In The Summertime

 High Branches

@8" x 10"

Pastel & Charcoal

Casey Klahn

Excuse me for having nice weather, while I know many of you are suffering under extreme heat.  I count my blessings. 


I made an extra effort to work on my plein air at the lake this year.  


I'll try to photograph the handful of pastels I completed over the holiday, and post them here, soon.  Happy vacations, everyone.


Bob Dylan has something to say about summertime, too.

Go To Market

You Must Find Your Market.

Sometimes you have to push yourself to market in a cart, so strong is the inertia defending the marketplace from you. I find this especially true in the summer, when family, chores, and focus on art-making occupy my time.


Here are some great links for art marketing to get you revved-up.


What Are You Really Selling?, Cindy Haase.
Daily Paintworks, Carol Marine.
Art Biz Blog, Alyson Stanfield.
Marketing Mondays, Joanne Mattera.
The Painter's Keys, Robert Genn.

Photo attribution lost, sorry.

Palettes

Arthur Buxton

"Colour Trend Visualisation, 

each chart represents an individual painting with the five most prominent colours shown proportionally."

Degas, Matisse, Gauguin.

The limit of this is that all color is relative, but the idea is a knockout.  Love it!

Cool Blogs You Haven't Seen

Maybe you have seen them.  But for those who have not, they are recommended.

The Limited Palette Workshop, by H. Edward Brooks.
Atelier LaRose, by Steven LaRose.  Formerly Fish or Cut Bait.
pastelnews at Tumblr, by Mario Vuklic.
Buckwheat.  A father & son bluegrass duo.  Jetta Smith.
For the Color, by Ken Elliott.
Sarah Peroutka Studios, by  Sarah Peroutka.

Two Artists

Have a look at these two artists.


Forrest Moses
Raimonds Staprans

Pinterest

art

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art vids

casey klahn art

master artists

totem

books

Late Sanguine

Late Sanguine

8.25" x 18"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

See this at Arbor Crest Thursday night.

Framing Canola

Informal Record

Canola Yellow

7.5" x 9.5"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Fathers and History

Link
My Grandfather, Max Klahn, is the young boy pictured @ the top right. See a story about him below. Next to him at his left are Henry, my Great Grandfather and Charlotte, my Great Grandmother. Location: Quillayute Prairie, WA. Date: 1895. This remote place is about the rainiest spot in the US, and less than 5 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. And we love it there.

Father's Day is a time that I choose to remember my fore-bearers.  

Grandpa Max and Grandma Anna homesteaded in the land that time forgot, the Olympic Peninsula.  Think Twilight, only without the amenities.  By no amenities, I mean no electricity.  Did I mention no road, either?  Max hiked the Olympic beach to get to work during the Great Depression, which was a hundred miles plus a little.  The Indians rafted him across the rivers he couldn't ford.  He worked in the logging and port towns of Hoquiam and Aberdeen.

Max and Anna had 13 children, and the seven brothers all went off to war.  My father, Kenneth K. Klahn, saw heavy combat in Italy, as a member of the famous Tenth Mountain Division, US Army.  

Together with my maternal grandfather, my father, brother and I worked in the woods when I was four years old.  Did I say I worked?  Of course, I played.

Today, we honor my father-in-law who passed away Thursday.  He was a wheat farmer, and a WW II veteran.  He could outwork five oversized men half his age, and feed the world while he was at it.  You cannot replace him, which is a fact.

Father's Day is Sunday.  A local point of pride is the fact that Father's Day was invented in 1910, in Spokane, WA,  by Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd.  It is good to remember our fathers.

Matisse on Color

1953

I just ordered a book of essays by and about Henri Matisse.  This quote is from the essay, The Role and Modalities of Color, 1945.

Tip-Toe This Line

This critique of my work offers some insight into the lines I try to straddle.

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Keep your ear to the ground and your heart in a safe place, you never know when you'll find yourself wandering...

                                      

   Coming into form, Casey Klahn's art strives to join the abstract with the ingenuity of landscape detail. You could say he tip-toes this line with ease, when in reality a line remains to be seen. The human eye is trained to view things which manifest in our hearts.

   The overall feel (of Klahn's art) refuses to be labeled with simple adjectives, rather wishes to be defined by thought patterns and feelings adapted into emotion. Keep your ear to the ground and your heart in a safe place, you never know when you'll find yourself wandering...

   This is a place where man has seldom come. The forest's age is conveyed with dynamic precision. The balance...would have to be its best quality. With just the right amount of color where it needs to be, you really get a sense of how much control the artist has with the instruments at his disposal.


   When it comes down to it, Casey Klahn's artwork has a mood all its own. The notion to single out a central theme or idea works against him in many cases, requiring his viewers to dig deep within themselves to try and identify a hidden meaning in many of his works.

