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Embracing Strategy

What a good idea, M. Comeau, some tips to maximize our experience as artists.

Waiting for your next missive, "Goals".

Thank-you,

Shannon
Canadian Pop Artist
www.quirkybs.blogspot.com

WAR - 10 years since 911.

War

As an artist and a gallery owner what do I hope people get from this exhibition. It is my view that an art gallery should show things that encourage contemplation. Ten years ago was September 11th - 911.

I think just how much the world has changed since 911. How we travel. security, the US and world economy, how we as individual view others, terror, news, media, culture... so so much has been impacted.

The world has changed so much in the last ten years. It would be difficult to imagine how the world will be in another ten years.

I hope that we are able to move towards peace and understanding.

sincerely
Patrick

OK, Who Has a Friend in Bosnia/Herzegovina?

Bosnia and Herzegovina Flag One of the interesting things about blogs is who reads them and where they live. It is somewhat of a mystery how people find out but I can say that traffic to our gallery blog is predominantly driven by the gallery website and Facebook. This blog started June 20/11, less than a month ago, and already, 702 people have taken a look and we have 10 followers. Here's where our viewers are coming from and how many from each country: Canada  283

United States   44

Norway   18

United Kingdom   8

Indonesia   6

Mexico  6

France  5

Bosnia and Herzegovina  3

Chile   3

Germany  3

Figure Painter, Jacob Collins

A four minute video of this realist painter's art, set to a marvellous saxophone duet. Wow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62bCP56cyFw&feature=player_embedded

About Canadian War Artists

How interesting is this? Wikipedia has a lengthy entry on War Artists and Canadian artists are there. I did not realize that several of our Group of Seven fall into this category, for instance, Varley, Lismer and Jackson. If I ever knew this, I'd forgot it. 

Meanwhile, under Recent Conflicts, the name Edward Zuber appears. Ted Zuber painted scenes from the Korean war and I am thrilled to see that some of his work will be presented in the next show at the gallery, the of which is WAR. How amazing it that? 

Come and meet Ted Zuber at the vernissage on August 4/11. 

 Canadian

Main article: Canadian official war artists

Canadian Forestry Corps' Gas Attack, Lievin (1918) by Canadian war artist A. Y. Jackson

Representative works by Canada's artists whose work illustrates and records war are gathered into the extensive collection of the Canadian War Museum. A few First World War paintings were exhibited in the Canadian Senate Chamber, and artists studied these works as a way of preparing to create new artworks in the conflict in Europe which expanded after 1939.^[71]

“

"The war art commissions brought intense focus to the observation of Canada's role in international conflict .... A driving need for a strong national identity urged First and Second World War artists toward symbolism. While these vivid images are of a now distant past, they continue to communicate their messages to us, and so never lose their relevance."[72]

”

In the Second World War, Canada expanded its an official art program;^[71] and Canadian war artists were a kind of journalist who lived the lives of soldiers.^[72] The work of other "non-official," civilian artists became part of the record of this period. Canada supported "official war artists" in both the First World War and the Second World War; however, no official artists were designated during the Korean War.^[73]
Among Canada's embedded artist-journalist teams was Richard Johnson, who was sent by the National Post to Afghanistan in 2007; and his drawings of Canadian troops were published and posted online as part of a serial "Kandahar Journal."^[74]

Selected artists

A select list of representative Canadian artists includes:

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

[edit] First World War

• John William Beatty, 1869–1941.^[72]
• Alexander Young Jackson CC CMG , 1882–1974.^[72]
• Arthur Lismer CC, 1885-1969.^[72]
  
  

  

  Capt. Will Ogilvie, Official army war artist, with some of his paintings, 9 February 1944
• Frederick Varley, 1881-1969.^[72]

[edit] Second World War

• Alan Brockman Beddoe OC OBE HFHS FHSC, 1893–1975.^[75]
• Molly Lamb Bobak CM ONB, 1922–    .^[76]
• David Alexander Colville PC CC ONS, 1920–    .^[77]
• Charles Fraser Comfort OC, 1900–1994.^[78]
• William Abernethy Ogilvie CM MBE, 1901–1989
• Jack Shadbolt OC OBC, 1909-1998.^[72]
• Donald Kenneth Anderson, RCAF: Official War Artist (1920-2009)

[edit] Recent conflicts

• Edward Zuber, 1932–    .^[79]

Australia's George Gittoes, WAR ARTIST

We are all war artists up until the vernissage of WAR at Patrick John Mills Gallery.

From an article which appeared in the Times Magazine, Feb. 15/2007.

In the art world, definitions can be crucial. And for much of his near-40-year career, George Gittoes has been tagged a war artist, a definition which is both true and false. While the 57-year-old Australian has covered many of the world's hot-button conflicts since Vietnam, he hasn't always been invited, and unlike most official war artists, he hasn't confined his medium to paint and pencil. Famously, he was one of the few to witness the Kibeho massacre in Rwanda, camera in hand, and more recently Gittoes has turned to music video and anime to capture the emotions he feels. "I hate war," he says. "I'm married, have a lovely wife and two kids, and I'm someone who loves classical music, poetry and literature ... If humanity's going to go on doing war, then there has to be evidence somewhere that someone felt something."

But in a world increasingly immune to the horrors of war, how to engage audiences without turning them off? With Soundtrack and its 2006 sequel, Rampage, which follows a rapping Marine home to Miami and the hip-hop studios of New York City, Gittoes cracked the creative jackpot, with films that could just as easily play on VH1 as in the current documentary-obsessed contemporary art world. (Three years on, curators can't get enough of Soundtrack, which, from March 9, screens as part of the third Auckland Triennial, called "Turbulence.") Gittoes' use of popular culture to explore the Iraq war "is a really amazing way in," says Russell Storer of Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art. "And I think that tells us so much more than the news about what's actually going on and how people feel."

These films are also giving new audiences access to the wider world of this maverick. The loudest soundtrack to Gittoes' current life is provided by the white cockatoos outside his coastal studio at Bundeena, in a national park just south of Sydney. Here his drawing desk—part of an old cabinet propped up on bricks—seems as improvised as his career. The son of an administrator and a ceramicist, Gittoes dropped out of law studies and, inspired by the visiting modernist art critic Clement Greenberg, traveled to New York in 1968. He studied with the social-realist painter Joe Delaney, and on returning to Sydney the following year, sought to put Delaney's civic-minded ideals to work in the Yellow House, the now legendary artist-run space Gittoes helped establish in 1970 with Martin Sharp. He would leave after two years, but the Yellow House set the scene for his art. Using any medium at his disposal, and world events as his palette, Gittoes' work speaks of the cosmic interconnectedness of things.

Please read entire article here: 
lhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1590757,00.html

Read more about George Gittoes, watch his movies, see his art here: 
http://www.borntofilm.com/site/journal/the-miscreants-of-taliwood/