The Gratitude of Frida

Frida Kahlo "Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill"  1951  Private Collection

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is one of Mexico's most well-known artists. She did not start out intending to be an artist. A survivor of childhood polio, she developed an interest in medicine, and when she was old enough to start college she enrolled in a pre-med program. But at age eighteen she was severely injured in a terrible bus accident. She was over a year in recovery and during her convalescence, as a way of diverting herself, she began to paint. Despite her complete lack of artistic training, her work instantly merited interest from the intellectual and artistic circles of Mexico City. At age twenty-two she married the muralist Diego Rivera, whom she had met as a schoolgirl, and who was twenty years her senior. Kahlo once said: "I suffered two grave accidents in my life…One in which a streetcar knocked me down and the other was Diego."

Kahlo never fully recovered physically from the bus accident.She endured more than thirty operations over the course of her lifetime. In 1951 she became gravely ill and Dr. Juan Farill performed a series of seven operations on Kahlo's spine. She remained in the hospital in Mexico City for nine months. In November of that year Frida was finally well enough to paint. Her first painting was this self-portrait which she dedicated to Dr. Farill. This painting (her last signed self-portrait)  is designed in the manner of a Mexican retablo, or devotional painting, with the doctor  in the place of the holy saint, and herself in the place of the saved and grateful petitioner. Kahlo felt enormous gratitude to her doctor, noting in her diary "Dr. Farill saved me."

Gisèle Freund "Dr. Farill and Frida with the Painting"  1951

Elaine in the Garden

Garth Herrick  "Elaine in the Garden" 2010  Private Collection

Garth Herrick (b. 1958) is best known as a figurative painter whose highly realistic technique usually involves long hours of planning, study and painstaking work. Herrick normally conducts carefully considered photographic posing sessions followed by detailed drawing and then a multitude of delicately applied layers of paint that need drying before each next stage is advanced. His stunningly life-like portraits usually require months of work to come to realization. Nonetheless, Herrick has got excellent alla prima chops as well! I was present on the day he whipped this juicy little beauty off in just a few hours. Herrick painted this for a good cause, taking part in Plein Air for Camphill, a non-traditional plein air event that benefits Camphill Special School in Kimberton, Pennsylvania, USA. (The artist he captured at work is fellow Philadelphia area painter Elaine Lisle.)

Herrick studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he won many of the top student awards. He is a sculptor and a photographer as well as a painter. His work has been the topic of several magazine articles and he received numerous honors and prizes, most recently from the Portrait Society of America. The artist's website can be found here. 

Araceli

Araceli Limcaco Dans  "Self Portrait with Calado" location unknown

Araceli Limcaco Dans (b.1929) is one of the most famous living artists in the Philippines. Limcaco Dans is known for her exquisitely detailed still life paintings in oil, watercolor and acrylic, most of which feature an intricate kind of lacy fabric made in the Philippines called calado. The creation of this cloth involves a type of drawn-thread embroidery.

Limcaco Dans studied art first at Sta. Rosa College, then went on to the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, where she was mentored by Fernando Cueto Amorsolo, one of the most celebrated artists in that country. An outstanding student, nonetheless, Limcaco Dans strove to find her own voice and also, to have that voice be representative of her nation. She succeeded in this by turning to still life and making unusual compositions often featuring the lacy cloth known as calado, the production of which is native to the Philippines. 

“...I did not want to be like Amorsolo and so forth. I had to look for myself.
I found myself in still life. Not many people around the world do still life.
And I looked for original ways of doing still life.
Why does everything have to be on a table? Why always fruits and flowers?
Why not rags, objects inside old cartons?"

She has exhibited at museums and galleries world-wide and received numerous awards. She is also highly respected as an educator, a field in which she has worked concurrently with the fine arts, for most of her career. A coffee table book about her life and work was published in 2010 entitled Araceli Limcaco Dans: A Celebration of the Life and Works of a Filipina Artist. Limcaco Dans and her husband have ten children, which I mention as a point of interest as there is a modern myth that women artists cannot have children, or at least not more than one.

Un bon nombre d'autoportraits

Melissa Pinon "Self Portrait with Mickey Mouse" 2010

Melissa Pinon (b. 1972) is a French artist who paints and draws representationally, focusing on figurative work as well as some landscape and still-life. Originally from the Burgundy region, she moved to Paris to study graphic design and painting. She received a diploma from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. She also studied at the Casa de Velazquez, in Madrid. She currently lives and works in Paris. The artist's website can be found here.

Melissa Pinon "Au Taboret Rouge" 2007

Melissa Pinon "The Director" 2010

Sabine

Sabine Lepsius "Self-Portrait"  1885  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Sabine Graef Lepsius (1864-1942) was a German painter, the sister of art historian/archaeologist Botho Graef and the daughter of painter Gustav Graef, who was her teacher. She completed this masterful self-portrait at age twenty-one, and went on to a long and successful career, focusing mainly on portraiture.  In 1902 she married artist Rienhold Lepsius, who also came from an intellectually distinguished family (Karl Lepsius, Reinhold's father, was a pioneer of modern Egyptology and Archaeology.)

Sabine and Reinhold seemed to have had a happy marriage and equally successful careers in the arts. They were well-known for their salon in Berlin, which  attracted many of the brightest minds of the day, including writer Rainer Maria Rilke and poet Stefan George. Sabine was an enthusiastic follower of George, and in 1935 her book about their friendship was published, Geschichte einer Freundschaft / Stefan George. In 1972 a posthumous book came out of her writings, mostly memoirs and correspondance, entitled Ein Berliner Künstlerleben um die Jahrhundertwende (An Artist Living in Berlin at the Turn of the Century.)

Milly

Emily Childers "Self Portrait" 1889  Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, U.K.

Not much of substance can be learned about the training or career of English artist Emily Maria Eardley Childers (1866-1922) who was known as Milly. She was the daughter of prominent British politician Hugh Childers, and after he retired in 1892 father and daughter traveled together widely, with Milly painting landscapes and churches. It is said that her father's extensive contacts (as well as her own apparent talent) brought her some commissioned work, including a job as restorer and copyist at Temple Newsam, a huge estate in Leeds, England. 

Happy New Year!

artist unknown "New Year's Calligraphy"  ca. 1880  private collection

This woodblock print from the japanese meiji period is entitled "New Year's Calligraphy". Kakizome is a traditional practice of writing out auspicious words and phrases in one's best calligraphy as part of the new Year celebrations. These wishes/prayers are then ceremonially burned.  However, such calligraphic efforts do not usually include painted imagery as we see here. I wonder if this print has been mis-titled, and instead of Kakizome, it illustrates the popular Japanese New Year's tradition of Nengajo, making and sending New Year's greeting cards to all one's friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances. While these greetings can now be bought ready-made, people used to make them by hand, with ink drawings and paintings, as well as calligraphy. Making the greeting cards was one of the many tasks leading up to Oshagatsu, the New Year's Holidays, celebrated from about December 30 thru about January 3.  The concept of Nengajo is similar to that of the western christmas card tradition but the Japanese send these cards in greater quantity. It is said that every year from 3 to 4 billion nengajo are delivered in Japan.

We can see this lady is painting an image of Mount Fuji. This may be related to the belief in Hatsuyume, the first dream of the New Year. It is believed that the best first dream of the New Year one can have is to dream of first, Mount Fuji, second, a hawk, and third, an eggplant. If you dream of one of these auspices you are assured that the year to come will be happy and prosperous for you.

Dear Women in the Act of Painting readers, even if you have not yet had a dream of Mount Fuji, a hawk, or an eggplant, I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

明けましておめでとうございます