Tag Archives: inspiration

Oct5

Project 24: Blustone Vineyards

Posted on by
Standard

blustone4

When the landscape is your subject and paint your medium, you could ask for little else in life than to be dropped on the Leelanau Peninsula. Right in the middle of the peninsula, right off M-204, you will find an excellent example of the landscape that has so enchanted at Blustone Vineyards and tasting room.

The hills roll on and the tasting room feels like a frame for the beauty that is the land here. Tom and Joan Knighton are the proprietors, who bought this little slice of heaven in 2010. As the sign inside the tasting room says, “Discovering a piece of Leland bluestone on the shore of Lake Michigan is finding a rare treasure of nature. Blustone wine is inspired by these unanticipated moments of life.”

blustone2

Need I say more? Only that this is a landscape worth discovering, and the wine is the story of the land, the season and the people captured in a bottle!

Cheers!

 

Jul16

Inspiration from London’s ‘Megaton’ Art Collection

Posted on by
Standard
englandblog4

Gazing upon a Turner

Don’t you want to be moved? Enchanted? Wowed? Let’s go make that happen!

London, simply put, has an enormous amount of mega art. By “mega art,” I mean hugely influential famous art from throughout history. One can stroll the museums there and take a walk through time in the medium of art. Badass art!

Moved to tears, feeling like a giant sap, I wept my way through the National Gallery and the Turner galleries at the Tate Britain. J.M.W. Turner is an artist whose work has to be viewed in real life. On paper, in books, you know it’s exceptional, but in person, you might just get swept away. He was a landscape painter. Better put, he set landscapes free. Free from the confines of the Royal Academy of Art and its stuffy rules. Free from expectation and free to be paint on canvas and nothing more or less.

Turner
Turner
Turner

He was a master who had so mastered his craft that he could set it free so to speak. In no way is his work all “loosey goosey”; it’s masterful, but free. Especially the work from the last 15 or so years of his life. This is true for many artists through history. In their latter years, I suspect — as in life itself — you feel more free to do as you please and care less what others think. Maybe we could all learn from that. What do you think?

Turner
Turner
Turner

There is a desire here to inspire you to go, gaze upon art and let yourself be moved. There are stories there in these paintings — uncover them with joy and wonder!

What are inspires you? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below or on my Facebook page!

Admiring a Renoir

Admiring a Renoir