Challenges - Marilyn Rea Nasky - Perception

Gary Keimig is one excellent artist. Gary Keimig is also one photographer extraordinaire. A couple of weeks ago, Gary posted this photo of a bighorn sheep on his blog. Sheila Tajima, who is always 3 steps up on everything, spotted this and asked Gary if she could paint it. Dean Haven followed closely behind and asked if he could paint it. Bringing up the rear, I finally found it and wanted to paint it.

And so I did and that's it above. Gary got so many submissions he dedicated part of his Daily Painting blog to posting them, and you can view them by clicking HERE. Gary is considering a monthly wildlife challenge, and I think it's a GREAT idea.

Michelle Burnett's challenge, Following the Masters, called for renditions of artwork from the Italian Renaissance Masters. I chose Raphael with a portion of The Madonna in the Sistine Chapel...the two little cherubs at the bottom of that piece.
The expressions on the faces of these two lead me to believe that Raphael had quite a sense of humor. These little cherubs have captured the fancy of today's society and are featured on cards, posters, and even U.S. Postage stamps. Just what are they thinking? Well, it probably isn't Peter Pan and TinkerBell, but that's what I had in mind.

MARILYN REA NASKY

There are some wonderful Texas artists in the blog community...Virginia Vaughan, Nancy Medina, Gwen Bell, Denise Larue Mahlke, Angela Elledge, Camille Olsen, Karen Hargett to name just a few. Marilyn Rea Nasky is a talented, established artist from Volente, Texas, who is just getting her feet wet in the blog forum. I was fortunate to attend her recent acrylic demonstration at the Highland Arts Guild in Marble Falls. Aside from showing us some helpful techniques and tips, she conveyed a delightful sense of humor and flair in personality. I was able to chat with her a while, and mentioned viewing her main website and events blog. I told her about the camaraderie and "sense of family" existing in our blog community at Blogspot...a laid back and easy format that is fun, informative and functional. So she has just begun a more informal blogspot which you can go to by clicking HERE.
Marilyn has spent some years living in The Southwest teaching and reaching out in the Navajo culture. The last few years she and her family have been on Oahu in Hawaii. She now makes her home over by Lake Travis and devotes her painting talents to the sights and scenes of the Texas Hill Country. I have presented two of her works below...

Moon Dance 1

22 x 30 Watercolor

Agave Midnight (from the Agave series)
20 x 20 Chroma Acrylic on Canvas

You can learn more about Marilyn and view her stunning works at Light Within Studios and In the Studio with Marilyn Rea Nasky.

PERCEPTION

I could write a thousand pages on perception and not even expose the tip of the iceberg on that subject. It is said that what we perceive is what we believe...and for the most part, that's true. The catch is that what we sometimes perceive isn't always true. Edward Burton send me this gag photo a while back. It illustrates the point.Study this photo for just a moment...particularly the area just below the camera. Your first perception might be "Ohmigosh, that girl in the back isn't wearing any panties!!!" Well, you perceived wrong...it's the camera girl's armpit. How we perceive things has always been a fascination to me, such as DaVinci's "Last Supper". We have, over the years, taken the artwork at face value as an honored religious painting, when there are a multitude of "quirks" embedded within it that we don't perceive, simply because we are looking at it as a whole composition, rather than a amalgamate of smaller, individual artworks. But...that's another story for another blog.

Cya down the road....... James