I WAS A COMPETITIVE BIRDER in high school. My family drove all around the countryside, so I spent a lot of time in the car, and I had to keep myself busy and project my brain somewhere. I would bring sketchbooks and field guides that I got from the library. I had started an Envirothon team at my school, to compete in the national decathlon pitting nerdy teens against each other in their knowledge of soil surveys, forestry, wildlife, and aquatic ecology.
I was the birding specialist. I learned more than two hundred birdsongs and birdcalls from CDs and from the field. I participated in other competitions where I would win binoculars and forty-pound bags of birdseed. I didn’t even have a bird feeder—I’d just become obsessed.
Unlike bird-watchers, birders often rely first on auditory cues to identify a species. You immediately know so much about the bird—its seasonal plumage, age, sex, if it’s making a courtship call or a warning call—from listening. The second thing you cultivate is an idea of where the call is coming from, so you can zero in on it. You develop a spatial awareness, so even with your eyes closed the woods become a vivid visual experience.
A steward of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania once took me out in a canoe to this extremely remote location to see a bald eagle’s ten-foot nest. Eagle populations had been devastated by the use of DDT. At the time, all nest sites had to be reported to the government and kept secret. In 2007, the bald eagle was removed from the list of threatened and endangered species, and ever since, I would catch myself looking out for them whenever I’d pass a lake or river. Where I work, in upstate New York, I see bald eagles all the time. Two years ago, I found a nesting pair in Poughkeepsie near a waste-treatment plant on the Hudson River. I just spent time watching and drawing them. It was very unglamorous. They eat garbage. They’re like pigeons. The river freezes in the winter, and I have a vivid memory of watching this wet, bedraggled eagle on a chunk of ice.
Cy Gavin is an American artist that lives and works in New York. Gavin often incorporates unusual materials in his paintings such as tattoo ink, pink sand, diamonds, staples, Bermudiana seeds, and cremains. Gavin also works in sculpture, performance and video.
By capturing the fluidity of glass in its liquid state with gestural experimentations of technique, John transforms “perfectly imperfect” into signatures of his creations. Fragile and ethereal, yet purposeful and confident, every Pomp piece is a unique confluence of light, liquid and fire, which he brings together to alchemic effect.
Between 13 December 1954 and 14 February 1955, Picasso painted a series of fifteen canvases based on Eugène Delacroix’s masterwork Les femmes d’Alger, each of which he assigned an identifying letter from A to O. Together, these paintings constitute Picasso’s single greatest achievement in the decades following the end of the Second World War. They represent his first comprehensive appropriation and thoroughgoing exploration of an important painting by an earlier artist, as well as the most focused analysis he had done since the war years of the female figure set within a specific spatial environment.
One of the largest canvases from Thiebaud’s groundbreaking early period, it depicts a row of arcade machines, decorated in a vibrant mix of oranges and yellows…With their foreshortened bodies, the machines press towards the picture plane like the cakes and hot dogs in Thiebaud’s other works, inviting the viewer to reach in and taste.
As a child, Marc Chagall would marvel at the traveling acrobatic troupes that passed through his Village. The animals, dancers and musicians of the circus seemed to conjure a distinct joy that would consistently manifest itself throughout the artist’s career. In this episode of Expert Voices, discover how Chagall was able to uniquely translate this fascination to canvas as Edith Eustis delves into the deep greens and brilliant reds of Marc Chagall’s Le Cirque Vert. Painted in 1973, this work captures the magical allure of the spectacle and incorporates many of the artist’s most iconic motifs. Le Cirque Vert will be offered as a highlight of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York.
From the anatomical features of Da Vinci to the fractured features of modernist portraiture, the human head has reigned supreme in Art History. Enter Jean Michel Basquiat – the consummate draftsman for a new age. Discover how Basquiat revolutionized the genre and captured the manic core of the human condition through his masterwork Untitled (Head), 1982, to be offered as a highlight of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York. Encapsulating the incredible dexterity that defines the very best of the artist’s works, and extraordinary for its use of India ink under the oilstick to lend depth and contrast to the composition, Untitled (Head) is a heroic depiction that reflects the explosive talent and brilliance of its author.
Boomers Daily 