   The human mind is only as open and deep as we make it, and Casey thrives on exploiting those pits which open in the deepest and darkest corners. This is what makes him such a proliferate artist and will continue to profile him for years to come.

Terry Gildow

There is a reception Friday, 5-9 PM at the Life Center Clearstory Gallery.  Color & Expression Now. (509)327-4422  

1202 N. Government Way, Spokane WA 99224.

Reception Friday Night

Clearstory Gallery

Spokane, WA

Friday, June 8th. 5-9PM

Color & Expression Now

Color & Expression Now at The Clearstory Gallery, Spokane

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Clearstory Gallery, Spokane. June 8th.

Absalom Shade & Galt in the Rain

The name Absalom Shade sounds like a character Johnny Depp might play in a movie, but he was actually a city father in southern Ontario.  The eighteenth-century founder of Shade's Mill would be proud of this singularly beautiful little hamlet today.  Part of Cambridge, and now called Galt, it is also the location where I taught my workshop this past weekend.  My full report will follow soon.

Galt in the Rain

8" x 10"

Pastel

Casey Klahn 

The Grand River in one-time Shade's Mill.

Pastel Studio, Canada

Galt

Absalom Shade

Cambridge, Ontario

At The Pastel Studio of Canada

Large workshop space!

I am pleased and proud to be teaching at Canada's exclusive purveyor of high-end pastel materials, The Pastel Studio of Canada, in Cambridge, ON.  You will find Diane Townsend and Roche open stocks and sets, just to mention two of the brands carried.

Yesterday I set up the space for my workshop, and took a short break to walk around beautiful, old Cambridge and Galt, with its Scottish stone-mason built structures and the river.  Of course it rained like mad, and yet I took an old fold of paper and a pencil and did up some proper sketches as references to paint.  Back in the studio, with the proprietor Edward, I created a pastel scene of Galt in the Rain.

Galt in the Rain

@8" x 10"

Pastel on Lava Grit, Mounted

Casey Klahn

Pastel Studio, Canada

Pastel Studio Art Supplies

I'll be at the Pastel Studio shop in Ontario, Canada,  this weekend.  The See Differently workshop participants will be making new art - never seen before in the history of the world.  It is a thrilling experience for me, and I am always inspired by these classes.

You may see a report via iPhone, but otherwise I won't have my laptop with me on this trip.  See you soon.

Pastel Studio

Workshops

Carole Buschmann - WBM!

Time for another important episode of When Bloggers Meet!  Here are Carole Buschmann, who blogs at Color Creates, and myself. We have followed each other's blogs for a long time. She was one of several bloggers who participated in my Denver See Differently workshop, taught two weeks ago.


As you can see, there really are people at the other end of the inter-tunnel, and it is wonderful to actually meet.  My previous WBM post was here.


I dug around for that Starbucks cup in Denver, but it was just a prop.  

Memorial Day

It was a tremendous honor to participate in creating this memorial at Ft Logan Cemetery, Denver. This is dedicated to the men of the Tenth Mountain Division (including my dad) who fought in WW II. I was privileged to render the climber and the mountains seen in the granite and the marble faces of the stone. Presented in 2009, it is a place to honor our fathers who had the task of seizing one island in the Aleutian chain, and countless mountain redoubts in north Italy. My dad remembered that the German bunkers were also cast into granite mountains; the major ones had walls 200 feet thick!


Photo: Ken Elliott.

Canola Field Trip

It's too bad I don't have any subject matter around here to paint.  Just joking.  I have been trying to get out and paint these canola fields in May for nine years, and finally made the effort.

Pastels Available, unframed.  $500 each/ $900 both.

When Bloggers Meet - Cynthia Haase

Cindy Haase & I meet at the Denver Workshop

This edition of When Bloggers Meet is brought to you by the talented artist Cynthia Haase & myself.  There were four of us blog-heads there, and we caused much of the trouble that occurred.  

Cynthia Haase Fine Art

What Are You Really Selling?

Cynthia's Blog

Editor's note:  In spite of the presence of three Starbucks cups in this photo, DO NOT go to Denver looking for Starbucks.  They are few and far between.  Sorry to be so brutal, Denver, but...

Author's note: There is no editor.

Demo in Denver

I Demo in Denver

At the last minute while packing for the trip to Denver, my new grays arrived on the doorstep: Thunderstorm grays and a set of gray Diane Townsend Terrages!  I didn't really need them, but I opened up my luggage and crammed them in - I wanted the "jazz" that comes with getting really yummitudinous sticks.  I felt that energy going into my demos, and really had fun making three pictures for the class.  This big violet one sold, but I was the most jazzed by another one that depicted the urban energy of Denver metro.

Denver Metro on the easel

@ 7" x 9"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Denver Workshop Report

Take the oath to paint your best

My student artists had a great time at the Denver workshop this weekend learning about painting and having fidelity to their own ideas.  I enjoyed seeing them creating pastels and paintings that were new and fresh.

