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Written by Melanie Reese
Apr 21st, 2020 • 9 minute read
Apr 21st, 2020 • 9 minute read
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The Weekly Curation: WFH Blues
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This week, artist and curator Mel Reese has brought together a group of Art in Res pieces to help you through those WFH Blues you might be experiencing these days. Mel explores the complexities of the color blue to remind us that “blue” might be the perfect antidote to feeling blue. From a bright cloudless sky to a cool swimming pool on a summer day to the soothing subtly of a blue undertone, objectively, we have to say, it’s one of the best colors. We find ourselves repeating the same words to describe these blue tones: flickering, comforting, soothing, bright, vibrant, and playful. A spectrum of things that are just nice to feel.
Though you may already have art populating your home, it’s exciting to envision new pieces being added, how they interact as a whole - and to imagine your own budding curated collection of fine art! While Mel envisions how each piece works in a different space, scroll through the post to see how they all come together in a thoughtful, coalescent collection, and read Mel’s tips on how to curate your own.
Like calm water on a hot day, let’s dive into these blues!
The Soothing Blue
If you’re lucky enough to be stuck at home with a tub, you know "blue" water is the ultimate salve to our everyday woes. Water as a subject in art is clean, refreshing, and inviting, just like your bathtub. With this piece, we find comfort and reminiscence in the familiarity of this blue in the soothing coolness of a swimming pool. The piece is relaxing, like a hazy nap on a sleepy summer day. Soaking in the tub, you can almost imagine yourself on a green lawn, swimming pool ready to dive into. You can feel the familiar warmth of the summer scene depicted, with the styled blue umbrella, chairs, and pool inviting us into the world, waiting for us to jump cannon-ball style into the water.
Artist Ella Yang, a first-generation Korean American and native New York, is a mostly self-taught painter based in Brooklyn, NY. Ella takes great pleasure in the traditional method of oil painting, especially working “en plein air”, i.e. on site with a portable easel (when the world allows). When Ella is not roaming the streets of Brooklyn or traveling to beautiful swimming pools, you can find her working in her studio near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.
The Vibrant Blue
The origin of the“blueprint”, a Cyanotype, is a beautiful process that focuses on both subject and form simultaneously, in the titular color of blueprints. Viewing this gorgeous piece we are reminded of the work of artist Myron Stout as we see the mastery of soft geometry. The emphasis in Stout’s work is on composition of the piece, in relation to form and edge, creating flickers and vibrations. Stout said of his work,
“For the painting comes to life for me in the vibration, so to speak, of the heights and depths of the texture. Vibration of this sort is like light flickering on an ocean’s scalp, you see the surface but feel the swell. Painting a pulse does not require any particular mode of handling or even image; it requires awareness.”
Combining this vision with the craft of the Cyanotype, we see Ella Barnes’s work. The variation of vibrant blue tones in the piece allows us to float through the surface of the work, seemingly lulling us into calm. The oblong forms overlap is gentle to view, almost soothing, yet the piece also breeds excitement. It’s bold, tension where two forms barely touch, where the two colors meet makes the image seem to vibrate with new vivacity. There’s so much to see, so much to feel just in these shades of blue.
Ella Barnes is a multimedia artist based in New York City. Through the cyanotype process, Barnes combines drawing with photography, interchangeably interrogating dichotomies of concept and matter. Barnes finds inspiration in the moments where medium leads the creation of composition. Her work navigates that idea of seeing as feeling.
The Familiar Blue
A pure blue sky is something we all crave right now. With the simplicity of laying on the grass at a city park, watching the clouds slowly float by, seems unimaginable. Justin Shull’s piece is a direct portal to a memory of lightness, just like that, of airy openness, of familiar, easier days. The piece is timeless, presented without season. The bright blue sky reminds us to enjoy those sunny days - to breathe deep fresh air when we can. The flecks of golden warmth within the clouds remind us there is often warmth in the blue sky, both physically and mentally. Even on a cloudy day, we know the sunny blue sky is there, waiting for us, hidden behind the fog, always shining. No matter what, that blue sky awaits and comforts us.
Justin Shull finds inspiration for his bright landscapes and beautiful skies in nature and home. His paintings are as much about the world we make as they are about the world that makes us. Shull is especially interested in the interaction between the build environment and its geography, trees and plants, and in the quality of light and color unique to each location. He works in a variety of media, including oil paint, gouache, acrylic, and digital, on a range of surfaces from traditional linen to wood panels, aluminum, and even handmade paper.
The Blanket Blue
Comforted by the presence of a human face, we take in this piece and its sea of blues. The figure is enveloped in the rich shades, like a comforting blanket of cool tones. As curators, we become bonded to the figures we hang on our walls, developing relationships with them. We have an internal banter with these faces and a reliance that they will always be right where we left them. The brushstrokes of this piece are active, guiding the eye away from the face, and bringing us beyond the familiar to enjoy the moments of expressive abstraction simultaneously. Peeking out from the chaotic, we read the words, “I feel it coming.” As a viewer, we are left to interpret these words. In these strange and trying times, they can be comforting, a promise of something we feel only in our gut. Better times, we hope, are just on the horizon, just beyond the blue brushstrokes.
