The Muses

The Muses

An Arts & Inquiry Online Exhibition

11th January 2017 Cynthia Willett

Gallery 1: Pasi Kirkkopelto (Finland)

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Gallery 2: Mieke van Os (Netherlands)

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Gallery 3: Jaap Berghoef (Netherlands)

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Gallery 4: Sonia Roychowdhury (India)

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Gallery 5: Agneta M Lindh (Sweden)

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Gallery 6: Peter Sansom (Netherlands)

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Gallery 7: Magdalena Brzezinska (Poland)

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Gallery 8: Cynthia Willett (USA)

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Gallery 1: Pasi Kirkkopelto The anatomical engravings of Andreas Vesalius have always been a constant source of wonder, admiration and inspiration for me. I’ve been fascinated by the scientific and artistic mindset required to make these images. His anatomical studies have a personality, which is reflected in their poses and faces. That is unusual in this genre. For me these images have always been attempts at understanding and describing human nature. Somehow, this particular pose has always fascinated me. It has become a sort alter ego. Its proportions resemble my own and the posture is open - feeling and receiving, strong and vulnerable at the same time. People who’ve seen me and my works always think that they are self portraits- based on the figure.— Pasi Kirkkopelto

the muse

VESALIUS: De humani corporis fabrica, 1543 Image source

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Pasi Kirkkopelto, Falter Ego: Mixed media - charcoal, ink and oil pastel on paper, 80 x 100, 2011

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Pasi Kirkkopelto, Vesuvius: Plaster, copper plate, ultramarine pigment and blood, 1996 Pasi's Flickr Collection

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Gallery 2: Mieke van Os

the muse

Johannes Vermeer: Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665 Image source

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Mieke Van Os: Girl with the...inlaying with contrasting color pigments; white transparent tulle applied with iron. Blurring the color and add depth. Removal of the gland, which serves as the original transfer.

Reapplication of black organza, more spacious with iron. Dimensions: 130 mm x 170 mm

Mieke's Blog

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Gallery 3: Jaap Berghoef

I am a huge admirer of impressionist paintings, especially the landscapes of Claude Monet. I take a look at his landscape paintings regularly, both in museums, in books and online, as a source of inspiration for my landscape photography. The painting "Seine near Giverny" I found on the Internet in an (expired) announcement of an exhibition in the Philbrook Museum Of Art (Tulsa, OK), with the theme "Monet and the Seine" (2014). The "river paintings" of Monet, and especially this painting, inspired me to make a series of high ISO, grainy (non edited) photos on the banks of a river in the Netherlands. The photo "A day once dawned and it was beautiful" is one of them.-- Jaap Berghoef

the muse

Claude Monet, The Seine at Giverny, 1840 – 1926, Oil on canvas Image source

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Jaap Berghoef: A day once dawned and it was beautiful, Photography Jaap's Website

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Gallery 4: Sonia Roychowdhury

The Nazca Lines--a set of ancient geoglyphs ( large designs created on the ground) in Southern Peru’s Nazca Desert—were created between 200 BC and 600 AD for either ritualistic purposes or as markers for underground resources. While pursuing an online architecture course, I was assigned the making of personal lines in the world, transforming it into a special place. This series—"the simplest way"—was created digitally using a picture of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley and a hand pouring of paint with some lines drawn on it by me. Then I used different colours and filters to get the different images.

the muse

Nazca Lines Image source

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Sonia Roycowdhury, the simplest way, digital image with mixed media, 2015

Sonia Roycowdhury, the simplest way, digital image with mixed media, 2015 10

Sonia Roycowdhury, the simplest way, digital image with mixed media, 2015 Sonia's Instagram

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Gallery 5: Agneta M Lindh

the muse

P. S. Krøyer--Danish painter (1851 – 1909)The Skagen Community, Movement: Impressionist Summer Evening at Skagen Beach – The Artist and his Wife, 1899. Oil on canvas.

