Eyes make the portrait. If you miss the mark with the eyes, you missed the mark for the entire portrait. I spent a fair amount of time on the eyes in comparison to the other parts of a painting. I found this YouTube video hosted by Kelly Eddington showing her technique for eyes. It works.
A new cutting horse. Kodi has some moves.
Kodi in Training
Kristy Santos on top of Kodi. She’s a cutting horse at heart. yea!
Cowgirl Hall of Fame – Fort Worth
Can’t resist visiting the Cowgirl Hall of Fame whenever I’m in Fort Worth. It’s the only museum in the world dedicated to honoring women of the American West. The current exhibit was Barbara Van Cleve’s photography of working cowgirls all over the Rocky Mountain West. Barbara is a Hall of Famer. The exhibit had over 60 black and white photographs depicting the tough side of ranch women.
Barbara grew up on her family’s ranch, the Lazy K Bar in the Crazy Mountains of Montana. She taught English Literature and Photography at DePaul University in Chicago. She became the youngest Dean of Women in the United States at the time. She retired in 1980 to pursue photography full time. She’s internationally known for her work.
I had an opportunity to meet Barbara Van Cleve while attending one of the museum’s Cowgirl University events in the hill country of San Antonio in 2006 and again in Greenough, Montana in 2007. A group of us accompanied Barbara on a photo expeditions in jeeps and on horseback. Here is Barbara teaching us in San Antonio.
Squeak Carnwath
Went to the final MFA students art lecture series Wednesday at Mills College. Their guest speaker was Squeak Carnwath. Squeak was a professor at UC Berkeley when I finished my art degree there. I was never impressed at CAL by Squeak. Although I never took a course from her, never even signed up, I had this opinion based on her presence in the Art school and events. I found her a pompous, superior person who didn’t want to share her knowledge, techniques or experience with her students other than to be an expert about every idea and every method. Calling her a “teacher” was a stretch as far as I was concerned.
Well, I’ve changed my opinion after Wednesday. It was a non-lecture, as Squeak put it. She had a conversation with us. She scrolled images of her work and videos behind her as she talked and answered questions. She was funny and engaging and vulnerable about her life.
Squeak has produced a tremendous amount of work…a tremendous amount of work. Her approach to her subject matter and painting is to “just do it”. Don’t think about it too much, just get in there, start painting. Add things. Paint more.
Squeak has a methodology about the business of her art and her profession. She planned and worked and developed her practice. She and her husband bought a 20,000 sf warehouse years ago in an Oakland area that is now up and coming; her work in cataloging, tracking and storing her work is impressive and her ability to get out there and get started and engage her art with people took courage and hard work. I get down with that. Anyway, I’m glad I went. It was an utter pleasure.
Kodi
Growing up. Playing with the dog with an unfair advantage.
Mills College Art Lecture – Ry Rocklen
I went to an art lecture at Mills College last night to listen to sculptor Ry Rocklen. What a pleasant surprise he was. He openly shares his thought process, tools and mediums. His self-deprecating humor about his unpretentious ideas and method of repurposing discarded items and turning them into a piece of art just makes you smile. If I saw any of his work in a show, I would have less of an emotional response without his humorous commentary. I will follow Ry now, but I will want to follow where he’s talking more than where he’s showing.
Li Hongbo
This will blow your mind. Li Hongbo’s paper sculptures.
Chihuly in Phoenix
Traveled to the Phoenix Botanical Gardens to see Dale Chihuly’s exhibit this year. It’s Chihuly’s 3rd showing at the botanical gardens. It’s a good exhibit. Besides the beautiful glass and amazing designs, I’m fascinated by the installation itself.
David Hockney – A Bigger Exhibition
If you haven’t seen the David Hockney exhibit at the San Francisco De Young Museum, it really is a must see. I expected to be under-whelmed thinking it would be nice to see Hockney’s swimming pool paintings in person, but what we saw was an incredible amount of work produced by the 76 year old painter on canvas, on the iPad and iPhone. He used his iPad to do a time-elapsed video of a road through a grove of trees during each of the four seasons. He used these images to create an installation on 4 walls facing each other of 12 screens each, synchronizing the separate videos. He created paintings of these images. He created prints of these images. There was an installation on another wall showing the sequence of his stylus strokes on the iPad. Then there were series after series of Hockney’s portraits. Some head-shot portraits. Some life-sized portraits. Full of color and massive in size. Room after room of paintings and videos and installations showing the artist at work. Impressive.
I need to get busy.
Sun Gallery in Hayward
I’m participating in the Wild Wild West III art show at the Sun Gallery in Hayward. This is a small wonderful gallery that supports local artists. My friend, Jacqueline Cooper, was curating the show. It was lots of fun.
Food, entertainment and the Rodeo Queen attended. A wonderful, poised young woman from Placerville, Jordene Burns. They must be accomplished horse women to win this contest in addition to their beauty and intelligence.
