Lockdown opening special

Creativity and the power of being in the Now!! - Tamsyn

Hello beautiful people!! What strange times we find ourselves in! We have, collectively, been thrown into a situation not of our choosing, a situation which, no doubt, has led to many of us experiencing an anxiety and stress that we have never had to deal with before ...ever.....

So, how should we tackle these feelings....within ourselves or our children, in a simple and meaningful way ?

When experiencing stress and tension, as we all are right now, one of the most powerful ways of finding a little respite, and sanctuary is to be creative.

You're not an artist? You're not creative? I hear you say....
Hah!!! I do beg to differ
Each and everyone of us, by mere virtue of being Human is a creative being. It is literally our birth right to claim however we see fit.
You do not need to be an incredible artist, or writer or chef or anything to be creative. All it requires from you is a sense of adventure, wonder, awe and playfulness!!

So let’s look at how this all works.

Your brain is (basically) divided into 2 hemispheres. Your Left brain is responsible for things like language, facts, mathematics, logic, number skills, rational thought and thinking in words.
Your Right brain is responsible for creativity, Intuition, holistic thought, imagination, musical awareness, insight and visualization.

As westerners, we are mostly left brain dominant....no one's fault...
It is just how we are made to be through our education system, our social conditioning, and our culture really. Creativity is essentially the act of using the part of your brain that has been sorely neglected (most of us) for our whole lives. We have within us a massive resource that holds the capacity of complete regeneration for our entire beings... sound too good to be true?

Have you ever done something where time seems to stand still? Or 3 hours pass by in the blink of an eye? We have all heard the saying that time flies when you're having fun - that is the creative force at work!! We have all lived in this stream as children, playing dress up, drawing, painting, talking to imaginary friends... literally creating our own desired reality moment to moment. And then we grew up and left these "childish" things behind... sad but true.

At age 9 to 10 children become incredibly critical of their art works, this is the first sign of the ego's development, there comes a need for every child to portray something realistically, it is part of our natural human development. Should the child be lucky enough to have someone around who can show them and teach them how to do this, that child will never be afraid of creating - ever.

Unfortunately for most of us, this is the stage where our faculties of perception become stunted because we are simply never taught to really see and perceive things in their true form. How many adults still draw like 10 year olds? Why? Because we didn't have the opportunity to develop our skills further. Absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, just by the way, it can be healed and rectified within just a couple of weeks if one so wishes!!

Over the past 9 years I have worked with hundreds of people, from all walks of life. From young children labelled problematic or ADD or ADHD, to teenagers struggling to find a place for themselves, to beautiful souls in recovery, struggling with addiction, to amazing moms running homes and families looking for a piece of their souls again. Many people from many walks of life. And I have been immensely privileged to be part of their journeys in finding parts of themselves that they didn't believe existed.

Starting can be the hardest part. I have watched trembling hands, a struggle to take breath, deep seated urges to pack up and leave, all because of a white page, a blank canvas or a piece of wet unmoulded clay.

Why? Fear. Fear of failure. Fear of never being good enough. Fear of being laughed at.....just pure FEAR!! This very tangible fear is birthed by judgement. Judgement comes from our left brain!!
We all have the innate desire to succeed hard wired into us, but how many of us have ever questioned our notion of success?

What does success mean to you? And what is success when it comes to being creative?
For me, success has come to be an honest desire, and then commitment and attempt to create, no matter the outcome of the creative endeavour. It is in the trying and perhaps failing, where true success lies. If we can only stop our inner critic, our judgement of ourselves, the secret which is revealed to us is that success ONLY comes through a certain amount of failure. This is the nature of learning.

There is no right or wrong with creativity, this is what makes it so powerful. When we bring ourselves to just being present in the moment, to sit absorbed by the now, we are literally giving ourselves over to our creative impulse. There is no past or future just this beautiful moment to explore, with childlike wonder - what joy!!

Whenever I have new clients there are always two exercises which we begin with.
The first is designed to trick the left brain into taking a back seat for a moment, allowing the right hemisphere the space it needs to kick into action.

Blind contour drawing.
If one is right handed, sit at a table with chair turned so that instead of facing the table as you would to eat, rather the right side of your body is parallel to the table, enabling your right arm and hand to rest comfortably on the table in order to draw. Place a sheet of paper under your hand and using a pencil or pen, without looking at your page, draw your left hand which should be resting in your lap comfortably. As your eye follows the contour of your left hand, your right hand draws ONLY what the eyes see. Start simply by just doing the outline and work up to capturing more detail. It is a continuous line drawing, so try not to lift your pencil when drawing! And don't cheat by looking at the page.
This is a fun exercise for the whole family to do. It has huge benefit for our fine motor skills as well as eye to hand coordination. Do this exercise for 10 to 15 minutes daily and you will be amazed at how your perception of things begins to change!!! We actually start to see...really see for the first time!!

