Dana Oldfather Talks Painting and Critiquing Others' Paintings

It's been a busy year for painter Dana Oldfather, and it's going to get busier.

This spring, Oldfather had her first solo museum show at the Butler Institute of American Art in Canton. Her exhibit Tap, Crack, Bellow allowed her to translate her abstract paintings onto mural-sized canvases, immersing viewers in a world where queues of blue and lilac shapes inspired by both machines and organisms float through cloudy spaces. Earlier this year, the Ohio Arts Council gave her its Individual Excellence Award. Right now she's preparing a commission for the Horseshoe in Cincinnati and pieces for three showcases over the next half-year, including one at Cleveland's own SPACES.  

Her accomplishments have propelled her to a state where she's sought out not just for her painting but also for her ideas about painting. Oldfather was tapped to be the juror at Lakeland Community College's Cleveland Connection Juried Exhibition presented by the Cleveland Arts League, which is on display now. She brings to bear on the experience her own countless applications to juried shows. Being on the other side of the judge's table comes with a new set of responsibilities.

However, Oldfather isn't letting all this success ruin her. At Lakeland, she doesn't want her own preferences and idiosyncrasies to dictate her decisions, but wants to wants to reward and encourage promising talents whether or not they adhere to her own artistic ideals.

"It does give you a different view. You want to be objective, but at the same time you want to be encouraging," Oldfather says.

And in her own work, Oldfather still works to internalize criticism from her peers and herself.

"For a long time, I had false ideas about my work, thinking it was better than it was. It's important not to be content. Work can always be better. If you're content, there's something wrong," says Oldfather.

She holds herself to a demanding schedule, painting, other commitments permitting, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in her home studio. At any given time, Oldfather is working on four or five paintings, each with its unique content and tone. A guiding principle in Oldfather's work is harmony, both between the spaces she creates and the objects she fills them with. The emotions, colors and forms are meant to invoke that relationship. Depending on what the artist is feeling any given day or hour, she'll try to express it in paint on the appropriate canvas.

However, this regimen has not always been possible. Like most artists in the Rust Belt, Oldfather has worked outside of her studio to make ends meet. But this September, Oldfather is stepping down from her job as webmaster and PR copy writer for the Bonfoey Gallery, where she's worked in various capacities for the last 11 years.

Besides providing money for brushes and oil paints, Bonfoey furnished lessons for Oldfather, the self-taught artist, about what's interesting in painting, and how to attract the attention of curators.

"You need complete art images and information on pricing right up front. When you bring in art, bring all that with you. You can't just drop into the gallery and have them look at art," Oldfather says.

Even after her departure, Bonfoey will still represent her paintings as it does now, but now Oldfather will be able to put in more nine-hour days in at the studio. However, just as her office-work duties are dropping away, a whole new set of responsibilities are approaching: those of parenthood. In October, Oldfather is expecting her first child with her husband, an engineer in the aerospace industry.

She is clearly happy, but her due-date comes just a month after her Bonfoey departure. She is already steeling herself to the effort to maintain her hard-won identity as an artist even as she takes on the vocation of childrearing.

"It's your life first. I want to care for my child, but I don't want to forget who I am first," Oldfather says.

For the foreseeable future, Oldfather sees herself continuing her explorations of "biomechanical" abstract figures, but remains modest about her own ability to analyze or forecast the present and near-future of her career.

"It's hard when you're so close to what you're making," Oldfather says.

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Chicks With Balls: An Exhibit of Paintings that Feature Just What the Title Says

Solon painter Judy Takács is displaying 19 portraits of women she knows at Bay Arts. They are the grittiest gals, in her opinion: Chicks with balls, figuratively, and as she displays them literally too.

The show delivers all the cheekiness the title suggests. Takács posed her models topless with various sporting balls clutched to their chests: basketballs, footballs, softballs, big modesty-enhancing exercise balls. However, the strategically placed spheres aren't just there to protect the PG-13 sensibilities of some gallery directors she's dealt with. They are visual representations of the chicks' metaphorical ballsiness. It's a difficult physical task to balance two softballs and a basketball, or an armful of ping pong balls, to your chest. No matter how light their weight, it's an awkward pose which strains balance and muscles quickly. Takács says the struggle to hold multiple balls aloft was meant to reify the multiple crises women must, can and do manage all at once.

"My women are doing big things in small ways," Takács says. "They're dealing with jobs, aging parents, troubled teens, starting fresh after divorces and starting life over."

Takács' youngest model is a collegiate rugger, and her oldest is her own mother, but most of her posers are the artist's fortysomething peers. Some she's known for three-plus decades, others she's met through kids' playgroups.

Though middle age is associated with stagnation and boredom, Takács finds her friends in real life-and-death struggles. She sees them nurturing parents sliding into dementia and decrepitude, guiding their own kids' through the hormonal and existential turmoil of adolescence, all the while trying to hold onto some professional dignity and personal identity. For all their drama, such stories are rarely told.                                                                                                             

These chronicles are published at Bay Arts, in essays on her site and also in the paintings themselves. One participating model, "Karin," notes that of all the qualities Takács is willing to flatter, vanity isn't one of them. She lets her women look their age.

"I think that working with Judy, you're not going to come out of it looking like a beauty queen. Not a lot of people hope for a flatter stomach or clearer skin. It's all about character," Karin says.

This character shows through not just in honestly crinkled faces or patches of cellulite, but in overworked hands. Exempting the face, no other region of the body receives so much sharp and fine detail as these extremities. Maybe because of the way they were posed, or maybe because of conscious or unconscious choices by the artist, the hands look disproportionately large in relation to the rest of the body. Not absurdly so, but still noticeably. Being engaged in the work of grasping balls, bones jut, muscles pump, and veins bulge, sometimes snaking halfway up the bicep. They're not always pretty, but they're clever and strong and get things done.

Takács says it was not much of a challenge convincing most of her models to participate, despite the nudity, the promise not the censor imperfections, and even the fact that most of her models do not work in the open-minded art world. They trusted her not to trivialize their act of publically undressing their bodies and biographies, and to assert the truth that living demands resilience, even in suburbia.

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Norman Rockwell paintings to be sold at New York auction

Visitors view a wall of Saturday Evening Post magazine covers featuring the art of Norman Rockwell at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London in this file photo taken January 15, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Chris Helgren/Files

NEW YORK | Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:36pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Seven works by American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell, including "Saying Grace" and "The Gossips," will be sold at auction in New York in December, Sotheby's auction house said on Thursday.

Rockwell, who died in 1978 at age 84, painted nostalgic and amusing scenes of everyday American life over the course of some 65 years.

The paintings, which are expected to fetch upwards of $24 million total at the December 4 auction, are being sold by the descendents of Kenneth J. Stuart Sr., Rockwell's friend and the art director at the Saturday Evening Post magazine, which published hundreds of his works on its covers over more than 40 years.

"Saying Grace," voted the favorite cover by readers of the Post after it was published in 1951, shows a Mennonite family praying at a restaurant. It has a pre-sale estimate of up to $20 million.

"The Gossips" from 1948, in which 15 pairs of people including Rockwell and his wife are depicted talking to each other, could fetch as much as $9 million.

"To offer any one of these masterworks would be a great privilege. To present two of Norman Rockwell's most iconic works in one auction is unprecedented," Elizabeth Goldberg, the head of Sotheby's American Art department, said in a statement.

Other paintings in the sale are "Walking to Church," with a pre-sale estimate of up to $5 million, a portrait of former President Dwight Eisenhower called "The Day I Painted Ike," and color studies for "Girl at Mirror," "Norman Rockwell Visits a Country School, and "Breaking Home Ties."

Rockwell's "Breaking Home Ties" sold for $15.4 million in 2006 at Sotheby's, an auction record for him.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Eric Kelsey and Philip Barbara)

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Provocative Balthus paintings focus of New York museum exhibition

1 of 5. A woman looks at the painting entitled ''Therese on a bench seat'' by French artist Balthus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's ''Balthus: Cats and Girls Paintings and Provocations'' exhibition in New York September 23, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Keith Bedford

By Patricia Reaney

NEW YORK | Wed Sep 25, 2013 2:25pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - French-born painter Balthus is known for his street scenes and portraits, but it is his paintings of young girls, some with erotic undercurrents, that are the focus of the first exhibition of his works in New York in 30 years.

"Balthus: Cats and Girls - Paintings and Provocations," which opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Wednesday and runs through January 12, examines the early decades of the artist's career from the mid-1930s through the 1950s in Paris, Switzerland and central France.

Thirty-four works by Balthus, who died in 2001 at the age of 92 and was among the most admired painters of his time, are in the exhibition.

Many works are of unsmiling girls shown in portraits, sitting, reclining, looking out windows and playing, often with cat, an animal that is a recurrent motif in his paintings.

"These pictures are powerful, sometimes troubling. Some may have been created with the intention to shock their viewers," Thomas P. Campbell, the director of the museum, said at a preview of the exhibition.

Sabine Rewald, the show's curator, had interviewed the realist artist and many of his models and was the author of the catalog for the museum's major 1984 retrospective of Balthus, whose real name was Balthasar Klossowki.

She said he is most identified with his paintings of young girls between childhood and adolescence.

"It is a stage marked by rebellion and also boredom," she explained. "It is much easier to depict in poetry and prose. Balthus did it in paint."

