Tag Archives: art

Art Imitates Nature

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Pretty, but painful!
A reaching hand in the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadlupe in Mexico City

Art Imitates Nature

Suspended in this plastic world, my heart a gaping wound
if not for all the beauty in which it is cocooned.
How would we salvage anything from war and greed and lust
without art’s kind revision of all that is unjust
to make us reclaim hope in life simply because we must?
It’s the alchemy of nature to which we are beholden.
It takes our baser natures, transforming them to golden.

 

Prompts today are golden, salvage, wound, plastic, suspended, and revision.

Black is Beautiful, March 10, 2023

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Oops.. I got mixed up and thought “Paint it Black” was a photo prompt. When I tried to link it, I found it was a short short writing prompt. I couldn’t find a comments section to link it to anyway, and since it is clear I was not meant to complete the link,  here is my response to “Paint it Black” in pictures.

“True” Art

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The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet
Banksy
Mandy Barker
Banksy
Mandy Barker

“True” Art

Ugliness invades the exquisite hall:
brazen rude truths hung up on the wall.
Training the rich to see the real world—
the truth of the starving so crudely unfurled.

Exquisite lives overlooking the grime
of ghettos and junkyards, pollution and crime.
Riches amassed while refusing to see
how greed contributes to poverty.

Idiosyncrasies. Truth told in chrome.
Sad themes and base metals invade the rich home.
Landscapes with hardships depicted in oil:
rusted-out car frames returning to soil.

Thus crude art invades the beautiful world
with the ugly truth blatantly unfurled.
And though robber barons might greedily yearn for it,
and they might hang it, they sadly don’t learn from it.

 

Prompt words today are chrome, hardship, landscape, brazen, trainer and idiosyncrasies.

Egg Carton Flowers: Art Day at Judy’s House–Wordle 582

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(Click on Photos to enlarge.)

Egg Carton Flowers: Art Day at Judy’s House

Fairy breath and greedy flush, scissors, paper glue—
they go about the mutual task of everything they do.
Twin sisters, they spill out in life, perpetually torn
apart since that rude splitting the day that they were born.

One demands the pink paint, the other requests blue—
their lips stained orange by Cheetos, fingers covered by goo.
Voices raspy with excitement, they call each other’s bluff
as their grandma hisses fondly, “Girls, that is enough!”

The yellowing sun descends to orange as they end their day
out on the back terrace where they have gone to play.
Safe now that frisky littler dogs are locked behind the screen,
they pet the Scottie’s matted hair, soothed by his gentler mien.

Inside, their older sister helps us clear away their messes.
Not the first time, right? I ask, “No, not quite,” she  confesses.
She fondly rinses paint brushes and points out the incredible—
blue fingerprints on cookies that someone had turned inedible.

The prompt words are bluff torn spill yellowing fairy breath greedy flush soothed safe hiss raspy for Wordle 583 on The Sunday Whirl
Last photo by Harriet Hart. Others by me.

When my good friend Harriet asked if I’d think up a project for her visiting grandaughters, I was pleased to have an excuse to get to know these lovely young ladies. Egg carton flowers it was!!!!

Art and Acquisitions

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Bob Brown, Artist
Carol Lopez, artist
DePaul Durham, artist
Art Studio
Jan Golik, artist
Pablo Picasso
Bob Brown sculpture and visitor
Young artist
Accumulated
Tree House Art Studio
Art Studio
But, to be fair, the root of all evil is also what feeds the artists who create so much beauty in the world.

(Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.)

Art and Acquisitions

Those who patronize fine art
start out congenial at the start
but then upset the apple cart
by arriving early at the mart
and increasing rate and pace
so they can win the prestige race
by obstinately using cash
to win the collector’s ten-yard-dash.

Marble statues and fine oils
are thus simply used as foils
used within the competition
between those whose one ambition
is to amass all those things
that a pile of money brings.

But in fact, it is the making
of great art, and not the taking
that produces joy in living.
Buying can’t compete with giving.

