Please enjoy these two excellent pieces from Sitting Pretty, our Feb – Mar 2023 exhibit.
Andrew Leone
Waiting in the Wings, Oil on Canvas by Andrew Leone
How does your artwork relate to the theme of the show?
Occasionally the theme inspires me to search my studio for an artwork that might fit. For “Sitting Pretty” an older painting of an attractive, seated figure was a rather obvious choice. This painting had hung on my parent’s wall for decades and I hadn’t thought about it much. I had been influenced by Picasso’s Blue period, and consider this monochromatic oil painting to be a ‘student work’. I decided to add some collage elements and repaint parts of it for the exhibit. It was a little strange working on a piece I first painted when I was in my teens!
What was the first artwork you created that really mattered to you?
When I was eleven years old I attempted to draw my sister who was doing her ballet exercises. I barely knew how to draw and I was trying to draw the moving figure! I scratched gestural lines on notebook paper with a ballpoint pen and had no idea what I was doing. My mother showed them to a friend and this led to me getting private oil painting lessons from a very accomplished artist from age eleven to about age 14.
Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to share?
In the next few weeks I’ll be putting together a solo exhibit at the City College of SF gallery titled, The Beginning, Middle, and End that will open on April 3. It will be a mini-survey of artwork from my teens until to now. The gallery is located in the art department at the City College Ocean Campus, and so the students there might be interested in their former instructor’s development as an artist over the course of about five decades!
Kevin Daniels
Yellow Dress, Oil on Canvas by Kevin Daniels
How does your artwork relate to the theme of the show?
When I painted Yellow Dress I imagined the act of sitting as something powerful, and active. I didn’t want to convey relaxation but rather motion and dance. I wanted the observer to feel involved…almost as if they were being watched by the painting.
The perspective, angles and figure’s proportions all break rules to provoke the sensation of movement and “sitting” as dynamic.
The idea of “pretty” explores what is beautiful. I wanted the concept of pretty to express diversity, feminine power and universality.
What was the first artwork you created that really mattered to you?
My entry to Sitting Pretty was the first painting that mattered most to me because it is when l stopped copying the works of the those I admired. It was my first painting when I decided to risk originality, spontaneity and most important, failure.
What is the most important artist tool that you use in your practice?
By far the most important artistic tool is the mind. The better I understand how and why I paint, the more intentional the use of creativity and technical skills. Learning to ignore the desire to make good art, be successful and please others was difficult for me until I considered the mind to be a tool.