Pasadena & Los Angeles
On my arrival Friday night, we visited a little of the Pasadena art scene first at the Armory Center for the Arts and then the wonderful Norton Simon Museum. Loved seeing all collection of Norton Simon, especially my little Degas dancer.
On Saturday, I took a class at the Inner-City Arts center in Los Angeles. The class is designed for Art Teachers to learn better ways to teach children art. My long time old friend, Susie Goliti is Operations Manager at the center. 
What an awesome program, completely dedicated to youth in LA. Jan Kirsch and Bob Bates taught the class called Creativity in the Classroom.
Art Trip
Started my trip from Alameda to Los Angeles along the Camino Real.
My first stop was in Los Osos to visit John Ramos Gallery. 
I’ve followed John for years. His Mexican beach scenes with taco stands, airstream trailers, Volkswagen buses and road trip scenes along familiar highways from inside woody station wagons have always been a favorite of mine. I’ve purchased at least eight of his limited edition prints, always from his old gallery in San Luis Obispo.
When I learned John had returned to the area after some five years in Loreto Mexico, I couldn’t wait to make this stop on my trip…. to see his new work and my old favorites and just get my trip started right. His new gallery is by appointment only now.
I walked up to the gallery and John came walking down the outside stairs. “Hi. I’m John.” I couldn’t believe it. I’d never actually seen him in person and fully expected to see other gallery staff that would just let me in to browse. I was flabbergasted. He’s somewhat of a celebrity given his long-time success, especially on the California coast. I’m shy anyway in galleries and like to keep a low profile.
John is soft-spoken and very endearing. He’s comfortable and open, proud of his work and his family. His granddaughter and dog came in…running around underfoot while his son-in-law’s music was playing in the background (Donavan Frankenreiter). John was very gracious about opening drawers and showing whatever I wanted to see, but I had no idea what to tell him I wanted… “I WANT TO SEE EVERYTHING, BUT I DON”T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!” was running through my head.
John asked me if I’d like to see his studio. I nearly vomited. 
(Inviting someone to see your studio is typically a very personal thing to do. Many artists have open studios, yes, but they prepare for them, establish boundaries around what they’ll show and what they’re ok with people possibly touching or commenting on. Studios can be messy and sometimes dangerous zones with paint and chemicals flying out onto your clothes.) John’s studio is this large, 2nd story, glassed-in domain with a small open kitchen. He had a lime green retro stove, with his grand-children’s paintings tacked on the side. He was working on an oil of a beach town sunset scene with a Harley Davidson of his old friend who owned Uptown Cafe in San Luis Obispo.
I decided to buy one of his flower market pieces, specifically the one he did of a shop at the corner of 24th St and Dolores in San Francisco. He had no idea what it cost, so he called his wife, Donna, to do the transaction. Now, Donna and I have a history….
Several years earlier, @ 2005, I visited the showcase John Ramos Gallery that was originally in San Luis Obispo. I purchased a couple of prints and was having them shipped to me in Phoenix, where I lived at the time. I explained to the woman running the gallery that I had followed Mr. Ramos for years, was in love with his work and just wanted to know what he looked like. This beautiful auburn-haired woman asked the other young woman at the desk if there was a picture somewhere. They had one of him under the desk’s glass top, posed in sunglasses and straw hat. I said he was exactly how I expected him to look…. a good-looking, Mexican man. I proceeded to go on and on about what I loved about his work, that I knew he studied at CSU Long Beach around the same time I was first studying art at Berkeley. I also knew that he had designed the logo for the Del Taco restaurant chain…years and years ago. They both kept laughing and finally she said “I should probably tell you now that I’m Donna, John’s wife and this is his daughter.” His daughter then said “I can’t believe Dad has a groupie!” I received the Dos Mas, Por Favor print in Phoenix and didn’t notice until a friend of mine pointed it out at least a year later that John had written a personal note on the print “To my Amiga Chris. Wish you were aqui.”
When Donna came down to the gallery to sell me the Flower Market print, she remembered me. We had a great laugh.
Here is her picture with John as they looked today. 
My favorite painting “Dos Mas, Por Favor” 
The Flower Market 
John McNamara
Went to the artist’s talk of John McNamara at the Gallery Bergelli in Larkspur, CA Feb 10th. John was a favorite professor of mine at UC Berkeley. His talks always depart from the regular artist presentations. He obviously loathes the typical pompous cerebral discussions artists try to have to describe the nature of their process as somehow having way more meaning than any of us care about or probably real. John is a very successful artist who shares his creative process with vivid descriptions of how he gets to the end result, even sharing photos of his process.
John’s pieces have an obsessive compulsive nature in the level of detail in his surrealist style. He has a thick, pure paint application on photographs. I always wonder what is going on in John’s imagination to come up with the work. I’m always fascinated by John’s use of Catholic religion images and beautiful women.
