Bringing in the Magic | August 27 | 10 am to 3 pm
Working in oil and cold wax is one way to develop texture and form, using your own unique personality to create artwork. Learn the basics of cold wax painting and experiment with a variety of materials with this fun method. Develop design skills and create starts that will become paintings that “speak to you.” During this intensive workshop, instructor Mary Montague Sikes (Monti) will demonstrate basic methods and leave you with time to explore the possibilities in your own work.
Supply List
- Matboard or any sturdy surface about 12” x 12” will work well for artists panels. Ampersand gesso board, cradled or flat, is ideal. Cradled wooden panels from Jerry’s or Cheap Joe’s are ideal. You can also work on Arches oil paper, Yupo, and Terra skin paper.
- One can Gamblin or Dorlands cold wax
- One bottle Gamsol and a spray bottle for it
- Assortment of favorite oil paints, including white
- Freezer paper to use as a palette
- Messermeister bowl scraper
- Printmaking brayer
- Paper towels, rags, baby wipes
- Old credit cards for painting
- Wide blue painter’s tape
- Wax paper to separate projects for transport
- Items to enhance texture like stencils, stamps, string, vegetable bags, yarn, collage papers. Items like paper product tubes, old lipstick tubes make good stamps.
- Thick gesso (Utrecht professional) and oil paint sticks are nice to have but not essential.
Note: You can start a painting using acrylics or work over an old acrylic painting. You can paint oil over acrylic, but not acrylic over oil.
Bring lots of enthusiasm and a readiness to learn new techniques. Questions? E-mail Monti at monti7olen@verizon.net .
To register, please complete the form below.
Mosaic Decorative Art: Techniques, Vocabulary and Skills of Trancadis | Sep 24 & Oct 1 | 9 am to 1 pm
Week 1 | Sep 24 | 9 am to 1 pm
Brief introduction to the history of mosaics and the works of Antoni Gaudi. Learn the basics of nipping tile and cutting glass to create tesserae (the small pieces of glass, stone, mirror, or other hard material used in mosaics). Begin planning individual project designs and materials that participants will gather for next week’s class.
Week 2 | Oct 1 | 9 am to 1 pm
Finalize plans and begin laying out tesserae. The focus will be on composition and adeamento (Italian for flow, it refers to how the placement of tesserae in rows creates a visual direction and movement). Adhere/finish mosaic.
To register and pay online, please complete the form below:
Instructor, Joyce Crown-Wilkins, is a local artist and art educator with a B.A. in Art Education (cum laude) from V.C.U. As a active member of the Virginia Art Education Association, the Teacher Advisorary Committe for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Tappahannock Art Guild, Mrs. Crown-Wilkins has presented countless workshops to art educators and aspiring artists throughout the state. She recently traveled to Barcelona on a Fund for Teachers grant where she studied Trencadís mosaic techniques in the studio of Livia Garetta and is very excited to share what she learned with her community.
TAG Art History Minis
Sergeant
JAN 12 Today we celebrate the birth of John Singer Sargent. He was born in Florence in 1856 to American parents and spent most of his life in Europe. He studied in Paris and soon became a star student. His early interest was the landscape, but later he became known for his portraits and regularly exhibited full-length portrayals of women in the Salon. Sargent met Chilean-born Eugenia Errazuriz in Paris around 1880, and she frequently sat for him. Madame Errazuriz hangs at the @vmfamuseum and exhibits a style more free than his commissioned portraits. In 1884, he completed Portrait of Madame X, which he considered his best work. It caused such a scandal, however, that he lost support and soon left Paris. Nevertheless, Sargent enjoyed success through the end of his life, despite painting his style of Realism during a period in which Impressionism, Cubism, and other new forms held the art world's attention.
Sergeant
JAN 12 Today we celebrate the birth of John Singer Sargent. He was born in Florence in 1856 to American parents and spent most of his life in Europe. He studied in Paris and soon became a star student. His early interest was the landscape, but later he became known for his portraits and regularly exhibited full-length portrayals of women in the Salon. Sargent met Chilean-born Eugenia Errazuriz in Paris around 1880, and she frequently sat for him. Madame Errazuriz hangs at the @vmfamuseum and exhibits a style more free than his commissioned portraits. In 1884, he completed Portrait of Madame X, which he considered his best work. It caused such a scandal, however, that he lost support and soon left Paris. Nevertheless, Sargent enjoyed success through the end of his life, despite painting his style of Realism during a period in which Impressionism, Cubism, and other new forms held the art world's attention.
