LIVE FROM THE STUDIOS: Mary Harju
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Bakasana, oil on canvas, 2011 |
Professional Development Summer Workshop
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Sharon Louden & Academy Alums |
- $600 = Current MFA Students and Alumni*
- $675 = Current Continuing Education Students
- $750 = All Others – this workshop is open to all artists.
- *As a special bonus, registered Alumni who are not yet members of the Alumni Association will receive a year-long membership in the AANYAA.
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: JUNE 1, 2011
Studio Shots: Aliene de Souza Howell, Mitchell Martinez, Sean Hyland
Aliene de Souza Howell (Painting, Class of 2011):
Mitchell Martinez (Painting, Class of 2012):
Six Things You Should Know About the Color Green
The New York Academy of Art is pleased to share a new note by Hilary Harkness. Regularly posting her “Notes from Studio Lockdown,” Hilary blogs with us as she prepares for her upcoming exhibition in May at Mary Boone Gallery in New York City. Follow her on this blog for sneak peeks into her studio practice!
Dear friends,
Now is a good time to give your palette a thorough cleaning and freshen your color choices for springtime.
1. Green has more possible connotations and symbolic uses than any other color. Green means go, is the color of envy, and it stands for an environmental movement. Everyone knows that if you eat a green m&m it will make you horny. As a child during the cold-war 80’s, the wisdom in my schoolyard was that as the nuclear bombs come in– best way to go out was in a bathtub full of green jello.
One of my favorite artists, Cary Liebowitz a.k.a. Candy Ass, has given a new blush of meaning to the color green: not only is it the color of indigestion, it is the color of apology.
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Cary Leibowitz |
2. There are more than three ways to achieve the color green using paint.
You can use a green pigment, you can mix it from blue and yellow, and you can also mix it using black and yellow. I like to juxtapose all three, as well as using color-proximity to imply that a yellow or a blue might in fact include a touch green.
Here is a riddle for students: when depicting a piece of yellow fabric, how do you keep the shadows from looking either greenish or a darker yellow? Please chime in!
A friend of mine recently was choosing a shade of green to paint her living room walls. She showed me nearly identical paint chips from different brands of paint, but the corresponding test-patches of colors on the walls were quite different. This is because of the endless ways green paint can be formulated. A more opaque pigment will make a deader color on the wall, but an uncomplicated mix of a dye color will make the room look so bright that you might wonder if martians have landed.
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Ross Bleckner |
3. There are more shades of green than any other color.
The color that spans the least number of shades is the color red. Artist Ellen Altfest exploits the full potential of green in many of her paintings, as you can see in this nuanced image.
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Ellen Altfest |
4. A green painting is the most difficult to color-correct when reproduced photographically.
It is important to carefully check that your digital image matches your real-life painting.
5. Green paintings are the least marketable. This is the word on the street. However, no art dealer I have spoken with will go on the record as having difficulty in selling anything.
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Inka Essenhigh |
6. Green is the most atmospheric of any color.
This seems to fly in the face of the use of blue to connote distance in Renaissance paintings, but on a sunny day, when the sky is blue, the air outside seems the clearest to me visually. There just isn’t a lot of “air†to paint.
I remember the day when I was nine years old when a tornado ripped down the main street of my town, passing only three blocks from my house. As the air raid sirens were blasting a disaster alarm, I noticed my mother was missing from the shelter of our basement. I found her on the front porch, enjoying the spectacle. The air was a satanic green as the wind picked up.
Yours very truly,
Hilary Harkness
Studio Shots: Adam LaMothe, Nicholas Borelli, Angela Gram

“My current body of work explores embarrassment, vulnerability
and absurdity through a series of intimate portraits.”
“In my current series I’m trying to channel Kafka and
Cronenberg to explore human/insect transformations.”
“My work addresses human decay and intends to challenge
this taboo through the aesthetics of nature.”
Help this Gentle Lion find a Happy Home and WIN 2 Cocktail Tickets to Tribeca Ball!
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James de Pasquale, Lion, 1983, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 136 in. |
Distinguish Yourself as an Artist by Painting from Life
The New York Academy of Art is pleased to share a new note by artist Hilary Harkness. “Notes from Studio Lockdown” is Hilary’s blog with us as she prepares for her upcoming exhibition in May at Mary Boone Gallery in New York City. Follow her on this blog for exclusive views of her studio practice!
Dear friends,
You might wonder why an artist like me, who paints imaginary scenarios, is a proponent of painting from life, but I do it quite regularly. I travel to significant locations to do preliminary studies from life to get a handle on how color behaves, I buy relevant props to paint to add touches of verite, and sometimes even ask my girlfriend to throw a right hook so I can depict a boxer convincingly.
On the other hand, I often make up color schemes that I use in a systematic fashion to make my scenarios seem real. For instance, I know blue light will create cool highlights and therefore the objects will cast warm shadows. I use the rule that highlights are sharper on shiny objects. I scour the works of Fragonard to try to guess at his color system. In addition, the journals of Eugene Delacroix are very useful because he described the exact pigments he used to create reflected light in the shadows of flesh.
Hopper |
But here are three examples of why painting from life, at least at some point in your process, is unbeatable. In looking at the following paintings, let’s ask: Why is her face green?
