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Tag: painting

Pumpkin Painting, Pony Rides, More Fall Fun Planned For Kids In Lisle

LISLE, IL — Pumpkin painting, inflatable haunted houses and the annual Scarecrow Scramble will give kids plenty of ways to get into the festive fall spirit this season. Below is a roundup of some of the fun activities the Lisle Park District has planned for autumn 2023.

Scarecrow Scramble

The Scarecrow Scramble will be held Oct. 14 at Lisle Community Park, inviting residents of all ages to don their best scarecrow outfits, Halloween costumes and other festive duds as they race to raise money for residents in need.

Pumpkin Painting

Head to Lisle Recreation Center at 4 p.m. on Oct. 19 for an all-ages evening spent painting pumpkins. The cost to attend is $10 for residents and $15 for nonresidents and includes paints, supplies and pumpkins. Click the link to register for pumpkin painting.

Monster Madness

A wealth of Halloween-themed activities are slated for the Oct. 21 Monster Madness event at Lisle Community Park. Geared for kids who are two to 10 years old, the event runs from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and includes a pumpkin patch, an inflatable haunted house, pony rides and a petting zoo, a corn bin and a creepy café selling themed goodies. Registration is $20 per child and the first 300 people to register will get a pumpkin and a bag of prizes. Costumes are encouraged. Click the link to register for Monster Madness.

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by Imelda D. Garrett
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Moncton news: Picasso painting on display


It’s not a common sight.


A priceless painting from Pablo Picasso, one the greatest artists of all time, right here in the Maritimes.


‘Lamp and Cherries’ from Picasso’s abstract period is currently on display at Resurgo Place as part of the Moncton Museum’s 50th anniversary celebrations.


Lawren Campbell, the museum’s culture and heritage coordinator, said it’s pretty neat coup to have the work of art here.


But it’s not the first time.


Campbell said ‘Lamp and Cherries’ was part of a travelling exhibit in 1973 and now it’s back, on loan from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.


The Picasso has it’s own room to create an ambience and there’s no doubt the post Second World War painting is being properly taken care of.


“We’re a museum, so we do have security,” said Campbell. “There’s cameras. There’s proximity detectors, so if you get too close to it an alarm will go off. An audible alarm that you can pretty much hear throughout the building.”


It’s also encased in high quality glass to protect it from vandalism and UV light.


“Some of the best glass that I’ve ever seen, on this painting. A lot of people have come and gone and thought, ‘Well that’s odd that it has no glass,’ it actually has glass. It’s just very, very good quality glass,” said Campbell. “I really have to try and find a reflection on that glass. You can see every paint stroke, every detail. It’s pretty incredible.”


A wonderful sight for art lovers and for those who stumbled upon greatness like Serge Levesque who was visiting Moncton from Toronto.


“I think it’s cool. I didn’t expect that when I came here,” said Levesque. “When somebody told me

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Painting event coming to New Leaf UMC | Local News

CONNEAUT — Artist Allison Tisdale Régnier will lead an art workshop, called Paint Your HeArt Out, at New Leaf United Methodist Church on Saturday, Oct. 28, from 9 a.m. to noon.

Régnier, a missionary artist from Nice, France, is spending six months in the U.S. pursing a variety of artistic and development opportunities, according to a press release from New Leaf.

No art skills are required, and participants will create three canvases with personal and symbolic meaning to them. “They will reflect on their lives, learn more about themselves and take stock of their faith journey,” the release states. “Paint Your HeArt Out is a powerful tool for processing strong emotions—from grief to gratitude.”

Régnier has a batchelor’s degree in fine art and interior design from Texas Christian University, and studied the Old and New Testaments at Bodenseehof in Germany, according to the release.

Tickets for the event are $25, and can be purchased at the New Leaf office between 9 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on weekdays.

Painting will start at 9:30 a.m., and refreshments will be served between 9 and 9:30. Participants are encouraged to bring an apron or painting smock, and all other supplies will be included.

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by Imelda D. Garrett
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Historic Alexandria church painting featured on t-shirts and hoodies

A painting of a historic Alexandria church is getting renewed attention.