Prompt words for today are congenial, race, marble, obstinancy,   patronize,  art

Agastopia (For Bob)

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Agastopia*
(For Bob)

At my dear departed husband’s behest,
my ode extols the female breast.
In a dream world of his making,
breasts on beaches would be baking,
naked in the sun, to gold,
then, unashamed, to brown and bold.

No petty thoughts would cloud his mind,
his excitation, an artful kind,
and as he paints or sculpts or molds,
each scoop of plasticine he holds,
will take a shape of his devising,
as he works, his hands revising

all that God and nature wrought,
their perfect beauty therein caught.
While some malinger at their tasks,
a breast is all my true love asks—
to do what nature first has done
and duplicate them, one by one.

 

*Agastopia is the admiration of a particular body part.

 

Prompts today are dream world, petty, malinger, revise, excited and agastopia (the fetishestic admiration of a specific body part.)

Forgottenman reminded me of this post of more of Bob’s sculptures: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/07/12/mentor/

 

Portraits of an Exhibition

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Candid shots taken during a presentation given by Deborah Kruger during her exhibition at the Old Train Station Gallery in Chapala, Mexico.

Seduction

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Seduction

The canvas is my suitor. It holds me in its sway,
seduces me with reaching arms that draw my brush its way.
I paint upon its surface and in turn it draws me out.
All those pains I hide inside on canvas learn to shout.

It stands mostly unnoticed when others are around,
attracting no attention and making not a sound,
but when alone, it prompts me to bare my soul to it,
and all the angst that crowds my mind finds a place to fit.

Written for this prompt: https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2022/08/01/what-do-you-see-145-august-1-2022/  Image by Marti Alonso @ Unsplash

Feed the Birds (Art Challenge #6)

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This art print of Antonio Lopez Vega inspired the piece above. She is feeding the birds and in turn they bring her a message in the beak of the bird to the left. Wheat from my father’s last harvest spills from the hand formed copper bowl from Santa Clara del Cobre. A copper plate holds a loaf of bread and a halved avocado. Copper leaf in the background surrounds the woman and completes the theme.

This is one of a number of my retablos still on view at the studio of Jesus Lopez Vega, at the junction of Rio Zula/Rio Brava and Ocampo, a half block south of Casa Linda Restaurant in Ajijic. Open M-F until April 30.

Dance of the Snake Woman (Art Challenge # 1)

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Dance of the Snake Woman

I’ve been nominated by Linda Levy to post a piece of my art each day for ten days. This first selection is one of the pieces in my present show that has been marked SOLD. Unfortunately, I had a terrible time getting a photo of it as it was in a frame with glass over the front and most of the photos had reflected images of other pieces hanging on the wall across from it. In this photo, I managed to get a shot with nothing except myself reflected in the glass. Just for the fun of it, I left my hands. An explanation of the piece is below. With the frame, I believe it was approximately 20 ” square.

Dance of the Snake Woman

In many cultures, the snake functions as a messenger between man and the gods or the conscious and unconscious minds. Number seven is the number of connection as well as the end result of adding numbers 3 and 4, two other numbers of special significance to me. The music box plays “A Little Night Music”—a serenade of sorts.

This piece is about connection to the world as well as one’s own nature. Movement and grounding are of equal importance, as is maintaining a keen eye, creative inspiration and practice, be it in the word of art, dance, music, photography, writing or human interaction. Each of these symbols of the universal truths of the world has a personal significance in my life, as well. My own image was captured in the glass of this piece as I took the picture. It turned out to be appropriate, I think.

The central image is the figure of a woman carved from wood by my husband Bob. It was part of a totem-like carving that had four figures, each standing supported by or supporting another one it a vertical column. In the move to Mexico, it broke into four pieces and although I originally intended to repair it, I later decided to make a collaborative piece out of each figure. Since my husband died shortly before our projected move to Mexico, it has been our last collaboration after 14 years of doing collaborative work together.

The snake extensions and all of the other collage elements were added by me.


Here is a view of the entire piece, reflections and all.