The second thing we always do is to draw a tree!! Drawing a tree from your imagination, amazingly enough, tells us your whole life story. I will write another article on this, but this is a beautiful exercise to do and can lead to many insights into ourselves as well as illuminate certain paths forward in order to heal our wounds.

Mandala art is another powerful way to get creatively in touch with ourselves.
Sometimes I will have a client who just cannot bear the thought of drawing or painting at all. Simply being given a blank mandala page or canvas to colour in or paint can bring about a surreal sense of peace and harmony. It is just as creative as doing a drawing and it has, sometimes, an even more rewarding effect.

There are many Mandala art coloring books available nowadays, downloads off the internet, but my favorite is Art Canvas Factory Mandala canvasses.

These canvasses are pre-printed with a Mandala design allowing us to turn them into our own works of art with felt tip pens or paint. I can recommend these amazing canvasses as a solid form of therapy for ANYONE!!!

SO, in this time, that we have to be home, let's not just be plugged into all our various screens all the time, let’s be creative, and see if we can discover some magic within ourselves, let us encourage our children to dream and imagine, to draw and to paint, to use colour without fear or restriction and to find a little piece of their Souls that will bring them endless joy!!!

I have started an Instagram art account called @coronaarttherapy, for anyone who would like to share their creations. Available for anyone to use. Please follow us and let us all be inspired together.

Much Love
Tamsyn

Amit Demonstration of Cityscape.

If you want to learn How to paint Cityscapes than watch my first Demonstration and subscribe my YouTube channel.



I am in the process of making new videos and will keep uploading for you.

5 Popular Painting Styles: By Mayra A

5 Essential Painting styles to know and learn in order to effectively communicate and understand terms in the art world.

Baroque:
The Baroque style of painting originated in Rome and generally has a religious theme or is centralized around court life. Baroque paintings can be characterized by the abundance of details within the paintings as well as a sense of grandeur. Like the painting style, the word Baroque has come to mean something elaborate, including many small details.

Popular Baroque Painters Include:
Anthony Van Dyck
Paul Rubens
Vermeer
Claude Lorrain
Baciaccia
Agostino Carracci

Photo Credit

Cubism:
Cubism became a popular style of painting in the early 20th century. The cubist style of painting is abstract, where one can visualize the theme of the painting, but the objects are broken up and re-assembled into un-life like representations. With cubism, the artist attempts to show the viewer the subject from a multitude of viewpoints.

Cubism is often associated with Pablo Picasso paintings, one of the innovators of this style of painting. Another famous cubist artist is Georges Braque.

Photo: Credit

Expressionism:
The expressionist movement originated in Germany around 1905. Unlike the popular Impressionism painting style, expressionism attempts to provide the viewer with the painters view and opinion of the world and the subjects. This creates an image that is the artists own interpretation of the situation, often distorting reality and providing more of an emotional effect to the viewers. The Expressionist movement is known for paintings that represent and express intense emotion or angst.

Popular Expressionistic Artists include:
Vincent Van Gough
Edvard Munch
Salvador Dali
Henri Matisse

Photo: Credit

Impressionism: The impressionist art movement began around the 19th century in Paris. Impressionist style emphasizes the fine details of every day objects including how light, colors, and the passage of time can affect the subject. This style generally concentrates on visible brushstrokes, light colors, primary colors and small brushstrokes.

Popular Impressionistic Artists Include:
Edgar Degas
Claude Monet
Pierre Auguste Renoir

Photo: Credit

Minimalist: The minimalist style of painting originated in America and has been subject to much criticism since its inception. The style of painting includes minimal details, the details that are included are often represented by precise, hard brushstrokes and often include geometric forms. The color palette of these styles generally include a limited amount of unmixed, primary colors. The style of painting represents something that is spare and has been stripped to its most basic forms.

Popular Minimalist Artists Include:
Frank Stella
Ad Reinhardt
Robert Morris

Photo: Credit

The world of art and paintings is endless, and learning about its history, styles techniques and other useful information about painting is an ongoing task.