Knights of Columbus St. Finnan’s Council 10640 is selling t-shirts and hoodies featuring the painting by renowned artist Stuart McCormick depicting the original St. Finnan’s Church around 1885. The Knights of Columbus are using the t-shirt and hoodie sale to raise funds for the Coats for Kids program during the winter months, and for food programs that assist people in need.

Stuart McCormick (1905-1992) was born in Glengarry and was a self-taught landscape and commercial illustrator. Loosely associated with the Group of Seven, McCormick was inspired by the Ontario landscape and painted in a style like A.Y. Jackson, Frederick Varley, Arthur Lismer, and Tom Thomson.

On June 27, 1959, the citizens of Cornwall presented Queen Elizabeth II with McCormick’s painting, The Long Sault Rapids, Canada, before 1959. The painting depicts the Long Sault Rapids on the St. Lawrence River between Cornwall and Iroquois. Those rapids disappeared with the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project. The painting remains in the possession of The Royal Collection Trust, which looks after the art collection of The Royal Family.

The original St. Finnan’s building, depicted in McCormick’s painting, was built in 1833 when Alexandria was still known as Priest’s Mills. The first mass was celebrated in it on December 25 of that year. It was replaced by the current St. Finnan’s Church, which was constructed between 1883 and 1885. St. Finnan’s was the cathedral of the former Diocese of Alexandria and Alexandria-Cornwall from 1885 until 2020. In 2021, the church was designated as a Minor Basilica.

To order a t-shirt or hoodie depicting the painting of the original St. Finnan’s Church, email [email protected] or call Cameron McCormick at 613-678-0942. T-shirts are $30 each and hoodies are $55 each.

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‘Nine Classical Paintings Revisited’ by Peter Greenaway

The film director, screenwriter and artist Peter Greenaway has a rather impressive filmography to his name, but the best known is arguably his 1989 movie The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, starring Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren and Alan Howard in the titular roles.

Greeenaway’s works are nothing short of visually astounding and are undoubtedly inspired by the paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, particularly those of Flemish origin. The director’s composition is second to none, and his films often explore the distinction between clothing and nudity, nature and humanity, and pleasure and death.

Considering the careful attention Greenaway gives to composing scenes in his films, his 2006 art project Nine Classical Paintings Revisited makes perfect sense. It’s an examination of the relationship between the starkly different artistic mediums of cinema and painting, an act of true artistic brilliance.

Greenaway made a series of video installations that reinterpret, as the project’s title suggests, several classical paintings of widespread notoriety. “I began my career hopefully wishing to become a painter,” the director once explained as part of a lecture on the project. 

He continued: “At a very early age – 13 or 14 – I set out on an adventure that somehow or other my career, if not my life, would be or ought to be associated with total excitements of visual literacy and certainly that would be related to a long 8,000 years of the western tradition of painting.”

The Nine Classical Paintings project began with an exploration of Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which was showcased at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2006. The painting, presumed to have been completed in 1642, is the museum’s most famous work.

Two years later, Greenaway followed up with a one-night “remixed” performance of Leonardo da Vinci’s 

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New Ways to Wear Old Clothes is Chichester art show
​Gary Spratt is exhibiting at the Oxmarket (contributed pic)

​Gary Spratt is exhibiting at the Oxmarket (contributed pic)

Dorset-based Gary Spratt explained: “The exhibition has come about after winning the Oxmarket Open Painting Prize. It will focus on my larger paintings made in the last couple of years. They are about our home, or anyone’s home, with tables, chairs, doorways and a variety of other items as their subject.

“What they mean is up to the viewer. However what they are to me is a way into making a painting. Its formal or abstract nature is in tension with a figurative idea, both of which come about during the making. But the things or objects in the images often carry personal meaning. For instance, the kitchen table my father made or my grandfather’s chairs feature prominently. There’s an idea about inheritance in that, in the things that we may bring forward.

“Sometimes I think that because I’m making images of the interior of my own house, that I’m painting my own safety net, as we are lucky to live in social housing.

“There are a lot of connections. I’m interested in animism, that things have stories and lodge themselves in our lives. Through the work I am both asking and answering my own questions, but in a way that opens up more questions. So it goes on.

“I stick to fairly basic materials, mostly oil on canvas or charcoal on paper. Although I favour oil paint, I don’t think that it really matters all that much with regard to the painting itself. Painting is slow, oil paint is slow to dry, so it works for me.

