IAPS TWENTY-FOURTH JURIED EXHIBITION in Boston

Shades Grand River, Canada

14.5" x 18.5."

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Thanks to Liz Haywood-Sullivan and the IAPS organization for exhibiting this pastel in Boston, May 10-June 21, 2014.  Liz writes the following:

"Please Come to Boston in the Springtime" - Dave Loggins.

If you do be sure to see the 24th IAPS Juried Exhibition at Vose Galleries. The exhibition runs from May 10 through June 21. Vose Galleries has devoted all 5 floors to pastel! The two lower floors display over 30 antique pastels in a show called "Crystals of Pigment: the Power of Pastel, and the top three floors exhibit the 76 paintings from around the world that make up the IAPS exhibition. This is a must see show!

IAPS Exhibition

Vose Gallery

Thanks also to Claudia Seymour and Margaret Dyer, jurists.

ArtHamptons! July 11-14, 2013

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Start making plans for your road trip to The Hamptons, on Long Island, NY.  If you make it you'll get to see up to nine of my recent works, most of which are dated 2013. The Galerie LuCo, which is hosting my pastels, is anchored by the incredible glass sculptures of Marlene Rose. Also, see exciting mixed media pieces by Carolina Cleere.


Casey Klahn

ArtHamptons

Galerie LuCo (Booth #112)

Marlene Rose, of Galerie LuCo.

Bridgehampton, NY

Running on Fumes

I am still running on empty. What a season!

Also, I am happy to have readers visit from Katherine Tyrrell, and I hope she'll give us some of the attention that London has been getting. We've missed her regular posts over the summer.

I am getting ready for an exhibition in Spokane in October, and I'll tell you more about that soon. Also on the front burner will be getting back to daily posts at The Colorist Daily. I need to make sure what my inventory is, and do everything right more than immediately, if that makes sense.

See you soon.

Matisse Trail

Self Portrait, 1900
Ink on Paper
Henri Matisse

Via Adam Cope, of Dordogne Painting Days, is this gallery website: Le Domaine Purdu. The gallery is connected to (run by?) the last student of Matisse. I particularly enjoyed the Fauve works found in the Modern Art section.

T.A.D. - Top Artist's Directory

The Top 101 Artist's Blogs list has morphed into a new creation: the Top Artist's Directory, and it has gotten its own blog address.

Part of the motivation for Kim Barker's new list has been the instability at Technorati. Reading there is nowhere near as fun as it used to be, with the metrics swinging wildly around. Kim, of the Laketrees blog, exemplifies artistic generosity by freely linking many, many artist's blogs. Her own profile bears the fruit of this, giving her a large and loyal blog following. Way to go, Kim!



From international things to things local: my art will be up at the Karlson/Gray Gallery in Langley, Washington through the month of September. If you visit anytime, and don't see my work hanging, then ask to see it, and the gallery will be more than glad to bring out my pastels for your viewing.

Art Is As Art Does

The BBC has posted a shaggy review of Bob Dylan's fine art exhibition in Great Britain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7445327.stm

While I am more than happy to see actual art critique coming from a newspaper, it is difficult to take this one at face value. No wonder Bob Dylan has been shy to show his artwork. I think he knows it won't be a free ride, and it is inevitable that his paintings will be held up against his song writing and music-making talents as a comparative measure.

I have news: there is no comparison anywhere to Dylan's song writing. He is his own genre, and the word genius is certifiably and forever attached to him in the music world. Now, how does anyone, including the fine artist Bob Dylan, ever stand up to that?

The following vid has Dylan's work in print in a Scottish venue (small and new gallery).



Here we have a Welsh gallery opening, but the proprietor's word-rich interview almost puts the truth to the Beeb's negative spin.



Thanks to Katherine for keeping us up on the Bob Dylan art events.

Art Hanging in Langley

Be sure to take a day and visit The Karlson/Gray Gallery in Langley, WA this month. Don't wait for a sunny day, either. I enjoy the beach in the rain better than the big city, don't you?