Serra
NOV 2 Today is the birthday of Richard Serra, born 1938 in San Francisco. His father was a pipefitter at a shipyard, and his mother encouraged young Richard's interest in art. After earning an MFA from Yale, Serra spent time in Paris studying in modern sculpture patriarch Constantine Brancusi's studio. He then spent time in Florence and began experimenting with nontraditional sculptural materials. Certainly, his father's profession and Serra's time working in shipyards and steel mills inspired him to create his large-scale sculptures with steel. In the early 1960s, Serra composed a list of over 100 transitive verbs--like to roll, to splash, to bend, to twist--to guide his process. One Ton Prop (House of Cards) is made of four rectangles of lead antimony propped together, each side working to hold the others up.
Bernstein
MAR 1 Today is the birthday of Theresa Bernstein. “A celebrated raconteur and art activist, the long-lived Theresa Bernstein may be the only artist to have made and exhibited work in every decade of the twentieth century. Exhibiting during the 1910s, Bernstein witnessed critics compare her work to that of Robert Henri and his circle for its forceful brushwork and realist approach. Despite this early acclaim, as is true for most women artists of her generation, Bernstein’s work has not yet received the attention it deserves. Nonetheless, her work has gradually made its way into important museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philips Collection, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, among many others. Bernstein remained committed to figuration throughout her long career. Her desire was always to connect with real life and to be a painter of the people.”
Bernstein
MAR 1 Today is the birthday of Theresa Bernstein. “A celebrated raconteur and art activist, the long-lived Theresa Bernstein may be the only artist to have made and exhibited work in every decade of the twentieth century. Exhibiting during the 1910s, Bernstein witnessed critics compare her work to that of Robert Henri and his circle for its forceful brushwork and realist approach. Despite this early acclaim, as is true for most women artists of her generation, Bernstein’s work has not yet received the attention it deserves. Nonetheless, her work has gradually made its way into important museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philips Collection, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, among many others. Bernstein remained committed to figuration throughout her long career. Her desire was always to connect with real life and to be a painter of the people.”
Arbus
MAR 13 Today is the birthday of American photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971). She is known for photographing social outcasts and for befriending, rather than objectifying, her subjects. In the late '40s, Arbus and her husband maintained a commercial photography business; Diane was art director and her husband Allan was the photographer. In 1954, she quit commercial photography to focus on her own art. Soon, she was meeting subjects by chance on the streets of New York. Around 1962, she switched from her 35mm camera and its grainy, rectangular images, to a twin-lens reflex camera. This led to a more detailed, square format described as “direct and unadorned.” Arbus pioneered the use of a flash in daylight, which served to separate the subject from the surroundings and produced a surreal effect. She established relationships with many of her subjects and returned to them over the years. "Child With Toy Hand Grenade" (1962)
Arbus
MAR 13 Today is the birthday of American photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971). She is known for photographing social outcasts and for befriending, rather than objectifying, her subjects. In the late '40s, Arbus and her husband maintained a commercial photography business; Diane was art director and her husband Allan was the photographer. In 1954, she quit commercial photography to focus on her own art. Soon, she was meeting subjects by chance on the streets of New York. Around 1962, she switched from her 35mm camera and its grainy, rectangular images, to a twin-lens reflex camera. This led to a more detailed, square format described as “direct and unadorned.” Arbus pioneered the use of a flash in daylight, which served to separate the subject from the surroundings and produced a surreal effect. She established relationships with many of her subjects and returned to them over the years. "Child With Toy Hand Grenade" (1962)
Caravaggio
OCT 10 Alberto Giacometti was born this day in the small Swiss village of Borgonovo (1901). Though he worked in other media, he is recognized as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. Coming from a family of artists, he developed an interest at an early age and later studied at the Geneva School of Fine Arts. In the 1920s, he studied in Paris where his work was influenced by Surrealism and Cubism. Giacometti is best known for the thin figures sculpted in bronze, like Walking Man. It is suggested that such figures express the fear and isolation many experienced after World War II and during the Cold War. Visit the gallery this week: No fear or isolation here.
Henri
Robert Henri was born on June 24 or 25 in 1865. He founded the Ashcan School of American realism, a mission of which was to depict the grittiness of urban life, much in the same way as muckraking journalism did. Henri was an influential teacher, and his students included George Bellows and Edward Hopper. Despite his interest in the urban landscape, Henri is best known for his portraits. "Wee Maureen" is a portrait of a child in Dooagh, an Irish village Henri visited annually. The bold brushwork and thick application of paint are hallmarks of his works, and this portrait exemplifies the empathy Henri shows for his subjects. Visit the gallery today from noon until 4, and see how Henri’s teachings have influenced today’s artists.
