From the Fort Wayne Museum of Art
Looking at, Talking about, and Appreciating Art
In this "Saturday Studio", we take inspiration from David Shapiro, an artist in our Archive, to paint without a paintbrush! Instead, stamp, stencil, scrape, and dig your paint into a beautiful artwork!
Very rarely do people walk into an art gallery or museum and say, “Wow, look at the lighting on that!” despite it making the art the star of the exhibit. Understanding the way a piece of art is lit can help the viewer better appreciate the artwork, so let’s shine some light (pun intended) on the technical side of things today.
An artist always hopes, at least implicitly, that her art will inspire a positive change in others. But does she hope or even expect that her work will change her? On January 1, 2019, painter Elly Tullis impulsively turned to the image of the biblical figure Mary for artistic inspiration, herself exhausted from the demands of motherhood. Over the next year, paintings of the Virgin Mary poured from her mind to create the Theotokos series now on view at FWMoA. In this interview, she shares with us her development as an artist since her childhood and what has happened to her as a result of this series.
Where did the paintbrush come from? In this "Art Term Tuesday", we grapple with the lack of information about a tool that has played a large role in our visual history.
This Thanksgiving, the FWMoA Children's Education department is thankful for creative teens who share their art and writing through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards!
It's a small world! John Hrehov, an artist in our permanent collection and professor at Purdue Fort Wayne, speaks about his work and his relationship with former teacher Julian Stanczak in this "Treasure from the Vault".
When looking at a painting, we tend to focus on the surface: the subject(s), the colors, and the brushstrokes. But what lies beneath that? Today, let’s canvass the canvas, a popular painting surface for artists.
"Hey, I think that's a Friedel"! "A what?" This "Treasures from the Vault" post focuses on a lesser known Abstract Expressionist painter with a name you're sure not to forget!
On August 24 Amanda Shepard, FWMoA COO, was privileged to judge the purchase prizes for the Kekionga Plein Air Paint Out. Though we all make private judgements of art, the stakes go up when we in the art world must select public winners from a group of highly competent artists. But who is Amanda to judge? Find out why she picked what she did, and the methods she taps into for coming to her conclusions in this "Reality Check".
Today’s treasure presents us with a bit of a mystery. Not only is the title of this watercolor Unknown, we also know little about its maker Louis-Robert de Cuvillon. So, what must we do to start picking apart this unknown piece? With works like this we have to combine what knowledge we do know with our most important tool: our eyes. Read on to see how art historians use visual clues to deduce a painting's meaning.