Sunday, May 27, 2007

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.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

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:

Friday, May 25, 2007

100,000 people

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

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

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
The Art of Amy Crehore

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.

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

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

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