Nicolai Fechin's drawings

Ever since I learned about Nicolai Fechin and his art, especially his drawings, I was truly inspired and have been trying to change my drawing style. To me, his drawing presents itself as a perfect combination of realism and abstraction, control and chaos. He does this artistic tight rope walking based on his hawk-eye observation and incredible drawing skills. He just nails the shapes with lines so sharp and decisive that they almost cut into the flesh, renders the flesh tones with exquisite subtlety, then, all of a sudden, he lets it go and leaves the rest of the drawing in a controlled chaos filled with expressive lines and tones that are as beautiful as the rest of the work. The way he makes the peripheral information seamlessly blend into the background is so effective, the background of his drawing stops being an empty space and starts to turn into some kind of latent drawing without anything actually drawn in it. I just find myself gawking at his work, speechless, sighing... One day, maybe one day, I might be able to draw like him (wishful thinking)...

 

Art at the Arnold

I participated in the event: Art at The Arnold for the first time this year. It was a part of the Arnold Sports Festival which takes place once every year at the Convention Center in downtown Columbus, Ohio. We made art using models on Friday. Saturday was all day studio session, then there was an exhibit on Sunday. I spent total 11 hours on my  painting. It was intense but so much fun. I didn't win anything but I am glad I did this. I hope to do this again next year. Here are snap shots I took.

Here is a scene on Friday. We had 3 models for 4 hours in the beginning.

Mike in the foreground and John seated close to the model.

Here is what I was working on during the Friday session.

This is my colleague Arthur Wang's beautiful watercolor.

Ron's oil painting.

Sunday's exhibit scene.

The small painting in the middle is the one that won the first place.

This is Fran's beautiful watercolor piece. She won one of the awards for this.

With my painting. I realized I forgot to paint his belly button. Oh well, I am going to paint that in later...

One of the artists included me in her painting. You can see me close to the edge on the right.

Specola Museum

Yesterday I visited the Specola Museum in Florence, Italy. It is a part of the University of Florence and was founded in the late 18th century. What I was particularly interested in seeing, besides their collection of stuffed animals, was their incredible human anatomy wax models. I had heard the reputation of these wax models being one of the finest in the world, but actually seeing them in person was something very special. They surpassed my expectations. They are incredibly realistic in colors, shapes and textures; a perfect fusion of art and science. The number of wax models they house in the building is also astounding. But there is something else that really fascinated me. Beyond aesthetics, there is a strong sense of morbid fascination about playing with the image of mortality and juxtaposing it right up against the image of "life". Many wax models were constructed in a way that their internal anatomical depictions are displayed in the curious combination with seemingly still "alive" bodies instead of clearly dead cadaver-looking bodies. Even the ones that are completely stripped off their skins and showing all their internal organs still look "alive" and make you wonder if they might be still experiencing this eternal pain. This effect becomes the greatest when you see the life-sized full-body female wax model with all her internal organs pulled out for the world to see, yet she still looks pretty much alive with a dreamy, almost ecstatic, expression on her face. It is very interesting to ponder upon the 18th century minds that embarked on this immense project and put it together in the way they did.

In this, I see something similar to the theme of Bernini's sculpture "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa". The meeting of earthly matter and spirituality is presented in these wax models just as it was in Bernini's famous sculpture, only from a scientific/medical perspective. It would be meaningful to note that this museum was founded at the tail end of the enlightenment (1790) and it is not too difficult to imagine that the same type of zeitgeist which dreamed of connecting science and faith was also driving this project forward.

Diazotype workshop

My Colleague Helen Hoffelt and I participated in one of the workshops during FotoFocus events in Cincinnati last month. It was a workshop on Diazotype conducted by Eric William Carroll and took place at Glen Helen Ecology Institute of Antioch college in Yellow Springs, OH. Helen and I had so much fun learning this process and experimenting with it. During the break we were given a little tour of the wonderful campus and an exhibit of Eric's work.

Below are some of the prints I made from this workshop.

Art of Recovery Fresh A.I.R. Gallery fundraiser

Tonight I participated in a fundraiser by Fresh A.I.R. Gallery. Fresh A.I.R. is located in downtown Columbus, and it works for and with artists with mental handicaps. I was invited to be part of this event through my painter friends I work with every Monday. It was for a worthy cause, sounded like fun, and I personally know the director of the gallery Kim, so of course I said, "yes".  The event took place in a Hilton hotel downtown. We had 2 models set up for tonight. We started painting around 5pm. The party started at 5:30pm and continued on to 10pm although I left there around 9:30pm. It was in a room called George Bellows Ballroom and the place became very crowded by the time a live auction started. The lighting was dim, then later on it got even dimmer both on models and on my painting. So it was very difficult to see colors and my painting went a little too far in the purple direction for that. But, hey, people seemed to be having a ball, the food was good and it looked like the auction went well. So I couldn't complain. After finishing our paintings, we set them up on easels on the tables to be silent-auctioned during the event. I hope my painting collected some money for the gallery. Below are a few snapshots of the display. The pictures are not good. The focus is soft and painting got some glare. But these are all I got since I had to leave my painting at the event.

S.E. Steele happened to be at the event and took a photo of me and Sean working. Thanks Stephanie!