Category Archives: Art

Today is the opening of the ‘Chromantics’ art exhibit at the OVADA Gallery. As a tribute to that, and as a way to celebrate the opening in the only way I can from such a distance, here’s the poem on color I wrote and that Mr. Watkins was kind enough to select for display. If you’re lucky enough to be in Oxford right now, by all means check out this show. It’s open until April 28, so there’s still time.

ColorBleed

By Alan Bennett Ilagan

From the very first time

He saw a box of crayons

Spilling their treasure across a tabletop

He knew they would hold his heart

And save his life.

Abundance of riches,

These limitless hues,

They gave happiness to all

Without explanation or reason

Inspiring wonder

With their primal evocation.

Give me your pigments,

Your shades

Your saturation.

Show me how you subtly shift

Between scarlet and cinnabar

The delicate gradations from sky to powder

Blue.

Rainbow dust

Ember rust

All your glorious gradations

Hombre undulations.

Pathway to expression

Relief and release

In every prismatic shard

This is light,

This is life

Swirled into water

Ground into dust

Imbued into oil

Elemental and fine.

Color bleeds our passions

When our voices and words

Are rendered silent,

When our sounds and songs

Become quiet

When our fingers and hands

Can no longer feel

Color allows the heart to speak

Allows the mind to reveal

Striking at the very heart of darkness

Obliterating the indistinct

Telling our story when the world

Seems hellbent on stopping us.

Color finds the way.

A new art show curated by Albany sensation Tommy Watkins opens across the pond next week. ‘Chromantics’ is a show celebrating the use of color, something that appeals to all of us who love a little pigment, especially yours truly. Mr. Watkins also opened up the show for a few written pieces on the subject of color, so I sent one in and was lucky enough to be featured. While I sadly can’t make it all the way to the opening, if you’re in the area give it a look.

Watkins was an Albany institution whose work touched many and reached far beyond the typical insular circles of an art scene. He also supported and encouraged fellow artists with their creative endeavors, and I’d see him out and about on 1^stFridays when he wasn’t busy putting on a show himself. The best artists are those who get out and spread their inspiration and enthusiasm, sharing their love for creative expression and genuinely thriving off such interactions. Check out the write up with all the requisite info below:

This April the Cornerstone Arts Centre in Didcot will be splashing its walls with a bright and colourful array of art works as it hosts the Chromantics exhibition. A selection of artworks from OVADA’s Associate artists pair together for a dramatic collection of colour and creativity.
This playful arrangement of striking work, including paintings and sculpture, set out to challenge the audience on what contemporary art can be. Curator and artist, Tommy Watkins, invites you to explore this unique exhibition and meet the people who are shaping Oxfordshire’s art scene.

The title of the show comes from a fusing of the words ‘Chroma’ and ‘Romantic’ as a poetic way to say ‘To be romanced by colour’. This show hopes to highlight the special chemistry found when pairing different styles of art into a cohesive body of work. These artworks revel with the brilliance of summer and extol the crispness of a spring day, but most impressive, is that this show has brought together over fifty artists, demonstrating the strength of the creative community in Oxfordshire. With inclusion being the guiding principle for selecting artworks, Watkins was resolute when saying;

“My goal with this show was to bring many different creators together and let us admire the unique and special traits we all have as artists and even more so as people. I see a chance here for us to appreciate and celebrate what makes us all individuals and at the same time emphasise how we are so much stronger when we come together as one.”

To add even more emphasis on unification Watkins has opened up the exhibition to include three poems from international poets and included artworks from a group of young artists through ‘The National House Project’, a charity that provides support to young people, enabling them to develop their own local housing.

As the first off-site exhibition for OVADA Associates, Chromantics demonstrates the organisation’s artist-led ethos. This event is the first formal collaboration between Cornerstone and OVADA and we can expect to see great things ahead with these two innovative organisations in collaboration. Cornerstone Arts Project Manager, Jessie Coller expressed her excitement by saying, “Cornerstone are delighted to be welcoming OVADA artists to our gallery with their stunning work. As a thriving arts centre, we are committed to supporting local artists and building relationships in the Oxfordshire area and we are thrilled that our conversations with OVADA have culminated with this fantastic exhibition.”

To discover more vibrant events, programming and art opportunities please visit: www.ovada.org.uk and www.cornerstone-arts.org

We also encourage you to explore the great work taking place over at www.thehouseproject.org

Launch event: 6th April 2019, 5-8pm
Exhibition runs: 3rd – 28th April – 28th 2019 (see Cornerstone website for times)
Venue: Cornerstone Arts Centre, 25 Station Road, Didcot, OX11 8RJ, UK.

