American Art – Part I of III: Esao Andrews
Painter Esao Andrews earned a BFA in Illustration from New York’s School of Visual Arts.
From the Music Archives: Paul McCartney & Wings
20 April 1974 – Paul McCartney & Wings release the single “Band on the Run.”
American Art – Part II of III: Daniel Chester French
Born 20 April 1850 – Daniel Chester French, an American sculptor who designed the Abraham Lincoln statue for the Abraham Lincoln Memorial.
Below – “Abraham Lincoln”; “The Angel of Death”; “America”; “Minute Man”; “Republic.”
Here is one critic describing the artistry of New Zealand painter Irene Ferguson (born 1970): “Irene Ferguson’s interest lies within the tradition of portraiture and art history. Her work, often surreal and unsettling, possesses a dry and witty reinvigoration of contemporary painting practice. Particularly concerned with the dynamic between subject, viewer and artist, her work plays with the blur between figure and portrait and explores the act of looking and how it effects how we view a figure.”
Died 20 April 1899 – Joseph Wolf, a German artist who specialized in natural history illustration and painting. In the words of one critic, “He depicted animals accurately in lifelike postures and has been considered one of the great pioneers of wildlife art.”
Died 20 April 1912 – Bram Stoker, an Irish novelist, short story writer, and author of “Dracula.”
Thank you, Bram Stoker:
Here is one historian describing the background of Spanish painter Luis Soler: “Luis Soler was born in Málaga , Spain in 1943. In his youth, he traveled around the world as a merchant marine for 7 years. He moved to New York City at the age of 25. While in Málaga, he studied at the Academia de Bellas Artes ( Academy of Fine Arts ), which is well-known for its famous alumnus, Pablo Ruiz Picasso. He has also studied at the Pratt Institute and at the Brooklyn Museum.”
“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience.” – Archibald MacLeish, American poet and three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, who died 20 April 1982.
“Ancestral”
The star dissolved in evening—the one star
The silently
and night O soon now, soon
And still the light now
and still now the large
Relinquishing
and through the pools of blue
Still, still the swallows
and a wind now
and the tree
Gathering darkness:
I was small. I lay
Beside my mother on the grass, and sleep
Came—
slow hooves and dripping with the dark
The velvet muzzles, the white feet that move
In a dream water
and O soon now soon
Sleep and the night.
And I was not afraid.
Her hand lay over mine. Her fingers knew
Darkness,—and sleep—the silent lands, the far
Far off of morning where I should awake.
Below – Leon Basile Perrault: “A Mother With Her Sleeping Child”
Here is one critic describing the artistry of Peruvian painter Ernesto Arrisueno (born 1957): “He came to Australia in 1989 and soon found success in local exhibitions. The crisp reality of Ernesto Arrisueño’s works creates an air of mystical calm, a world of still waters, a myriad of flowers and isolated enigmatic figures. His current work blends memories of his early years in the dry barren landscape of Peru with the new visions and traditions of his life in Australia.
He imagines the boats, the beaches, the weathered surfaces of old timber as he sits and paints in his modern Sydney apartment. This is true, to a certain extent, but it is not just the artist’s imagination that creates this space, but memory.”
“We are our own dragons and our own heroes. We must rescue ourselves from ourselves.” – Peter S. Beagle, American novelist, essayist, screenplay writer, and author of the fantasy work “The Last Unicorn,” who was born 20 April 1939.
Some quotes from “The Last Unicorn”:
“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.”
“The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch’s door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”
“It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is.”
“When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see it, and ‘Monday’ as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls… You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that — then any time at all will be the right time for you.”
“Never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention. ”
“The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock.”
“As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn’t say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.”
“Whatever can die is beautiful — more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?”
“I think love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.”
“No cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.”
“We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.”
Cyprus-born painter Sylvia Nitti has taught drawing and pastel classes at Northeastern State University since 2001.
