The artist Kurt Solmssen has a show of beautiful landscapes at the George Billis Gallery in New York. In this film he discusses some of these paintings, ones that were worked on, in location, during a snowstorm.

Duration : 0:6:20

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For more instruction on this watercolor demonstration:
visit:
http://www.floatingpaint.com/blog/demonstration

Piano Piece:
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21, II. Larghetto

Duration : 0:9:26

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New Moon Posters and Eclipse Movie News

First off, exciting happenings include the debut of 2-brand-spankin new movie posters. The first one features a hot body shot of Edward, seemingly surrounded by a stone columned structure, while the other poster focuses on a peaceful, distant shot of Bella walking away into the clouds. Both artwork show the release date that fans will be counting down until: November 20th, as well as the official movie title: The Twilight Saga, New Moon.

The movie plan for now is reportedly to shoot the rest of the Twilight series in Vancouver back-to-back. That means that while New Moon is in post-production the editing, songs and extras get added in that the 3rd installment will start shooting. This is fabulous news for Twilight fans because you wont have to wait an eternity to catch the rest of the story line. The planned release date for Eclipse is get this- June 2010 which is less than a year after New Moon comes out and the speedy followup is quite unheard of in the film industry.

Then the production company reportedly made a list of possible directors including newbie Drew Barrymore and 3:10 To Yumas James Mangold. In the end, its looking like Summit will pick the foreign film director of The Orphanage Juan Antonio Bayona to take the reins for Eclipse. Some fans are NOT happy about the possibility of the next director being male, because they say the Twilight saga NEEDS to have a female director, in order to truly capture the tender love story between vampire and human from Stephanie Meyers book series.

What do you think about the next movie from Twilight? What are you looking forward to? Leave us a comment below.

Check out clips from the Twilight saga as well as from all of your favorite movies at Clevver.com. Im Dana Ward and well see you next time!

Duration : 0:2:25

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New Moon Posters and Eclipse Movie News

First off, exciting happenings include the debut of 2-brand-spankin new movie posters. The first one features a hot body shot of Edward, seemingly surrounded by a stone columned structure, while the other poster focuses on a peaceful, distant shot of Bella walking away into the clouds. Both artwork show the release date that fans will be counting down until: November 20th, as well as the official movie title: The Twilight Saga, New Moon.

The movie plan for now is reportedly to shoot the rest of the Twilight series in Vancouver back-to-back. That means that while New Moon is in post-production the editing, songs and extras get added in that the 3rd installment will start shooting. This is fabulous news for Twilight fans because you wont have to wait an eternity to catch the rest of the story line. The planned release date for Eclipse is get this- June 2010 which is less than a year after New Moon comes out and the speedy followup is quite unheard of in the film industry.

Then the production company reportedly made a list of possible directors including newbie Drew Barrymore and 3:10 To Yumas James Mangold. In the end, its looking like Summit will pick the foreign film director of The Orphanage Juan Antonio Bayona to take the reins for Eclipse. Some fans are NOT happy about the possibility of the next director being male, because they say the Twilight saga NEEDS to have a female director, in order to truly capture the tender love story between vampire and human from Stephanie Meyers book series.

What do you think about the next movie from Twilight? What are you looking forward to? Leave us a comment below.

Check out clips from the Twilight saga as well as from all of your favorite movies at Clevver.com. Im Dana Ward and well see you next time!

Duration : 0:2:25

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http://www.forumgallery.com/adetail.php?id=207
Steven Assael, the New York artist hailed by The Art Newspaper as “the foremost figurative painter of his generation”, will exhibit his latest paintings and drawings at Forum Gallery, New York, from March 19 to May 2, 2009. The exhibition, Assaels seventh since joining the Gallery in 1998, focuses on public and private aspects of urban life and explores issues of intimacy, gender and personal identity. The portraits and narratives the artist paints touch on contact, isolation, sexuality and the journey through life.

In the paintings, Steven Assael employs his unique, characteristic sense of light and shadow to illuminate the characters and lives of his subjects. A featured painting, Crowd #1, 2009, oil on canvas, 72″ x 96″, was exhibited by Forum Gallery at The Armory Show Modern (New York, March 5-9) to preview the forthcoming exhibition. In this major work, Assael leaves specific location and narrative to the viewer. He shows a crowd of infinite number and depth, people to whom we relate but who do not relate to each other, no matter how close the gathering.

