Amy Crehore's Venus Show Painting

Painting: "Wild Cat Fever" copyright 2007 by Amy Crehore, oil on linen panel (with carved black frame 11" square)

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Here is the new painting I did for the "Venus Show" at Roq La Rue Gallery opening June 8, 2007. This one is a little bit different. It has more of a jungle motif. The cat is an oncilla which I blogged about earlier. Other artists in the show besides me are: Lori Earley, Audrey Kawasaki, Travis Louie, Marion Peck, Glenn Barr, Kukula, Stella Im Hultberg, Isabel Samaras, David Bowers, Lynne Naylor, Chris Reccardi, Sas Christian, Gail Potocki, Joshua Petker, Fuco Ueda, Boomer, Krysztof Nemeth, Derek Nobbs, Jessica McCourt, Nicole Steen, Sarah Joncas, Rik Garrett, Sarah Bereza , John Brophy, Esao Andrews, Panni Malek, and Robert Pitt. This will be a fabulous show!

That Ain't Art Blog has some of the other paintings on display.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Go here for the link to MONOVITA Magazine with a new profile of Amy Crehore (me).

Free Readings

Just for fun, you can get free Tarot, Runes, Numerology and I Ching readings on this site. They have about 20 decks for the Tarot such as a "Cat People" deck or a "Voodoo Tarot of New Orleans" deck. I like the I Ching better than the Tarot, but the Tarot decks are cool.

Facade

The Art of Amy Crehore

Early Tarot Deck

Tarot Cards are always fascinating- the older, the better:

"Tarot cards by Nicolas Bodet (1743-1751). An early example of the 'Rouen/Brussels' Latin-suited tarot, probably the earliest we know actually made in Brussels."

Bodet Tarot Cards

The Art of Amy Crehore

My Drawings

First attempt for the "Banana Eater" copyright 2005 Amy Crehore
Drawing for the "Flower Muncher" copyright 2006 Amy Crehore
Drawing for "The Nibbler" copyright 2006 Amy Crehore
Drawing for "The Creature" copyright 2006 Amy Crehore

Drawing for "The Teaser" copyright 2006 Amy Crehore

I need to upload some of these drawings to my website drawing section. Right now, I only have my "Little Pierrot" drawings on display. But, the "Monkey Love" drawings (shown above) are pretty interesting and so are the "Blues Gal" drawings. There are other newsy things happening as well that I need to add to my homepage. I'm staying busy with a few little projects that I will tell you about later.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Remedios Varo 1908-1963

Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo was a very unique and imaginative surrealist painter who was born in Spain. She hung out with other artists in Paris for a time, but fled to Mexico in 1941 where she remained for the rest of her life. She died at the young age of 55 during the peak of her success. Her best friend was Leonora Carrington, another well-known woman surrealist who used to be Max Ernst's girlfriend. These are the things that I find fascinating about Varo: her use of architecture, her inventions of strange vehicles, her big-eyed spooky characters that seem to emerge out of the ether and aren't quite real, crazy hairdos and weird costumes, her creative story-telling qualities, and the many different textures she created for backgrounds in her paintings. She had an imagination that didn't quit!

Varo was an intellectual and "was influenced by a wide range of mystic and hermetic traditions, both Western and non-Western. She turned with equal interest to the ideas of C. G. Jung as to the theories of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart, and the Sufis, and was as fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail as with sacred geometry, alchemy and the I-Ching. She saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness."-read more:

Remedios Varo

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100,000 people

As of today, this blog has had over 100,000 unique visitors since July 2006 (that's when I started counting).