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#artistbirthday #roberthenri #ashcanschool #realism #tappahannockartistsguild
Johns
Flag, Jasper Johns, encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood, 1954-55
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#flagday
Courbet
Today (June 10) is the birthday of French painter Gustave Courbet (1819), a leader of the Realism movement. He rejected Classicism and Romanticism and instead elevated humble scenes and depicted ordinary people as heroes. Manet took inspiration from Courbet's ideas, as did the early Impressionists. Burial at Ornans "buries the viewer as if he or she were in a cave. In a decidedly non-classical composition, figures mill about in the darkness, unfocused on ceremony. As a prime example of Realism, the painting sticks to the facts of a real burial and avoids amplified spiritual connotations." (The Art Story) Visit the gallery to find our own examples of Realism. Open today and tomorrow from noon until 4.
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#courbet #frenchartist #realism #burialatornans #artistbirthday #tappahannockartguild
Kahlo
JUL 6 Today is Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s birthday (1907). Married to Diego Rivera, she worked successfully to develop her own style, inspired by the folk culture of Mexico. It wasn’t until the 1970s that her significance as an artist was recognized. Today, she is an icon for feminism and the LGBTQ+ movement.
(Click image for larger view)
#fridakahlo #femaleartist #mexicanartist#tappahannockartguild
Willard
Archibald MacNeal Willard, inspired by a holiday parade in Wellington, Ohio, painted The Spirit of '76 around 1875. It was exhibited in the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia where it was not well received. Reproductions sold well, though, and soon the painting was popular enough to tour the country. The central figure is based on a sketch of the artist's father. Archibald Willard was proud of his father's work as a minister and of his grandfather's service in the Revolutionary War. Happy Independence Day!
(Click image for larger view)
#independenceday #fourthofjuly #julyfourth #spiritof76 #tappahannockartguild
Rubens
Today we celebrate the birth of Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577). Rubens maintained a workshop of students and assistants who participated in the creation of many of his works. In 1610, the workshop produced “The Elevation of the Cross,” commissioned by the Church of St. Walburga in Antwerp. Most likely, Rubens designed the piece and made sketches that his workshop would follow in executing the painting. The artist then came behind and made touch-ups where he deemed it necessary. This TAG member wishes he had a workshop of helpers.
#artistbirthday #rubens#tappahannockartistsguild
Gauguin
JUN 7 Today is the birthday of Paul Gauguin (1848), one of art history’s most castigated figures. It is oft told that he quit a career in the stock market and abandoned his family for life as an artist, but it may be that his wife, at least, was glad to be rid of him. His early paintings fall into Impressionism, but he soon moved to develop a new style. His quest for authenticity led him from Paris to Brittany, a region cut off from modernity in the 19th century. After some time there, he left for Panama, Martinique, and, most famously, Tahiti. His styles ranged from Symbolism to Primitivism, which Picasso would later adopt. While in Brittany, Gauguin painted Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel). He didn’t want the painting to look real, but rather like a spiritual vision. He flattened the spaces and used color as an abstract element. Note the red field where Jacob and the Angel wrestle. Visit the gallery this weekend, and maybe, like the Breton churchgoers, you too can have a religious vision. Open Thursday through Saturday, noon until 4.
(Click image for larger view)
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#gauguin #frenchartist #symbolism #primitivism #postimpressionism #tappahannockartistsguild
Velázquez
JUN 6 Today we celebrate the birth of Diego Velázquez (1599), Spanish painter and lead artist in Philip IV's court. Many of his paintings show his perfected use of chiaroscuro to create a dramatic sense of dark and light. In 1656 he painted his baroque masterpiece Las Meninas, in which the infanta Margaret Theresa seems to be the focus. Also seen are other members of the royal family, including the king and queen in a mirror. Velázquez himself appears at left working on a large canvas. There are many interpretations surrounding this work. What’s yours?
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#Velázquez #baroqueart #spanishartist #artistbirthday #tappahannockartistsguild
Escobar
MAY 21 Today is the birthday of sculptor Marisol Escobar (or just Marisol) born in 1930. She enjoyed short-lived fame in the Sixties and again in the 21st century before her death in 2016. She found inspiration for her portraits from photos and memory and incorporated found objects, such as the door and sneakers seen in The Family. I love this piece and hope to see something like it in the gallery soon. How about you?
