CIA Weaponizing Abstract Art and Its Fallout
Idyllwild Backyard in Winter
The Tattoo Series by Michael Newberry
Art within art. Painting a person with tattoos is like painting a painting within a painting. Mind-bending. The tricky part for the painter is to be not confused by the tones and hues of the tattoos and bring out the forms and light of anatomy.
Tattoo Series, 2017, oil on canvas, each 24×20″
Michael Newberry, Idyllwild, 5/17/2020
Ep. 3 Phallic Shapes in Painting Part 2, Aesthetic Evolution
A visit to well known NY gallery of an artist’s solo show of still lifes. I was surprised he didn’t get the connotations of his visual language. It was like talking to someone who didn’t get that they were making a double entendre.
Workshop Series: Composition!
Newberry Art Tutorials
Some Guidelines For Great Compositons
In my workshops students have plenty of time to compose the work, the line drawing set up before painting begins. The following tutorials show techniques you can focus on as you map out the painting’s composition.
Composition in One Easy Lesson
The lesson in three words: Make interesting corners. In this tutorial I show how some of greatest artists of composition, Vermeer, Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Diebenkorn, and Velazquez make fascinating shapes and lighting in the corners. It is a very simple way to get the most out of your composition without having to remember a million rules!
Abstraction in Representational Art
Though this tutorial is not strictly about composition it will be helpful to see how one can organize abstract shapes in a compositional way. Using Rembrandt, Kline, and Monet I show how they group things into broader abstract shapes. This is an extremely powerful technique that gives the viewer an epic journey through the big picture.
True Lies Warp Negative Space
A very surreal artist’s perspective but indispensable to give life to your painting is accenting the negative spaces of things. I go into detail showing how Monet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, myself, and William Wray manipulate negative space to create a sense of movement in the painting. If you can take a few seconds, while composing, to check the negative spaces it will add tremendously to making a powerful painting.
Pushing the Composition Envelope, Melissa Hefferlin Still Lifes
This is a very helpful article on how Picasso and Hefferlin arrange their compositions, and how Melissa manages to do so in a realistic way.
When you are taking a workshop with me you don’t have to hold all this info in your head, that is my job, but it is good to read up on these tutorials. I hope you enjoy them and I guarantee you that adding them to your technique will feel great and raise your art up a few levels.
For more about studying with me please introduce yourself and your work via email, mtnewberry at gmail dot com.
Grateful
Grateful, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches.
How does an atheist find images to express that? These overlapping hands had an abstract quality, something of a butterfly, and, for me, absolutely a feeling of thankfulness. A great pleasure to paint. Nod to Manet’s little fingers.
This painting and several recent works from Idyllwild will be in my show at the White Cloud Gallery in Washington, D.C. November 3rd – December 14th.
Michael Newberry is Artist-in-Residence at The Atlas Society. He has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Athens, and Rome. Follow him on Instagram at @artnewberry.
Art and Ideals by David Kelley, 29 min
Just published for the first time.
On October 6th, 2003 The Foundation for the Advancement of Art presented this conference at New York’s Pierre Hotel. David Kelley, a philosopher, gives the talk Art and Ideals.
Tats Series
Tats 1
Tats 2
Tats 3
Earlier today I signed off on the third tattoo painting. The series was a fascinating excursion in which I contemplated how we sometimes become the artwork. I have always thought that was true in a metaphorical way, in the sense that when we are young, we often form our characters, unwittingly, by the influence of movies, literature, songs, paintings, or by sculptures. With tattoos it is the reverse, it is the person that becomes the canvas. They literally become the artwork.
The process of painting them was difficult and fun. It is like working a jigsaw puzzle in 3d, with each piece curved to fit the human form, and each piece occupying its unique spot in space.
The Tats Series is part of an ongoing project of abstract, realistic paintings destined for The White Cloud Gallery in Washington D.C. this fall.
Michael Newberry
Rhythm a Beautiful Way to Organize Chaos
Newberry Art Tutorials
Joseph, acrylic, 16 x 12 inches.
This is a portrait of a friend, architect Joseph Castro, with dark brown leather as the backdrop.
Any complex subject is visually chaotic; with incongruent shapes and lots of details. When you look at something like a person’s face or a panoramic landscape there are a million things to look at – out of all that stuff which do you draw/paint? One of the fun and great challenges for an artist is to organize this chaos in a meaningful way through the use of visual rhythms.
Erotic Symbolism in Visual Art
Newberry Art Tutorials
O’Keeffe, 1923, Grey Line with Black, Blue, and Yellow
Representational painting, such as landscapes, people, and furniture, is normally viewed at face value. A flower is just a flower; a chair a chair. But the manner in which an artist uses shapes can convey more than the literal content of the painting.
Once you grasp how an artist plays with shapes to convey another layer of meaning it can open up a universe of deeper insight and, sometimes, powerfully erotic subtexts. You may never see art again in the same way.
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