The Art of Amy Crehore

Carlo Carra and Metaphysical Art

La Figlie di Loth 1919 by Carra

Madre e Figlio 1934 by Carra
Daughters of Lot 1940 by Carra
Italians Carlo Carra and Giorgio De Chirico were friends. They created an art movement called Pittura Metafisica or Metaphysical Art (1917) which influenced surrealism and dada. Mysterious, poetic and dreamlike, their paintings looked to the past for inspiration - to the work of Italian artists like Giotto in particular. They made poetry out of familiar objects by isolating them or placing them together in claustrophobic rooms or outdoors in shadowy Italian squares. Both painters were concerned with giving the objects an inner life of their own through odd juxtapositions and simple, almost stark rendering that pointed to a "higher, more hidden state of being" (Carra). This selection of Carra paintings are later works, but they still show his metaphysical tendencies. I have always been very inspired by the works of Carlo Carra (I don't really relate to his early futurist works, however) and by the metaphysical works of Giorgio De Chirico.
Metaphysical Art
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Der Golem

Strange Monster from German Expressionist Cinema: Der Golem

"In the 16th century, the Jews of Prague face persecution. Rabbi Loew creates a giant golem out of clay to protect the people. Unfortunately, the creature rebels and wreaks deadly havoc. In the end, a small girl stops the golem by removing the magic star from its chest."

Starring Paul Wegener as the clay monster which inspired other monsters in cinema.

It ran in NYC for ten months in 1923. I like the poster art.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Kazoos and Old Lures

Cat Kazoo with Plaid Britches

1907 Kazoo fishing lure
Rhodes Mechanical Frog lure - before 1910
Antique Lures
Electrizooka via Makezine (How to make an electric kazoo)
Tin Man Tin Toys (Cat Kazoo)
Kazoos (Kazoo in Popular Music)
Here are some links that I found while surfing around. The Hokum Scorchers always played kazoos, a popular instrument in hokum music. I like this cat kazoo that I found on a tin toy site. Kazoos come in all shapes and sizes, but the metal ones are best. Makezine blog featured an "electrizooka" that someone invented. I also found an old fishing lure called the "Kazoo". This antique mechanical frog lure is pretty cool, too.
I will actually be painting a fishing lure sometime soon. I'll tell you more about that later.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Paintings

Armand Point painting
Robert Henri Painting
Bernhard Gutmann Painting
Arthur Hacker Painting

Paintings by painters. A timeless art form.

Even in this digital age, people are still sucked in by the quiet power of soulful painting.

The Art of Amy Crehore

And Venus was Her Name

Oncilla-spotted South American wild cat

This exotic creature may just show up in my next painting.
I'm currently working on something for a show at Roq la Rue gallery in Seattle, WA -opening June 8th -"Venus" - an invitational group show exploring the theme of the feminine as muse, in whatever incarnation that may take - Artists: Lori Earley, Audrey Kawasaki, Travis Louie, Marion Peck, Glenn Barr, Kukula, Stella Im Hultberg, Isabel Samaras, David Bowers, Lynne Naylor, Chris Reccardi, Sas Christian, Gail Potocki, Joshua Petker, Fuco Ueda, Boomer, Krysztof Nemeth, Derek Nobbs, Jessica McCourt, Nicole Steen, Sarah Joncas, Amy Crehore, Rik Garrett, Sarah Bereza and Robert Pitt. Stayed tuned. (P.S. Actually had a cat named "Venus" once and she was wild, too.)
The Art of Amy Crehore

Sappho - A Passionate Muse

Sappho by Dannecker 1800

Sappho 1877, Charles-August Mengin (1853-1933), Oil on canvas
Sappho, World Noted Women. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1883.
Sappho , (Le coucher de Sappho), Charles Gleyre, 1867
Sappho was a Greek poet who lived around 600 BC. She wrote about love, yearning and reflection. "Most of her poems (Aeolic dialect), which were always set to music, describe erotic passion and its consequences. She was a lyric poet who developed her own particular meter, known as sapphic meter, and she was credited for leading an aesthetic movement away from classical themes of gods, to the themes of individual human experience. Sappho speaks in the first person and describes her own experiences."
-Read more HERE by Michael Lahanas
Also, there is a nice collection of female images, including Mengin's "Sappho" (which I think is an amazing painting), at Sensual Arts

The Art of Amy Crehore

Kisses and Red Monkey Butts

Children's Book by David Fair 1980
"Everybody Kissing" by David Fair
" Upside Down Kiss" by Jad Fair
"Archer" by Jad Fair

I have owned a copy of this little monkey book by artist/musician David Fair for a long, long time. Ever since it came out. It's all about Becky the Monkey's red 12" butt. It's very funny. I have another one called "Worms in It" which is extremely silly. The drawings are wonderfully naive.

