Praeterita

  Phthalo + quinacridone + azo 1.4.16 , watercolor on paper, 75 cm x 53 cm. Part 38 of an interview series in which artists reply to the same six questions. Helen Reynolds is a New Zealand artist whose work in many media explores systems, layers, and translucency. Her recent watercolour pieces push the boundaries of what we normally expect of that medium, often emerging as large-scale abstract pieces that focus on a single gesture carried as far as it can go. Her website is here . Other interviews on this blog are available here . Philip Hartigan : What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why? Helen Reynolds : I’ve been working almost entirely in watercolour for five years now. Watercolour is translucent, treacherous and delicate - I love it. I started using watercolours when my daughter was quite ill and I was spending most of my day looking after her. Watercolour fits into women’s lives when those lives are constrained to the domestic. You can put watercolour down quickly, it do...

  A few weeks ago I was invited onto The Art Biz podcast to talk to host Alyson Stanfield about my past and current work as an artist and an art writer. We talked about this blog, too, and how I started it in 2009, posted almost daily for a few years, and then leveraged the blog into paid writing assignments for art magazines. Here is the link to the page . The podcast recording is about halfway down the page.

  Since the pandemic began in early 2020, all my art-related classes have moved online. In terms of the subject of each class, the transition from in-person to online was seamless. Collage, handmade books, and the at-home sketchbook all worked out, mainly because the participants were making things with their own hands in their own space, while the teaching was demonstration followed by a friendly "show and tell." One class I was skeptical about was the first-time drawing class, which I taught for the Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago). The challenge: if I asked the students to set up their own individual still lives to draw from, the class might end up as a seven-way free for all, and it might be impossible to make the instruction general enough to cover all the different arrangements of objects. On the other hand, if I used a still life in my space as the model, they would be drawing from a 2-d image on their screens, as opposed to the in-person class where you see things in ...

"More", oil on canvas, 60" x 48", 2018 Artist Sarah Stolar's large-scale paintings are currently on show in a group exhibition at the Elizabeth Jones Art Center for Social and Environmental Justice , in Portland, Oregon. The title of the exhibition is Power Positions: A Dismantling of Phallacies , and as the pun in the title suggests, each of the artists presents work that questions patriarchal power structures by concentrating on women and female expression. In the words of the exhibition prospectus, they "explore themes of misogyny, intersectional feminism, body politics, sex and sexuality, power/empowerment, and systems of oppression." Stolar contributes eleven paintings that nearly all share common themes and method of making. "More", from 2018, is a good example of this style: a woman staring directly at the viewer, her pose and gesture indicating confidence, possession of her own body, even defiance (for example, the gesture of the righ...

  A new interview with me is now live on Vimeo via Multiple Arts , a series curated by Liana Voia, who lives in Canada and France. It's a really well-edited piece, with me mostly speaking directly to camera about my life, art, influences, and plans, with detours into the history of twentieth century French art! The interview is part of a series  of dozens of similar interviews that Liana has conducted with artists in the United States and Canada: Here is the video (link here if you want to watch it via Vimeo):

  Beginning shortly before Christmas, I have been regularly uploading short videos showing me (or at least my hands) at work in my studio. Many of them are short hyperlapse videos, condensing hours of work into fifteen or thirty seconds, to fit the Instagram format and recommended length. Ai imagine that by the end of this year I will have quite an extensive archive of my painting and printmaking sessions.  

In my last blog post, I talked about a virtual exhibition of my work that I created via the Kunstmatrix hosting site, and which can be viewed on my website. Last week, I held two online events to inaugurate it -- a preview for the VIPs on my mailing list, followed two nights later by a public event -- and I am pleased to report that both were a success. Both events were broadcast via Zoom, and a recording of the public event is available via my Y ouTube channel , website , or here: About 27 people attended, and I sold ten pieces from the show. But most satisfying of all, perhaps even more than the sales, was the question and answer session conducted by artist/curator Joanne Aono . We agreed that I wouldn't see the questions in advance, and it made for an incredibly interesting and stimulating back and forth.  I hope you look at the virtual exhibition, but I also urge you to watch the Q & A, which begins at around the 30:00 minute mark.