Category: Usa

It's All About You

6/27/2012

Welcome to IAAY number two! This time it's all about Rebecca Venn, who is a superb water-colourist and pencil-wielder. She's had many exhibitions and her work is one of the main attractions in fine art collections around the USA and Europe.

Rebecca gained her BA in Art from Brescia College in Owensboro, Kentucky. That said, she considers herself self-educated rather than self-taught as she has searched out artists whose work she admired and studied under them.

Ultimately she taught Life Studio at UW Parkside, and a variety of workshops at the Charles A. Wustum Museum in Racine, Wisconsin and The Clearing in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin.

IAAY is published every Wednesday (yes, all of them), so there's plenty of time for you to join in too! Contact me via the comments or via Twitter: @mickdavidson.

It's All About Rebecca Venn
It's All About Elizabeth Sparhawk Jones
Deciding on one artist that has influenced or inspired me is a daunting task. I think I have, without realizing it, been affected on many levels walking through the Chicago Art Institute and seeing vision after vision that crept into my dreams at night and no doubt appear on the tip of my paintbrush in the morning. And so many are men. I love many of them and it is easy to choose one, so I do not. I choose Elizabeth Sparhawk Jones.

She was a surprise for me. Seeing her stunning painting one day entitled “The Shoe Shop”. I wanted to know more. In it you can hear the rustle of the skirts and marvel at the crisp white blouses that are a uniform and sensual attire at the same time. And those brush strokes make me marvel.

When she was at her peak she won a prestigious award that she was to collect in Europe but her strict parents would not allow it. Gradually she sank into mental illness. After many years she reappeared and became successful once again. Her work was never the same though. It is as if her spirit, once shattered, is now viewed through the lines glued together, distorted, holding the vessel of her talent together, but not the same.

I choose her and her magnificent artwork as inspiration when days are hard. It is her determination, her brilliance, her fragility and her talent that I admire. I am not fond of her last work, but this earlier work was so very beautiful. In a time when success was hard for a woman she shown like a star, unable to be ignored.

It's All About Me
This painting is titled “Swimmer I”. It is a watercolor measuring 17” x47”. Originally it was a movie that inspired it. The move was an HBO film titled “Angels In America”. At the end of the film the actor tells the story of the Fountain of Bethesda. I loved the idea of the healing aspect of that story with the water washing over the person and transforming them to wellness, spiritual and physical.

When this artwork was exhibited, many people would call it “the Swimmer” so I renamed it. The original inspiration is personal and viewers bring their own stories and I love that. It is probably why I leave an unfinished quality to a lot of my work so that the viewer can have room to experience their own visions.

This subject of water and the human form is a passion for me. We are a large percentage water and I find that I tend to return often to watercolor and the human form. It is the risk of watercolor that excites me. It makes me crazy and happy at the same time. It is like life. Risky and joyous. It is flux. It is flow. It is sensuous.

You can contact Rebecca via the following:

Twitter - @Rebecca5002
Website - www.rebeccavenn.com

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It's All About You

6/20/2012

9 Comments

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first It's All About You! And we're kicking things off in grand style with Maureen Hovermale, who I've known digitally for a couple of years now thanks to Libboo.com, where we worked on the world's first crowd-sourced novel. She's good at a lot of things and is an excellent writer too. But don't take my word for it, check out the links at the end to see for yourself.

IAAY will be published every Wednesday until the end of time or the 12th of never (whichever comes first), so there's plenty of time for you to join in too! Contact me via the comments or via Twitter: @mickdavidson.

It's All About Maureen Hovermale
It's All About Jane Austin
My mother is armpit deep into genealogy.

Why bring this up now? Because my great-great-great whoever was part of the Revolutionary War here in the good ol' U.S.A. (Now hold on, I'm getting to the point.)

Seeing how I'm in love with British literature, I'm a bit afraid that the old fart will haunt me as this could be construed as Tory-like behavior. I know hundreds of years have passed, but you've got to understand that my mother was very disappointed I married a 'German' even though he was born in Kentucky. It seems grudges are held that carry over generations unfortunately.

I'm so in love with this literature that I took bad marks for spelling favorite 'favourite' and color 'colour' in grade school. I argued that my heroes used such spelling and came from an older society than ours so therefore I was right, but the teacher obviously was an eyebrow raiser on Tory-like behaviour (ah see?), too. Either that or she had a penchant for red ink and a proclivity to use it on me.

So onwards to what Mick was really wanting me to do. I...ah...tend to deviate.

