Authentic Flesh showing in October

Drum roll, please!

For all of you who have been wondering when you're ever going to get a chance to see these beautiful women I've been painting in real life, your wait will soon be over!  I don't know if you'll get to see the women themselves, but you can definitely come see the paintings!

Here's the press release we'll be sending out this week - you're the first to know!

Susan Singer – painting all the naked women in Richmond, one at a time…

Richmond, VA – Visual Art Studio is pleased to announce the Opening Reception First Friday, October 1, 2010 of Authentic Flesh, the newest series of paintings to come from the brush of the talented Susan Singer. Coming several years after her provocative and very successful life size pastel series, 12 Naked Men, Authentic Flesh is meant to awaken the viewer to the beauty of the female form in all of its variations. Singer has exquisitely painted women from age 23 to age 89, from the excruciatingly thin to the quite portly, all of them emanating the power of their individual form and being.

In today’s society, the media seems to be in charge of creating the image people have of the “perfect” woman’s body. Singer hopes to crash through the belief that a woman must be tall and rail thin to be beautiful. She presents women who are beautiful because they feel gorgeous. They live authentically within their own skin and feel great about themselves – perhaps not always - but that is the overall feeling that one gets from looking at these luminescent paintings. The women radiate in their own beauty and show us what it can be like to be a person who knows her own worth.

Authentic Flesh, sure to be a blockbuster show, will premier at Visual Art Studio at 208 W. Broad Street, on First Friday, October 1, 2010. It will be on display, with many new works added, on First Friday, November 5th as well, and will close Wednesday, November 24th.

For more information, please contact Anne Hart Chay at Visual Art Studio, 804-644-1368 or the artist at www.SusanSinger.com .

Talk20

Thanks so much to everyone who came to Talk20 last night at 1708 gallery!  I had a great time, and I loved seeing each and every one of you there, especially if I knew you were there ; ) !

We had tons of people there - it was standing room only - maybe 175 people.  There were 8 artists who spoke for about 4 1/2 minutes each then took time to answer questions if there were any.  It was fascinating hearing what each artist/designer was working on and what he/she was thinking during the process.  People are doing such cool stuff.  Brian Korte showed us the picture he made out of Legos which is now in the Guiness Book of World Records!  Tiffany Glass talked about geocaching "real small art" all around Richmond and about giving away small canvases as a way to make someone's day.  Shelia Gray paints bodies and creates costumes just for the heck of it, and gardens and house and pet sits out of the goodness of her heart.  Gordon Stettinius has done a series of photographs of himself with all different kinds of hair and in different styles of dress.  They are fascinating!  It's hard to recognize him in all of them.  There were two designers there who talked about their process of figuring out how to decorate a building - there's so much more thought that goes into it than I ever knew.  And an artist who does prints of maps of places friends and family live.  All so interesting! 

As the fourth presenter, I spoke about my fascination with the human form for the last ten years, beginning with pregnant nudes, continuing on to scars, then naked men, and now the female form.  I showed primarily pictures from this new series and talked about how blessed I am by my models and their generosity in allowing me to paint them, their authenticity, their vulnerability, and their power and grace.  Slash Coleman at the end asked me a question I'm so grateful for.  He asked what the experience tends to be like for the models.  I answered that in many cases it has brought about healing, helping the models feel more comfortable in their own skin and helping them see how beautiful they truly are.  I was so glad to be able to bring that into the talk.  That, the healing, is the primary reason I do this work.  I would so love it if my work influenced people to think about their common perceptions of the body and to perhaps consider if they are logical/reasonable/rational or not.

Why do we believe that it's not OK to be naked?  When do we start to feel ashamed of or embarassed by our bodies?  What causes that to happen?  Society has very, very strong messages about being naked and about how the body should look.  What makes us believe those messages?  When do we start to take them on?  What can we do about it?

I think becoming aware of the messages is the first step.  I hope that when people look at my art, they will begin to think about the body.  Perhaps they will feel uncomfortable.  I'm OK with that.  Maybe they'll go a little bit deeper and start to ask themselves what is wrong with the painting?  Why are they uncomfortable?  What seems so wrong about it?  There is so much to be learned from the questions.

I have a student who thinks I'm OK with all this weirdness because I lived in Europe.  That may have contributed to my acceptance that I have a body, and it's not perfect, and that's OK.  But I think what has brought me to this place is rather that I have continued to paint the nude and to look at all these bodies.  How could I help but recognize the vulnerability and humanity of each and every person - each person is doing her best to be her best self, to live a good life, to get along in the world with as little pain as possible.  I treasure their trust and authenticity and openness with me.  I find each woman I've painted to be indescribably beautiful and powerful.  It's not about their bodies.  It's about their souls.  It's really the essence I try to paint, but I have to describe it using paint and by re-creating an image of their body surrounded by their skin.  But hopefully it's the soul that shines though.  And those are sublime.