20 April 1841 – Edgar Allan Poe publishes “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a short story generally recognized as the first detective story in Western literary history. Poe referred to this work as one of his “tales of ratiocination.”
French Art – Part I of II: Odilon Redon
Born 20 April 1840 – Odilon Redon, a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and pastelist.
Below – “Lady of the Flowers”; “The Cyclops”; “Ophelia”; “Flower Clouds”; “The Buddha”; “Chariot of Apollo”; “Shell”; “Pandora”; “Portrait of Violette Heymann.”
French Art – Part II of II: Martine Pinsolle
Painter Martine Pinsolle (born 1944) lives and works in Cote Basque, France.
From the American History Archives: The Ludlow Massacre
In the words of one historian, “The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Some two dozen people, including women and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely criticized for the incident.”
Below – Ruins of the Ludlow Colony in the aftermath of the massacre.
Italian Art – Part I of IV: Giambologna
Giambologna, born Jean Boulogne (1529-1608), was a French-born Italian sculptor known for his marble and bronze statuary in a late Renaissance or Mannerist style.
Below – “Mercury”; “A River God” (study); “Hercules and Nessus”; “Architettura”; “The Rape of the Sabine Women”; “Samson Slaying a Philistine”; “Astronomy”; “Venus”; “River God – Euphrates.”
Italian Art – Part II of IV: Ugo de Cesare
Italian painter Ugo de Cesare was born in a small village near Florence. He studied at the Academy of Naples and Florence. His work is held in public and private collections in Europe and North America.
Born 20 April 1893 – Harold Lloyd, an American film actor famous for performing dangerous stunts in his silent comedies.
Italian Art – Part III of IV: Giuliano Tamburini
Here is one critic describing the background and artistry of Italian painter Giuliano Tamburini: “Giuliano Tamburini was born in Pesaro in 1958 where he obtained his high school diploma in accountancy in 1977. He started painting at an early stage and is self-taught. He chose the landscapes as his favourite subject using mostly oil or tempera.
The study of the classics led him later to discover the deep contrast between light and shadows used by Caravaggio to intense expression, by Vermeer, in refining portraits of everyday life and also by Turner in the great suggestivity of his landscapes and in particular in his Venetian works enhancing the intensity of the expressive quality of watercolour.
Tamburini pursued his artistic studies in order to widen his knowledge of different techniques in various schools and art institutes, with special attention to the study of watercolour, sculpture and modelling. At the same time he acquired more indepth knowledge of various XXth century movements getting progressively closer to contemporary art.”
Italian Art – Part IV of IV: Claudio Tuccillo
Italian painter Claudio Tuccillo is a graduate of the State School of Arts of Naples.
A Poem for Today
“Facing West From California’s Shores,”
By Walt Whitman
Facing west, from California’s shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the
land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western Sea–the circle almost circled;
For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
From Asia–from the north–from the God, the sage, and the hero,
From the south–from the flowery peninsulas, and the spice islands;
Long having wander’d since–round the earth having wander’d,
Now I face home again–very pleas’d and joyous;
(But where is what I started for, so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)
American Art – Part III of III: Brett Amory
Here is one critic describing the artistry of painter Brett Amory (born 1975): “Figures and places in Amory’s work are based on photographs the artist has taken of ordinary city architecture and random people who he sees on a daily basis but never speaks to.
He feels especially drawn to individuals who look lost, lonely or awkward—those who don’t appear to fit in socially. As the title suggests, the Waiting series is about how we rarely experience living in the now, always awaiting what will come next or obsessed with what has already transpired. In our age of distraction, being in the present is difficult to achieve outside of meditation practice, it requires heightened cognitive awareness and clear mental space, often prevented by constant internal dialogue, preoccupation with memories of the past and/or concern for the future. Amory’s work attempts to visually represent this concept of disconnection and anticipation, conveying the idea of transient temporality that exists in most moments of our daily lives.”
