Art is the most wonderful passport to making friends around the world. Sharing, learning, agreeing, disagreeing - friendships flourish and deepen over time. Many a time, art has been the bridge to making that friendship, just as it has down the ages for so many people.
Read MoreArtists
Paul Cézanne's Drawings /
The exhibition, "The Hidden Cézanne; From Sketchbook to Canvas" is still on until September 24th, 2017, at the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland. Cézanne's drawings, kept very private during his lifetime, tell of his questing, learning, thought processes in creating art or just recording for inspiration much later on. It reminds us all that drawing is a pathway to many ways of analysing, understanding and forging an artistic identity that is unique.
Read MoreArtists' Ambitions /
Ramon Casas, an ambitious, innovative artist from Barcelona who straddled the nineteenth and early twentieth century, frequented many notable artists from France and Spain - from Toulouse-Lautrec to Jaoquin Sorolla and Pablo Picasso. Considered a modernist, he excelled in portrait drawings and paintings, as well as graphic art for art nouveau posters. His self-portrait from 1910 is revealing.
Read MoreColour: Its Early Moral Strictures /
Learning about artists' strictures in the use of colour in antiquity and medieval times is fascinating and surprising, a far cry from today's total artistic licence in colour usage.
Read MorePlein Air Art - Looking Back (Part 3) /
In Part 3 of Plein Air art - Looking Back, I follow the development of plein air art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Europe as so many artists paved the way for present-day interpretations of nature and the outdoors.
Read MoreHow Artists' Work Evolves over the Years /
Does an artist remain faithful to early visions and inspirations for art creation over the passage of twenty-five years? Measuring my own evolution, I find that I have just moved in closer to look at the nature that surrounds us, to marvel at details that often get overlooked in our busy lives.
Read MoreReacting to Life Experiences as an Artist /
I recently had an exchange of e-mails with a fellow artist friend, whose wife had suddenly become very ill. Both of us commented on the fact that there is such a change of optic when one is struck by serious family illness or some other type of trauma. Everything important comes back into sharp focus and the “small stuff” falls away.
Read MoreGeorgia O'Keeffe - Drawings /
When I recently saw the big Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, I was rather disappointed. It seemed disparate, with a huge range in quality of her paintings, and the overall lighting was, I found, strangely cold and uninviting. Nonetheless, as always, there were marvellous gems. Predictably, for me, most of these special pieces were drawings done at various stages by Georgia O'Keeffe. It is always so interesting and important, I find, to see other people's drawings and theirdifferent approaches to creating a drawing: not only the actual materials used to make the marks, the size and presentation, but also the content, the emotions, the impact. Of course, being a drawing, each can potentially be much more direct and fresh, more unvarnished in honesty.
Read MoreNew Worlds: Spirit Drawings of Georgiana Houghton /
How many times do you go to an exhibition, especially in England, and end up talking to practically every other person in the room whilst looking at art? Not too often, I suspect! But that is exactly what happened as I went around a small and remarkable exhibition, "Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings" at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Each of us was so astonished and fascinated that we all talked to each other at one point or another, standing in front of a drawing, all of us marvelling at these pieces.
Read MoreDrawing Trees /
Trees have always played a very important role in my life, ever since I learned to love all the diversity of tropical trees in East Africa. Baobabs, flame trees, jacarandas, grevilleas, mvule or African teak, thorn trees, and on and on. I was taught that all these trees were absolutely vital, for habitat, to help prevent erosion, promote moisture retention, enrich the soil and generally to enhance the world for allother species! In other words, trees are worthy of deep respect and merit great care. Artists have been some of the greatest admirers of trees. From early times, artists have drawn them, as portraits or in preparatory studies for paintings.
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