Shell Studies

While at the Outer Banks on vacation, I brought many, many art supplies.  I brought oil paints and 10 canvases and an easel a student was generous enough to loan me.  I brought 2 boxes of pastels along with pastel paper.  I brought pencils and a gorgeous sketchbook I bought in Venice and am intimated to use because it's so beautiful.  And watercolors and brushes and paper.  It was a lot of stuff!  I made sure to use each thing while there.

One of the first days were were there, the weather was very nice, if somewhat blustery.  I decided that would be a good day to head to the beach to paint, unfamiliar easel and all.  I learned that it is cold painting outdoors at the beach in March, even with my loving husband as a windbreak and a tube-opener!  I painted two small canvases of the ocean and beach.  I am NOT yet skilled at painting the waves!  I spent a good deal of time staring at them trying to figure out how they work and how to paint them, but I will be the first to admit that I was not successful in either. The first painting I did with my palette knife.  It was fun to slop the paint around and to try to capture the extravagant vitality of the crashing waves, but when I was done, I knew it was not a keeper.  For one thing, there was too much paint on it to dry before leaving for home.  For another, it simply wasn't good enough.  Yuck!  The second one was better but not significantly.  I brought it home with me, but will not embarass myself by showing it here!  I have so much to learn about painting landscapes.  They are not my forte, darn it!  I kept thinking as I tried to paint the waves - I KNOW how to paint the body.  It makes sense to me.  It has defineable form and light and shadow and color and value.  These darn waves are so spectacular, but I can't figure out how to paint them at all!  I have pictures of them.  I guess I'll have to work from a few photos to try to decipher them then try plein aire again.

The next thing I did was to combine watercolor and pencil to draw some shells.  We were blessed to find many, many whelk shells so I wanted to draw them.  I love spirals, and they have great spirals!  Sadly the pencil made the watercolor turn out too grey and dull so that wasn't such a great idea, but I enjoyed the process.  I also find shells difficult to draw.

After that, I didn't want to stop so I used a burnt sienna-colored pen to draw the outlines of shells then filled them in with watercolor.  I feel like they were more successful.  I was able to paint the details and play with the patterns in ways that satisfied me more.  While walking on the beach, I kept finding shell fragments that I found absolutely beautiful.  Their patterns were compelling to me.  I decided to bring them back to the house (and ultimately cart them home) so I could be inspired by nature.

After painting the watercolor shells, I got out my pastels and used the patterns and colors as the stepping off for color studies.  Here's the most obvious one:

became

I really liked the 3-D effect of the ups and downs on the shell.

This is from those purple and white shells that I find everywhere and think are so beautiful.  I love the colors.  The drawing reminds me of a sunrise as well as the shell.

This one is based on the movement in the shell. It was very 3 dimensional and had wonderful colors in it.

This came from my favorite shell.  The shell was just a sliver of an ivory-colored shell with very fine blue lines pitched at just the curved angle I have above.  It was so delicate and beautiful.

I tried a different technique for this one - cross-hatching.  It certainly gives it a different feel.

This last one is based on a scallop shell I found and is more like the color studies I worked on a few years ago.  I really like the juxtaposition of colors and the fieriness of it.

Thanks for taking a look!

Creating Nature Art

We had a wonderful restorative time in the Outer Banks!  The weather was not-to-be-believed-beautiful!  We had a day and a half of bad weather with lots of rain - perfect excuse to stay inside and read and cook good meals and hang out together.  The rest of the time was gorgeous!  Sunny, 60 degrees, comfortable, not too breezy.  We did a lot of walking on the beach - Chris went for a five hour walk one day - boy, was he sore the next!

One day we walked a long way into the National Park.  We found a huge 35' tall pine tree that had been washed up onto the shore - WAY up!  All the bark was stripped off, and it was almost driftwood - except for the roots which still had bark on them - that's how I could identify it.  There was a knife stuck in it, so Chris carved our names into the tree - my first!  Then I began doing an Andrew Goldsworthy.  (If you don't know who he is, check out his work.  It's amazing!  He's an artist who works in nature, taking natural elements and creating order out of them.  The picture here is one of his.)  What I did was nowhere near as interesting as that, but I had fun!  I began gathering up debris on the beach - both natural and unnatural - and decorating the tree.  We stuck plastic bottles on the roots and plastic bottle caps all over like Christmas ornaments.  I hung found rope around the branches like garlands.  There were 100's of birds' feathers which I stuck out of the roots every which way, then I lined the long straight trunk with 100 shells in a straight line. It was so absorbing to modify nature by embellishing it with its own beauty along with mankind's trash.  Sadly, I didn't have my camera with me, so I can't show what it looked like, but below are some pictures from other Nature Art sessions I've taken part in.

