What's Up

Greetings from Auburn Ca.,

Its starting to feel like Summer for a change . I hope you all had as good a time on Father's Day as I did. Jana made me a Fillet Mignon wrapped in bacon with a special Marsala Mushroom Cream sauce with twice baked potatoes and an excellent Murphy Goode Cabernet. I think she secretly wants to give me a heart attack!

I will be reviewing the Book " Cecila Beaux , American Figure Painter" . I just finished reading it and there are many important insights that I think you will find not only interesting but also benefiting to our growth as artists...especially of the portrait variety.

I will be starting a painting of another person who made quite an impression on me when I was starting to figure out who I was back in those days in Pasadena Ca. I will call him Mr. X as I have forgotten his name. He displayed both genius and amorality in a fluent life stroke. It is poetic that part of him is in the light and the other half enveloped in the shadows. He reminded me of Barkilphedro ( sp?) who is a rasputinish like character in Victor Hugo's " The Man who Laughs" . Hugo described him as the man who could walk on the edge of a shadow and would appear comfortable in either environment...kinda like a political consultant.

I am attaching the 1928 silent film adaption of the book. The intro is an invention as the book starts with a shipwreck...but you will get a glimpse of Barkilphedro...



_______