Poets: Alan Ilagan, R.M. Engelhardt, Jasen Ward

Exhibiting OVADA Artists: Wendy Aldiss – Kate Aries – Didi Baldwin – Juliet Bankes – Lisa Bates – Betsy Bell – Sarah Birch – John Blythe – Luis Rafael Borja – Joshua Browitt – Sue Chamberlin – Aileen Creegan – Clare Crombie – Jan Crombie – Robin Danely – Phil Dobson – Elizabeth Gascoigne – Emily Gong – Julie Gooddy – Ellen Hausner – Mary Haynes – John Hazell – Katie Hellon – Deborah Hudson – Ala Jazayeri – Elaine Kazimierczuk – Gabriele Kern – Monica Lewis – Rebecca Lyne – Andrew Manson – Adriana May – Jacqueline McLaurin – Kieran McLean – Miranda Millward – William Milne – Jeremy Morgan – Naomi Morris – Christopher Neal – Sue Perstitious – Lucy Phillips – Jezella Pigott – Deborah Pill – Marina Price – Roger Pugh – Catalina Renjifo – Melissa Rodd – Marigold Short – Alex Singleton – Matt Smart – Brigitte Stepputtis – Katie Taylor – Gill White – Sarah Wills-Brown

Please note that works in this exhibition are family friendly.

It may not be groundbreaking, but hopefully you’ve noticed the bit of redesigning that’s gone on here since the blog was dark this summer. All those florals and fall-like patterns on the header, slider and outer regions of this site were created from the enchanting offerings on view at Avalon Rose Design. This is my first purchase of graphics from anywhere, proposed by webmaster extraordinaire Skip (Mr. M.) Previously I thought I could get away with finding what I needed with a simple Google image search. But where’s the honor in that? And where’s the support to creators and artists? Anyway, I found Avalon Rose Design and fell in love with the antiquated and vintage-like images they have. It was exactly the look and feel I was going for when trying to make things a little prettier here. 

The way they’re put together may be rudimentary at best, but that’s all on me, as I basically had to teach myself the most basic maneuvers in the nightmare that is Photoshop. (As most of my photos likely attest, I hardly ever use it.) I just wanted to share the source material in case you want to make something similar. 

As for these designs, give the repetitive intricacies of making such beauty, I’ll likely keep them to a minimum as far as revamps go – perhaps with a seasonal change for when winter arrives next. We’ll see. No promises = no expectations = no stress. Besides, these are so nice I’d like to leave them up for a while. When you find a lovely set of curtains you don’t put them up for a few weeks only to take them down again. 

Malena Valcarcel is a Spanish artist who transforms used books into the works of art you see here. Utterly enchanting and wonderfully whimsical, this is a glimpse into the way art causes us to pause, to examine, and to thrill at the world of possibility. More about Malena here. 

One of the first things I noticed was the fallen.

Not the stone pagodas or the pebble seas or the granite bridge.

The fallen blossoms.

They laid there in various states of decomposition, and from a distance I thought they might be litter.

It turned out they were the remnants of the flowering stewartia, in the midst of its high-summer blooming period. A rare time for a tree to be in bloom, this made the occasion all the more solemn. I was quickly won over by such an anomaly – a tree that dares to bloom when most have finished. We have a seven-sons’-flower tree that pulls a similar trick. We value them more when they wait until such a fine point in time.

“Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?” ~ Muriel Barbery

This is ‘The Garden of the Heart of Heaven’ as designed by Kinsaku Nakane. Inspired by the Zen temple gardens of 15^th century Japan, it arrests time in the ways that only beauty and art can manage.

“The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains, a blue porcelain cup – this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain?

The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life.” ~ Muriel Barbery

I followed the stone path to the source of the fallen flowers, tracing the pretty mottled trunks into the sky, and found a few at the height of their beauty. In the dappled sunlight, with their downward-turned petals, they made a shy show, as if it was best to hide their beauty from the world.

Sometimes that is the case.

As their fallen brethren would attest, the world is not always kind to pretty little things.

This is the sort of thing I love: a recreation of a work of art by another work of art. Here we have the original Matisse painting of a Woman in Purple Robe, whimsically echoed in an abstract floral homage. It’s magical. I especially love how the skin tone in the painting is almost perfectly-matched in the double gerbera daisies. It’s a brilliant illustration of how art can continue to live on in unique ways, and how it might multiply in joy and happiness with each passing iteration.

The greatest artists have more than one note to sing or one color to paint.

The shape-shifters and the versatile chameleons are those who captivate my notice and thrill me the most.

