End of the Year arty posts

Georgetown Loop Train station view.

Long ago in August I got ready to participate in the Colorado Plein Air http://gtmd.org/colorado-plein-air/ little did I know at that time that I would be placing that experience among some of the most wonderful arty experiences of 2013.

Let me start out and say the 2 ultimate life experiences happened this year.

1. I became a grandmother when Wyatt Fenton Gee was born.
2.  I became a mother-in-law for the second time when my daughter Kate married Peter Fath in a beautiful wedding here in Colorado.

But in the art world, magnificent experiences of artfulness occurred quietly and stealthfully. I am going to recount just a few and see if you will also agree.

So there I was back in August accepting a challenge I have long wanted to take on - to paint in a series of locations through out Colorado on boards, paper or canvas with a special GTMD stamp and then to submit some for jurying to be a part of a final show. This year the show expanded to allowing the participants to paint all of Colorado. During this time several locations, museums etc. hosted the participants. It was great fun to see what the fellow artist/participants were painting as you stood maybe 10 or 20 feet from them. Here are a few photos of various places we painted.

What we observed while painting at the Capitol on the first day.

 Every place I painted I felt like I always do when I paint plein aire. I want to return. Not necessarily because I want to redo what I had done, but because when you sit someplace for 3 hours or more looking , reacting and putting down what you have seen you then have absorbed that place. These are all places one frequently rushes by to get somewhere else not realizing - we are there. I love plein aire painting because it puts the place I paint, inside of me. It does this in a way that does not happen in the studio. So one of my top arty experiences of the year was painting plein aire in Colorado.

View from the observation deck at the Denver Art Museum

City Park and friends

If you would like to see what the artists who were juried into the Golden Triangle Museum District Colorado Plein Air painted then follow this link. http://gtmd.org/colorado-plein-air/ . Now click on the title Colorado Plein Air Preview. Voila!!Enjoy!!

Near the edge of verticality

Today I went off with the Colorado Pastel Society to paint plein aire. We went to the Spruce Mountain Open Space which is south of Denver proper. I live in a western city on the edge of the mountains. The earth has imperceptibly moved up from the Mississippi River basin for hundreds of miles. St Louis Missouri is an elevation of 456 feet and then Kansas City is at 865 by the time you travel the 3 hours on I -70, past Abilene, Ks (1,155 ) you reach Denver the Mile HIgh City at 5280 ft( 6.5 hours from Abilene). Here we are in vast sweeping space in crisp light with skies similar to the width of what a sailor views but without any halo of humidity). So today we were at approximately 7,1227 ft. on a vast open high plain.

This is what I carried to the shade of a grove of oak scrub. I tucked myself back in among the branches knowing that the sun would be moving across the sky and finding every unshaded spot.

I looked off toward the west and saw clouds , moving grasses and a small butte.

By 11:30 the sun flattened out the shadows of the land and grasses.  I was back in the center of Denver by 12:30. I understand that just further around the trail one comes upon red rocks and wildflowers. Hopefully later this week I will head back there again looking for more wild flowers. It was invigorating to work in such wide open spaces. Lovely to be out of the studio, although I have a piece(in my studio that I am engaged in). Next Saturday the Golden Triangle Plein Aire Paint Out begins and this is a fine way to re-immerse myself in plein aire.

http://colorado-lifestyle.blogspot.com/2011/07/spruce-mountain-loop.html

Anticipation

Tomorrow heading south and west to paint just a little further out in the Colorado western landscape. It is the monthly Colorado Pastel Society Paint Out. I am getting my pastels  packed.

 I  will take photos and post them for you. I am heading to Spruce Mountain. So pictures of how I travel and my set up will follow.
A demain. Until tomorrow. Manana!

Still here,  waking up at 2:00 in the morning thinking of cool ideas for blog posts and then heading down to the studio to paint or off to my life to breathe in.
 I miss though,- focusing . Posting on this blog allows me  to focus.

So some ideas of which I have been thinking about and may explore in some fashion later.  Have to do with the color PURPLE.

February and early March in Guatemala seem a time of exploring the color - PURPLE., I plan to do so later. 

Mean while I have put together a new edition of my website and would love to have your response to this endeavor. Please go look at it here http://cbuschmannart.com/. Don't only let me know what you think of it but please look at the work.
Most recently I have finished work about  Italy and you can see some of it in "Italian Views". These pastels are based on my response to Umbria. I am participating  in an exhibit "Italian Reflections in Umbria", next month, with my fellow artists who I accompanied to Italy. More about that later.
Now of course much more will be written of new beginnings. It is spring after all. Just to prove that is so in my family we are expecting the birth of our first grandson. Then just a wee bit later we will celebrate another family event - the wedding of our first daughter.
So I am full of happiness and have much to think about and much to write but as with all of us a full day. What could be better.
So I have turned once again to a wonderful thought voiced by the American Indians.

