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Harley Brown – soft pastel artist
Those of you who follow my work may know, that this March marks 20 years since I created the website acrista.com and the Acrista Art brand was born. The first half of this period I spent mastering the soft pastels as a material and the artist who greatly influenced me during this time and was a sort of virtual mentor for me, was the pastelist Harley Brown. I came across him after subscribing to International Artist magazine, where Harley had regular articles, sharing wisdom on the artist’s life and priceless practical advices on the creative process. During this period, I acquired his two books: “Eternal Truths for Every Artist” and…
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Quotes from “Alla Prima”, Richard Schmid
“The thing we label as talent is not a single ability. It is a complex mixture of motive, curiosity, receptivity, intelligence, sensitivity, good teaching, perseverance, timing, sheer luck, and countless other things.” “Serious painting is not something that can be learned casually. You must be willing to sacrifice many other things.” “I regard my disasters as invitations to learn more.” “Art happens in the mind of the person seeing them.” “Don’t reject difficult ideas simply because you fail to grasp them immediately. Put them on hold until you do, then decide. Many things in painting become clear only after considerable experience, and that takes time.” “The reason why painting remains…
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Swarez Art
It’s been a while since I have been impressed so thoroughly by an artist – from the chosen medium (enamel paint), from developing technique by trial and error, combining several working places with a gallery, to market positioning, scope (huge canvases delivered worldwide), personal approach (he hand delivers all of his art in the UK) and experimenting with different mediums in addition to paintings – aluminum sculptures, art with cast resin blocks, enamel paint on carbon fiber… Ed, who creates under the label Swarez, is absolutely self-thought and although he’s often told that ‘this can be painted by my five year old child too’ and ‘he’s not an artist’ with…
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February movie mix
Bohemian Rhapsody: I am not one of the devoted fans of Queen who compare the movie scene by scene with documentary footage from concerts and interviews. For me the move is exceptionally well made, and the role of Rami Malek is inhumanely difficult and perfectly played given the vast admiration for Freddie Mercury. In the interviews from the movie release interesting facts ‘from the kitchen’ came up, for example, that the first shot scene was the Live Aid concert (!), the work with movement couch, details on make-up and costumes. I would watch it for the second time, so I am looking forward to the 5-hours directors cut. absolutely deserved…
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“Genius: Picasso”
I knew that the second season of Genius would be inspiration, contemplation and very much needed context, as if a long time ago you had started putting together a puzzle of somebody’s live, but you missed pieces and reasons. A few things keep resonating in me after the ten episodes for this extraordinary, whimsical, driven innovator which some would call a prick, a rake, an egoist and they might be right depending on their viewpoint: his purposefulness and outright refusal to compromise his fierce desire to surpass a colleague by whom he felt awed (Matisse) and thus to surpass himself his hectic search for the new, the different, the radical using…
