Margret E Short Fine Arts Blog

PRESS RELEASE

Dear Friends,

For the past year, I have been grinding the world's most precious minerals and replicating historic pigments to capture the "bling" in the canvases from the age of Rembrandt. My inspirations were eleven specific 17th-century Dutch paintings, from which I have appropriated the color palettes for each of my own Dutch Master homages.

These works will be exhibited in the nearby Lawrence Gallery as "Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art" opens at the Portland Art Museum. I think you will find it fun and fascinating to compare my colors to the inspiration paintings. All of the inspiration paintings along with my paintings will be posted on the blog in a few days.

A full press release is below. I encourage you to forward it to anyone you think might be interested, including organizations. Feel free to post it on your blog, or web site or in your newsletter.

I look forward to seeing you at the exhibit opening on June 7, 6-9pm. Thank you for all the support and wonderful comments posted over the past many months.

Best Regards,
Margret Short
5322 SE Hull Avenue
Milwaukie, Oregon 97267
Lessons from the Low Countries
Lawrence Gallery
June 1 - 30, 2007
903 NW Davis
503-228-1776
Portland, Oregon
www.lawrencegallery.net
www.margretshort.com

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW PAINTINGS BY MARGRET E. SHORT
REMBRANDT'S BLING REVEALED IN AN AMUSING GAME OF SEEK-AND-FIND

Portland, Oregon, May 20, 2007-For the last year, Portland artist Margret E. Short has been eating with, laboring side-by-side, and dreaming about Rembrandt and other Dutch masters. In particular, she has been studying the historic pigments they used and introducing them into her work. If she were any closer to her inspirations, people would start whispering. However, that probably would not deflect her mission.

Short's splendid series of still-life paintings, "Margret E. Short: Lessons from the Low Countries," opens at Portland's Lawrence Gallery on June 1 and runs through June 30. Each work is inspired by the color palette of a select painting in the exhibit "Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art," which opens one day later at the Portland Art Museum. Reproductions of the Dutch inspiration paintings will be exhibited alongside Short's finished works, which are finished with detailed of Dutch period reproduction frames. Viewers will enjoy participating in the artist's visual amusements. Not only are the colors reproduced, Short has also quoted, quite accurately, sections of each original work in each homage. It's a game of seek-and-find.

Not content with contemporary colors, Short replicated the 17th-century pigments of the inspiration paintings for this collection by hand-grinding each mineral. Her blog, www.margretshort.typepad.com, has documented the meticulous study of the ancient hues. Luscious colors with magical names like lapis lazuli, cinnabar, and azurite are the focus of each bountiful still life. Delighted with her discoveries, Short says, "There is no comparison to the handling qualities of the modern pigments. Everything about the handmade historic pigments is different from the modern: particle size, thickness, consistency, color, saturation, and on and on."

Throughout the creation of the paintings, Short's exhaustive research led to unexpected findings. Among her favorites is the word "pronk," which she associates with today's "bling." While it isn't often featured in contemporary painting, bling was abundant in The Netherlands of the 17th Century. It was a prosperous society and the center of world trade. Diamond cutting, book publishing, textile manufacturing, shipbuilding, fishing, and banking were among a growing number of trades that flourished. The Dutch merchants bartered their goods for imported spices, paper, silk, wine, olive oil and countless other items that enriched their burgeoning economy. There was plenty of bling to go around!

With expanded patronage, art flourished in this environment. Artists flaunted their abilities to capture reflective precious metals, sparkling jewels, and luscious flora. Short, who is well known for her attention to delicate lace, has done the same thing in the 21st Century. Each canvas is saturated with enough bling to make Short a legitimate heir to a longstanding tradition. 

Margret Short has exhibited her work throughout the United States and beyond, including the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana; the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the  Weatherburn Gallery in Naples, Florida. She is the recipient of two coveted Salmagundi Club Awards, the Grumbacher Gold Medallion, and many other national honors. She is also a Signature member of the Oil Painters of America, American Women Artists, and the Copley Society.

An opening reception for "Margret E. Short: Lessons from the Low Countries" will be held during First Thursday Gallery Walk night on Thursday, June 7 from 6 to 9 p.m.

The Lawrence Gallery is located at 903 N.W. Davis Street in Portland, Oregon. It is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. More information is available at www.lawrencegallery.net or by calling 503-228-1776.

For more information, please contact Margret E. Short at 503-652-2749 or mshortfineart@aol.com.
-END-

Performance Peaked

Performance Peaked! Final painting #11 revealed. Watch for all eleven images along with the Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art exhibit inspiration paintings in a few days.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has graciously given me permission to post the images here on the blog,  and publish them in an exhibit catalog.

