Announcing Today's Featured Artist

Hi everyone,
I really have no idea how many people read/look at my blog. If many people did, I fear that the numbers must be dwindling as I have not posted anything since I created this blog. I originally started this blog so that I could have a place to show my work. Well, I thought that this might also be a good opportunity to tell you all about some artists that I love, both from the past and the contemporary world. A few months ago my sister Joanne asked me, is there even any good, uplifting art anymore--do people even make art that is beautiful these days? Oh yes, Joanne, they do!! I wonder if there are a lot of people out there asking the same questions. So, I thought that I would take this chance to highlight some of the artists and their artwork that are beautiful to me.

The first artist that I want to feature is Gustav Klimt. Although he is not contemporary, he has been on my mind a lot lately and worked in a style that is very popular in contemporary art.

Klimt was born as the son of a gold and silver engraver in a suburb of Vienna. He had a formal art training at the Vienna School of Decorative Arts. In 1882, Klimt opened a studio of his own with his brother Ernst and Franz Matsch, a fellow student. They specialized on executing mural paintings. They were quite successful from the beginning and received commissions from theaters, museums and other public and semi-public institutions.

He often painted figures with realistic looking faces, hands, or limbs, with bodies flattened with intricate patterns. His paintings are full of emotion, passion and deep feelings. One very famous work that is widely popular is The Kiss, (1907-1908) shown below:This work was painted during what is referred to as his "golden plate" phase, as he applied gold leaf to the surface of his paintings to enhance the pattern and texture. Much of his work is of women and incorporates themes of family, relationships, love and passion.

Last semester I worked on a painting based much after the style of Klimt. My assignment was to paint a portrait incorporating pattern, 3-dimensionality, and flatness. I learned that Klimt's patterns are not patterns at all, but rather they are more organic as they are continually changing, never repeating the exact same motive more than once. I painted my friend from Honduras, Ruth Vasques, who is also and art education student at BYU. I will hopefully have an image of my painting soon to post.

If you are interested, you can read more Gustav Klimt him on wikipedia.com.