The Fellas and I hit the opening day of the Scottsdale Celebration of Fine Art – a 75 day artists-in-residence program in a tent off one of the main drags in Scottsdale.
It was great.
The Team wasn’t that psyched for the outing, but identified that I was unmoved by their protests. I set Hunter up to ask any artists we engaged a series of questions about the paint they used, how they picked their subjects and what was the most fun about painting. By the end, Hunter was loving the sessions and the artists were enjoying the engaged little tow head.
When the ship comes in, I will be calling on the following artists:
Elaine Coffee (link)
Elaine paints people enjoying art in many forms. At a show in NY, a woman from Boston accurately identified the painting as the Museum of Fine Arts because “that is me in your painting.”
Diane Barbee [link] let The Fellas touch her work and explained her palette knife technique. She has a standalone of her dress picture with my name on it. She calls it “Juliet”.
Gregory Sievers [link] had me circling back to his station the most. He dims the light for you and the oil paint of the light inside the restaurant begins to glow. Magic.
Santiago was painting a wild front shot of a old locomotive and showed us his “underpainting” and described why he loved this topic. We want the locomotive on the wall some day.\
Finally, the best personality of the day was Kenneth Ober [link]. Half a hippie surfer and RISD grad currently driving around between Phoenix, Denver and Portland. His current set of work is completed with a pin-striping tool for cars. It feels like pointillism has a new, longer, cousin and the paintings long to be stared at. Two, please.