"We are all creators.
We Breathe.
To speak is to form breath and make manifest sound  into the world.
As I write I create myself again and again.
Re-Create. And Breathe.
And I see that I am not one voice, but many:
 all colors,
all sounds, all fears, all loves.

Joh Harjo,
Tribe, Creek

Re-entry- I'm Back!!

Actually I  have been back for almost a month. We returned from our now annual Guatemalan adventure around the 11th of March. We volunteer with the Cascade Medical Team in the Highlands of  Guatemala, and have done so for the past 6 years. Here is the link in case you want to know more http://www.cascademedicalteam.org/. This is a remarkably intense and rewarding experience. When my husband and I first thought we would participate we assumed we would only be involved one year. Here we are 6 years later. 

I have fallen in love with Guatemala and look forward each year to the time  getting to know the culture  better. 

These are the patients of the Cascade Medical Team waiting to be Triaged in 2 days before the official opening date.

These are members of the kitchen crew. You can see the beautiful high spirits that pervade.

I have found what I  have always loved, working physically hard, thinking hard, re-evaluating hard and being surprised! I love it!

Heading South

Heading down south for awhile-
Off to a place of beauty and adventure.

I look forward to sharing more when I return;

he ART ISTS

Two Big Black Hearts by JimDine at the DeCordova Sculpture Park. Lincoln  MA

Today is the day of Cupid and Eros that day to celebrate LOVE so I thought I would look up some of my most fav artists who have used the HEART in their ART. Of course Jim Dine comes first to mind, and it is interesting to note that many of these artists fall under that umbrella name of Pop- Artist.

Jim Dine who was born in Ohio in 1935 likes to use imagery to hang  his landscapes on, I am paraphrasing here. In a life time the iconic graceful shape of the heart has allowed him to explore paint, printmaking, drawing,collage and sculpture.

Jim Dine, Sunflower, 2005

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/P/P04/P04226_10.jpg

Robert Indiana an artist who used is advertising skills to make

what began as a Christmas card into a worldwide symbol including a postage stamp.

Robert Indiana, Chatsfield Gardens, England 

I remember having the LOVE poster in my dorm room. Now the Love sculpture can be found in plazas in Japan, Philadelphia, New York and Taiwan. A beautiful message that clearly many have loved.

Here's to your  LOVEly celebration.

Now I am also going to include in my homage a dozen red roses painted by me and currently on view at Framed Image.

http://www.framedimage.net/index.html In their Mostly Red show.

"Afternoon Tea". Pastel. C. Buschmann

Going to Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh, 'Self Portrait with Straw Hat",1887 Oil on Canvas,Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam(Vincent Van Gogh Foundation);F:469,JH:1310

I have been going to the Denver Art Museum exhibition "Becoming Van Gogh" as much as I could since it first arrived in Denver in late October. Each time I go I see old friends in the images on the walls. Many paintings and drawings are ones I once pored over in books.
I love this exhibition because it approaches Vincent Van Gogh in the serious way he approached his own work. The exhibit truly studies and looks at the manner in which Van Gogh deliberately went about acquiring skills and building on his own abilities to become the expressive human being whose art work has riveted our attention for more than a century.
If you are looking for confirmation of Vincent as some kind of basket case who crazily piled on color and line and then went roaring into a Provencal field and cut off his ear then this is not the exhibit for you.
At this writing the exhibit is over. It finished with a 24 hour continuous exhibit so the public could see this exhibit. The last few times my husband and I went we took notice of whom was looking with us at this exhibit. We saw a lot of families w/children discussing color and emotion. We saw students and fellow artists all carefully looking and discussing. This exhibit was wonderful. I highly recommend the book which was written as the catalog. I feel we have seen a true landmark exhibit.

Early Van Gogh drawing,1882, pencil, at the Hague

Vincent went through a variety of visual steps I have watched adults and children travel as they learn how to handle an art medium. Working with too few subtle value changes, not recognizing their own personal visual communication skills as strengths. You can see he has power of composition and an interest in texture in this early piece. Now 6 years later after 1000's of drawing you can see that love of texture has evolved into a personal shorthand of dots and dashes, He has experimented with handling a reed pen and milk washes.  His work shows and increased understanding of how to edit his emotion.

V. Van Gogh Drawing "Wheat Fields w/Sheaves in Arles in the Back ground" 1888, Private collection

But it is still Vincent Van Gogh, after a long an arduous journey.  His was a Journey that many artists recognize, they understand the path he trod. This exhibition at the Denver Art Museum was remarkable as it showed the markers of that path, a path many artists recognize because they so frequently set out on it themselves.