The first is from the summer at The Clearing in Amelia County.  It's a Quaker retreat place where I go sometimes for weekends just to be away from it all.  There are many acres of beauty.  Chris and I often go there today.  One time we spent an afternoon creating art...  The sticks you see there are wrapped in green spring leaves.

One of the most fun times I had making nature art was in April at a Contact Improvisation Jam at Claymont in West Virginia.  I used to go there 2-3 times/year to dance for 4 or 5 days at a time.  It was fantastically fun!  One time we watched the Andy Goldsworthy video then the next day went out and played in nature for several hours.  Folks would walk along as we were doing it and join us or gawk or admire.  It was wonderful.  Here are several pictures from then:

I'm very taken with the difference between these two pictures of the rock circle.  They're at the exact same time of day.  All that changed is the angle from which I took the shot.  Andrew Goldsworthy plays with the change in light a lot too.

Circles seemed to be a thing for us that day.

Our friends liked the rock circle too!

Some of these are subtle.  Can you find our contribution in this one?

I was fascinated by the dandelions which were in great profusion at that time of year - April.  I made them into chains and bunches and strings and patterns and anything else I could think of.

Another woman hung hers from a tree.  Delightful!

If the rocks could talk, what would they be saying now?

The third time I really enjoy making Nature Art was when I led a workshop in January at a Quaker Women's Retreat.  I showed bits of Andrew Goldsworthy's video then we all went outside and made stuff.  It was cool to see how intent everyone got.  Afterwards many people came out to take a look and to delight at the many creations.

The circle was again a compelling shape to create.

Perhaps you can tell from the light that it was cold and clear this January day, but that didn't stop people from creating.  The available materials were sparse - nothing was blooming, almost everything was dormant, but still people found beauty and creativity abounding.

And yet another season: Fall - October.  This time I was at Dayspring Retreat Center for a Silent Retreat with the Quakers.  (I used to go to a LOT of retreats!  Back in the days when I was single and had weekends without my kids and needed something to keep me busy so I wouldn't miss them!)

Fall leaves are my favorite - there's so much you can do with the blazing colors.

This was contributed by Mother Nature herself.  No arrangements necessary on my part.  Same for the pictures below.  They were just waiting for me to notice.  That's the wonderful thing about Silent Retreats - I take the time to notice because there are no distractions.  Pure silence, out in nature, time to think and feel and notice.  Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

So now are you inspired to go out and make something beautiful where you live? On the street, in the back alley, in your garden? Wherever you are, you can find or create a pattern. Chances are, once you start, people will want to join you. It's a very solitary pursuit, but it does tend to engage others in wonderful ways. I'd love to see pictures of anything you create! Have fun!

My first experience with censorship was one of my first solo shows which was held at the now-defunct Shockoe Bottom Art Center here in Richmond. I was displaying small discrete pencil drawings of pregnant nudes. Apparently someone got bothered by them and called the police. Thankfully whoever got the call recognized that he was looking at ART, not pornography, so the exhibit was allowed to proceed, uninterrupted.

Fascinating.

My second experience occurred when I sent out the postcard for my 12 Naked Men show.  It had a 1" naked man viewed through a keyhole.  One of the patrons of the gallery where I was to have the show called the gallery incensed - "What if I had children and they SAW this card?!  What would they think?!"  She told the owner to take her off the mailing list, etc., etc., etc.  Good grief!

Light and Shadow, day 3

I'm finally starting to feel some strength when I paint.  What I mean by that is that I'm learning how to use the materials more effectively.  Before I had to be very careful and pay oh-so-much attention to get each detail just right.  Now I'm starting to know better which brush to use, which color, how to apply it, how to get the effect I want.  I can do that with pastels, but, until now, I couldn't with oils.  I'm certainly not al the way there yet, but today as I was painting, I felt loose and capable and free to apply paint more rashly, recognizing that I can fix a mistake if I make one, but that probably the strokes I make will be right and interesting and will more likely work than not.  Maybe it's how an athlete feels when he/she finally starts to feel some mastery over his/her body's ability to run/dance/do the shot put, etc.  I've never had that kind of ability.  My strengths have been more limited to intellectual pursuits like memorizing or understanding Algebra or learning German.  It's exciting to be developing another skill fully.  As my mother, who's an excellent art teacher, says, "Practice, patience, and persistence is all it really takes to be a good artist."  There's much to that.