The drawings are striking in their detail and accuracy, always used in the interest and exploration of intimate moments of introspection. All of the drawings and paintings in the exhibition have been created since 2006.

Steven Assaels work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at museums from Chattanooga to Seattle and at galleries throughout the United States. Works have been chosen for curated group exhibitions at the Naples Museum of Art, FL; the Arkansas Art Center, the Evansville Museum, IN; and the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; among many. Paintings and drawings can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design, Kansas City; The Columbus Museum, GA; and many other museum and distinguished private collections.

An opening reception with the artist will take place on Thursday, March 19, 2009 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at Forum Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, Fifth Floor. The exhibition continues through Saturday, May 2, 2009. A full color catalogue, with essay by Anna F. Burgess, is available, $25.00 ppd. The entire exhibition may be viewed online at www.forumgallery.com/currentseason. For more information please contact Forum Gallery: www.forumgallery.com/contactinfo.php

———-

Forum Gallery, New York and Los Angeles, is a leader in the field of modern and contemporary figurative art. Founded in 1961, Forum Gallery today represents thirty contemporary artists, including Odd Nerdrum, William Beckman and Robert Cottingham; and the estates of Raphael Soyer, Chaim Gross and Bernard Karfiol. International in scope, Forum Gallery is the American representative of Xenia Hausner, Michael Leonard, David Mach, Charles Matton and Peter Krausz.

Forum Gallery maintains an important inventory of American modernist and social realist art, European modernism and figurative art from 1900 to the present day. Over more than four decades in the fine art field, Forum Gallery has placed works in every major American museum and in private collections throughout the world. Forum Gallery is a founding member of the Art Dealers Association of America.

Duration : 0:5:36

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http://www.forumgallery.com/adetail.php?id=207
Steven Assael, the New York artist hailed by The Art Newspaper as “the foremost figurative painter of his generation”, will exhibit his latest paintings and drawings at Forum Gallery, New York, from March 19 to May 2, 2009. The exhibition, Assaels seventh since joining the Gallery in 1998, focuses on public and private aspects of urban life and explores issues of intimacy, gender and personal identity. The portraits and narratives the artist paints touch on contact, isolation, sexuality and the journey through life.

In the paintings, Steven Assael employs his unique, characteristic sense of light and shadow to illuminate the characters and lives of his subjects. A featured painting, Crowd #1, 2009, oil on canvas, 72″ x 96″, was exhibited by Forum Gallery at The Armory Show Modern (New York, March 5-9) to preview the forthcoming exhibition. In this major work, Assael leaves specific location and narrative to the viewer. He shows a crowd of infinite number and depth, people to whom we relate but who do not relate to each other, no matter how close the gathering.

The drawings are striking in their detail and accuracy, always used in the interest and exploration of intimate moments of introspection. All of the drawings and paintings in the exhibition have been created since 2006.

Steven Assaels work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at museums from Chattanooga to Seattle and at galleries throughout the United States. Works have been chosen for curated group exhibitions at the Naples Museum of Art, FL; the Arkansas Art Center, the Evansville Museum, IN; and the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; among many. Paintings and drawings can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design, Kansas City; The Columbus Museum, GA; and many other museum and distinguished private collections.

An opening reception with the artist will take place on Thursday, March 19, 2009 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at Forum Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, Fifth Floor. The exhibition continues through Saturday, May 2, 2009. A full color catalogue, with essay by Anna F. Burgess, is available, $25.00 ppd. The entire exhibition may be viewed online at www.forumgallery.com/currentseason. For more information please contact Forum Gallery: www.forumgallery.com/contactinfo.php

———-

Forum Gallery, New York and Los Angeles, is a leader in the field of modern and contemporary figurative art. Founded in 1961, Forum Gallery today represents thirty contemporary artists, including Odd Nerdrum, William Beckman and Robert Cottingham; and the estates of Raphael Soyer, Chaim Gross and Bernard Karfiol. International in scope, Forum Gallery is the American representative of Xenia Hausner, Michael Leonard, David Mach, Charles Matton and Peter Krausz.

