What Is My Voice?

Chromatic Variations, Susan Giannantonio

30 x 22" watermedia collage on paper (sold)

Giclee art print available on Amazon.com

"What's my voice?" has to be asked by each individual artist. Committee-free, the artist needs to develop her voice as if on an island. To be a voice is to be a different voice, set apart, unique. How to find it? Go to your island, put in long hours, fall in love with process--your voice will come out of your work.--Robert Genn's Twice Weekly Newsletter for 7/23/2010

To Live Out Loud

Subito, Susan Giannantonio

40 x 30" watermedia collage on canvas (sold)

Announcing "Subito", my 6th painting featured by music publisher Simply Violin. (www.simplyviolin.com).  "Subito" will soon be released on a collection of music arranged for youth orchestras.  "I am an artist....I am here to live out loud." --Emile Zola

Play with Purpose

Color is No Object, Susan Giannantonio

"Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."  Pablo Picasso

The Music of Painting

The Striped Blouse, Edouard Vuillard

"Who speaks of art speaks of poetry. There is no art without a poetic aim. There is a species of emotion particular to painting. There is an effect that results from a certain arrangement of colors, of lights, of shadows, etc. It is this that one calls the music of painting."--Vuillard, Jan. 1894

Coax the Soul

Scottish Rose, Susan Giannantonio

"The work of art is to help to coax the soul of the nation back to life."--Gutzon Borglum, sculptor, Mount Rushmore and other major work

Look Back, Paint Forward

Old Willow sketch, Susan Giannantonio

A trailblazing group of artists in Canada in the early 1900's struck out to the Canadian countryside and, after years of study and practice of sound academic painting and drawing, began to experiment with broken color, dots and dashes, underpainting, and alla prima. In an essay about these artists called The Story of the Group of Seven, Lawren Harris wrote, "When we focus our own seeing through our own creative activity and conviction, we are working from the inside, with the creative spirit itself; then the arts of the past and of other peoples become immediate, alive, and luminous to us."

Art's Unlimited Source

Pansies, oil on canvas, Richard Schmid

In one of my favorite "how to paint" books Alla Prima, Everything I Know About Painting, master painter and one of my very favorite artists Richard Schmid says, "Somewhere within all of us there is a wordless center, a part of us that hopes to be immortal in some way, a part that has remained unchanged since we were children, the source of our strength and compassion. This faint confluence of tangible and the spiritual is where Art comes from. It has no known limits, and once you tap into it you will realize what truly rich choices you have." For a glimpse of his creative genius, check out a 5 minute YouTube video of Richard finishing a painting: click here.