Added Jan 18, 2022
What's on the Easel, August 2021
What’s On The Easel
August 2021, Vol. III, No. 8
A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer
Inspiration
My uncle Mike passed away recently. I didn’t really know him but I do keep in touch with his daughter, Mollie. She included a photo of him in her announcement to friends he had passed and I was inspired.
The challenge will be painting like Van Gogh. The technique is called wet-on-wet, just keep painting. An interesting exercise in a technique I have only just dabbled in. We shall see.
Legacy
I have expanded on the two portraits of Kruse women, Steph’s sister Brenda and niece Heather. I have added her other niece, Beth.
And on the easel, Steph…
Five more Kruse women to go to make the full set of three generations. The plan is to give each of them their original portrait as well as a full set of the nine in a box set of prints.
Another job…
Natalie took a booth at the gift show in Javits, NYGift, and, as usual, I was drafted to do new graphics for the booth I designed a couple of years ago.
(And, yes, the booth graphic is a blow up of one of my wiping cloths from painting).
In the garden …
The garlic crop is in and curing in the basement! Now, on to the tomatoes!
Fighting back with art…
Look at what they are building behind us! It’s a monster (housing two 'luxury' condos for $800,000 each). Noting that they will be looking straight down at our garden and into our second floor windows (but, hey, that’s urban living), I decided to give design something for them to look at, a mural (a Fall project):
It’s one of my favorite Matisse paintings and will be 22 feet by 22 feet (and I’ll bet they complain about the nudity, whatever).
Retirement?
I left the corporate world 16 years ago at the age of 55 to pursue a full time art career. Now, as my friends and family are retiring from their professions, I am getting the question “When are you going to retire?” (or, even sometimes, the assumption that I am retired and just ‘amusing myself’ with art). I respond to their inquiries and assumptions with the words of the artist Christo when he, too, was asked about retirement, “Artists don’t retire, they just die.”
That’s all for now. Stay well. And what’s on your easel?
Jim
Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307
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