Hip, Hip, Hurrah!, 1888. Oil on canvas.

Image source

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Agneta M Lindh, Walk on Water, 2017. Photography.

It was always Krøyer. He was my first Muse and I had quite forgotten. By looking at his paintings I learned composition without knowing it. When I was twenty-five I went to Skagen to catch the famous Krøyer light. In a white cotton dress of my own design, barefoot and with my camera I went to the Sea. This, I still do, to find the calm both in picture and mind.

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Agneta M Lindh, Recollections of Summer: Crinkled Butterfly Wings, 2016. Photography.

How many shades are there in a shadow, in a patch of light? Krøyer’s painting Hip Hip Hurrah! with light and shadows dancing over the artists in the arbor, over the tablecloth, had me mesmerized. Today I point my camera towards the sun for contrasts, for transparencies, for light to paint diamonds and tickle leaves.

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Agneta M Lindh, En plein air, 2017. Photography The first Art that made me want to catch light on film was by the hand of Peder Severin Krøyer. My inspiration soon broadened to Impressionism as a genre, looking to France, Great Britain, Australia and America. My interest in art inspires me to experiment and make my photos look as if they were painted with a brush, using light and shadows and reflections, be it sun or moon.

Agneta's Website

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Gallery 6: Peter Sansom

A lone figure stands at a virginal in a seventeenth century Dutch home. Who she is, is unknown.

Vermeer’s domestic scale paintings of a domestic scenes have a charge, a captivating impact. We talk about the ‘presence’ or a Vermeer artwork. In our world of multiple images and copies, is an original done a service or disservice by reproduction? What is our relationship to the original? Just what do we see when we encounter a familiar motif? Even when only a small aperture is opened onto it.

Is it the woman’s gaze that holds us, Vermeer’s penetrating observation or our own visual inspection, knowingly engaged with the image and status of high art?--Peter Sansom 2017

the muse

Johannes Vermeer, A Lady Standing at a Virginal, 1670-72 Oil on canvas, 45.2 x 51.7 cm Image source

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Peter Sansom, The absence of a Vermeer, 1991, Photograph, wood, gold leaf, aluminium and glass, 83 x 3 cm

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Peter Sansom, The Music lesson (after Vermeer), 1993, Graphite on paper, 10 x 7 cm Peter's Website Peter's Blog

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Gallery 7: Magdalena Brzezinska the muse

Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1920, platinum print, w19.5 x h24.5 cm

Image source

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Magdalena Brzezinska, Jacek, 2013, paper collage/mosaic 210 Ă— 297 mm (8.27 Ă— 11.69 inches)

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Gallery 8: Cynthia Willett Surrealist sculptor Jean Arp was known to begin a piece of work without preconception, with as little intervention from the conscious mind as possible. This particular sculpture was destined for the forest floor, to be placed amidst the shapes and forms of nature and eventually found by a passer-by. the muse

Jean Arp, Sculpture à être perdue dans la forêt (Sculpture to be lost in the forest) 1932, plaster Image source

As I worked on “And the she was lost to the clouds…” a similar unintentionality came into play. Arplike biomorphic forms emerged. I sought the composition by repeated stacking, shaping, patching, filing and sanding; adjusting upper and lower contours until the piece finally held this configuration. It slowly revealed itself as a set of slabs suggesting body parts. Yes, torn from my memory, I realized that these were remnants of the last moments of my mother’s life--her foot, her knee, her face.

While our intended destinations differed (Arp’s the forest and mine the heavens) we shared the ideas of loss, abandonment, chance and surrender as the physical objects evolved in our hands.

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Cynthia Willett, And then she was lost to the clouds, 2017, plaster and steel mesh, 18" x 16" x 6"

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Cynthia Willett, And then she was lost to the clouds, 2017, plaster and steel mesh, 18" x 16" x 6" Cynthia's Website

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Posted 11th January 2017 by Cynthia Willett (curator and Contributing Artist) on Blogger

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