The Exhibition of Henry Moore and Georgia O'Keeffe now at the San Diego Museum of Art  and  closing August 27, 2023. 

Georgia O'Keeffe

the Muse Within

An Artist who declined to be categorized as a Woman Artist, she was a person who lived her life as truth as she saw it. Color. shape, texture,and line. Her imagination created works which will be treasured for all time. I see her work and realize that here was a soul which gave us her self, imaged in color and infused with mystery. Georgia O'Keeffe small in stature, but characterized monumental in her dedication to work, and gives rise to the question of women in art and whether or not they should be categorized as women artists or artists who paint.

I read that women actors are now actors in the media. This should be the norm for women in the arts of all genres. I declined to exhibit in The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) back in the day, for the reason of being labeled. I echo her stance about labels and it is my belief that labels of any kind are not needed, that works of art should stand on their own.

As a small child, she always knew that she wanted to be an artist. When small it was a natural inclination to do the drawing and was encouraged by her mother to be herself. Her Muse within was born early and this gave rise to the unflinching drive which was a lifelong ability to create her art.

This muse within gives joy, purpose, doing, completion, and the secrete smile that comes and means the work is Truth. Done. There is no greater feeling of worth when the nature of creating an art work is done.

It has always been my philosophy that all children have this creative ability. They paint with abandon, sings songs with words that only they know. Somewhere along the way this ability is lost, and most never are never to reconnect for many reasons. (Which is another post). Georgia was the exception in a most wondrous way. Her Bigness, her colors and the emotional impact of viewing her work is seductive and compelling. The Bigness was born when she lived in Texans and contemplated the vastness of the sky. How large it was compared to New York. How blue and big.. This became a conscious guide for her work.

Large Flowers, large skies, large clouds, and large bones. She collected bones from the desert, leaves which became withered sculptures, shapes from nature, and painted it infused with her colors and imagination of her environment.

In this exhibition, Georgia O'Keeffe and Henry Moore share similarities in combining negative space and sensuous forms. They are the elements which give a yin- yang feeling to the over all exhibition. His being three dimensions and hers being two dimensions. Hers bringing exhilarating and brilliant color, and his being of a solid and limited palette of stone, wood, and bronze.

Yes, Georgia, you did so very well. You have given us worlds of wonder from the heart, driven by the Muse within. As a woman and artist, I thank You. Your work will be for All Time as an Artist, and, as a woman who lived outside of the definition of society's of a woman's role and inside of the world of imagination. She became one with Nature...Above all an Artist of masterworks.

 

                 Georgia O'Keeffe

 

Watching Henry Moore

 

From time to time for this blog, I muse on art events which are not in the City of Oceanside. Last Thursday was one of those times. The San Diego Museum of Art located in Balboa Park is currently now until August is exhibiting the Sculptures of Henry Moore and the Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe.

As a sculptor painter I view art works differently than those who do not have this background. When I am in the presence of a sculpture, the three dimensions are compelling and enchanting. The lines, the shadows, the music of repeats are so very different from the viewing of a painting. A painting you see only one dimension no matter where you stand. It is always the same. A sculpture, you walk around and the front, sides, and back show a design of splendid alignment. The lines are in tune with each other no matter where you stand, the repeats are giving music to the arrangement of shapes.

 

For abstraction of life forms into sculptures, Line, Shadows, and Repeats are essential. These elements are the music of sculpture. A realistic art work in sculpture has these elements as well, but that is for another blog post.

Let me tell of the shadows. Shadows are the element of three dimensional shapes. Without shadows, the work would look flat. Henry Moore, a master of shadows which fall on rounded shapes throw a strait line. To give an example, look at a car's fender and see the highlight and the shape of the highlight. It is perfect and shows that the surface is perfect in it's self so the highlight is perfect as well. This, then is also true with shadows. When a shadow falls on a curve it also has to be perfect from all sides. The challenge for the artist is find and make the shapes perfectly smooth and round for any small bump will throw the shadow into a imperfect wavy line.

 

Lines are the sharp edges of the sculpture. Some sculptures to not have sharp edges and there are no lines which define where dark and light of where shadows fall. Sometimes I had a hard time conveying to my foundry workers the idea of a curved strait line. It seems like an oxymoron. Again back to the fender on a car. The fender is a curved line, but perfectly strait. Therefor any shadow or highlight will be a perfect line as well.

Repeats are the music in a sculpture. Repeats are a line, shape or shadow which are repeated in the viewing of the work. These repeats can be close together or at a distance when you view the sculpture from different angles. The repeats can be subtle, or of great impact. The dance of the repeats bring a cohesiveness to the work and it is what makes a sculpture a masterwork. 

 

Walking around these masterworks, Watching, I see the dance, hear the music, and see the lights and darks. They sing to me, and give a great sense of a sublime awareness of a gift. A gift from Henry Moore, a master forever.