Artist Arthur Banach writes about his work, “I paint rappers, that part is easy to share. I love Hip Hop, that’s an expected side dish. I care less about realism and constantly question the emotion of my canvas. I treat rappers no longer as icons, but as reflections of my struggle with mental health. I take George Condo’s psychological cubism into account during the portrait’s construction, focusing on the energy of the rapper’s flow. My work is concerned with my own personal journey understanding my mental health, through the music of rappers who’ve laid their psyche out in surgical theatre.” Amen, Arthur.
The Grounding Blue
Take a deep breath, planting both your feet on the floor. Think about your home, the foundation and earth beneath, the familiar texture of the carpet. Ground yourself and take in the work. Within this piece, Jacqueline highlights the importance of subtle undertones, layered in a textural painting like this. The subtle grey-blue base grounds the piece and us as viewers. The base creates a depth to the piece since as viewers we “read” cool colors as further away from us and warmer colors closer. That’s why the piece is reminiscent of the sky or fog or a snowstorm on the horizon. The grey-blue also allows the warm white to pop, highlighting the delicious texture we almost want to run our hands across. The purple, flickering throughout, helps highlight the texture as well. We are reminded of Justin Shull’s sky and clouds, remembering the warm gold floating atop the stable base of blue and purple.
Jacqueline Ferrante is a Brooklyn-based painter. Ferrante’s work stems from her acute fascination with surfaces often overlooked in our natural and urban environments, as we can envision in this piece. With the use of paint, concrete and other building materials, she creates sculptural paintings that mimic these surfaces and call up nostalgia, ephemera, and the dichotomy between beauty and imperfection. Her paintings rely on themselves - on time and all the elements taking hold of them.
The Playful Blue
Throughout all of this, don’t forget to have fun. Even as a cool color, blue can be hot. The bright playfulness of the cyan blue colored hills within this piece are striking, paired with the wheat colored sky. It seems to emulate light from within. The pink tree blooms reminds us of spring, a season of growth, rebirth, and rejuvenation, which we are all currently experiencing. The napping figure is nestled between the floating blue hills and inspires us to relax in our environment, taking in our solitude with ease and intimacy. The sculptural blue celestial body in the sky sits three-dimensionally on the piece’s surface, making the work feel playful in its use of strategic simplicity. It reminds us of childhood, puddy we used to shape, crafting our own mini sculptures. When we’re young, we engage with art directly, always thinking with our hands, physically not just visually. We think of simpler times, emulated by the napping figure in comfort, ease, and joy.
Max Sarmiento is a mixed-media artist based in Queens, New York. He creates paintings that occupy space like sculpture in which he shares intimate moments of his dual Ecuadorian and American upbringing. Self taught, Sarmiento’s work includes a variety of materials such as fabric, glass, paper, paint and wood.
Bringing it Together
On curating the collection: As we ramp up this week’s curated selections, I wanted to talk about what I consider when bringing together a collection. This will cover the basics for all collectors, both experience and new to the game, as we discuss what we can consider when viewing art. I am excited to share this week’s perspective!
Color: Well, this week that’s obvious - every piece explores a single color, blue. And yet, as we can see viewing the pieces together, each artwork explores a completely different variation. Across varying shades and hues of just one color, we see a unique vision from each artist. Blue is a “strong” color; it dominates our visual environment, enriching our home environment. It is also considered a universally “cool” color, but, as evidenced by Max Sarmiento’s piece, there’s always variety. We can play with the “hot” undertones of blue as well.
Mood: This is a big theme for this week’s curation. While we talk about “having the blues” we often imply that blue is inherently a sad color, but, as evidenced by our collection, that isn’t always true. Like all colors and all artists, blue is complex! It evokes cool summer memories, cold winter moments, soothing environments, and, as I said, even warmth.
Materials: To add variety to the selection and your home collection, I’ve included works crafted with a variety of materials. Each piece in this group was created with a different material. Through that variety, united by a shade of blue, each piece works together as a curated selection.
Size and scale: Every piece in this week’s selection ranges from medium to small in size. This scale feels more intimate, more appropriate for today’s theme and palette. Blue’s visual strength as a color can become overwhelming in larger sizes. In smaller scale pieces, you can be drawn in close to the piece, developing an intimacy in the physical relationship between artwork and viewer.
Subject matter: As with my last collection, you can see all kinds of subject matter in these pieces, from quiet landscape to total abstraction - just the way I like it! Always remember, don’t be afraid to mix up figurative, narrative, still life, and abstract in your home collection. Staying in our homes full time, we crave variety in our art more than ever. In this selection, all the works interact with one another in unexpected, but rewarding ways. We view individual pieces differently when they are put into a collection; we may develop a new appreciation for Arthur Banach’s abstracted figure when paired with Ella Yang’s cool poolside scene. Each piece utilizes a similar palette to communicate a very different view.
With these new viewing tools in hand, happy collecting!
Curated by Mel Reese
Zhuzh by Emily Berge