Arts Patron Benefit Invite

Just finished up this little drawing last night.  It is to be included in an invitation for a party honoring Gemini G.E.M. founder Sidney Felsen. I don’t normally do portraits, but this seemed like a good excuse to break that habit. I drew him with his trademark Panama Hat and bow tie: I think he turned out pretty nice! Check out the Original line drawing after the jump.

Millions and Billions…

Some older works from a series of “quantifiable drawings” in which each picture  is comprised of  several rows of hatch marks, or tallies.  The numbers at the end of each row designate the amount of  marks in that row.

one down

It took the better part of the week but I think I finally hit the skids on this one. Its the first in a series of six. Hopefully I’ll have the next one done by this Friday.  Check out the details after the jump.

Progress Report

Currently working on six small drawings. Here’s a peek.

Rembrandt prints

On a whim, April and I stopped by Norton Simon on Saturday to see the Rembrandt exhibit currently on display. Its a modest exhibit with about  only a dozen or so works, but I left plenty satisfied.  They were all etchings, all relatively small scale  portraits ranging from thumbnail sized studies to highly hatched and labored scenes slightly larger than an index card.  looking closely at these prints, it’s very easy to see why Rembrandt is widely considered to be one of Europe’s greatest print makers.  Every piece in this exhibit is a gem, but there is such a profound  sensitivity in the later works, where he makes the most technically complex intaglio portrait look improvised, a perfect economy of biting and just the right amount of aquatint.

Here it almost seemed as if there was some kind of implicit omage to the wood-reliefs of Alrect Durer from over a century earlier when he pioneered the exploration and quantification of vision. Instead of optics, mercantilism and early capitalism are under the microscope here, undoubtedly a theme Rembrandt had strong feelings about because of his own troubled relationship with money.  Another unique point about this show was that there were no biblical scenes. Instead the portraits  here come with a more crypted narriative, enchanting nonetheless.

Of course no trip to the Norton Simon would be complete without spending some time with one of my favorite paintings in LA; “First Fruits” by Edouard Vuillard. There is another painting similar to it at lacma.  They are excessively  decorative and navigating through the painting becomes a kind of haptic archeology.

I know these are terrible images, I will try in the future not to photograph importiant works of art on my iphone.

In other news, I have a couple new drawings I should be wrapping up by next week, I’ll post pics as soon as they are complete.

Happy Sunday!

Sean