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Two feel good videos for https://kirsteinfineart.myshopify.com
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First, I want to let you know that I am getting ready to feature more awesome, creative fine artist painters in the very near future, but I have been recently sick. I think I’m finally getting better because today I had the strength to plant some herbs and flowers. A very God sign (I meant to type good, but God works just as well) , I think!
Browse the collection, and let me know if you have a favorite! If you choose to click the above link, it will take you directly to my manufacturing outlet Fineartamerica. Here is how it works. Click on an image you prefer in all Circus Buddies images. Then look to the right for a menu of all the various items. You will see many choices: pillows, duvet covers, shower curtains, prints, posters, cards, totes, beach towels, etc.
Have fun “shopping” with my Circus Buddies!
I hope to be back in gear in a few more days, so can get out some more artist features! Meanwhile, enjoy your summer!
Jan Kirstein
Click on these thumbnails to enlarge.
Paintings by Christina Verhaert sing with a depth of emotion and a height of lucidity. Line moves gracefully through the white space of the paper’s surface, ingiting a feeling of peaceful freedom. In contrast, layers of dense pigment churn with storms of passion and layered complexities, all to create a capture of the tenuous balance of life’s many converging forces.
Jan Kirstein
Verhaert’ paintings call to mind a poem by Percey Bysshe Shelley
I
O West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Christina Verhaert is a painter living in Brecht, Belgium.
Janis Kirstein
“I have been an existential psychiatrist and artist for over 20 years and through this work I have learned that the secret to creating expressively alive paintings is by trusting yourself. My vision and the work of my life in art and psychiatry is helping others to trust themselves and to create meaningful lives through their work. Take the plunge and start on your own path towards making the work of your life. Show us what you love!”
Nancy Hillis
“The art of activating the canvas and bringing your painting to life with your own personal lexicon of mark making, expressive gestures and brushwork is nothing short of miraculous.
To create authentic and alive abstract paintings that are unique to you and your own vision is the ultimate attainment for an artist and yet the most elusive.
One issue is that you can get stuck repeating what’s worked before in your work. Another issue is trying to recreate what you love about other artists’ work.
I’ve found myself in both situations. When I finished my residency in psychiatry at Stanford I became fascinated with abstract painting. I felt that it was a mirror into the artist’s inner world, a potent and unique personal expression of the artist.”
“I loved attending museums and galleries that featured abstract artists, in particular abstract expressionist work. I admired the museum exhibitions with works of Cy Twombley, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. I’d feel excited to go home and try to create paintings as raw, immediate and expressive as theirs! I wanted to paint works that astonished me. I wanted my art to mean something.”
“The day I finished my residency in psychiatry I started creating abstract paintings. I didn’t know what I was doing but I’ve come to learn that this is a good thing. Saying this brings to mind the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind where Shunryu Suzuki said “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Cultivating an open mind and maintaining the teachable spirit of a beginner is a potent practice for artists at every stage of development.”
“One of the things I’ve learned on this journey is that being an artist is about continually evolving. It’s about searching and finding your way as you create. It’s about experimentation.”
In this video, Nancy explains the benefits of specific steps in painting for allowing the development of an open mind.