This week I hope to learn to paint plein aire - see if I can come to understand waves and how they move so I can paint them from life.  Painting from a photograph is substantially easier.  Everything is laid out for me in a photo.  In real life, things change constantly, especially the light, and with something like waves, there's no way to stop the motion for even a fraction of a second.  That takes understanding what's happening so I can represent it on the canvas.

I think I'll spend lots of time meditating on the ocean and the waves and the sand and sky.  It sounds like heaven to me.

This piece certainly isn't finished, but I'm happy with the progress I made.  I got the hands and face done a lot more and made the shadows and arm lok better.  I'm excited to get back to it when I get back from the beach.  It'll be nice to have that to look forward to since I'll probably not really want to come back otherwise!

2 very different exhibitions

One of my friends on Facebook sent me 2 links to very, very different exhibitions/books about women.

Two beautiful views of what beautiful women look like: the Photo Gallery of Bathers by Jennette Williams http://cds.aas.duke.edu/books/bathers.html# and Baldovino Barani's fashion portfolios http://www.baldovinobarani.com/.

The first one is a book of photographs done by Jennette Williams.  She spent 8 years photographing women in the baths in Hungary and Turkey where women actually hang around naked with each other with some degree of comfort and sociability.  I find these pictures beautiful, atmospheric, lovely. 

The second one is the polar opposite in my mind.  Skeletal women who are indistinguishable from one another involved in rituals that seem to involve bad things.  They are ghastly.  Beautifully done and evocative - I just don't like the images themselves.  They seem to me to be the endpoint of where the media is heading young women and showing them what they should look like.  Yuck!

Thank you to my friend who shared these links so I can share them with you.  Inspiring!

Light and Shadow continues

Yesterday I made very good progress on this piece, getting the first layer on most of the body, even one hand!  Today I plan to finish the first layer on the other hand and on her face then go back into lots of the other areas to get the looking better.  I'm excited about the contrast between light and dark.  I think it makes it a very exciting piece!

Nude snow woman in NJ causes problems

My lovely friend in Vienna, Austria saw the following online and sent me the link: http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/offbeat/nude-snow-woman-100303-apx.  Apparently there was a very naughty family in NJ who just couldn't keep their predilections to themselves and had the gall to sculpt a naked snow Venus di Milo!  Can you imagine?!  Somebody called the police who asked the family to please clothe the nude.

What is wrong with this society that we can't handle nudity???  It is insane to me!

Light and Shadow, a new piece

Yesterday I felt so full of passion to be painting!  I decided to start on a new painting because I needed to be working big and crude, not detailed and fine like is necessary for the stage I'm on with Mother and Daughter Jocks.  Luckily I had already drawn this image on the canvas so I was ready to apply paint - just what I wanted to do!  I had to mix the paint first, so that took a while, but after that, I went to it!  It was very difficult to break away for work at noon.  I'm excited to have some time today to continue working.  My favorite thing about this piece besides the dynamic composition is the light and shadow.  It's very dramatic.  When I took this picture, the model was having a great time dancing and was loving her body so well.  It was a delight to photograph her in her fully aware enjoyment of her self.

I look forward to getting more of it done today before I have to move on to more mundane chores like talking to an accountant and packing for vacation.  Yes!  Vacation!  We leave Saturday for the Outer Banks for a week.  I absolutely love it there!  I am taking my oil paints and hope to paint the ocean while I'm there.  I've only ever done it in pastels before, so I'm excited to see how that goes.  Expect some new posts around the 14th with sea scapes on it.  Or not - I never know what I'll do on vacation.  Sometimes it's nothing.  Sometimes it's a whole new direction for my work.  But the best part is that I always come back refreshed and excited and renewed.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Talk20 rescheduled

The talk I was going to give in February which was postponed due to too much snow has been rescheduled for March 16th.  There will be 8 artists talking for 20 seconds about each of 20 slides of their work.  It will be held at 1708 Gallery and starts at 6 PM.  I'll be showing pictures of my female nudes and talking about them.

More details and opportunity to sign up can be found at the following link: http://www.c3richmond.org/calendar/talk-20-event/

I would be delighted to see you there!

Mother and Daughter Jocks

I got to spend a lot of time painting today.  I worked exclusively on Mother and Daughter Jocks.  I think I finally got the daughter's face to look good.  Chris told me he was glad because she hadn't looked human before.  Ouch!  I realized that I had her nose up too high so I moved it down.  I guess that helped.  I also narrowed her face and fixed her teeth.  I am amazed by how difficult it is to paint teeth well.  They change a person's personality so much.  It's no wonder dental records can be used to identify a person.  I think teeth are as individual as a fingerprint - and just as difficult to paint!

I probably need another 8 hours on this piece to finish up some details and to make sure everything is just right, then I'll have the pleasure of being able to enjoy it from a distance rather than from 6" away as I work on it!