Seattle Art Blog

Here is some exposure at the Seattle Art Blog which I bring to you a little late. But my art is still featured at the Karlson/Gray Gallery for the balance of the month.

January - Perspectives on the Landscape - Karlson/Gray Gallery

The Karlson/Gray Gallery, in the Seattle-area town of Langley, WA, is posting it's Perspectives on the Landscape exhibit. The hanging will be January 4-30, 2008.

The following blurb was posted at the KGG website:

Casey Klahn, of Davenport, WA is the invitational artist in the show. His pastel work focuses on a few intuitive color choices and simple, linear shapes. Other artists in the show include Michael Croman, Doug Ealley, Maryanne Gardener, James Hardman, Pete Jordan, Bruce Morrow, Cheri O’Brien, Karen Schroeder, and Beverly Shaw Starkovich.

Those who can make it will be in for a treat.

January Gallery Installation - Karlson/Gray

Light in Branches
21" x 13"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn

Those of you in close proximity to Whidbey Island, Washington, will be able to see an installation of my pastels in January. The newly remodeled Karlson/Gray Gallery has a blurb on it at this website. The gallery location is the former Gaskill/Olsen in Langley.

Karlson/Gray

I am happy to announce that I will be participating in a landscape exhibit at the Karlson/Gray Gallery in Langley, Washington in January of 2008.

The Karlson/Gray was formerly the Gaskill/Olsen, which enjoys a long and fine reputation in the Seattle & Puget Sound region. A noteworthy element of the Langley location is that it anchors the southern end of Whidbey Island and that area is an artist's colony. Perhaps the biggest in the state.

On a personal note, hanging next to my own work at the Karlson/Gray Gallery will be the oil paintings of Whidbey Island landscapes by Pete Jordan. Pete's work is well-known in our region, and I am having a hard time finding the words to say how fantastic it is. Let's just say incredible and top, top, top drawer. Further, Pete is a friend and mentor of mine since the days when I only dreamed of being a working artist. His advice and encouragement has been a tremendous boost for me, and now he's going to have to suffer hanging with me at his home gallery. I am humbled.

Also, his spouse Joan Govedare is a Raku Potter whose work is featured at the Karlson/Gray, and over the years I have bugged/volunteered with Joannie at the Bellevue Art Fair and other venues. Those were the days when I wondered "how do you break into these art fairs?" Both hers and Pete's art grace our own home, and so I am happy that we'll get to be in a show together. A milestone for me.

Did I mention that you will (probably) have to ride the ferry to get there?

Karlson/Gray, 302 First Street in Langley on Whidbey Island.

Helen Frankenthaler

Photo: Lieberman, Alexander

Here is a link to a new exhibition of one of my Abstract Expressionists, Helen Frankenthaler. It's at the Ameringer-Yohe Gallery currently.

Her school of art was known by some as Post Painterly Abstraction. Whatever. She painted in New York, she knew Jackson Pollock, she studied with Hans Hofmann, end of story. I will still place her in Abstract Expressionism, at least until I write my doctoral thesis on schools of art.

The following wisdom from Frankenthaler should be burned in your heart if you want to be an artist who paints well and freely:

"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." (In Barbara Rose, Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1975, p. 85)

I will not post any paintings of hers, since she still holds rights to them. Here is some link love about the master:

CONNECTED BY JOY, 1967-70, via the Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle.
Wikipedia entry on HF.
Googleography (my own word for a list of books on Google).
What amounts to a resume on HF at World Wide Art Resources.
Bio from the NGA.

Art of This Century

What I Bought Myself in Seattle

After reading a very interesting post on Rothko, links and all, I am getting more and more Rothko-ized by the day. Because I want to create a few really excellent posts, I'll be taking a little time to write them well. Be patient, dear readers.

In the meantime, I'd like to share with you the recent addition to my art library:
Peggy Guggenheim & Frederick Kiesler, The Story of Art of This Century, by Davidson, Rylands, editors. Link. AOTC was the famous gallery that Peggy Guggenheim established in the Forties and where she was instrumental in launching the careers of many (if not all) of our Abstract Expressionists. Kiesler was the architect of the far out gallery space that became a hang-out for the avant-garde of the art world.