Want to learn more? Visit TheHelpIsHere.com [http://www.thehelpishere.com]

which offers thousands of useful help and how to articles on a variety of topics. All content is free to access, including our coupons and deals section, reviews, articles, and freebies area.

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23 Amazing Pieces Of Street Art Around The World

Experts Conclude That This Odd Self-Portrait of Vincent van Gogh Giving the Side Eye Really Is by the Dutch Master

Leading experts on Vincent van Gogh have concluded that a strange portrait belonging to a Norwegian museum is actually an authentic work by the Dutch master. Extensive research conducted by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has shown that the artist executed the unusual self-portrait while he was suffering from psychosis.

The painting, from 1889, has been in the collection of Oslo’s Nasjonalmuseet since 1910, but its attribution to Van Gogh has been openly disputed since 1970. Over the years, some scholars took issue with crucial missing provenance details, while others deemed its style and dreary color palette out of key with the rest of the artist’s oeuvre.

While provenance research carried out at the Najonalmuseet in 2006 showed that the work had belonged to two friends of Van Gogh, Joseph and Marie Gioux, who lived in Arles, it was still unclear when the couple received the work. And, for a long time, experts couldn’t agree on a date of execution, or whether it was done in Arles, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, or Auvers-sur-Oise.

In a bid to settle the matter once and for all, the museum invited the experts in Amsterdam to study the portrait in 2014. Now, after comprehensive inspection of its style, technique, material, and provenance, researchers have concluded that it is “unmistakeably” by Van Gogh’s hand.

The work turns out to be the only one that can be tied to a letter Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo on September 20, 1889. What’s more, the letter proves that the work is actually a significant one, executed while the artist was having his first major psychotic episode at an asylum in Saint-Rémy. In his letter, Van Gogh describes it as “an attempt from when I was ill.” It is the only known work painted by the artist when he was in the throes of psychosis.

“Although Van Gogh was frightened to admit at that point that he was in a similar state to his fellow residents at the asylum, he probably painted this portrait to reconcile himself with what he saw in the mirror: a person he did not wish to be, yet was,” Louis van Tilborgh, a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum and an art historian at the University of Amsterdam, says in a statement. “This is part of what makes the painting so remarkable and even therapeutic.”

In mid-July of that year, Van Gogh entered a state of psychosis that lasted until September. At the end of the summer, in a letter dated August 22, he wrote that he was still “disturbed” but was well enough to experiment with painting again. This led experts to conclude that the work was done after August 22 but before September, and it therefore predates both of his famous 1889 self portraits in Washington’s National Gallery of Art and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

The work shows Van Gogh looking defeated, head slightly bowed and gazing sideways at the viewer with a lifeless expression. While the brownish-green pigments and somber palette seemed unusual for the artist who is known for his bright blues and yellows, the palette and brushwork are actually consistent with other works dating from the summer and autumn of 1889, which make sense within the context of the work’s execution.

The work is currently on view on the third floor of the Van Gogh Museum, and will be included in the museum’s upcoming exhibition of artists’s portraits, “In the Picture,” beginning February 21. After the exhibition closes in May, the work will return to Oslo where the Nasjonalmuseet is slated to reopen after renovations in 2021.

Original Article: Here

Pierre Bonnard - The Splendid French Painter: By Annette Labedzki

One of the most renowned French painters & printmakers, Pierre Bonnard was especially famous for his ingenious experimentation with color. He though, was not revolutionary in his style of painting, but he definitely was a master in portraying human emotions through colors. His fluency with colors fetched critical acclaim and appreciation from all art lovers.

Pierre Bonnard was born on October 03, 1867, in Fontenay-aux-Roses near Paris, to a highly placed French Ministry official. His childhood was therefore, spent in luxury and accordingly he had a very careless and idyllic youth. Due to parental pressure, Bonnard graduated in law and practiced briefly. He however, was always interested in art and took extra courses for the same during his free time. On March 11, 1887, he enrolled at the Scole des Beaux-Arts and resolved to be a full time artist.

In his youth, Pierre Bonnard co-founded a group of young 'Symbolic' and 'Spiritual' artists, called Les Nabis. He exhibited his works as a Nabi in the Gallery of Le Barc de Boutteville. During this phase, he heavily experimented with patterns in textile & furniture, while also exhibiting a Japanese effect in his work. His friends even lovingly called him 'a highly Nipponized Nabi.' In March and April 1891, Pierre first exhibited his work at the Société des Artistes Independants, gathering the much-needed support from all art critics. From then on, he exhibited yearly with the society.

