KOI POND, SARASOTA, FLORIDA

Koi Pond, Sarasota, 10 x 8 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I sketched the ornamental carp in this koi pond at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota about three weeks ago.  It's an amazing place, with the second largest collection of air plants (orchids, etc.) in the world.

VODOU SPIRITS AT THE FIELD MUSEUM

Vodou God Danblewoum, 10 x 6 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

Yesterday I went to Chicago's Field Museum to see the exhibition "VODOU: Sacred Spirits of Haiti," and I sketched some of the objects on display.  This was a polychromed wood carving of the god Danblewoum about three feet tall with a real metal machete. 

Vodou Spirits, 10 x 6 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    Available

Most of the objects in the exhibition were anonymous folk art created by various hands.  However, there were a number of these 4 foot tall effigies of stuffed fabric painted mostly red and black with pieces of broken mirrors embedded in them for eyes and elsewhere that struck me as being the work of a single artist, although as near as I could tell hardly any artists were credited.  They were strong and alarming images and I sketched a few of them, here and below.  

Vodou Gods, 10 x 6 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

These are the gods Legba Kita Bizango and Baron La Croix.  All these vodou drawings are pages from my sketchbook.

CAMPO SANTA MARIA FORMOSA, VENICE

Campo Santa Maria Formosa, Venice, 29 x 40 inch oil and pencil on paper by George C. Clark    SOLD

This is a big oil and pencil on paper studio painting I made after a visit to Venice.  I sold it to a collector in Lake Bluff from an exhibition I had in Lake Forest in the 1980s. In it I depicted my younger self about to cross paths with Corto Maltese as he emerges from beyond the kiosk at the right.  One of the joys of visiting Europe back then was the opportunity to buy great graphic novels by French and Belgian and Italian artists that weren't available in the States.  I discovered artists like Corto's creator Hugo Pratt, Guido Crepax, Jacques Tardi, Jean Giraud aka Moebius, and Milo Manara.  When I was living in Paris in the summer of 1976 I used to get the magazine Charlie Hebdo for the brilliant satiric Paulette comics drawn by Georges Pichard and written by Georges Wolinski who was murdered recently by terrorists.  The Paulette stories were later published in book form and I still have them all in my library.  Now of course, European graphic novels are easily available here in English translation or their original editions from sources on the internet.

DAYLILLIES IN MINERAL POINT, WISCONSIN

Wisconsin Daylillieds, 6 x 5 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark   SOLD

I sketched these daylillies one morning in July at the Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts when I was neither teaching or taking part in a workshop at the annual Woodlanders Gathering.

"ART SYNTHESIS 2014" EXHIBITION AT INDEPENDENCE LIBRARY IN CHICAGO

Steam (Levee  at St. Louis). 23 x 29 oil and colored pencil on paper painting by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

My painting Steam (Levee at St. Louis) is currently on exhibit in the ART SYNTHESIS 2014 show at the Independence Branch of the Chicago Public Library located at 3548 W. Irving Park Road in Chicago.  The exhibition will be up through November 29, 2014.  Library hours are Monday and Wednesday from 10am to 6pm, Tuesday and Thursday from noon to 8pm, and Friday and Saturday from 9am to 5pm.

BELLY DANCE PERFORMANCE IN CHICAGO PARK

Belly Dance Performance, Independence Park, Chicago, 10 x 13 inch ink and colored pencil drawing
 by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Sometimes I don't have to travel very far to find my subjects.  These ladies are part of a troupe from the Arabesque Dance Studios who did a belly dance performance the Sunday before last at this year's first Farmers Market in Independence Park, a short walk from where I live on the Northwest Side of Chicago.  They looked great, but constant motion made them as hard to draw from life as the alligators I tried to sketch in the Everglades last year.  So I did the same thing I did in Florida-- I photographed them and then sketched from my photos.

THE FORESTER'S HOUSE

The Forester's House, 16 x 12 inch oil on canvas by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

My problem with the natural summer foliage of the American Midwest where I live is that it is all pretty much the same green color-- the trees, the grasses and the shrubbery.  That's why most of my Midwestern landscapes feature prominently big areas of other color like buildings, plowed fields, bodies of water, roads, or railway tracks against which the foliage can act as counterpoint.  The Forester's House is a rare example where I have let the foliage take center stage because I really like the shift in color and texture that the blue spruce trees at the heart of the painting make with both the deciduous forest in the background and the shrubs and day lilies in the foreground.  I like the rustic house in the forest too that gives the painting its title.  This was painted on-site in a public park in Schaumburg, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago.