Rembrandt – Moose Pants Studio

Paintsgiving

Joanna Zeller Quentin / art, artist, Artists, horse, horses, music, Rembrandt, violin /

I admit it. Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. There are lots of reasons for it – it is a secular holiday, so you don’t have to worry about offending anyone or leaving someone out, it comes with yummy food and none of the calories, it brings back wonderful memories of my family gathered around the table when I was younger, and it reminds us to pause and be thankful for what we have. Kinda like a kinder, gentler New Year’s Eve… without the calories.

So, what am I thankful for? First, I am thankful for this wonderful recording of Satie’s Gymnopedie in my music library. I’m not a huge Satie fan, but sometimes he has the perfect music… like for stormy November nights, with icy rain sluicing down the windows and thoughts rattling against the inside of my skull like the leaves against the glass panes. Satie is a lovely, ponderous, purple sound. Maybe next we can segue into Copland’s bright blue Saturday Night Waltz and take flight. (And in fact, we have…)

I am thankful for this studio I sit in, surrounded by my paintings, all waiting to be finished, full of potential and possibility. I am thankful that I was able to attend one of the best art colleges in the country, and thankful that enough people were terrified of my second year painting professor that they dropped the class, leaving a class of only four students to receive 9 hours of personalized instruction a week. I am grateful the aforementioned professor made us learn to mix our own gesso and stretch our own canvases, and I am thankful that I can now buy that crap already done from the store. I am thankful that my career path has followed my “artistic” path very closely, and that whatever I’ve learned in one field I’ve been able to use in the other. I am thankful that my parents never told me I couldn’t draw, and thankful that years and years of practice have allowed me to be able to fake it fairly well these days.

I’m thankful for my subject matter. The horse for me is a neverending marvel, the perfect blend of power and containment. I’m thankful that there have been a wonderful herd of horses in my life, and that my “first” horse was an ancient Cleveland Bay. I’ve never looked at a “plain” brown horse the same way since. I’m thankful for the miracle of birds, and it’s nice that they so often tend to live in those other awe-inspiring things: trees. And speaking of trees and the inherent majesty of Spanish moss and resurrection ferns, I’m thankful for literally the entire state of Louisiana. I think I could wander the wilds of Louisiana and Florida forever, dreamy and dazed, and never run out of things to delight the eye and inflame the senses.

I’m thankful for the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and thankful that a public school music teacher told me I could and would learn to play it, and then made me do so. (And I’m thankful for this marvelous recording by the ever delightful Anne-Sophie Mutter.) Speaking of Ms. Mutter, I’m thankful for Anne Rice, both in literary and “fairy godmother” form, and I’m thankful I’ve been able to give something back to her for all the enjoyment she’s brought me over the years.

I’m thankful for Rembrandt, Sargent, Mucha, Magritte, Leyendecker, Audubon, Parrish, Toulouse-Latrec, Rousseau, Mehl, St. Clair, Brenders, Pratt, Forbes, Hopper, Van Gogh, Caravaggio, Gorey, Stubbs, Keane, Vettriano and Deja. And whoever came up with the whole Art Nouveau phase, Minoan art period and Byzantine iconography thing, you rock. I love you guys.

I’m thankful for my best friends, for a litany of unsaids. I’m thankful for my parents for their support. I’m thankful for my family for their love.

And I’m thankful for my husband – artist/draftsman supreme, man of steel, head cheerleader, personal-demon slayer, and professional “pep talk” giver. I’m thankful he knew me for 10 years and then decided he still wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

Finally, I’m thankful for you, whoever you might be, out there reading this blog. Thanks for providing an audience, a challenge, a goal, a competition, an eagerness to share and talk and touch and explain and listen, and thanks for allowing me a platform to share with the world. I was going to close with some crack about the pen being mightier than the sword but the paintbrush being mightier than all, and then I lost the thread. So, instead, I close with what I am most thankful for – the art. Happy Paintsgiving.

Name Change! part deux, or “just add purple”

Joanna Zeller Quentin / Albers, art, artist, color, drawing, equine art, George, Hanovarian, horse, horseback, horses, Josef, oil, opinions, painting, Rembrandt, Stubbs, Thoroughbred /

I didn’t exactly explain the name change yesterday. It’s freshly engraved on my drawing desk, pinned to my bulletin board, and now the new name of my blogspot. We’ve all heard of exhibitions called “The Horse in Art”. I have at least three books – lovely, full color coffee table books – celebrating our good friend the horse in art. It’s a fairly self explanatory title, an exploration of how different artists have depicted the horse in art since those Lascaux pastelists got the jump on all the rest of us. But “the ART in HORSE”?

I am at a crossroads in my art. This is nothing new – it’s been building for years. I know what I love. I know what moves me. Bold, exciting color, painterly lines, furioso brushwork, eloquent drawings and elegant etchings. Sargent, Rembrandt, Rousseau, Albers. All used their virtuosity to push the boundaries of their art. (And we won’t even talk about Picasso.) I don’t think I’m tired of the subject matter. Horses are my love, they are my passion. I know them, their musculature and lines and motion, and I enjoy showing the world what can be done with a “horse painting”, especially in a way that hasn’t been done before.

But lots of it HAS been done before. Lots of tightly rendered pencil drawings. Lots of finely detailed oil paintings. Lots of photorealism, and lots of stylization. Every brushstroke exact, every hair in place, every blade of grass gently waving – sporting art at it’s finest.

Yes, there is a place for that type of art. Yes, it has a long and distinguished history in the art world. (Stubbs, I’m looking at you. No really, I am. Bought a book the other day.) Yes, some people are amazingly good at it. Yes, it is art. But it’s not me.

(Confession: I WANTED it to be me. I drooled over Carl Brenders art when I was a kid. I tried and tried for years to render tightly detailed, extremely realistic paintings and drawings. I finally had to accept that it just isn’t me, and no matter how hard I tried, I only ended up with a disorganized mess or a pounding headache. One day I just accepted that this is the way I paint, and I apparently I can’t do anything about it. Life, and art, got much easier. And my art teachers went nuts.)

So…. art of the horse. I propose a change of direction. A shift in perspective. One where the painting ISN’T about the horse. It’s about color and brushstrokes and line… and it just happens to have a horse in it. What I want to do is embark on a systematic exploration of color… on horseback. Primaries, secondaries, tertiaries. Complements and triads. Josef Albers on horseback. From now on, it’s NOT just about the horse. It’s about the art.