I have several works in an upcoming group show in Brooklyn. The exhibition has a theme: Horses. Theme shows are sometimes iffy, but I have confidence this will be very good. These two mixed media monotype/paintings in progress are part of several final pieces I’m working on for this show. The first one is in a very unresolved stage.
Here are just a few recent life drawings done on the MTA, the NYC subway. I take the D, N and R lines to and from Brooklyn and Manhattan; most of the sketching is done at night on the train from Rockefeller Center in Manhattan to Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I have a smallish sketchbook right now, about 8″ x 5.5″. The challenge is to draw the subjects quickly and hope they don’t catch your eye. That kills it.
I grew up 70 miles from NYC, in the rural town of Ridgefield, Connecticut. I started visiting Manhattan from the age of 2 or 3, driving down the Saw Mill Parkway with my parents as my father delivered art to the publishing houses who hired him to do book cover illustrations. One of the main clients was Pocketbooks, a division of Simon & Schuster, whose offices are on 6th Ave, right across the street from the subway station I use now every day.
The music that speaks New York to me is particular and special to my history of NY as visitor then a 25-year resident. The attached song by the Brothers Johnson will forever conjure up trips to New York in 1978 that invariably ended up with bar-crawling, party-crashing and public debauchery.
Here’s an old monotype from the archives.
I once spent a week in the Uffizi drawing room collection when one could be issued a special permit to examine original old master drawings by hand (wearing special cotton gloves, of course)–literally holding the ancient drawings on paper in your hands! Needless to say, that special provision is history. Carracci impressed me with his beautifully facile line and form. I came away with a man crush on the old italian.
A bit prosaic. Oil on paper, 22″ x 16″
Truth in advertising. I drew the bear. Toni cut it out.
-JD
I’ve lived in NY city for a long time and have experienced this city through many crisis both natural and man-made. It may sound like a cliche but I have found it absolutely true: NYers are best when circumstances are worst. Hurricane Sandy, the most destructively powerful natural disaster in recorded city history slammed the the northeast causing devastation through the boroughs, not to mention the whole tri-state area. Fear and destruction played out through the last several days but individuals steel through it.
Below is a photo I took several blocks from my house in Brooklyn, as the storm was slowly heading towards us.
Below is a monotype I made later that night, as the city was flooding and i was fortunate enough to have electricity and a dry house.
Breach 1, stage 1, monotype, 16″ x 20″
here i sit awaiting the wrath of the superstorm sandy. so far we still have power and so i’ll quickly post. spent the weekend in a printmaking workshop in northampton ma discovering the joy of the pronto plate. it’s a super versatile material originally developed for the commercial printing industry. here’s a link http://www.nontoxicprint.com/polyesterplatelitho.htm i’ll definitely continue exploring this process.
in the meanwhile, today i’ll play with woodblock stuff. since i’m at home, i’ll spread some old tablecloth or something and have some fun
With this piece, based on an image of Toni Tiller (supine on a trampoline), I approached the treatment a little differently than the recent paintings on paper I’ve been doing over the past year. I struggle with an objective analysis here, but the controlled application of paint , conscious distortion and drawing I see as a reaction to the graphic quality of the photo I worked from.
Tom Bennett
Trampoline, oil on paper, 22″ x 30″
Took a monotype I made a few years ago of an homage to Valentin de Boulogne’s Martyrdom of St Bartholomew and painted back into it. It went from an old man being crucified to a young woman who may have just done some crucifying herself. I was inspired by a photograph of Toni.
Tom Bennett
The original monotype I found a little clumsy.
The reworked image.
Dominant at Rest, oil over monotype on paper, 16″ x 20″
She was enjoying a bit of late summer sun before heading back to the grind.
North Truro, Mass is a tiny piece of heaven.
.
Ink & brush pen sketch from life
Some small painted monotypes for an upcoming show in Massachussets and a naked monotype which came out looking like Gloria Swanson with big boobs.
Tom Bennett
Beauty 2, monotype with oil overpainting, image 8″ x 6″
Beauty, monotype with oil overpainting, image 8′ x 6″
Sunset Boulevard, monotype on Rives BFK, 12″ x 9″
This I’m going to paint into.
TB
Age, monotype, 8″ x 6″
two of my favorite activities. this week i joined them in a union that may lead me somewhere. i had just boiled some beets and was really taken (again) with the deep rich color left behind in the water. i soaked a piece of sketch paper and left it to dry overnight. testing the paper with white ink, i started drawing circles … a rather mundane yet meditative practice. the result … barely interesting.
1st Stage of a painting on monotype.
Tom Bennett, Exit Stage 1, work in progress, oil & oil based printmaking inks on Rives BFK,
9″ x 12″
last week was a circle week in more ways than just drawing … I’ll let you figure that one out. 10 foot rice paper scroll of circles very meditative
Agora Gallery - the proud sponsor of the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition, which offers contemporary artists the opportunity to show their original art at one the most acclaimed juried art shows in Chelsea, New York’s art galleries district.
Tom Bennett
darteboard
galinatodorova
Jason Gray
jdhastings
laelia e. mitchell
probrucer
ssstephg
Toni Tiller
