my favorite painting......

a favorite artist...

Daniel Gerhartz

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Born in 1965 in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, where he now lives with his wife Jennifer, and their young children, Dan's interest in art emerged as a teenager. Studies at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Illinois and his voracious appetite for museums and the modern masters such as John Singer Sargent, Alphonse Mucha, Nicolai Fechin, Joaquin Sorolla, Carl von Marr as well as a host of other French and American impressionists have inspired him.

Dan has a particular interest and appreciation for modern Russian art and the sumptuous canvases of the painters Nicolai Fechin, Isaac Levitan and Ilya Repin. As Dan says, their paintings are "completely loose yet deliberate and faithful, not at all flashy."

Indeed, the powerful and evocative beauty of Gerhartz's paintings are also due in large measure to looseness, honesty and faithfulness of his style. Dan's paintings embrace a range of subjects, most prominently the female figure in either a pastoral setting or an intimate interior. He is at his best with subjects from everyday life, genre subjects, sacred-idyllic landscapes or figures in quiet repose, meditation or contemplative isolation.

His mastery of the female figure, the clothed figure especially, is brilliant. He has drawn inspiration from the very old tradition of romanticism and symbolism. His absolutely lavish surfaces, color and lighting are in harmony with his expressionistic brushstroke, application and modeling of light and shade.

His paintings are sensitive yet evocative creations, which dramatize his bold and ambitious technique. He is at his very best when he allows himself to explore the surface in a free and painterly manner, while retaining his sense of other worldliness.

His subjects evoke a timelessness and idealism, yet for the most part Dan has drawn upon his home and community in Wisconsin, including family and friends. His sense of intimacy and honesty with regard to his subjests are a direct result of his closeness and proximity to them. A projection of tranquillity, repose and rich introspection result from his knowledge of the content of his art.

In Gerhartz's pictures the ordinary or commonplace is transformed into a higher reality and consequently a sense of greater importance. Emotions are a vital part of his express design, while his mastery of anatomy, the human form and complex surfaces combine to make his canvases very powerful visual experiences.

About his work Dan has said, "My desire as an artist is that the images I paint would point to the Creator, and not to me, the conveyor. J.S. Bach said it well as he signed his work, 'Soli Deo Gloria,' To God alone be the glory."

http://www.danielgerhartz.com/biography.htm

my other blog entry about this artist.
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=1099649708910652312&postID=8314655454024713235

Raphael's Madonna

Raphael (1483 – 1520), one of the most prominent Italian Renaissance painters, created masterpieces that epitomized the High Renaissance ideals of harmony and beauty. From Urbino, Italy, Raphael was admitted to the workshop of the town’s leading painter at age 12 and quickly surpassed his instructor. Possessing a remarkable command of depth, perspective, light and shadow, Rafael imparted warmth and serenity to his magnificently lifelike figures. His most brilliant works include the stanzas inside the Vatican, and Madonnas which he portrayed with human emotions, as no artist had previously done. Pope Julius II had such high regard for the grace and perfection of Raphael’s work that at one point, he was inclined to make him Cardinal.

i like this...

sigh...

Girl with Pearl Earring
Johannes Vermeer
Year: circa 1665
Type; oil on canvas
Dimensions: 17.5 in x 15.4 in
Displayed: Mauritshuis, The Hague

Johannes or Jan Vermeer (baptized in Delft on October 31, 1632, and buried in the same city under the name Jan on December 16, 1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of ordinary life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death


Despite the fact that he was baptized in a Protestant church, Vermeer married a Catholic girl named Catherina Bolenes in the village Schipluiden. For the groom it was a good match. His mother-in-law, Maria Thins, was significantly wealthier than he, and it was probably she who insisted Vermeer convert to Catholicism before the marriage on April 5, 1653.

His wife gave birth to 14 children, ten of which survived: three sons and seven daughters. The names of ten children are known from wills written by relatives: Maria, Elisabeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, Beatrix, Johannes, Gertruyd, Franciscus, Catharina, and Ignatius.

The often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights in Vermeer's paintings have been linked to his possible use of a camera obscura, the primitive lens of which would produce halation and, even more noticeably, exaggerated perspective.

sigh.......

adventure in oil painting....

