Rick Janson Art Studio
My Art Journal
Category: Art and Society
-
Quick: name a Canadian visual artist who is known for their portrayal of labour? Still thinking about it? Likely the worst thing to happen to art that celebrates working people was Soviet Realism, which was so over-the-top it likely made many Western artists run in the opposite direction, especially amid the growing awareness of the…
-
Years ago I visited London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and stumbled upon the cast collection. In the 19th century it was popular to make plaster casts of well-known sculpture for educational purposes. Opened to the public in 1873, these life-size casts included work from around the world, initially starting with the most revered pieces from…
-
As a visual artist its always been clear that mass culture has always had an uneasy relationship with fine art. We go to specialized schools that not only teach us our craft, but also the words we need to use to distinguish ourselves as professionals as opposed to weekend warriors. Yeah, we’re taught to be…
-
I first heard about Warkworth when I bought a painting by Lucy Manley from a craft fair in Cobourg. A plein-air painter, Lucy regularly paints around central east Ontario, including Warkworth, where she gives continuing education classes in painting. Our picture was from a winter scene in a residential part of Warkworth. We travelled to…
-
Arles, France, was the starting point for our trip up the Rhone River. Throughout the town are signs indicating where Vincent Van Gogh painted many of his iconic pictures. That included one where the house he once shared with Paul Gauguin stood. It was the victim of Allied bombing in World War II, and is…
-
Tourism has been in the news lately. Despite the fact that most of us are or have been tourists at one point, the worm appears to have turned in our culture. Residents of cities like Barcelona are actually using squirt guns on tourists in their city, angry that tourism has led to overcrowding and a…
-
I’m totally addicted to the UK Sky Arts duo of Landscape Artist of the Year and Portrait Artist of the Year. As Frank Skinner, the original co-presenter of the shows said, “I love the idea that you can make great entertainment out of watching paint dry.” If you are an artist or would be artist,…
-
Women make up 80 per cent of fiction sales, according to statistics from an opinion column in today’s New York Times. “The fiction gap makes me sad,” writes columnist Maureen Dowd. Me too. It also explains a lot. Dowd quotes author (and man) Richard Babcock: “Not to blame the current cultural landscape on Ronald Reagan,…
-
There is a sad story in the New York Times today. As an artist, it made me stop in my tracks. Could this be me some day? Author Alissa Quart writes about having to sell and give away about 400 paintings by her 90-year-old mother, who was a literature scholar up until her retirement 30…
Rick Janson Art Studio 