Women In Winter

Brenda, I am looking at WOMEN on my phone and I think it is gorgeous. I can't wait to see it on a bigger screen!

Thanks, Vivi ♥

The pastel lift is a good thing on a dark November day.

Thank you very much Brenda. A Surreal Circus Feature

Thanks Adrian!

Great painting Brenda. Interesting medium - oil on paper. maybe you could add some cobalt drier to speed up the set time.

Thanks, Atticus. These are water-based oils, which I love. The guy in the art store insisted I wait 6 months lest the sections with very thick oil that I spread straight from the tube smear. Even after 6 months, some of the paint bled into the matte varnish! Only a little though, thank goodness. I haven't tried cobalt drier, will look into that. The finish did give a darker, richer quality to the painting, though, so it was worth the wait.

wow! you're an incredible talent! just beautiful.

Thank you, David... I don't think I've ever been so emotional while painting as I was doing this one. Usually I go into a sort of trance, I guess that's what it might be called, into 'the zone,' but during the main painting of this piece I was, hmnn, in an inner emotional storm, what is released after you've had to hold everything together during a crisis, which had happened and which had passed, but which found its way unexpectedly into this painting. The emotional depths were, I admit, a little scary. But then the 6 months passed, and I varnished it.

a true artist! : ) and it shows!

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977867388
Persephone's Breakthrough

The pink hint of winter sky is a kind austere contrast with the movement and emotion of the figures. My first impression was a memory of how warm and smooth women feel in winter.

How lovely, Guy... 'how warm and smooth women feel in winter'! I called it Women in Winter because I painted it last Winter after a family crisis had just passed and I was still feeling raw, which seemed very Wintry. There are two other paintings in this series, (no idea if this'll embed) Women in Spring:

From Women In Spring - Brenda Clews

Women in Summer:

From Women In Summer - the process of painting

Hopefully that posts! They're all one woman, from one lifedrawing session, many poses, many colors, many moods... perhaps next time I drop in on a lifedrawing session, there'll be a male model... :) ♥

I'm so glad that didn't come across in a sexist way, because your painting gave the real, immediate, tactile memory.

I went and looked at spring, and the first thing I felt from that hot blush of color was the fertility and, may I say, 'horniness', for lack of anything more scientific springing to mind. From warm to hot.

This is the first lookI've had at Summer. I don't know how you persuaded Venus to do a guest appearance, but I did smell ocean salt. The figures are more defined and more active and my first sensation was that special kind of that multi-sensual beauty women have when they're dripping wet.

Thanks for sharing these, I really love what you're doing with the theme. Not much graphic art grabs me sensually (sensuously?) like this, but then. . . you picked one of my favorite subjects. lol

I like your sensuality, Guy. It's great.

Yes, Venus did make an appearance. I love the image of the ocean salt, the wetness, that you evoke.

Thanks!

Oh, you did the evoking, Hun, believe me. I'm not a connoisseur or anything, but if graphic art makes me hear something or smell something or have a tactile sensation, I like it. It's my yardstick.

it dances
it's a dance
Damsels dancing
viewer entranced

Thanks, Jan! For your beautiful poem comment! Your writing, luscious! ♥

This is just gorgeous, Brenda.

Thanks, ♥Magi♥♥

The colors swirl and give the effect of movement throughout
And the leaves of humanity joyfully dance.

It is so amazing to me how this appears when I see desolation and hope, blood and green, and stiff figures repeated... but that shows that what the artist sees isn't necessarily what's there. I remember reading Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother, Theo, where he wrote, 'I just finished a painting of my bedroom (at Arles), a peaceful, restful scene' (or something to that effect)! The painting is writhing with energy and tension and acute compacted (e)motion! It's called 'pathetic fallacy' - that not seeing what's there in the way that it is. Thank you for your comment, I really appreciate your perspective. ♥

I love the way most of the motion seems to be from right to left. We woman are always pushing ahead. Thank you for sharing with Gather's Best.

Ann, this is so interesting... I love how we read each other's work... it enrichens it. The whole series is a focus on one nameless woman, a model in a drop-in lifedrawing session, at the Vita Brevis Studio I think, back in the Fall of 2006. She was slender, beautiful. A yoga practitioner. She was lithe and flexible. I am still working with the ink drawings I made during that 2-3 hour session. Many thoughts on our perceptions of women as women ourselves have filled my mind as I've painted this series. And for men we are as variable as the seasons, as multiple as all the images I have transferred from the actual poses to the papers to these paintings. Many thanks! ♥

oh my. i really love this.

Featured in the Triple Name Club.

Adorable you! Thanks, Kathryn.