“I have been exhibiting my work for the last eight years.

“Particular highlights have been making it onto the short list for the Contemport British Painting Prize 2021, showing in London and Huddersfield.

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Tribeca Citizen | The Paintings of Max Miller

Tribecan Max Miller has been making art just about as long as he can remember. He was 13 when he started taking classes at The Art Students League and a few years later, went to RISD for college, Yale for graduate school in fine arts and then, arriving in New York City not long after, did what every New York artist does: got scrappy.

And it paid off. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1987 and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1991 — there are others too — and the Metropolitan and several corporate collections own his work. It’s all spectacular: monumental, detailed, clever, colorful and a master class in craft (The apartment she shares with his wife, Carla Hoke-Miller, is also a work of art — but more on that later.)

His passion project of the past few years has been painting dogs, but these are not your average canine portraits. It all started with the couple’s Welsh Corgi LouLou, and now has grown to include commissions from all over the world. Scroll through to see more and hear Miller’s story. (His human portraits are beautiful too, so I have included a couple. It was hard to choose.)

How did you get started?
I was always making art. My dad was an architect so I just always loved doing it. I remember I was with my mom at MoMA and I saw abstract paintings and I thought, that’s so great – I’m going to go do that. And my parents were very supportive.

From New Haven I came to New York, to an apartment at 38th and Ninth. I was painting houses and working at a showroom steaming clothes – different odds and ends. But that place was amazing.

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At 29, Sahara Longe Has the Art World at Her Feet

Still, her career as an artist wasn’t a foregone conclusion. After leaving Heathfield School in Berkshire, she enrolled at Bristol University to study art history, but after realizing she was “really bad at writing essays,” dropped out after less than a year. Eavesdropping on a stranger’s conversation in a café about the Charles Cecil atelier in Florence turned out to be “life-changing.” She googled it, realized “this is exactly what I want to do,” and in 2015 headed to the prestigious painting school, where she spent the next four years. It’s an experience she describes as “tough, and probably a bit weird, but I loved the discipline and the complete madness of the whole thing. People would leave all the time as it was quite hard, but I just love that it really teaches you how to paint.” She left in 2019, but success was slow to follow. “Most people who go to Charles Cecil leave and do portrait commissions. But if you’re not really, really good, then you’re never going to make it. And I wasn’t very, very good,” she says matter-of-factly. It’s a statement many would disagree with, but she insists: “I was very slow, and so I found it very difficult.”

And so she went to Sierra Leone for five months and came back to Suffolk just as lockdown was about to hit. “And I just kind of gave it up. I was like, God, this is so tough, maybe I’ll do something else.” It was a year before she started painting again “just for myself,” with social media ultimately leading her back to the art world. “Everyone was on Instagram and looking at work, and that’s when people were like, ‘I really like this,’ and I actually started selling stuff.” During that time, she also

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Perspective | A historical look at why painting food was a staple for great artists

Edible things are a staple of art, but that doesn’t mean they are simply food. They can also be religious and political symbols, signs of wealth and class, and, today, key markers of identity.

An old but powerful idea distinguishes between art (which is permanent, eternal and lasting) and things that can be consumed (food, wine and other sensual pleasures). Another aesthetic school argued that if you desire something with your body or with your own pleasure or status in mind, then it can’t be art at all. True art is above such supposedly crass things.

I asked Tom Sietsema, The Washington Post’s expert on food and dining, to explore some key works of art that raise these and other issues. I enjoy a good meal, but Tom sees food with the refined eyes of a critic. We looked at six iconic paintings and prints, beginning with a curious “feast of the gods” by the Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini and ending with a harrowing image of hunger from one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.

It quickly became clear that many more distinctions were necessary to make sense of how images of food operate in art. There is food and then there is eating. There are essential differences between, say, caviar and a cheeseburger. But there are hierarchies to how and where we eat, too. Do we savor delicacies in a restaurant? Or feast on comfort foods? Or gorge on empty calories in squalid seclusion? It is also difficult to disentangle drinking from all of this, which raises questions of disorder, violence and sin.

Many centuries-old ideas about food seem quaint to us today, especially religious moralizing about gluttony, which has been reinvented in a new discourse of the

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