ART is everything. It is universal. Paintings is one of those arts.

I like paintings because it really emphasizes the real essence of everything. It is an abstract way of filing emotions, transparent distribution of feelings and a concrete way of exaggerations. When you are painting something, your feelings would reflect on what you're painting. You cannot hide you feelings to everybody because it can directly be seen in contact to the paintings even if you deny the fact, the reality will still come out. As what I've stated above, it emphasizes the essence of everything.

Power Heart

Acrylic on watercolor paper, 22" X 30", 1998.

The earth opens up to receive the golden light of heaven channeled through the human heart.

This painting shows the harmonious love of GOD for us.

1990's, Art, Gustavo,

415 × 550 - 107k - jpg

For example, this painter emphasizes maybe, he loves really music,or he is a musically inclined person. For he extracted the meaning of this, as we can see in the picture. Im not saying that he is truly showing his feelings. What if he is only tasked to do it? what if somebody only told him to paint that kind of painting?

Well, but in my own opinion, if he was tasked to do it or not, if his not in the mode to do it, the result would come out imperfectly, or it feels something is lacking. And it will really reflect on the painting for instance

Path of hope #3″ (1990′s) –

431 × 500 - 110k - jpg

The painter maybe, was very determined as what I have internalize about the painting, He really deepen up a his life in the way of his painting, he emphasizes a faithful and a hopeful person. Or maybe, he's sending us a message through his paintings that we should not loose our hope in every struggles, for GOD is always with us, and HE is always there to light up our way and HE will truly make a way. Always think positive.

Herbert Creecy: Paintings from the 1990s

by Debra Wolf Vibrant color, dense patterning, and exploration of surface form fundamental aspects of the late Herbert Creecy’s four decades of creating art. “Herbert Creecy: Paintings from the 1990s”

exhibits more than a dozen large-scale canvases highlighting this singular voice in 20th century

abstraction.

Roots

Born in 1939 in Virginia, Herbert Creecy was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Endowed with talent and

drive, he made the most of his opportunities at a young age. After attending the University of

Alabama for several years, Creecy returned to Georgia to study at the Atlanta College of Art,

where he received his degree in 1964, and was given an unprecedented one-man show at the

High Museum of Art in the same year. Following his graduation, he received a French

Government Fellowship to study at the prestigious Hayter Atelier in Paris.

The New York art scene beckoned. Creecy’s paintings were acquired by museums as early as

the 1970s, as he exhibited steadily in both group and solo shows, primarily in the Southeast, but

also at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in New York, New Orleans, and in

Europe. But the artist chose to remain in Georgia, where he painted, sculpted, taught, and

eventually installed himself in the rural community of Barnesville in 1979. There, he transformed

an old cotton warehouse into both residence and workplace, his home base for the next 24 years, until his death in 2003.

Whistling Wind (1999)

Mixed media, 68 x 68 inches Herbert Creecy: paintings from the 1990s | Exhibition Catalogue Essay

Process

The Barnesville studio ideally suited Creecy’s highly physical process. Surfaces told the tale, ranging from subtly layered to stridently impastoed as Creecy stroked, splattered, collaged,

raked, dripped, and sprayed. His noholds-barred gestural approach and large-scale format garnered him frequent comparisons to Jackson Pollock. But Creecy’s influences ran broad and deep, reflecting a passion for nature, an acute awareness of his environment, and examination of issues that preoccupied both modern and post-modern abstractionists. He explored space and color, pushed materials to new effects, and sought to engage the viewer both conceptually and viscerally. The unconscious, the emotive, the act itself of painting – these elements figured heavily as well, taking a cue from European surrealism and post-war abstraction, as well as American abstraction expressionism.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, charged lines, squiggling curves, and flirtations with figuration filled jazzy and lush imaginary landscapes. The artist frequently opted for bright, confectionary hues

that became part of his signature look. The physicality of his process was clearly visible. So, too,

was the mix of moods he poured out onto canvas in sprawling, biomorphic forms that seemed to

reveal eyes, birds, and colliding fragments of earth and sky.

Constantly revisiting his images, Creecy seemed to hold little as static or sacrosanct. By the

1990s, he was surrounded by canvases. They were stacked, stored or laid out on the floor of his

studio. Many hovered in a perpetual unfinished state; Creecy was known to paint over seemingly

completed works, and to slice apart others, layering bits and pieces onto newer works in process.

