Day 9: more leaves

Autumn leaves on canvas, 20 x 20 cm, oil on canvas, ©2011 Julie Galante. [SOLD]

These leaf paintings have become almost meditative to make. This one is on canvas, whereas the first two were on canvas board. I wanted to see whether the technique (spreading on thick paint and then using the palette knife to sketch in the outlines and veins) would work as well on a soft surface. It worked out better than I expected.

I think this will be my last leaf painting for now. Time to look around for the next still life subject.

November is Art Every Day Month! I’ll be posting a new small painting here each and every day. After they have had time to dry (a couple weeks), the original paintings will also appear in my Etsy shop.

Tags: Art Every Day Month, daily painting, oils, painting, still life

Day 7: big breakfast

Frühstück (Breakfast), 18 x 24 cm, oil on hardboard, ©2011 Julie Galante. Original painting available on Etsy.

This painting was inspired by the big, beautiful breakfasts served at a restaurant in my neighborhood in Munich. This frame only captures a part of one breakfast: a croissant, an egg, cheese, jams in small glasses, yoghurt, grapes, tomatoes, and two pats of butter perched on a bed of arugula. It’s almost too beautiful to eat.

November is Art Every Day Month! I’ll be posting a new small painting here each and every day. After they have had time to dry (a couple weeks), the original paintings will also appear in my Etsy shop.

Tags: Art Every Day Month, daily painting, fruit, Munich, oils, painting, still life

Day 6: Little Leaf

Small leaf study, 15 x 15 cm, oil on canvas board, €65, ©2011 Julie Galante. Original oil painting available online at Etsy. 

This one is more about the paint than the leaf. Sometimes I felt like I was spreading frosting rather than painting. Most of the paint was applied by palette knife, although at times I pushed the paint around with a brush, as well. It was fun.

November is Art Every Day Month! I’ll be posting a new small painting here each and every day. After they have had time to dry (a couple weeks), the original paintings will also appear in my Etsy shop.

Tags: Art Every Day Month, daily painting, oils, painting, still life

Day 5: quick figs

One and a half figs, 15 x 15 cm, oil on canvas, ©2011 Julie Galante. Original painting available on Etsy.

I had to paint this one quickly, because I really wanted to eat the figs. Mmmm fresh figs.

November is Art Every Day Month! I’ll be posting a new small painting here each and every day. After they have had time to dry (a couple weeks), the original paintings will also appear in my Etsy shop.

Tags: Art Every Day Month, daily painting, fruit, oils, painting, still life

Day 4: the jack-o-lantern

A portrait of the jack-o-lantern as a young man, 20 x 20 cm, oil on canvas, ©2011 Julie Galante.

OK, how’s this for cheesy? I was inspired by the paint your pumpkin challenge on the Daily Paintworks site. It seemed a fitting way to pay tribute to our lonely little German jack-o-lantern before he got chucked in the compost bin.

November is Art Every Day Month! I’ll be posting a new small painting here each and every day. After they have had time to dry (a couple weeks), the original paintings will also appear in my Etsy shop.

Tags: Art Every Day Month, daily painting, oils, painting, still life

Art Every Day, Day 2: Leaves

Autumn leaves, 18 x 24 cm, oil on canvas board, ©2011 Julie Galante. Original painting available on Etsy.

Today I did something horribly cheesy: I walked around my neighborhood collecting pretty leaves. I figured they would make a nice still life subject.

November is Art Every Day Month! I’ll be posting a new small painting here each and every day. After they have had time to dry (a couple weeks), the original paintings will also appear in my Etsy shop.

Tags: Art Every Day Month, daily painting, oils, painting, still life

Art Every Day Month is here!

Pomegranate and figs, 20 x 20 cm, oil on canvas, ©2011 Julie Galante. Original painting available on Etsy.

Yay! It’s Art Every Day Month! For the next 30 days I’ll be posting a new little painting each day.

Tags: Art Every Day Month, daily painting, fruit, oils, painting, still life

Daily painting: red and yellow onions

Onions (red and yellow), 15 x 15 cm, oil on canvas, ©2011 Julie Galante. [SOLD]

Not every single one of my paintings has an Oktoberfest theme these days, although it is starting to feel that way. I’m still fitting in the occasional still life or cityscape here and there. Onions are one of my favorite still life subjects, I’ve decided. I especially like trying to capture the little stringy things that stick out at the end of them.

Do you have a favorite still life subject?

Tags: daily painting, oils, painting, still life, vegetables

Dreaming up some art influences

Two paint tubes, two brushes | 15 x 20 cm | oil on canvas | €85 | ©2011 Julie Galante

Last night I dreamed I was interviewing for something art-related. The interviewer (a stern older man) asked me what artists influenced me. I struggled to answer this, tossing out the first names of artists that came to my head, even though they weren’t amongst my favorites, and in some cases I couldn’t picture their work at all. At one point I kept saying “Peter Fischli and David Weiss” over and over, even though I knew it was the wrong answer. Then I finally stumbled onto a better answer: Giorgio de Chirico. I started describing his work and what parts appealed to me. (Oh yeah, and this was all in German, and I didn’t know the German word for “mannequin” but the interviewer corrected me, but now I forget what he told me the word was. I wonder if it was the right one.)

The interviewers seemed pleased with my answer, and told me it was good that I had stopped telling them what I thought they wanted to hear. I thought that was odd, given that my earlier attempts to name my influential artists were bad not because I wanted to tell them what they wanted to hear, but rather because I couldn’t think of anyone else.

At least I wasn’t naked.

So, does my subconscious think the art world wants me to be more like Fischli and Weiss, when really I want to be more like De Chirico? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Artists: What artists do you list amongst your influences? And do you have weird stressful art world dreams, or am I the only one?

Tags: daily painting, oils, painting, still life, thoughts

Cherries, summer, and Cy Twombly

Cherries, 15 x 15 cm, oil on canvas, €65, ©2011 Julie Galante. Buy now

This little daily painting was very hard to photograph. It’s so dark, and a lot of its interestingness comes from the three-dimensionality of the paint. For the past few weeks my still lifes have been less about representing the object and more about heaping big globs of paint onto the canvas. It’s fun.

Summer in Munich is too hot for me. I don’t enjoy walking around on a hot day, and my skin reacts badly to harsh sunlight. But luckily on most hot days I can just hang out inside my relatively cool northern-facing studio and paint. If I get up early enough, before the heat sets in, I’ll run down to the farmers’ market to get some new fruit or vegetables to paint and eat. Summer is very good for that. What’s your favorite summer produce?

Cy Twombly died yesterday. I feel a bit of a connection with him as an American artist in Europe, and his big, colorful, child-like paintings make me smile. A couple years ago a new museum, the Brandhorst, was built in Munich. The top floor contains rooms specifically designed to display some of Twombly’s paintings, which were avidly collected by the museum’s patron. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like pretty much the coolest thing that could happen to me as an artist during my lifetime. I always wondered how he felt about it. Was he so used to his celebrity that it didn’t even phase him? Or did he feel at least a little bit giddy?

Tags: art world, Cy Twombly, daily painting, fruit, Munich, museums, oils, painting, still life