In 1893, Pierre married Marthe de Méligny, who later modeled for a majority of his paintings. He obsessively portrayed her in her routine activities, stretching up to covering her nude. His works post marriage, therefore, turned quite personal in essence. Some of the famous paintings of those times include "Indolence" (1899) and "Man and Woman" (1900). In 1896, he had his first solo show at Galerie Durand-Ruel. Here, the great French artist Toulouse-Lautrec appreciated his award- winning poster. In 1910, Pierre left Paris for Southern France.

All the while, the painting range of the artist spanned from portraits to still life and landscapes. Bonnard would transform the mundane, simplest day-to-day objects into vibrating, iridescent, faintly represented subjects in his paintings. Small brush strokes imparted a marked influence of 'Surreal' mystery in them. The distinctive thing about Bonnard's paintings was the genuine time warp in them. The same objects in the room, such as tablecloths, teapots, and platters, rotated through the paintings. The subjects looked faint, creating a bizarre mystery. Some such renowned paintings are "The White Interior" (1932), "Still Life with Fruit" (1936), "The Dining Room in the Country" (1913), "Woman in Front of a Mirror" (1908), and "The Terrasse Family" (1902).

The artist died on January 23, 1947, leaving behind a great legacy of art. Pierre's passion for art is evident in his use of color with much vivacity and emotions. In 1998, his works were exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The series of his paintings was titled, "Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors." He once quoted, "Before you add color, you must see things once, or see them a thousand times."

Annette Labedzki received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She has more than 25 years experience. She is the founder and developer of an online art gallery featuring original art from all over the world. It is a great site for art collectors to buy original art. Is is also a venue for artists to display and sell their art . Artists can join for free and their image upload is unlimited. Please visit the website at http://www.Labedzki-Art.com

Annette has bonus offers on her work only. Buy 3 small paintings of any size (maximum size 11x17 inches) and receive 3 small paintings of your choice for free (maximum size 11x17 inches) SHIPPING IS FREE Buy one large painting (minimum size 18x24 inches) receive 5 small paintings of your choice (maximum size 11x17 inches) FOR FREE. SHIPPING IS FREE.

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25 Artists Keeping Traditional Art Techniques Alive

Women with Tattoos of Fine Art Masterpieces Are Actually Oil Paintings Themselves

Since we last checked in with painter Agnieszka Nienartowicz, she has continued to hone her skills and produce stunning oil paintings. Inspired by the world of Old Master art, her canvases typically incorporate motifs from well-known artists like Caravaggio, Hokusai, and Sandro Botticelli. Popping up as contemporary tattoos on the skin of the women she portrays, they are a wonderful tribute to the past that also looks toward the future.

One is initially drawn into Nienartowicz’s work due to her technical skill. Bordering on hyperrealism, her paintings have barely a brushstroke that’s visible to the naked eye. Each woman is portrayed with incredible accuracy and detail. It’s only when drinking in these visuals that the historical details begin to reveal themselves. Whether it’s John James Aubudon’s Birds of America peeking from beneath the shirt of a woman with her back turned to the canvas or Guido Reni’s depiction of Jesus and Mary as sleeve tattoos on a downtrodden girl, each classic painting informs the significance of the artwork.

Particularly meaningful to Nienartowicz is her Girl in White triptych. Over the course of three canvases, we see the same girl in different stages of undress and as she slowly unzips her dress, a spectacular surprise awaits. The Last Judgement by Hans Memling, a masterful 15th-century triptych, covers nearly her entire torso. The paintings are deeply personal for the artist, as they are partially an expression of her experience as a Polish emigrant.

Reflecting on the difficult past of her ancestors and how this has informed her outlook on life, she writes about her initial impressions of Americans and how different their attitudes were in comparison to what she was used to. “I remember my surprise after the first contact with these people—how much joy, openness, and positive attitudes towards the world is in them,” she recalls. “I think that there is a sadness in me that transferred from the blood of previous generations, who experienced suffering. I think many of us Poles are—often without even knowing it—deeply scarred by hard history; the stigmas of unfulfilled dreams, traces of surgery on aching souls, disfigurement after difficult choices, and wounds of tragic events. These scars are the tattoos of survival.”

Still early in her career, it’s thrilling to see Nienartowicz’s art grow and progress. As she continues to develop her craft and find her voice, we’ll be anxiously waiting to see what’s next.

Original Article: Here

37 EASY RECIPES TO BECOME AN ARTIST