Finish Line

                     The Dutch artist, Michiel van Musscher, painted Michael Comans, Calligrapher, Etcher, which is the source painting for number eleven in the Lessons from the Low Countries series. Musscher, 1645-1705, trained in Amsterdam and received instruction from non other than Gabriel Metsu, a personal favorite. Metsu painted The Hunter’s Present, my inspiration for #3 of this series.

                    This 24x28 painting of Michael Comans was one in a series of ten paintings depicting artists in their studios. In addition to Comans and his wife, Elisabeth, the scene is filled with tools of the trade: easel, paintings, frames, paint filled palettes, etching and calligrapher habiliments, books, and other items.

                   The color theme used here perfectly illustrates the beauty of a subtle limited palette. Musscher used only tiny bits of pure bright hues here and there, the red flowers on the sill, the underside of the seat cushion, and a few objects on the taboret. I tried to replicate that idea by using reds in my bouquet, scarf, and a few warm tones in the grapes. Warm wood tones are carried out in the scarf and book, which echoes the wood tones in Musscher’s wood palette, stool, and easel. The warm tones balance the background cool greens.

                   This light/dark theme was an auspicious use of my conveniently blooming dogwood and suited number 11’s composition perfectly. This final painting in my Lessons from the Low Countries series measures 20x16, and is another still life/floral theme.

Pins and Needles

Tension is mounting! Painting #10.  Only one more to reveal, and the Lessons from the Low Countries series is complete. As you can see it grew from the original 10 to 11 paintings which are now all completed, photographed, documented, and will be posted here in a few days. It is amazing how many chores must be done at this late date, and I am trying to wade through all of them. Announcements, blog entries, last minute lists, framing, labels, and I am still documenting much of the painting and historic process while still fresh in my mind. I have filled notebooks already and more to go.

Watch for the final messages coming out this week, press releases, and other information.

Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art opens one week from today, June 2 at the Portland Art Museum. Very exciting!

Rembrandt, Oysters, and Pronkstillevens

Many artists’ names in this Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art exhibit are not familiar like Rembrandt’s, but they are masters in their own right, non-the-less. This is true of Abraham Mignon, the painter of Still Life with Fruit and Oysters and is the source piece for #10 in my series.

Mignon’s canvas, filled with flowers, ribbons, sheet music, a sweeping curtain, and fruits and vegetables still on the vine, is a “pronkstillevens”, a sumptuous still life.  It is also loaded with goblets, elaborate stemware, a roehmer, oysters, a silver platter, and tassels.

This is one of those typical large Dutch still life paintings seen often in most museums. Many in this style have very muted colors, grays and umbers. Mignon’s is quite the opposite being very colorful which, you have probably guessed, is why I selected it as a source painting. My catalog notations are mostly about the color. It is “off” in many places:

*overall too orangy red

*this area should be darker
*this should be less golden, too much yellow here

*leaves more blue/green, darker madder in seeds of pomegranate

Because of this “off” look in the catalog image, I constantly adjusted my palette accordingly, more from memory than anything.

Number 10 was a joy to paint. I usually use a grisaille underpainting using three or four shades of greenish/gray, because all issues with composition and placement are settled in graytones, not confused by color. Because of the large, 30x36, size this took quite a few hours.

Grinding of pigments is a peaceful meditative process filled with self-talk about “bright colors, muted colors, light direction, focal points, lights/darks, mystery, edges, values, foregrounds, and backgrounds.” Planning and painting in my mind’s eye is critical, before one stroke is put on canvas. This thoughtful time of pigment making was used to plan all the splendid colors for use in this painting. The concept clearly is the color theme including all varieties of the spectrum hues that I used freely, as did Mignon.

The tenth painting of this series is done. Only one more to be revealed.

Smalt Fears No More

I can't thank Dr. Kremer from Kremer Pigments enough for taking the time to respond to my blog post about Smalt. His expertise and knowledge is completely invaluable to me in my research for my Lessons from the Low Countries project. The information about smalt, in particular, is most helpful as I have been reluctant to use it at all.

There is mostly vague and controversial information in the research books. Because the archival quality of my paintings is of utmost importance, I have used only the colors I feel confident with. Now that Dr. Kremer has explained the properties of smalt, I feel assured it will be safe to use in a future project. According to him, "smalt is never mixed with lead white, only transparent glass powders or chalk. It is a very stable glass pigment, lightfast and stable in oil, distemper and watercolor." I think my next testing will involve smalt and chalk.

Veronese vs. Viridian the Sequel

  Dr. Georg Kremer from Kremer pigments took the time to read my blog and wrote several comments, and I was quite honored. It is enormously helpful and educational to get information from an expert such as Dr. Kremer. He made a very interesting observation about my color tests on viridian and Veronese green from a couple of weeks ago.