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See DeWitt Cheng’s review of John’s work in the link below.
http://dewittcheng.com/john-mcnamara-gallery-bergelli-larkspur-feb-1
Planning
Planning. If you’re one of those people who makes lists, like I am, we plan to plan. I just made my yearly plan, then broke it down into my monthly plan, then weekly and then daily… what I’m doing each day toward that goal…toward that plan. Now the hard part.. execution…
The New Year!
I’m back! The holidays swallowed me!
I love the new year. Making new commitments. Resurrecting plans. Making new ones!
I’ve been all over the west since last we talked…
Colorado, Arizona, Texas and back home to California.
Family, friends, business.
Nearly all cleaned up from Christmas
Back to exercising.
(Starting my P90X again…God help me!)
Adopted a new filly colt. Learning to train a new baby.
Up to my neck in my textile paintings.
Making plans for my garden.
Roses and hydrangeas are dying.
Tell me how you make your new plans?
Kodi
… such a little baby
Ariz State Ceramic Research Center
While in Phoenix the past several days, I decided to visit my old campus at Arizona State. I attended the Art & Design Institute there for 3 semesters in 2006-2007 and have very fond memories of that stint there. They have a fabulous art department, offering nearly every media. I was also able to take courses only offered to the architecture department like Photoshop and Architectural Rendering.
I stopped in at the ASU Art Museum and the Ceramic Research Center there. (Was not evident what they are researching, but the research room resembled a cross between a children’s activity center to a very clean science classroom largely empty.) I stopped at the Museum-like desk attended by a young Asian student who greeted me friendly enough, but from that point forward, nothing he said made any sense. I asked him if I was supposed to register or pay anything. He said “where did you park?” I told him I parked on the street, trying to figure out why he asked me. He said “where at?” I pointed off into the distance and said at a meter. While pointing at a set of clipboards, he said “these are only to sign up for the parking lot?” I said that I wasn’t concerned about parking, but wondered if I had to sign-in or anything to look at the museum. He said “we’re part of the ASU Art Museum.” I said that was nice. He then said something like he didn’t know why I was asking about the parking. I just walked away from him. It was obvious at this point that it really didn’t matter what I had asked or if I had to register to look inside, he had no idea why I was there or what I wanted.
I’m always fascinated by ceramics since the semester I took a course at UC Berkeley in the Spring of 2009 from David Linger in Richard Shaw’s department. I wasn’t good at it, but I loved the process and techniques. Gave me a greater appreciation for how hard it is to make something beautiful and delicate and realistic. I fell in love with Robert Arneson, an American sculptor ceramicist (1930-1992) who was an Art professor at UC Davis and had also taught at Fremont High School in Oakland, Santa Rosa Jr. College and Mills College, but he’s known internationally for his whimsical, cartoonish, realistic busts, largely of his own head and body. Two of his pieces are part of the permanent collection in this ASU Ceramic Research Center gallery.
Art Openings
Went to an opening reception last Saturday in San Francisco at Meridian Gallery. A professor of mine, David Linger, from UC Berkeley was showing his new work in ceramics. The exhibit was very good. David creates these very delicate, thin ceramic panels in translucent porcelain. He transfers black and white photographic images onto the panels. He embosses lettering onto some of the panels. His skill at firing these delicate panels, transferring them to a gallery and hanging them without breaking them fascinates me. The images seem to have a memory narrative. They’re emotional – sad and lonely. The images are of boats and courtyards of scenes and recognizable objects in places that seem to be in Morocco or Russia.
The reception was crowded with lots of well-dressed people who appeared to be serious art patrons. I recognized some – artists and professors. I saw David almost immediately when I walked in, but he was surrounded, so I looked around. The gallery is a Victorian-style, 3-story house placed on a typical San Francisco hill, so lots of stairs and rooms and doors. I was never able to talk to David and felt bad about just leaving. I get very shy at these things. I tend not to talk to anyone and feel very awkward and uncomfortable. But I love to go. I love to hear what people have to say. And I love to leave. (David later emailed me that HE was sorry he wasn’t able to talk and that next time, I should interrupt him… helps him break away…) for the love of God…
Studio time
Working in my studio after many days of absence. It always feels good to be here. I’m working on some house portraits. One for a friend who wants a drawing of her Tucson house for her Christmas card. One for an old friend who wants a painting of his childhood home. Trying to finish it for his birthday in October. And finishing up one of a new house my girlfriend bought a year ago. None are for hire. Well, one was, but I told my friend I would do it for free…need the practice and need the portfolio piece. I’m working from photographs and work in watercolor. I feel like breaking out though of this “safe” style and do something more like Edward Hopper
Painting by Edward Hopper
or Bay Area artist Robert Bechtle Robert Bechtle – Works | Louis. K. Meisel Gallery.
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But let’s just get to it. I need to get out of my head and into my studio and keep working.