INFLUENCED BY SURROUNDINGS

The exhibition is divided into four galleries, each showing a different stage of his work. In addition, there is another room holding about 40 pen-and-ink drawings done in 1918 when the self-taught artist was 10 years old. The drawings about the loss of his cat, Mitsou, were published in 1921 by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Many of the works are of Therese Blanchard, a dark-haired, 11-year-old girl, who was the artist's neighbor in Paris and a favorite subject.

"She inspired this exhibition," Rewald said of Blanchard.

"Therese," a 1936 portrait of the girl in a dark dress, is one of 10 works Balthus did of the child, many in somber colors and a flat style.

In "Therese on a Bench Seat," she is shown unsmiling and aloof, wearing a bright red sweater, dangling a string and playing with a cat not shown in the painting. Another work, "Therese Dreaming" depicts her leaning back with her leg raised.

"He often captured his models in poses that children unconsciously and naturally take, which might be ungainly or unguarded," said Rewald.

After being wounded early during World War Two, Balthus left Paris in 1940 and moved into a farmhouse in the Savoie, the free zone in France not occupied by the Germans, and then to Switzerland. His paintings took on lighter tones and showed different models reading, sleeping and looking into a mirror.

"Balthus was always very influenced by his surroundings and his surroundings influenced his painting style," Rewald said, adding his works turned dark again when he returned to his gloomy studio in Paris in 1946.

"The Cat of La Mediterranee," done as a decoration for a restaurant in Paris in 1949, is a self portrait of Balthus, who painted himself as cat eating at a table with the sea and a rainbow in the background.

The final gallery features large, bright canvases done while Balthus was living at the chateau de Chassy in central France from 1953-60.

In "Girl at a Window," his 16-year-old niece by marriage Frederique Tison leans on a chair and looks out of a huge window over a garden and courtyard, and she reclines on a sofa in "The Cup of Coffee."

Although the exhibition shows Balthus' works up to 1960, Rewald said he continued to paint throughout his life.

(Editing by Eric Kelsey and Leslie Gevirtz)

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Renea Collection: Uniquely Everyday Product Designs From The 3-D Abstract Oil Paintings of Renea Menzies

    HOUSTON, TX, June 14, 2013 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Renea Menzies, a Texas abstract artist, is known for sculpting heavy oil paint and vibrant color to captivate her audience with an amazing line of one-of-a-kind products. As an international model, she had the privilege of traveling abroad and experiencing the world at a very early age. During her extensive travels, she acquired a unique sense of style and zest for life in which she translates into her own unique art form.

Renea is now showing in cities across the nation such as Aspen, Boston, Santa Fe, New Orleans and Scottsdale she has decided to expanding the utilization of her artwork. Renea came up with a plan to print visuals of her abstract paintings onto everyday items. Renea's early life experiences have made it easy for her to take expand her art to the "lifestyle" products that she is proud to present this summer. Her art has an infinite amount of design possibility, the bold color from her art transcend beautifully onto her products.

The collection made from her art will be exhibited at the licensing show at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas June 18-20th. Her designs represent and capture her vibrant use of color and the elevated surface that Renea Menzies' art conveys. Her individualism and sense of unique style will soon capture the hearts of the people yet again. Incorporating all that she is and all that she ever wanted to be, Renea skillfully combines her knowledge of composition, color and design with her new fabric line and products to create a aesthetically appealing collection.

Renea's designs include items such as I-phone cases, handbags; shower curtains, binders, bedding and various others everyday items. Her fabric line consists of thoughtfully selected fabrics that are perfect for constructing dresses, pillows, ties, and other items. Her intricately designed umbrella line has proven to be a favored product of her collectors. The three-dimensional textures of her abstract Paintings accompanied by stylized patterns have made the umbrellas a big hit.

Most of the line is abstract and floral in nature yet during the process of creating this line Renea also discovered that her art has a similar affect as fractals, witnessing these geometric patterns change in front of her eyes she discovered the unlimited possibilities of her designs, it is truly amazing.

What makes this product line different from any other is the illusion of texture on a flat surface. Her ability to take a flat surface, display her beautiful paintings, and bring it to life has really proven to be captivating to the human eyes. Her designs are to everyone whether young or old because they can be translated onto so many products.

"My intention is not to replicate nature in its entirety, but to vibrantly portray the distinctive form and movement of each petal and leaf. I sculpt and texturize to reflect both the luminous light and the esoteric shadow of each individual floret. My ambition to convey life is echoed in the detail of each heavily textured flower, bringing exclusivity and vitality to every piece." Renea Menzies

For more information on Renea Menzies' art collection and products you can visit her website and online art gallery www.reneamenzies.com or contact the studio rm@stuidorenea.com.713-806-7076.

Studio Renea is an artist website that is creating everyday products using the art for the design. Artist Statement "My creative soul was inspired by a desire to evoke my emotions at the deepest level with vibrantly colored swirls that exude off the canvas and into the heart of the viewer."

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