Lyricism

Although his style and compositions from the 1970s and early 1980s were easily recognized and

highly praised, Creecy never ceased experimenting. He tested palettes, periodically incorporated

fragments of figuration, varied the sculptural quality of his surfaces, and investigated unusual

ways to lay down paint.

In the late 1980s, Creecy embarked on a new direction, as curvy, all-over patterning emerged in a

connective and fluid structure. This was a changing voice – more lyrical, more streamlined, but no

less expressive. Its visual ambiguity was purposeful, fertile, and referential. Circular shapes

rippled through these compositions, teeming like mouths and beaks, eyes and heads, cells and

blossoms. Echoing earlier motifs (in more explicitly

abstracted form), these new compositions played with metaphor and perception. Swerving contours and abutting, angular passages had always been part of Creecy’s visual alphabet, but now his paintings roiled with a tempered turbulence, rhythmic and sensuous, set against varying backgrounds. Areas of canvas were left raw. Chromatic choices were alternately vibrant and somber, expansive and

reductive. Spiraling, at times nearcalligraphic brushstrokes destabilized compositions of interlocking patterning. Formidable in scale, some of these works stretched to 12 feet wide and 9 feet tall. Their stature demanded participation from the audience, forcing the viewer to move back, approach, and

walk alongside, inviting the eye to slowly navigate complex and nuanced surfaces.

Oil painting

Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503-06

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil — especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or evenfrankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body and gloss. Other oils occasionally used include poppyseed oil, walnut oil, and safflower oil. These oils confer various properties to the oil paint, such as less yellowing or different drying times. Certain differences are also visible in the sheen of the paints depending on the oil. Painters often use different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium.

Although oil paint was first used for the Buddhist Paintings by Indian and Chinese painters in western Afghanistansometime between the fifth and ninth centuries, it did not gain popularity until the 15th century. Its practice may have migrated westward during the Middle Ages. Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its advantages became widely known. The transition began with Early Netherlandish painting in northern Europe, and by the height of theRenaissance oil painting techniques had almost completely replaced tempera paints in the majority of Europe.

A Portrait of the Philippines - Fernando Amorsolo's Paintings

Posted by Coconuter at 11:29 AM

If I had to choose a favorite painter, it would without a doubt have to be Fernando Amorsolo. The reason, of course, lies in the nature of his paintings--specifically, how he paints and also what he paints.

Although I certainly appreciate the contemporary Filipino lifestyle and the modern Pinoy culture, it is the old provincial and traditional Philippines that my heart is most fond of. And it is this vision of the Philippines that Fernando Amorsolo portrays in his works. In fact, he is so brilliant at his craft that whenever I look at his paintings, he makes me feel so nostalgic that my heart weeps from such an overwhelming longing to return to those beautiful days.

Indeed, Amorsolo knows the original spirit of the Philippines, as is exhibited by the scenes he depicts. A summary of his art would be idyllic and idealistic settings of pastoral Philippines. Yet, what sets him apart and makes him unique from other pastoral artists is his amazing use of light.

Amorsolo is a master of color and natural light. The bright sun-drenched countryside that pervades most of his paintings is one of the main reasons that makes his artwork so appealing. Just from looking at his paintings, one can almost feel the heat from the glorious sunshine. And his masterful usage of light allows one to sense the time of day and hence, also experience the mood.

Through his paintings, one witnesses the simplistic beauty and pure innocence that makes the traditional and provincial Philippines so magnificent. Yet, Amorsolo is also able to convey the same perception for the culture, people, and especially women of the Philippines. Though nothing can justly substitute a comprehensive gallery look at his whole art collection, I think he just may have captured all essences of these aspects in his single untitled painting (shown above right) now known as Palay Maiden (1920), which portrays a provincial Filipina beauty or dalagang bukid during a rice harvest and dressed in and enveloped by the colors of the Philippine flag (the yellow can be interpreted to be represented by the sunlight or the rice stalks).

Perhaps some might say that this vision of the Philippines is long gone and can never be brought back. But I don't think so. Because it lives in the minds and hearts of individuals like myself--which is why, even though Amorsolo has long passed away, I still speak of him, as well as the olden days of the Philippines, like they still exist to this very day.

PAINTINGS