Loading...Brian's Morning Newsletter
December 16th 2009
Good Morning
I am thankful for all the work Monday and Tuesday, but I'm tired just the same. Yeah, somehow hanging off second story balconies at an altitude on 9000 feet is exhausting, what can I say? Not that being tired kept me in bed, I've been awake and out of bed since 3:30 AM and awakened at least three times that I know of by the dog wanting to go out, or the cat making some kind of wild animal sound she used to reserve for announcing that a mouse had been caught. Unfortunately, our three surviving pets being around 12 years old are getting stranger than they were when they were young. Isabel, the tabby cat, now attacks the toilet paper with a voracity she once used on catching mice, bummer, but what can we do? Cujo, wants out two times a night, we're mostly happy to get up and let him out. He has been a good and faithful dog for more than a decade, he deserves what ever he wants, but he is too old to merit the time it would take to build a dogie door, besides he doesn't have the control over his hind legs well enough to negotiate a dogie door. We are trying to prepare ourselves for the enviable.
So when I woke at 3:30 I was having some stupid dream, you know the kind, some really inane soap opera style nonsense. I woke up not really knowing what the dream was about and that my subconscious mind is kind of retarded to be working through whatever in the hell that was about. My awake mind decided that is was a waste of time sleeping if that was all the good the subconscious could do with the time it had. Now that it is 5:30 I'm beginning to wonder if that reasoning was sound. Maybe I will go back to bed, except now I have cookies in the oven and the kitchen is warm. Dang things get complicated, huh? Yeah, I made cookies. Well I checked the temperature outside was negative five two hours ago, and baking cookies is a good way to keep the kitchen warm.
It must have been really cold yesterday morning, I had a heck of a time starting the Trooper. I didn't look at the temperature, I guess I was so wrapped up in writing the BMN, I never thought about it. Jack said later when I talked to him that he had six below zero at 7:30 AM, I don't know what we had up here, but it was probably even colder. The fuel filters came in on Monday, but since I worked all day I didn't get a chance to install a new one. Whatever crap that was plugging up the old filter must have frozen solid in there, I finally changed it out in town in the parking lot of Desertgate. All better. I have a couple days off now, so when it warms up I'll put the Trooper in the shop and look at the fuel system modifications and see what is needed and what can go.
Today's featured American artist is Kenneth Freeman. I don't know, what do you think? He gets so much detail with his oil paints it is almost hard to tell if it is a painting or a photograph. I blew the image below up from 600 pixels wide to 800px wide, in order to see how much detail is really there. Apparently there is a great deal of detail, and now the brush strokes are more visible too. Seeing work like this makes me not so much wish I could paint, because dang, that really does look like work. He must have spent days on her forehead alone.
That is one of the things I really like about the Impressionists, quick, quick quick.
I hope you liked yesterday's newsletter as much as enjoyed writing it.
You can go and comment on it at our forum or right on the BMN at:
http://outfitnm.com/2009/12/16/bmn-good-to-be-working-again
If you have trouble logging in, please write me at brodgers@outfitnm.com, I'll fix you up likity split
Have a good one, I'll return tomorrow, same time same channel
Brian Rodgers
SCOTTSDALE, AZ.- Artist Ken Freeman always called himself a “Jewish Cowboy.” The world premiere of the Kenneth M. Freeman Legacy Exhibition opens at the Booth Western Art Museum in January 2010. The display consists of fifty (50) oil paintings and sculptures that feature working cowboys and cowgirls, rodeo heroes, Native American elders and children, mountain men, Western landscapes, and Buffalo Soldiers. For artist Kenneth M. Freeman, the cowboy hat and boots were not a gimmick or shtick. Neither was his Arizona attitude. Ken Freeman may have grown up in a traditional Jewish home in Chicago, Illinois but make no mistake … he was a cowboy. The Booth Western Art Museum, an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, hosts the world premiere of the Kenneth M. Freeman Legacy Exhibition – Artist at Work opening on January 16, 2010. The exhibit continues through May 2, 2010 in the newly created Special Exhibition Gallery.
His early career as an artist included illustrations for books by Louis L’Amour and Will James and culminated with compelling portraits of cowboys, Native American elders and children, mountain men, Buffalo Soldiers, western landscapes and rodeo heroes.
Kenneth M. Freeman was a graduate of the American Academy of Art in Chicago. At the age of 15, he began taking classes at the Academy in the summer of 1950. He studied with renowned artist Haddon Sundblom. Freeman passed away in June of 2008 leaving a rich body of work unrivaled by many artists. His paintings hang today in museums, galleries and private collections around the world including The Library of Congress American Legacy Collection, The Booth Western Art Museum and the family of President Herbert Hoover.
“He was a man you could never forget. His enthusiasm for life and art was contagious. Of all the artists from the Academy I've met over the years, Ken really stood out as one of a kind,” said Aron Gagliardo, historian and archivist of the American Academy of Art.
According to Bonnie Adams, curator for the Kenneth M. Freeman Legacy exhibition, his subject matter was unique for a Jewish painter.
“Most Jewish artists are not figurative in their subject matter,” Adams points out. “They paint abstracts and symbolism, but not usually realistic figures and portraits. Ken was a rare breed … a special man and a special artist. He had chutzpah and the courage to live his dream.”
“The Kenneth Freeman Legacy Exhibition represents a true working artist,” said Seth Hopkins, executive director of the Booth Western Art Museum. “The exhibition shows the artist at work … as an illustrator, sculptor, and painter. The Booth Museum has two of Ken’s paintings in our permanent collection.”
“This will also be the first temporary exhibition at the Booth Museum since the opening of our new 40,000 sq. ft. expansion completed in October, 2009,” added Hopkins. “We now house the largest permanent exhibition space for Western art in the country. We say: You don’t have to leave the South to visit the West.”
Consisting of fifty (50) oil paintings and sculptures that feature working cowboys and cowgirls, rodeo heroes, Native American elders and children, mountain men, Western landscapes, and Buffalo Soldiers the exhibit also includes an area focusing on Ken’s artistic technique.
“Ken sketched on the canvas or board with pencil and then did a full value, burnt umber painting where he worked out all the details of the work. When the burnt umber was dry, then he laid down the color,” explained Bonnie Adams, curator of the Kenneth M. Freeman Legacy exhibit. “This is the style of the old masters and for his use of the technique and his subjects, several members of the press dubbed Ken as The Rembrandt of the Rodeo.”
The exhibition also highlights a number of educational exhibits that include a re-creation of Ken Freeman’s studio complete with easel and artifacts, a section on Ken Freeman, the illustrator, showcasing a display of book covers and posters including ‘Fallon’ by Louis L’Amour, and a special section on the Buffalo Soldiers (http://www.9thcavalry.com).
Kenneth M. Freeman
Accolades include winning the Salmagundi Show in New York City , the Union League Club of Chicago, being chosen five times as artist for the Parada Del Sol Rodeo in Scottsdale , AZ and having a painting selected for the 1988 Prescott Centennial Rodeo. That particular painting was also used as the inside cover of Arizona Highways Magazine. Ken was also famous for painting original art for the Hashknife Pony Express ride three years running from which posters have been made and sold in the post offices. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona chose two of these posters for display in the Library of Congress in the American Legacy Project.
Visit the artist's gallery : http://www.kennethmfreeman.
--
Visit the forum at: http://outfitnm.com/forum/
Read the BMN online at: http://outfitnm.com/category/brians-morning-newsletter
Oh yeah, I turned the comments back on at http://outfitnm.com
Recent Comments