Happy New Year 2024!

 

Copy of Van Gogh's "Mussels and Shrimp"
oil on 24x30cm canvas (his: 26.5 cm x 34.8 cm)

I wish everyone a happy and creative New Year!

 

This is a long overdue post after a busy fall. First, I see that I never posted my copy of Van Gogh's shrimp painting. It intrigued me and I happened to have a suitable canvas ready, so wanted to try those color combinations -- just to see for myself how they felt -- dark browns, golden ochres, some black, reds, the grey blue of the mussels... I find these copying exercises fun, like somehow connecting with Van Gogh. The original is not much bigger. It's from his Paris period in 1886. According to the VG Museum site, Gauguin later wrote that Van Gogh sold this painting to a dealer for 5 francs but immediately gave the cash away to a poor woman in the street. I think Van Gogh sold more paintings than we are led to believe.

More recently I started examining some works by Monet that I'm less familiar with. It's usually the paintings that are in private collections or smaller museums that don't turn up in my art books. It's refreshing to look at those, as opposed to the famous ones that have unfortunately been on my calendars, crayon boxes, notebooks, and so forth, nearly to the point of nausea.

 

Below are three copies on postcard canvas. I will put them in the mail as soon as they dry. I always send postcards without envelopes so they are postmarked and show signs of travel. I've already successfully sent this format to France and the UK. But I'm not sure if all postal services accept them because they are thicker than regular postcards.

 

First, a more conventional Vétheuil painting by Monet from the winter of 1879:

Then off to the Mediterranean in 1888. By then Monet had perfected his technique of painting several canvases at once, thus capturing all the different light effects during the course of the day. But in his letters to his wife, he tells how he struggled to get used to the colors of this new environment, so different from the Brittany coast. He also had to take breaks due to rain or wind or even excessive heat. Sometimes he was frustrated to find the scene had changed so much by the time he returned that he had to wipe off the paint and start over.

 

 

Finally, today I couldn't resist trying a completely different color scheme. My postcard copy of Monet's "Grove of Olive Trees in Bordighera" (1884):

All three are oil on 10x15cm postcard canvas panels. Now who will I send these to?