Monday Motivation - Edvard Munch - Painter/Printmaker

This week's Monday Motivation is a day late, but I hope you'll find the featured artist inspiring nonetheless.  On Friday, my husband and I decided to take a trip to The Art Institute of Chicago.  We've been living outside of the city for a full year and have not made our way to the museum yet.  This is a strange thing for me since I made an annual trip with my mother all the way through high school and it's one of my favorite places in Chicago.  But when I learned that admission to the museum is free and that tickets to the new Munch exhibit are half off through the month of February, I decided it was time we made the trip.  My husband had never been and it was a great inaugural visit.  

Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety and Myth opened on Valentine's Day and runs through April 26th.  The exhibit counters the widely held belief that Munch was mentally unstable or that he was not influenced by his Scandinavian peers.  Paintings and prints by Munch are displayed side-by-side with the work of artists like Claude Monet, Max Klinger and James Ensor.  It's a fantastic in-depth look at an artist who spent his career finding ways to express intense emotions through his work.  If you have an opportunity to go, I very much recommend it.  Munch's work is raw and emotional and his story is told well through his own hand. (Above: Edvard Munch, Madonna, 1894-1895, painting)

Monday Motivation - Piet Mondrian - Painter

As I looked at my work area today, I saw the small pieces of colored glass sitting on the gridded work surface and I thought about the paintings of Piet Mondrian.  When he attempted to explain his artistic theory, he said this: "I believe that it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true."  You see, I've been having a bit of a hard time with inspiration the last couple of weeks.  Everything I do seems too calculated or formulaic.  This week, I'm going to let Piet be my guide and I'm going seek out that harmony and rhythm through my own sense of awareness and intuition.  Hopefully, I'll have some good results that I can share with all of you soon. (Above: Piet Mondrian, Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray, 1921, Oil on Canvas, 60.1 x 60.1 cm, Vertical axis 84.5 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago)

Monday Motivation - Jasper Johns - Painter

As you can tell, this week's Monday Motivation was directly influenced by last week's Presidential Inauguration.  I think it can safely be said that no matter your political preference, the peaceful transfer of power is an amazing thing to witness and a great source of pride for us here in the United States.  So, when I received an e-mail from the Museum of Modern Art featuring Jasper Johns' painting, Flag, it struck me that artists are uniquely able to express those feelings in a very powerful, but non-verbal way.  His use of the symbol as a visual object allows us to divorce the subject from it's symbolic meaning.  But, for me it's exactly that separation that allows me to see it's true beauty.  His treatment of the surface and the variations in color lend a depth to the image that can be hard to see when you think of the flag in a strictly symbolic way.  Strangely enough, it is through Johns' eyes that I see the flag as more beautiful and powerful than ever before.  I hope you'll take a moment to explore more of Jasper Johns' work and let his work inspire your week.