Even though lead white has been the only white used in my paintings for this project, when this particular test/experiment was executed I was in a different part of my studio where lead white was not available. I used the titanium not realizing the critical impact it would have to the outcome of my testing.

I am very grateful he brought to my attention that titanium has a far stronger hiding power than lead white, and therefore could skew any results. The experiment has been re-done using lead white. If you remember in my first experiment, I talked about color strength. Many of the green earths are very low in tinting power, but are beautiful nonetheless. As a means of illustrating this concept, equal amounts of Veronese green and the modern pigment, viridian, were mixed into the same amount of lead white.

You can easily see how much of the Veronese green is necessary to alter the white as opposed to the viridian, which has a powerful tinting strength. Veronese is subtle and grayed will never overtake other pigments. Thank you, Dr. Kremer for the splendid advice!

Seeing Red

The color tests here are a perfect way to portray the differences between the modern pigments and the historic. On the left is the historic vermilion, pure above and mixed with white below.

On the right is the modern pigment, cadmium red, pure on the top and mixed with white below. The intensity of the two colors is immediately apparent. The cadmium (right) is much more intense. This pigment will instantly overpower any color mixed with it. Only a tiny amount is necessary to alter white or any other color, especially those of a lighter hue. Of course, it is very popular and used widely by artists today and is a staple in any paintbox. Mixed with white it has a bright pink hue.

The vermilion on the left is far more subtle with a much more grayed tone than the cadmium. There is never a worry that vermilion will over power many other colors. When mixed with white it has a rather dusky look. This is the only true red I have used in my Lessons from the Low Countries Series, and it is indispensable.

Peek Performance

Posted here is a detail of painting number 9. The source catalog painting by Rembrandt is a very limited palette and includes many of the friendly colors described in Intimidations below. In spite of the limited range of hues used by Rembrandt, vermilion reds were prominent. I have attempted to capitalize on the chiaroscuro technique here by contrasting the lights of the sheet music against the darks of the pitcher, and the same with the ink bottle stopper.

Intimidations

Time has come finally to tackle one of the Rembrandt’s from the Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art exhibit as a source painting. This is a very intimidating quest indeed. My approach was not to think about the genius of Rembrandt, but to concentrate on his colors and probable pigments used. By thinking of it in this manner, the task was not so daunting. For painting #9 Rembrandt’s Denial of St. Peter became my palette.

This masterpiece is also a shining star of the exhibit. The Dayton Art Institute grouped three of the largest together, this one by Rembrandt, the King Solomon by Salomon Koninck (used for #8), and Govert Flinck’s Isaac Blessing Jacob (used for #4).

Each was similar in size and had striking vibrant color, none of which I could resist. Because they were hung so near to each other it was exciting to compare each artist’s skill level and approach. It was apparent Rembrandt influenced Flinck and Koninck profoundly, as the differences were almost indiscernible. There were similar components to each also: dramatic, chiaroscuro, luscious color, and lavish costumes.

According to the exhibit catalog, the face of St. Peter is illuminated with a candle, although the hand of the girl next to Peter blocks the candle itself. Parts of the painting remain unfinished. Something that was not uncommon for Rembrandt in his later paintings. He employed the use of a palette knife for some of the passages, which was new to his style also.

Some of my catalog notations from

Dayton

are:

.overall too dark

.green/grays are lost, but mostly color is good

.should be lighter in focal area

.cinnamon tones

By using this painting as my palette, choices were somewhat restricted; a true “limited palette” of lead white, vermilion, green earth, umbers, earths, black, and lead tin yellow. Again, an endless variety can be mixed from a few pigments. Surprisingly, a glowing bluish/gray can be made with white and black.

Several months ago while doing research for this project, the conservation department at the National Gallery counseled me on Rembrandt’s palette: black, umbers, ochres, siennas, azurite, smalt, carmine, vermilion, lead tin yellow, white, and a few lakes.

The term often used to describe Rembrandt’s palette is “friendly colors.” If you will recall my descriptions of the natural historic pigments, they have a subtle “harmonious” or “friendly” beauty.

The ninth painting in my Lessons from the Low Countries series is quite a departure from the first eight. It has been my desire for years to do a true “Five Senses” piece. In this rather large canvas, 30x26 there are objects representing touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste, which cover all the senses. Red dominates and copious amounts of vermilion were repeatedly mixed on the grinding slab, as were many darks, umbers, and black.

Many times over, burnt or raw umber was mixed into the black to hasten drying. As mentioned before, this can be a huge issue and drawback to the black, but can be helped with the addition of those indispensable umbers.