A passage from the first Britbook I read and therefore deeply ensconced into my heart (which doesn't count against my word count you lovely man thanks-for-that):

"Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticize.
But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect
symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing;and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware;--to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her
handsome enough to dance with.

He began to wish to know more of her, and as a step towards conversing with her himself, attended to her conversation with others. His doing so drew her notice. ..."
(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)

Ah...seduction however subtle makes no never mind. Here were my ten-year-old hormones waking up to the idea that intelligence is the most desirable foreplay to the secrets I already wanted to discover. Indelibly I was marked and Jane, oh Jane...I love you for it despite your choice of color in coats. Red or not, you're true blue to me. ;) By
the by, if you'd like to read more about her Jane Austin is a wonderful place to visit.

Ah so onwards to me eh?

It's All About Me

I write. Every. Single. Day. I sometimes post it and then change my mind and take it down. I'm never satisfied - I want perfection or at least something that won't make me cringe ten years from now. Perhaps it is Jane's example that I hold myself up against. Perhaps I'm never drunk enough to push the publish button.

Regardless of my carrying fruit juice in my gut instead of alcohol these days, Mick is a good mate and so I offer up an excerpt of the novel I'm currently working on:

The Eternal Observer adjusted the dog under his armpit and took count of the survivors.
It didn't take him very long since it was himself, the dog, and the writer. This was expected as the pen is mightier than the sword. The man had parried well with the seven-headed hydra, dotting eyes and summing things up.

The writer brushed the hair back from his brow and tried to look scholarly, "Why do you think it took the girl?"

Frank didn't take his eyes off the horizon, "They. It's a they not an it."

"It is a single being. Therefore it is an it."

Frank still didn't take his eyes off a point in the distance, "You're a grammar Nazi then?"

The writer looked shocked, "Well...I wouldn't say Nazi."

Frank nodded, "Grammar Nazis rarely do. Regardless, it's a they."

The writer began to argue the points of how Frank had referred to it as an it while referencing it as a they, when Frank looked all around them looking this way and that.

When Frank was satisfied, he smiled and calmly stiff-armed the writer off the iceberg.

Buford looked at Frank and Frank shrugged, "No one saw and I didn't have time for his singularly dogged structure."

The dog made certain to stay silent since he wasn't sure if Frank meant dogged as referring to himself as well.

"With Old Man Time out of action, we've got to get that girl." Frank looked down at the dog, but the dog said nothing. "Oh for the love of Pete and crisps, I didn't mean you and the writer was already dead. It's not like I killed him."

The dog still didn't respond because the man had looked quite hale until his icy plunge.

There. Now it is posted somewhere I don't have control over. I do reserve the right to try and bribe Mick later on though. Ah what the hell, I'll finish the book. It would be easier since we all know my chances are slim what with Mick unwilling to share even popcorn.

So about this burgeoning book of mine...well, it's a round about story like most beginnings are. It stemmed from my inclination to browse about places poking pieces out of here and there. I'd been asked to write a chapter for a project called Grim5next where we were supposed to bring the world to the brink of destruction and then rescue it in a flurry blurry of awesome unbelievables. My twisted mind went...hmm. 'Everyone is being so dystopian and leaning towards religious concepts, so I believe I'll insert me some overdue humor.' I went about reading articles on Schrödinger's cat since it seemed parallel to the premise (is it alive or is it dead?), found information on Richard Feynman (who is another hero of mine and was an avowed atheist. I mean, how polar opposite a viewpoint could I pursue?). I then proceeded to write a chapter throwing puns and double entendres around like you can't believe.

It was well received but after I wasn't able to bring Mick on board, I thought well I'll just finish this puppy myself and give them something different. Mick and I go back to Paradox times at Libboo and well it just wasn't the same without him.

So there you have it. A writer's attempt to emulate another while keeping their own voice. This passage I've given you leans more towards another book-maker-love of mine though: Douglas Adams. Now that's another story entirely and one that perhaps I'll go into when y'all wake up and I've got you drunk enough.

When I'm not writing or fighting the jungle-lawn out my window, I'm procrastinating doing something productive on the web and can be found here:

@zencherry on Twitter
My blog: The Zen Corner
World Literary Cafe - where I interview authors on WLC
Facebook - somewhat censored since my mother is a friend.
Pinterest - where I have gads of links to things I probably won't have time to do since I'm busy ah...being productive and not in any way procrastinating.

Cheers, ciao, and Cheerio cereal,
Maureen Hovermale (aka the weird lady writing scenes and snickering over there).

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It's All About You

It's All About You

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