Brothers David Fair and Jad Fair of Half Japanese fame (punk rock band & stars of a 1993 documentary movie) both make beautiful paper cut outs. It's a type of traditional "outsider art" that makes me very happy indeed. See more at Jad Fair's myspace page (and buy them) or on his website:
Jad Fair

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Mark Mothersbaugh's Postcard Diaries

"Bring 'em in Like This, Drive 'em Home Like this" 2007 Mark Mothersbaugh

Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame has been drawing on postcards forever. He has the originals -numbering probably 30,000- all filed away, but he sells limited edition prints of these and has a gallery tour going on. These little postcards are the humorous and inspiring traces of an obsessed and highly creative man. He gets the Little Hokum Rag Seal of Approval.

Check out his latest craziness here:

Mutato Visual

The Art of Amy Crehore

"Little Bit" from Memphis

Portrait by Amy Crehore 1993
Little Laura Dukes with Robert Burse, Dick Rowles, Louis Allen, Wilfred Bell and Will Batts 1930's
Little Laura Dukes 1960

I used to want to be like this little woman when I played with the Hokum Scorchers band. They called her "Little Bit". She played with Will Batt's band all over Memphis and in other parts of the south. She was an explosive singer, dancer and ukulele player. I made this portrait of her with a special frame. She's playing a banjo uke. Unfortunately, my scanner is too small to show the entire frame which has a carved-out sunburst at the top. Recordings of Little Laura Dukes are rare and brilliant. (Photos from "Memphis Blues and Jug Bands" by Bengt Olsson, Studio Vista Books, edited by Paul Oliver)

Here is more about Little Laura Dukes from the back of the album cover of "Memphis Sessions 1956-1961" (Wolf Records, Austria) on which she plays and sings with Gus Cannon and Will Shade -

"Born on June 10, 1907 in Memphis, TN, Laura made early encounters with the music scene in her hometown: her father played drums with WC Handy's Band and often took little Laura to the local theaters and taverns, where she later worked as a singer and dancer. In 1933 she met Robert Nighthawk in East St. Louis and took guitar lessons from him, and the two appeared as a duo in various local joints. Laura later switched to the ukulele. She followed Will Batt's South Memphis Jugband in 1938 and went on the road off and on until 1956. In 1954 she recorded for Flyright with Will Batts and for the Albatross label in Memphis in 1972 and appeared in the TV-documentation "THE DEVIL'S MUSIC- A HISTORY OF THE BLUES"(BBC-1 TV England 1976)."

She plays on 9 songs on this album: "Dirty Mother For Ya", Salty Water Blues", He's Knockin' on my Door", "He's Gone", "Shanghai Blues", "Nobody loves Me", I'm Goin' Down to Lucy Mae's", "Haunted House Blues", "Laura's Blues".

The Art of Amy Crehore

Time for Krampus

More inspiration! Krampus postcards. Do you know any devils in real life? I do.

I'd rather draw them than know them. Might just have to do that.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Vintage Banks Are Cool

Check out these vintage mechanical banks and the graphics on the old trading cards. The drawings are beautiful as well as the worn-down look of the old toys. Inspiring!!

See more here: Mechanical Banks Online

The Art of Amy Crehore

P.S. I was just thinking how much more beautiful these banks are in their worn-down state than any of the vinyl designer toys available today. None of the new toys are as innovative as these old babies. Designer toys are just about as articulated as toys-for-tots. The graphics and printing are far superior on the old advertising cards, too.