I had the strange experience of (unknowingly) visiting the location of the famous gallery at 20 West 57th Street in NYC. The actual place (Washburn Gallery ?) is a story or two above the Ameringer-Yohe Gallery, where I went to pay hommage to Wolf Kahn's pastels. During the same trip I bought a book at the MoMa that identified the location's place in history, and I thought about the serendipity of my chance visit.

Gallery Run

On Monday, after the fair, I did a gallery "run" through downtown Seattle. It's like a gallery walk, only a lot faster.

I'll let you know what I saw a little later. Of course, I had to duck the flying fish!

Edmonds Arts Festival

Pink Forest
7.3" x 5.3"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn

This work, Pink Forest, has been juried in to the Edmonds, Washington Arts Festival Gallery. The festival, where I will also have an outdoor booth, is in it's Fiftieth year. The scenic city of Edmonds anchors one of the numerous ferry lines in the Puget Sound region.


If you would like to get an early look at the Gallery installation, the Preview Party provides the opportunity:

EDMONDS ARTS FESTIVAL PREVIEW PARTY
We are inviting patrons to preview and purchase art in the Juried Gallery by attending the Edmonds Arts Festival Preview Party on Thursday June 14th. Over 600 loyal patrons of the arts attend this event, which includes dinner, drinks, and entertainment. For more information contact Edmonds Arts Festival Juried Gallery email: festivalgallery@comcast.net.

See this blog for my outdoor booth number when the information becomes available.

Process Sketch - Italy

Bell Tower Process Sketch
Casey Klahn

Since I missed the Wolf Kahn pastel workshop in Manhattan, I decided to "channel" him through this sketch. He makes these squiggly lines with unpredictable colors, you see. The end result, though, is a rather built up set of layers, and an expressionist landscape that pleases the eye.
In fact, I have never done one like this, and when I finished it, I said: "How did I do that? It looks like a Wolf Kahn!" I guess it goes to the "seeing" operation. If you look hard enough, and long enough at art that you like, it will find its way down your arm and out your hand, eventually.
I couldn't be happier.
Another factor is the sketch paper. I'm used to working on (expensive) Wallis Museum stock, or Sennelier La Carte, both of which are sanded heavy stock. The regular laid paper allows the sketchy look.
The big difference between a WK and my own pastels (besides about $2,000) is that he is a little more interested in the scene, or nature, than I. He uses pastels as a drawing tool, and I make a finished painting. Indeed, I visualize WK's Oil Paintings when I make my Colorist American Landscapes.
I wrote somewhere in a comment (probably Tracy Helgeson's blog) that I made the effort to go see Kahn's art at the Ameringer-Yohe in New York, while I was in transit to Italy last summer.
I was rewarded with a ring bound catalog of their last Wolf Kahn pastel show. And, I had to suffer through the assistant (not the main staff person, who was top notch) describing the artist's layer build-up as probably done in oil pastel. (steam coming from my ears, here)
Back to my drawing. I also played a lot with the colors, by building up as many layers as the cheap paper would take. I was thinking of van Gogh's Auvers church, and looking for a complex of colors for the main building and tower. I was thinking of his letter where he describes the pink road in his painting.

Van Gogh, The Self-Taught Artist

I forward this very interesting piece from Alyson's blog, by the gallerist Paul Dorrell who speaks to artist's about career moves.
He has a nifty view of the self-taught artist, which I quote:
"As a dealer, I’m always most interested in what an artist is creating now, and in what they’ve created in the past. I don’t even care if they’re self-taught, so long as the work is exceptional. Besides, 'self-taught' can place an artist in some very good company, beginning with that tortured Dutchman. "
VG may have "typed" us artists with some bad perceptions, but I don't mind that one, as I am 98% self-taught myself.
Happy Valentine's Day to all of my loyal readers, and to those who arrived by happenstance.