Detail of New Painting

Detail of painting,"Snake Tamer's Ditty", copyright 2007 Amy Crehore (click to enlarge)

Okay, I scanned some parts of the new painting. I need to scan a slide before I can show you the entire thing, but you can get an idea here. It's a horizontal painting like the "Banana Eater". I will show you the rest very soon.
The Art of Amy Crehore

More Italian Nudes

P. Conti, Nudo di giovinetta, 1933
Francesco Trombadori, Fanciulla nuda , 1933
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538
I love all of these Italian nudes in art history. The top two are new to me. I found them while surfing the internet. These two painters were around during Antonio Donghi's time. Conti has painted a wonderful study of red hair. Check out the position of the hands and arms on all of these paintings. All are interesting compositions.
In fact, I used this Titian image in one of my works from the early '90's that I exhibited at the Portland Art Museum. link: The Art of Amy Crehore

Nostalgia

The Three Graces by Raphael 1504
I always loved this picture of my mom (in the middle) and her sisters.
It's a classic sort of image like "The Three Graces”.
The Art of Amy Crehore

Favorite Artist of the Hollywood Stars

Tamara de Lempicka was a figure painter of massive volumes who also had art deco-cubist tendencies. She was a very skilled painter who invented an unforgettable style. During her day, she was very popular and at one point during the 1930's, she became the favorite painter of the Hollywood stars. She lived in Paris, Beverly Hills and NYC and finally Mexico. "She painted them all, the rich, the successful, the renowned -- the best. And with many she also slept." - this is a quote from her daughter Kizette's book about her, Passion by Design.

In other words, she was a whore. Both with women and with men. I don't know how she found time to be one because she was quite a prolific painter. Her work is a little bit too stylized for my taste, but some of it is pure painting and a new book called, Lempicka by Patrick Bade shows many wonderful works that I have never seen before. She did lots of nudes and nude bathers and groups of figures in complex compositions. She also liked to paint people playing stringed instruments. They are rendered almost like sculptures. Read more about Lempicka, a fascinating woman artist who had a huge influence on graphic arts and interior design: Tricky Micky Art Page

The Art of Amy Crehore

Study for "The Bathers"

"The Bathers" by Renoir 1887 Philadelphia Art Museum
Study for the Bathers 1884-85 Chicago Art Institute

I found this beautiful study for Pierre-Auguste Renoir's magnificent painting, "The Bathers". This is my favorite Renoir painting. I especially love the character of this girl with the braid down her back. She's rendered so lovingly. This painting has it all. Movement, charm, sex appeal, complexity of composition, rhythm, soul, classicism. And his style is not as brushy in this picture as in his other works.

The Art of Amy Crehore

That's the way it goes

I said that I would unveil a new painting this past week...but, I am still finishing it up. It's been an extremely difficult painting to realize. I have been working on it intensely every single day. It keeps changing. I hope to be done very soon and then I will be able to catch up on other things.

The Art of Amy Crehore

A Botticelli Face

1482 Sandro Botticelli, Tempera on wood, Detail from "Primavera"
Picasso drawing of Marie-Terese Walter

"Italian painter Botticelli was Florentine and extremely successful at the peak of his career, with a highly individual and graceful style founded on the rhythmic capabilities of outline. With the emergence of the High Renaissance style at the turn of the 16th century, he fell out of fashion, died in obscurity and was only returned to his position as one of the best-loved quattrocento painters through the interest of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites."

link

I added the Picasso drawing because I like it. It seems to have that same feeling of soulful youth that the Botticelli does, with the girl gazing directly at the viewer. Both girls are rendered like angels. I definitely relate to the painters that came before the High Renaissance- the Early Italian Primitive ones like Giotto, Fra Angelico and Botticelli.

The Art of Amy Crehore