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#marisol #popart #foundobjects #sculpture #portrait #family #tappahannockartguild #artistbirthday
Waring
MAY 15 Today is the birthday of artist Laura Wheeler Waring (1887). Her mother had been active with the Underground Railroad, and her father was pastor of the first all-black church in Connecticut. Waring taught art and music at Philadelphia's Cheney Training School for Teachers, as well as at Harvard and Columbia. Time in Paris before and after World War I had a profound effect on her growth as an artist, and in 1927, her work was part of the first exhibition of African-American artists in the US. This portrait of Anna Washington Derry helped Waring win an award from the Harmon Foundation, which resulted in the painting being exhibited in several cities in the US and Europe. Today it can be seen at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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#laurawheelerwaring #africanamericanart #portrait #annawashingtonderry #tappahannockartguild
Braque
MAY 13 It's the birthday of Georges Braque (1882). He and Picasso developed Cubism when both lived in Montmartre in Paris, beginning around 1908. With the application of geometry, Braque created paintings with multiple perspectives. He fragmented his subjects so that they looked both flat and three-dimensional at the same time. Shown here is Violin and Candlestick, painted in 1910.
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#georgesbraque #cubism #frenchpainter #modernart #tappahannock
Dali
MAY 11 Today we celebrate The Most Illustrious Salvador Dali, born in Catalonia on this day in 1904. A leader of the Surrealism movement, his most famous piece is The Persistence of Memory, completed in 1931. Its melting clocks and human "monster" figure are used to recreate a dreamlike state for the viewer. Dali himself was a work of art, shown here sporting his iconic mustache and posing with his pet ocelot. Come look for surrealism in our gallery. Open Thursday through Saturday, noon until 4.
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#salvadordali #artistbirthday #surrealism #tappahannock #tappahannockartguild
Warhol
Andy Warhol, arguably the most popular of pop artists, was born this day in 1928. After graduating art school, he moved to NYC in the late '40s and began work as a commercial artist. His experiences as an illustrator likely led to his most famous style, photographic silkscreen printing. There are so many facets of Warhol's career--too many to describe here: Chelsea Girls, The Factory, Edie Sedgwick, the films, 15 minutes of fame, The Velvet Underground, being shot, his wigs, Interview magazine.... His legacy is large in popular culture to this day. Remember Burger King's Super Bowl ad a few years back of Andy eating a Whopper? Learn more at The Warhol museum (warhol.org).
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#andywarhol #popart #shotmarilyns #marilynmonroe #artistbirthday #tappahannockartistsguild
Fox: Painting with Oil & Acrylic | Jul 24 | 1 to 4 pm
INSTRUCTOR: Janet Hockman
DETAILS: This 4-hour class project will be painted on an 8×10 canvas or a piece of shiplap; students choice when they get to class. The price for this class is $35. All materials will be supplied, paints surface, brushes and a palette.
This class combines acrylics and a touch of oils and the background will be in acrylic with an oil overlay. The students will learn the process of using acrylics to simplify and speed up the painting process.
They will learn fur techniques on the fox. The background is an amazing technique to create wood grain on canvas and or wood using acrylic and oils. Students will take home a finished piece.
Heron: Painting with Oils
INSTRUCTOR: Janet Hockman
TO REGISTER: Contact Frank Rixey at 804-445-5131 or achillesheel2004@yahoo.com. Payment can be made at the door.
DETAILS: In this two-day class students will learn to create a background that is pleasant but not distractive in order to enhance the main subject. The students will learn the use of color theory and gradation of values throughout a composition to create an eye appealing piece.
This is a fantastic learning class for all levels or even beginners in oils. All materials and a paint palette and brushes for each student will be provided. Finished piece is 11 x 14.
• We will use a wet into wet oil technique to create and paint the Heron.
• Oil materials and products used will be explained.
• Feathering, and water techniques will be taught as well.
Students may bring paper towels. Class size is limited to 9 students.
TAG Exhibit | Catherine Kauffman
Women and Children: Moments in Time
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Catherine (Cate) Kauffman is a resident of the Northern Neck near Burgess. Growing up with an artistic Mother, it was natural for Cate to have a pencil or paintbrush in her hand. As a teenager she was selected along with a small group of her peers to study with the resident artists at the National Gallery of Fine Art and the National Portrait Gallery, and her love of portraiture evolved. She developed a great fondness for the compositions of Edgar Degas but loved the brushwork and palette of John Singer Sargent. She studied further at VCU, graduating from Radford College in Journalism. She is an accomplished painter also of still life, landscapes and paints en plein air.
Kauffman now teaches at the RAL Art Center in Kilmarnock and is a regular exhibitor there. She was in a two-artist show at the Stewart Gallery in May 2020. She has also had work featured in the Xanadu Art Gallery Catalog. Cate is a member of the Oil Painters of America and The Portrait Society of America. She has recently begun accepting commissions for private collectors. Please see her website at http://ckauffman.faso.com.
ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
“When invited to present a one-artist show here, I was thrilled to be asked specifically to present a show of figurative work. I believe that art should have a purpose of telling a story, not necessarily just be a pretty picture on the wall – although if it can do both, all the better. Figurative work does this in a way that is unique as it humanizes history. It tells its own truth.”
As she reflects on the historical and possible future restrictions on women and children, she feels privileged to have the life she has had. Her paintings in this show are snapshots of her life, her children’s life and the lives of friends and their families, telling a story of our society and revealing a level of truth in a way she hopes viewers will relate to.
Artist and art show juror, Susan Fisher, will provide an oil painting blending and value change demonstration for sky and water at Tappahannock Artists’ Guild gallery, Saturday July 9 at 10 am. There is a powerful blending technique for creating gradation in sky and water that Susan will teach us. She will discuss the way sky is generally darker at the top of the work and lighter near the horizon. More importantly, she will show you a good way to control that change in hue and value so that you can make it your own.
MEET THE JUROR
Susan M. Fisher
Art Painter, Artist, Teacher
With an impressionistic dance between sketch and realism, Susan M. Fisher paints dream images and realty. Focusing on the feeling of living, Susan creates many of her images from the mind’s eye, taking the viewer to places they have never been, but have likely felt. She has graciously agreed to serve as the Juror for the show.
Barbara Collins: The Artist At Work
At almost 96, Barbara M. Collins has painted across two centuries. An Orange County, Virginia resident, she has traveled the world and with her watercolors, she has explored its wonders and its secrets. “Once our children went away to college, my husband and I signed up for an oil painting class. I went on and took another class. And another.”
After raising four children, she was eager to travel. She combined that interest when she saw an advertisement for a five-week painting trip in Umbria, Italy. “We stayed in a former monastery, painted every other day, and toured the countryside. The teacher was from Bristol, Virginia. They drove us into the hills in a van to paint, complete with picnic lunches. At the end of the trip, they invited me to visit their daughter in Rome.”
La Romita was the first of a dozen painting trips where Collins learned how to convey light and shadows to evoke the unique character of a location by painting en plein air. “My favorite trip was Greece. Carolyn led two of those trips. A veteran of 20 years, she knew the islands and took us to tiny harbor towns.”
By that time, Collins’s paintings were being accepted into the Virginia Watercolor Society annual show. The third show acceptance results in your being honored as ‘an artist member’ of the association. Before each show opens, the juror describes her/his selections from slides. Collins remembers one juror’s comment about her painting of a friend’s Vermont house and orchard. “This painting is just pure, beautiful watercolor.”
“Once our children went away to college,
Barbara M. Collins
my husband and I signed up for an oil painting class.
I went on and took another class. And another.”
“I loved the group. No meetings, a week of classes before the annual show and one big awards banquet. My paintings were accepted for the shows at Virginia Tech, Bristol and Abingdon.”
Once Collins moved to Virginia, she worked as a school librarian. A founding member of the Central Virginia Watercolor Society, she prepared the newsletters and helped organize local shows. The group drew artists from the Harrisonburg and Charlottesville area.
A great fan of the Olympics, Collins traveled to five summer Olympics, including Moscow, Barcelona and Korea, where she began to create travel postcards as presents for friends and family.
In 2014, the Art Center in Orange published a book of her watercolor postcards that depicted Christmas scenes around the county, paintings that spanned her thirty years as a resident there.
Her paintings have won prizes in Harrisonburg and Fredericksburg. But Collins insists that the friendships from her painting career are the true gold. “Nancy Browning and I carried paintings in my little Subaru over to the Blue Ridge school shows. Millie Lane invited us to lunch and to paint by her pier at Lake of the Woods. Jean Dobie, a nationally recognized watercolorist, and I painted in Provence.” Collins describes those days as ‘work.’ “Jean wouldn’t even break for lunch. I would go and get us both sandwiches. She could paint two or three paintings a day and go back to the B & B and paint some more.”
Collins last painted with the Blue Ridge Artists in Culpeper, VA where her paintings sold in fundraising auctions for $350 to $600.
Because Collins celebrates her 96th birthday in June, the TAG show is priced to reflect her ‘downsizing’ of her home studio. Her framed paintings will be offered at $96 each and matted paintings at two for $96.
Still in her own home, planting tomato seeds and watching for bluebirds, she says she feels better than she’s ever felt. Behind her, her first heart attack lastAugust. Ahead, whatever adventure lies in store.
Her latest show opens at The Prince Street gallery in Tappahannock on Thursday May 26 with a reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and runs through July 5.