Forum Gallery maintains an important inventory of American modernist and social realist art, European modernism and figurative art from 1900 to the present day. Over more than four decades in the fine art field, Forum Gallery has placed works in every major American museum and in private collections throughout the world. Forum Gallery is a founding member of the Art Dealers Association of America.

Duration : 0:5:36

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Atlanta Georgia Artist Corey Barksdale large scale wall mural art.

Murals of sorts date to prehistoric times, such as the paintings on the Caves of Lascaux in southern France, and many ancient murals have survived in Egyptian tombs, and in Pompeii. The term became more famous with the Mexican “muralista” art movement (Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, or José Orozco). There are many different styles and techniques. The best-known is probably fresco, which uses water soluble paints with a damp lime wash, a rapid use of the resulting mixture over a large surface, and often in parts (but with a sense of the whole). The colors lighten as they dry. The marouflage method has also been used for millennia.
Murals today are painted in a variety of ways, using oil or water based media. The styles can vary from abstract to trompe-l’œil (a French term for “fool” or “trick the eye”). Today, the beauty of a wall mural has become much more widely available with a technique whereby a painting or photographic image is transferred to poster paper which is then pasted to a wall surface to give the effect of either a hand-painted mural or realistic scene.

Mural at the American British Cowdray Hospital in México D.F. by Veronica Ruiz de Velasco in 1989.
Murals are important in that they bring art into the public sphere. Due to the size, cost, and work involved in creating a mural, muralists must often be commissioned by a sponsor. Often it is the local government or a business, but many murals have been paid for with grants of patronage. For artists, their work gets a wide audience that otherwise might not set foot in an art gallery. For the city, it gets beautified by a work of art. Murals exist where people live and work and affect their daily lives.
Murals can be a relatively effective tool of social emancipation or achieving a political goal. Murals have sometimes been created against the law or have been commissioned by local bars and coffeeshops. Often, the visual effects are an enticement to attract public attention to social issues.
World famous murals can be found in Mexico, New York, Philadelphia, Belfast, Derry, Los Angeles, Nicaragua, Cuba and in India. [1] and have functioned as an important means of communication for members of socially, ethnically and racially divided communities in times of conflict. They also proved to be an effective tool in establishing a dialogue and hence solving the cleavage in the long run. State-sponsored public art expressions, particularly murals, are often used by totalitarian regimes as a tool of mass-control and propaganda. However, despite the propagandist character of that works, some of them still have an artistic value.

Many people like to express their individuality by commissioning an artist to paint a mural in their home, this is not an activity exclusively for owners of large houses. A mural artist is only limited by the fee and therefore the time spent on the painting; dictating the level of detail; a simple mural can be added to the smallest of walls.
Private commissions can be for dining rooms, bathrooms, living rooms or, as is often the case- children’s bedrooms. A child’s room can be transformed into the ‘fantasy world’ of a forest or racing track, encouraging imaginative play and an awareness of art.

Southern art is a broad term that applies to art of, about, and from the American South. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans houses the largest single collection of Southern art. In 1992, the Morris Museum opened in Augusta, Georgia, with a focus on Mid-Twentieth Century American Southern art.

Southern art refers to the sum of the work of artists who have lived in the American South. The core of the American South consists of the eleven states that formed the Confederate States of America: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. Beyond these eleven states, there is some dispute as to which of the following six states should also be included: Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The city of Washington, D.C. is a special case. Though it was not part of the Confederate States of America, it is usually grouped as part of the American South.
Of these six “border” states, Delaware and Oklahoma probably have the weakest claim to be included in the American South. Though a slave-holding state until the end of the American Civil War, Delaware never seceded, and today is culturally closer to the urban Mid-Atlantic states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Oklahoma was a sparsely populated territory at the time of the Civil War, and though it contributed a regiment to the Confederate Army, it never was home to the kind of plantation life typical of the American South.
In 1975, Southern Arts Federation (SAF) was founded with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to support and promote arts and culture in the Southeast.

Duration : 0:7:9

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