Did I ever tell you about….
March 31, 2008
Did I ever tell you about the time I got egged while working on a plein air painting? A couple of years ago I noticed that a local landmark, the Snell Isle Bridge was dramatically lit around 2PM. The effect doesn’t last long so I decided to paint it on small scale (6″x8″) over two sessions. On day two I arrived on my spot shortly after 2:00, quickly set up and waited for the sun to provide the show. By 2:30 I was deeply engrossed in the painting with Lou Reed pulsing through my earbuds. The Snell Isle Bridge is in an upscale area of St. Petersburg. Passers by are usually curious but courteous. This time I thought noticed a carload of highschool boys repeatedly driving by and yelling. I wondered if they were taunting me but I had work to do and the sun was moving fast. So I ignored them. On about their fourth pass one of the knuckledraggers launched an egg at me. Of course, I didn’t see it coming as it narrowly missed my crotch catching my left thigh. I turned to see them hanging out of the car windows waving and yelling triumphantly. Dumbfounded I shook my head with dismay. I immediately check the painting for collateral damage. There was none. Paper towels handy, I wiped my pant leg and went back to work. What’s a little egg when your jeans already have spots of dried oil paint on them. I finished the painting thinking, “Every painting has a story but few like this”.
I’d say I got the last laugh because that little painting sold for a nice sum and I continue to do well with the giclee’ version of it. View the Snell Isle Bridge by clicking on my Plein Air Paintings page. Check the Available Works page for the giclee’ version.
Thanks for reading,
Robert J. Simone
Art is Therapy!
March 27, 2008
Art often has a remarkably therapeutic effect on the quality of artist’s lives. Salvador Dali suffered paranoid delusions and hallucinations as a youth. In his autobiography, The Secret Life, Dali credits painting daily with his recovery and ability to function in life. In that volume he states that his quality of life was such that he woke up each morning excited with anticipation wondering what this Salvador Dali would create that day.
The famed American artist Robert Henri, in his book The Art Spirit, wrote about coming to the easel some days feeling fatigued or under the weather only to be filled with energy and well being after painting for a short time. He also wrote of his belief that the mental activity of painting contributed to health and longevity of artists.
Vincent Van Gogh’s life would have been of little consequence were it not for his art. Suffering a variety of mental problems, Van Gogh found relief from the institutional life through painting and writing about his painting in letters to his brother. When living outside of institutions Vincent derived a sense of purpose from his art that helped him cope with his depression and psychiatric problems. Without art the unfortunate circumstances of his death would surely have happened sooner. And today, more than one hundred years after his death, he is worldwide household name. His work has universally recognized like no other.
In my own life I found that rediscovering my passion for art was the key to recovery from a series of anxiety attacks which occurred in my mid to late thirties. I hadn’t done any artwork for nearly twenty years when my living circumstances changed as a long term relationship ended. I had great difficulty adjusting and suffered high levels of stress and anxiety. I consulted two different therapists at Catholic Charities in Tampa. One was a lay woman and the other a Catholic Priest. Both off-handedly referred to me as a “frustrated artist”. That started me thinking about the real love lost in my life, my passion for oil painting.
Eventually I got my self together enough that I invented a system for dating (more on that in a future blog) which led to my marriage to Penny, my best friend, companion and lover. Penny and I viewed, and still do, our wedding as “the beginning of a great adventure”. (We credit Lou Reed for that line). Even so I still experienced, with some frequency, a gnawing ache of anxiety in the area of my diaphragm. I guess Penny saw the frustrated artist in me too because she started encouraging me to take some painting classes, which I did. Eight or Nine years later I am deeply immersed in the study and pursuit of oil painting. I paint almost daily, teach regularly and participate in both indoor and outdoor shows. I haven’t felt that gnawing ache in my side since, well, I don’t know when. One thing I do know is that I am happy and never have to drag myself out of bed in the morning. Art is therapy!
Robert Henri sez…
March 25, 2008
It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist’s ability to see well into what is before him….If the eyes of a Rembrandt are upon the model she will rise in response and Rembrandt will draw what he sees, and it will be beautiful. Rembrandt was a man of great understanding. He had the rare power of seeing deep into the significance of things….A genius is one who can see. Others can often draw remarkably well. There kind of drawing, however, is not very difficult. They can change about. They can make their sight fit the easiest way for their drawing. As their seeing is not particular it does not matter. With the seer it is different. Nothing will do but the most precise statement. He must not only bend technique to his will, but he must invent technique that will especially fit his need. He is not one who floats affably in his culture. His the blazer of the road for what he has to bring. Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready- made order