Case in point is artist Paul Richmond. Known perhaps best for his series of Cheesecake Boys, and his recent Adult Coloring Book, Richmond also has an eye for the melancholy.He goes a bit deeper in some of these works, favoring the blue and violets and silvery shades of night. For this particular work, he uses hues of flesh accented by bloody splashes of vermillion – the artist battered without and within. More than that, he offers a look inward – at the struggles and torments of an artist, at the passions and sorrows of any life well-lived. Some say poets and painters feel things more. I don’t know if I believe that. I happen to think they simply open themselves up more, let their emotional guards down. They are braver than the majority of people. That is on heartrending display in Richmond’s latest piece, “Lost To Myself”.

“Most of my figurative work has some connection to the theme of identity and self-reflection,” Richmond says. “Even portraits of other people often become vehicles for exploring my own emotional responses, but this piece in particular was very intentionally about looking inward.”

As much as I love getting cheeky, some moments call for something calmer and more contemplative. A good artist finds joy in all the world. A great artist finds beauty in the sadness as well. But the best artists find the courage to look inward and put it all on display.

{Find more of Paul Richmond’s evocative body of work at his website here.}

Color my ass any way you want to – this is a cheeky promotional item for Paul Richmond’s ‘Cheesecake Boys: An Adult Coloring Book’. You can download the original HQ version here on his website, then print it out and go to town with markers, crayons, colored pencils, lipstick or mascara – the sky’s the limit! If you post the finished work on Instagram and tag @paulyworld and @alanilagan, he (and I) will be especially honored – and he may just add it to his wall of fame.

I was super lucky to have been immortalized by Mr. Richmond once before, so this is just the icing on the cheesecake. He’s been posting a series of these in support of his upcoming book release, and I’m now in the amazing company of heroes such as Matthew Rettenmund, Garrett Miller, and CardreaderB.

For obvious reasons, this is probably my favorite, and it’s amazing to see how he incorporates little details – a bottle of cologne, a glass of water, a recent Instagram pic as the framed wall art – into telling touches that immediately give away the eyes of an artist.

A couple of variations on how some have chosen to shade my ass are posted below – many thanks to Jan-Simon Minima, Richard Knoppen, Guinevere Renée, Susan Figueiredo Reaves, Berdien Geven-Dölle & Erik Dalston for filling me in so gorgeously!

Lending a distinctly cheeky edge to the adult coloring craze currently sweeping the world, Paul Richmond is offering a collection of drawings just waiting to be filled in and shaded by anyone who has a passion for cute guys and art. Richmond has been an artist I’ve admired for many years (not just because of his gracious rendering of me as a Cheesecake Boy), and his current coloring endeavor has been a smash on his Instagram feed. Taking that one step further, he will be releasing an entire book of drawings that capitalize on our obsessions with coloring and Cheesecake Boys (available from Dreamspinner Press on February 14).

There is something both joyous and calming about coloring. For many of us, it harkens back to a time of innocence and happiness, when the soothing act of creation found inspiration in a box of colorful crayons. That such a fond childhood memory is only now coming back into vogue seems strange – but Richmond has been a master of combining vintage notions (such as pinup girls) and giving them a modern spin (such as pinup guys). His cheeky series of Cheesecake Boys and their requisite wardrobe malfunctions is the perfect choice for a coloring book that demands a bit of interaction from the viewer.

I’ve often felt that inside most of us is an artist yearning to be released. Richmond’s latest creative explosion lays the structure and groundwork to foster such creativity, and there’s something vastly rewarding of being able to take an active part in his artistic process. It is the ultimate compliment to the viewer – to invite them to be part of that artistic journey, to hand us the power to complete something that he began. There’s a trust there, and a generosity that makes his work a little more special.

His series of “Friday Freebies” has garnered an impressive following, and artists of all levels are invited to show off their colorful contributions, instilling a greater sense of community and camaraderie at a time when we need that more than ever. Richmond gets just as much of a kick out of seeing the finished works as we do in participating, graciously posting them on his Instagram page and genuinely enjoying what different people decide to do with his lines.

His new adult coloring book unleashes a new set of Cheesecake Boys upon the world, and it’s coming at just the right time. The impeccably-timed Valentine’s Day release makes it the perfect gift for a loved one, a friend, or, perhaps best of all, your own self. For anyone who’s wanted to color their dreams, Paul Richmond just gave you that chance.

{“Cheesecake Boys: An Adult Coloring Book” will be available on February 14, 2017 from Dreamspinner Press. Paul Richmond’s other work can be found on his website: www.paulrichmondstudio.com.  Richmond is also on FaceBook under ‘Paul Richmond Studio’ and on Instagram under “paulyworld”}