He continues to exhibit frequently. The Tate Gallery in London has an impressive collection of his work."

- source: http://www.lesliesacks.com/gallery/artistPages/exhibitbios/hodgkinbio.htm

Link Howard Hodgkin Official Web Site

Frank Hobbs - Painter

Bridge Over Scioto River, Oil on Panel, 16x12,  Frank Hobbs (all images copyright Frank Hobbs)

"Frank Hobbs is a painter, printmaker and draftsman. Since 2007 he has been Professor of Art at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, where he teaches painting and drawing. From 2006-2007 he was Visiting Artist at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Hobbs was born in Lynchburg, VA. He studied art at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, and later at American University in Washington, DC, where he earned his M.F.A in1984. He lived and had a studio in Staunton, VA for 15 years, teaching at Washington and Lee University from 1987 until 2004, and for 11 years at the Beverley Street Studio School in Staunton, which he co-founded in 1992.

Hobbs is a recipient of fellowships and grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His work has been shown in the American Embassies of Ankara, Turkey, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Bermuda, and is included in numerous corporate and private collections in America and abroad." - source: www.frank-hobbsart.com

Link Frank Hobbs web site

Kathe Kollwitz - Artist

Self Portrait, Kathe Kollwitz, Color Stone Lithograph,

20.5 x 15 inches, approximately

"I would like to exert an influence in these times when human beings are so perplexed and in need of help." - Kathe Kollwitz, 1922

Käthe Kollwitz, July 8, 1867 – April 22, 1945, was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century. Her empathy for the less fortunate, expressed most famously through the graphic means of drawing, etching, lithography, and woodcut, embraced the victims of poverty, hunger, and war. Initially her work was grounded in Naturalism, and later took on Expressionistic qualities...

...In 1933, after the establishment of the National-Socialist regime, the Nazi Party authorities forced her to resign her place on the faculty of the Akademie der Künste. Her work was removed from museums. Although she was banned from exhibiting, some of her work was used by the Nazis for propaganda... Wikipedia

Link Wikipedia, Full Text

Link Kathe Kollwitz, Google Image Search

John Wonnacott - Painter

Red Tablecloth Two, Oyster Eaters, John Wonnacott, 1996-99

"What I’m really trying to do is to bridge this gap between my own world of feelings, thoughts and ideas and that world out there. When it works, when one reaches the point of balance between them, it’s a wonderful thing." - excerpt, Ray Atkins in conversation with John Wonnacott

John Wonnacott was born in London in 1940. He trained at the Slade School from 1958-63 before moving to Southend in Essex where he still lives and paints in a studio overlooking the Thames Estuary. - John Wonnacott Online Gallery

His paintings and drawings are known for their panoramic and unexpected pictorial space which is a dynamic of working from direct observation.

Link Interview, Ray Atkins in conversation with John Wonnacott

Link John Wonnacott Online Gallery

Link Slade School of Art

Euan Uglow - Painter

Ali, 1995-97, Oil on Canvas, 32 7/8" x 30 3/4", Euan Uglow

+ Giacometti always wanted to look into the eyes of the models, but I don't want the scrutiny of the model on me whilst I'm working, so you will very rarely find the eyes are looking at me.

+ I'm painting an idea not an ideal. Basically I'm trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled, and therefore potent, emotion.

+ I don't do wristy paintings because I want the brain to intervene between the observation and the mark.

+ I'm interested in color belonging to something, where it takes on a completely new kind of vibrancy, rather than being what you would call straight abstract paintings.. And anyway it is so much more exciting trying to find out about the three dimensions of color and sticking it down on a two dimensional surface.

Link Euan Uglow, Wikipedia

Link Euan Uglow, Google Image Search

Antonio Lopez Garcia - Painter

The beauty of López García's work begins with an appreciation of his craft. Paintings such as The Sideboard (1965–66), or the atmospheric views of Madrid from the 1970s show an acute perception and understanding of the beauty of the objects he portrays.

Though López García is devoted to the mundane—he depicts humble people, buildings, plants, and cluttered interiors—his portrayal of these subjects is compelling and beautiful. Starkly lit studies of his studio, bathroom, and the red brick wall in his backyard underscore an interest in prosaic subject matter. His deftness brings attention to these simple forms, encouraging the viewer to re-examine the presence of ordinary objects...

...The pictures are sometimes worked on for more than twenty years, some of them remaining unfinished.

As the artist explains, "the pictorial nucleus begins to grow and you work until the whole surface has an expressive intensity equivalent to what you have before you, converted into a pictorial reality." - Wikipedia

Link Full Text, Wikipedia

Ann Gale - Painter

Shannon, Ann Gale, Oil/Masonite, 14x11

Ann Gale (born 1966) is an American figurative painter based in Seattle, Washington. She is known for her portrait paintings, which consist of an accumulation of small color patches expressing the changing light and the shifting position of her models over time. Some of her main influences include Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, and Antonio Garcia López.[1]

Gale works from live models and her process is lengthy. Once she begins to paint, she works for three-hour sessions[2], and takes from four months to two years to complete a painting[3]. Her pieces possess a strong psychological component due to the amount of time she spends with her models... - Wikipedia

Link Ann Gale, Full Text, Wikipedia

Link Ann Gale, Christopher Jagers' Blog

Jo Weiss - Painter

Embolden, Jo Weiss, 2000

Jo Weiss is a contemporary figurative painter living and working in Washington, DC. Through the act of painting, she expresses a deep pictorial intelligence and visual poetry. Her work possesses a strong emotional and personal presence and a gravity earned from years of dedication to the art and practice of painting.

Link Jo Weiss, Website

Ginny Grayson and Perceptual Drawing

"Looking Down on the Self," Ginny Grayson

The Veils of Perception

Although I have worked with a variety of methods and mediums, from works on paper to video/performance, it is the activity of drawing itself that is the most compelling for me and is the central basis from which my practice unfolds.

Drawing has long been thought of as the process most suited to giving form to ideas and expressing the internal workings of the imagination and the body, due to its immediacy of touch. This tactile seismographic directness is what attracts me to it as a primary source of communication.

At its essence my work endeavours to relate to the viewer from a personal level the ‘actuality’ of experience itself. It is ‘how’ the work is imaged and made that is most significant to its reading. Perceptual/observational drawing is especially engaging for me – encompassing memory, time, emotion and a high level of concentration. it absorbs, frustrates, excites, terrifies, exhausts and humbles. I often feel blind when drawing from 'life', the more I look the more I see. The more beyond comprehension it all seems to become. At this point I relate to Lucien Freuds remark that -"The harder you concentrate the more things that are really in your head start coming out". A level of completion in a drawing is difficult for me to attain, there always seems to be more that can be explored, learnt and discovered. But it is a conundrum I am becoming more comfortable with as the physicality and tension that manifests in the work through this response, through the process of drawing, re-drawing layering and erasure, is essential to what I am seeking to communicate in it’s direct link to the visceral and the ambiguous effect temporal transience has on our state of being.

Ginny Grayson 2008

Link Ginny Grayson's Website

Interview with Lucian Freud

Art Critic Robert Hughes has called Lucian Freud the greatest living realist painter. In this 1988 five part video interview, Jake Auerbach talks to Lucian Freud.

Link Lucian Freud, Wikipedia

Link Lucian Freud Google Image Search Results