In Denver, With a Trivia Question

Me posing in front of a Robert Motherwell.  He & I share one thing that few people know about.  Can you guess what that is?

The Denver workshop, See Differently-Authenticity & Your Art, is all set to go this weekend, and I am enjoying a visit with my host, Ken Elliott.

I will report back here, soon.

Multi Tree

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Multi Tree

7" x 4.5"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Forest Glen

Forest Glen

4.5" x 5"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Dusk Horizon

Dusk Horizon

3.75" x 9.75"

Pastel on la Carte

Casey Klahn

Simplicity.

Be self-limiting.

Work fast.

Don't think! See!

Re-imagined Plein Air

Forest Interior

@5" x 5"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

The Subject Bucket List

Violet Mountain

3.5" x 3.75"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

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Because of my personal history with the mountains and mountaineering, it has been my hip-pocket goal to do a series of alpine scenes. I wonder when I'll start that project?

Currently I am working on Bainbridge Island scenes, and have begun to do barn interiors.  About a year ago I started the shoulders of the butte series.  Then, the Hoquiam River series is ongoing. Also on my plate for the near term are some plein air works.  Oh, don't forget Italy - I am revisiting my old Italy pastels to re-imagine them, and also pouring over old photos I took there.  The other day I took a "drive around" the Florentine hills via Street View, and might try to do some practice works from that.  Then, there is my return to doing figures.

Do I have enough subject matter to work with?

Munch's Scream Speaks Loudly

Follows is a re-posting of my essay on The Artist's Ideas, illustrated by The Scream, Edward Munch.

Edvard Munch
The Scream, 1893
o/c, tempera & pastel

A work of art can't be questioned or dismissed. Saul Bellow.

The obscure word ethos has a different meaning today than it did seventy years ago, and it has traveled a malleable path since the days of Aristotle. Whereas, today, it is a corporate creed, it formerly held a deeper meaning. Pre-war artists owned the word - it was the artist's ethos. My 1936 Webster's dictionary has the following:

Webster: From the Greek, ethos, ἔθος, character. The moral, ideal or universal element in a work of art as distinguished from that which is emotional in its appeal or subjective.

How do the artist's ideas exhibit themselves in an artwork? Is it important for an artist to express an ethos through the making of art?

We have been considering The Artist's Ideas, with these previous posts:
Have Ideas
Quotes - The Artist's Ideas
The Inner Meaning
The Artist's Ideas
Paint Better Now


The Artist's Ethos.

The Greeks saw ethos as the first proof of debate, and it had to do with trusting the moral competence of the rhetorician.Fast-forward to our concerns and the artist's ethos. Let's unpack the definitions of moral, ideal and universal elements.

The Moral Function of Art.
Webster describes a moral element in a given artwork, which is, by definition, an illumination of right or wrong. As concerns the formal parts of art, there is no right or wrong. "There is no must in art because art is free," Wassily Kandinsky. So, we are left with artworks that reveal a moral quality intended by the artist, such as in the case of Sacred Art. See below some artworks that reveal strong moral qualities in a broader context. See The Sistine Chapel for Sacred Art.

John Dewey said that “Art is more moral than moralities.” Artist and blogger Katherine A. Cartwright is reading Dewey's important 1934 book, Art as Experience, and hosting a community discussion on The Moral Function of Art. See here, here and here, and remember to read the comment fields.

Here is the "see below." For my part of the discussion at Katherine's blog, I have been illustrating the moral function of art by identifying individual artworks that I see as strong moral forces in the canon of Western art. Blogger/artist Linda W. Roth had the idea first, and she chose Edward Munch's The Scream for its moral content. I think she's right on with that, and I thought of Andrew Wyeth's Groundhog Day, and Willem deKooning's Woman 1. These artworks are linked below.

The following opens a window into Dewey's thinking: Art is morally powerful because it is indifferent to moral praise and blame (loosely quoted). Do you agree?

Ideals - The Artist's Ideas.

Notice that the Websters definition relates to a work of art, and not the group known as artists. My understanding of "the ideal" is that an artwork must, to be true to the artist's ethos, reflect his ideas. See these quotes on The Artist's Ideas.

Universal Elements.

Art is a universal mode of language. John Dewey. Philosophers will tell you that language is wanting in descriptive power - it falls short of expressing what man is able to think. Art is a huge bridge in "speaking" to mankind aught words.


Edvard Munch, The Scream.
Andrew Wyeth, Groundhog Day.
Willem de Kooning, Woman 1.




Ethos at Wikipedia.
John Dewey, Art As Experience.

Inversion Dusk

Inversion Dusk

5.25" x 7.8"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

This was one of my demos at Morristown, New Jersey.  I resolved it at home in the studio.

Riva del Garda: Car, Street Sign, Sunshine and People

Looking South in Riva

10.25" x 7.25"

Pastel

Casey Klahn