I took most of my art classes at SJ Adult Education classes. Judy was the one who taught me basic art, but when it came to oil painting we all painted the same picture, first a tree and then a barn. (I think Susan has the barn, but don't know where the trees went..didn't like them much anyway as they did not express what I wanted to paint.)

The first 2 oils below were my first, painted at an Art Store
on Alum Rock Avenue. We were able to paint what we felt...

(Elizabeth wants the seascape)

After the lessons with Judy this was a tree I painted on my own.
(Annette has this painting)

and this very small one

I tried a few still life, but felt I did better with pencil
on this kind of subject.

Then came the faces..which I painted from photographs...
maybe from National Geographic.

I gave Danny this Chinaman but it was burned up in his
Eichler home fire...

For some reason I call this one "Indian Poet" and I never finished it.
Some thing else must have caught my eye!!!!!

I enjoyed all my classes so much and would still be painting, had it not been for my sister and genealogy and the interesting classes I took, the side trips to cemeteries and libraries and Latter Day Saints archives!!! That got me started on the journey of doing both mine and George's family history!!! But that is another story.....

Back to the drawing board...

In the 1960's-70's I was in my "art" phase and
tried every kind of media possible.

Japanese brush painting, which I really liked.

sketching from life and from books

those little books are my ukelale books




charcoal....

and more pastels....

In the 80's-90's I became interested in geneology and art went out the window!!!! Then came photography and video's and movies....I was lost and still am....and I love it all...Thanks be to God!!!!!!!
Maybe someday the painting bug will bite me again....I'll be another Grandma Moses in my nineties, but doing watercolors, which I've never done...not oils because of George's allergy to paint!!!! Life is an adventure.....

The Last Supper

Sketches...

Some of my sketches

done in 1974

I did this sketch of Mary in 1976...here she is in 2001 and 2006




















.

Pastels...

Bobby gave me a pastel portrait painting class for a birthday present one year...so I began sketching people faces, mostly from photographs and the kids.

This is a sketch the teacher did for me...sort of in the style of Petty or Vargas...not what I really wanted to do. There was a pretty crazy woman in the class who occupied all the teacher's time talking about her personal life, so he consequently didn't teach us very much.

This woman claimed to be the girlfriend of the owner of the SF Giants and she had some wacky stories to tell...I'll admit pretty fascinating!!! She said she had out of body experiences where she would float out of her bed and soar over the city.

She brought into class some pictures she'd done of nudes on velvet...don't know why she was in the class since she already knew how to draw....maybe for the pastel technique.

She also claimed to have been commissioned to do an oil portrait of Y. A. Tittle, at the end of his career, with broken ribs and a bad concussion, kneeling in his own end zone.
We never did see the painting of Y. A. Tittle, but here is the real picture...take her word for it!!!!

Below is one of my only attempts at pastels....
not too satisfied with my results.....off whack......too flat....
The drawing was too big for the scanner, and I still had oil painting classes to go!!!!......

scratch boards...

I took so many classes at so many places. Judy, at the San Jose Adult Education classes taught me a lot of basic art and different techniques. I really liked doing these scratch boards but never did it at home or ever again.

interest in art...

I took so many art courses...starting way back in grammar and high school, but quit when I was inspired by a Navy nurse (but that is another story to tell) to become a registered nurse. The Good Lord kept me busy with my medical studies, and then marriage, and my children, who were my pride and joy ...we had a lot of fun doing crafts!! We started our business in 1976, I became interested in art again, and began taking lessons from artists in art supply stores (they had studios in the backs of the stores) and in the Adult Education classes at various schools. My love of drawing has always taken a back seat to a new interest or business. I started and never finished the tree on the right. Somehow the edges got ruined and I had to cut the canvas down....now I like it!!!

A quick oil study...very small 4 x 8...I found it hidden away just recently..

I think that I shall never see.....

We recently watched a t.v. program depicting famous old trees in California...with the background sound of a baritone rendition of the poem by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.  

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

This is my oil painting 

of one of God's creations.

My painting