Hopper, detail |
A girl looks out from the shadows of her tenement window onto a bright snowy backyard scene. Looking closely, we see that her face has indeed been created using green paint. But in the context of the painting, it is obvious her face is not actually green. No color system in itself tells us why this use of green rings true. We can see from her rosy cheeks that her face is pinkish. If the local color of her face was yellow, then a reflected blue light from the snow could combine with that to make her appear greenish. Maybe the room she is in is green, but she is standing too close to the window for it to affect the appearance of her face. Perhaps the green skin is meant to make her cheeks seem an even more feverish bright red be contrast. The dullness of the green pigment (perhaps the earth color terre verte) makes her cheeks seem to actually radiate heat and light. It adds pathos: is this girl too sick to go out and play? Is she experiencing vicarious delight despite being at death’s door? The use of green in this girl’s face makes this painting transcend any illustration of a snowy scene, and I think this transcendence has sprung from years of observational painting.
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Van Gogh |
You would have to go to MoMA yourself to see that Vincent van Gogh uses green pigment in the flesh of his subject Joseph Roulin.Great painters don’t simply depict exactly what their eyes see like they are photographic machines; there is interplay between the artist and his subject, and the artist and his canvas.
Van Gogh has selected a limited palette and created a tight color envelope that allows certain greens to read as more neutral flesh-tones. In addition, the contrast of the even greener wallpaper behind Joseph Roulin pushes his face back toward a ruddy alcoholic complexion.
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Nicole Eisenman |
Nicole Eisenman has made many lovely paintings of scenes in nighttime beer gardens. She captures the conviviality of the moment, as well as the darker moments her characters could be experiencing. Eisenman is obviously a close observer of not only the unusual night-time lighting in this type of scene, but the varied emotions of the characters within them.
Yours very truly,
Hilary Harkness
Printmaxing!
by Aliene De Souza Howell (MFA 2011)
I started printmaking again last semester after years away from it.
Since taking the Narrative Printmaking Seminar, I started creating relief linocuts inspired from poetry. This acted as a significant catalyst in freeing up the imagery in my work. I felt I could get away with anything because of the graphic quality of the black and white and the finality of carving that lent a certain austerity to the image.
I’ve just started using animals as a lens to look at ideas of social practice and how, as humans, we’ve chosen to cultivate ourselves. I’ve always responded to the impact of life size work where you could really enter into the image and have always worked large in my paintings, so I thought I’d push my printmaking and began to work on a 36†x 60†image.
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Printmaking instructor John Jacobsmeyer, Yi Cao, Post-Graduate Teaching Assistant Jan Pecarca and Aliene set the press. |
Due to its monstrous size, I needed assistance printing it. The press bed was maxed out and we even had to re-adjust it (a risky feat) and send the block back through the press a second time in order to print the entirety of the image. It worked out and I’ve just begun my second large print!
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Pulling it off the press – a first look… |
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The linocut, finished! |
Don’t miss the last Open House! March 19, 2011
March 19th, 2011
**Attendees will have their application fee reduced from $80 to $60! Please click here to register.
Facebook, Curator of Culture: Salon des Refusés
After the Academy posted a response on this blog to facebook’s removal of Steven Assael’s artwork (Jan 31, 2011, 5:22pm), The New York Times, Gawker, MSNBC, The Cornell Daily Sun, The Register, ARTINFO, and other news sources have covered this story. Please see below for photos facebook has removed from the Academy and Academy Alum’s accounts.
Where do you draw the line?
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Steven Assael, “Simone” ink on paper.
Artwork image removed by facebook, 1/31/2011
from the Academy’s “Uncovered” exhibition on facebook. |
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Alyssa Monks, (MFA 2001) “Press” oil on canvas, 2008. Artwork image removed by facebook, 9/2010. Alyssa’s original facebook account was disabled. |
Richard T. Scott (MFA 2007) “Hermetica” oil on canvas. Artwork removed by facebook, 1/30/2011 |
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John Wellington (MFA 1990) “Break Clean From the Past” oil on aluminum. Artwork removed by facebook, 2/13/2011 (John has since posted “facebook-is-keeping-you-safe” censored images on his facebook page.) |
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Judy Fox, “Venus” 2004. Filled Resin, Casien 67 x 21 x 17 |
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Gary Schneider, “Young Man, 1908, 2008” pigmented ink on paper, 52.5 x 38.5 in. Artwork removed by facebook, 2/22/2011 from the album of the Put Up or Shut Up exhibition. ________ NB: This image was removed from the Academy’s facebook page after this article was published in The New York Times. |
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Patricia Cronin “Canto VI: Circle Three, The Gluttons” watercolor on paper, 60 x 40 in. Artwork removed by facebook, 3/1/2011
from the album of the Put Up or Shut Up exhibition.
________ NB: This image was removed from the Academy’s facebook page after the story was published in The New York Times
and also by many other news sources. |
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Artwork: Judy Fox, “Venus” 2004. Filled Resin, Casien 67 x 21 x 17
Article: The New York Times from the Has Your Artwork Been Removed By Facebook? album.
This album has been created to track artworks that have been
removed from the Academy’s page. The “offending” artworks appear
with text from articles posted by news sources reporting on
facebook’s censorship of artwork on the Academy’s page.
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Well, folks, what do you think? |
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And on the same day, current student Aleah Chapin’s facebook profile photo was removed as well. She reposted it, as seen here. |
August 12, 2011:
“The needs of many outweigh the needs of few…”
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Artwork: John Jacobsmeyer, “Planet New Hampshire” 2007. Oil on Canvas 36 x 36 in.
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