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A pause in the middle of the week to look at someone who made, wrote, questioned, or saw something differently.
Not to study their whole life, but to linger for a moment over the work, the ideas, and the ways they chose to see.
64-year marriage. “We were in love, and we loved what we were doing,”
They combined complementary talents and temperaments, forming a prolific partnership that produced a wide range of work, including ceramics, mosaics, tapestries, woodcarvings, and hardware, an unusual cross-disciplinary approach for designer-craftsmen.
Polish artist Matylda Tracewska works across painting, mosaic, drawing and mural techniques. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and later studied mosaic in Ravenna, Italy.
What caught my attention was something she said about the way she begins a work.
“The essential element of my visual language is a dialogue with the surface.”
For more than two decades, Julie Mehretu ( Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) has been engaged in a deep exploration of painting. She creates new forms and finds unexpected resonances by drawing from the histories of art and human civilization—from Babylonian stelae to architectural sketches, from European history painting to the sites and symbols of African liberation movements.
"There are recurring elements: a continuous human presence, moments of daily life, bodies which become images, ghostly presences, and from these images they become works on paper, canvas, plaster or sometimes marble as pieces of a mosaic. What remains in these passages is the sense of a vibration, of a phase shift and of an enigma that doesn’t need any mystifying veil, but whose presence is also confirmed through the luminous transparence of the images. I am not trying to affirm and celebrate the image but to witness its otherness, its being simultaneously familiar and strange."
Anrep created the remarkable mosaic floors at London's National Gallery, filling classical and allegorical scenes with people from his own time, artists, writers, actors, friends and public figures
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Genaro Alvarez was a celebrated Mexican artist known for his exceptional mastery of mosaic art and his pioneering contributions to modernist aesthetics.
While Jack Whitten’s early work combined figuration and abstraction, he became known for his conceptual advancements, focusing on the materiality of paint.
​Severini was something of a renaissance man who moved freely from painter, to theoretician, to designer, to teacher, to mosaicist.
"As we gain experience, the world becomes less mysterious, as we are afforded more and more looks behind the veil"
The Bridge Between Ancient Heritage and Modern Art. In the mid-20th century, modern painters wanted to explore mosaics but didn't know how to cut glass or stone
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"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
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"What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become."
He then began his signature style of mosaic cityscapes. Sgaffitoed tiles, placed among abstract cities, made visual themes of human struggles from literature or the Bible.
We can’t control the level of talent we’ve been given. We have no control over the nature of our gift. What we can control is our self-motivation, our self-discipline, our self-validation, and our self-reinforcement.
"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable."
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“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”
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“Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.”
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
Lee was major figure in American Abstract Expressionism, although for much of her life her work was overshadowed by that of her husband, Jackson Pollock
Kusama, is renowned for her polka dots, infinity installations, and mirrored rooms. Active in painting, sculpture, performance, and fashion, she rose to prominence in New York’s avant-garde scene of the 1960s, influencing peers like Warhol.