I found this image on www.dianapostel web site. She is a wonderful artist and was a student of Norman Raeben. Please click on her name to see her work you will be in the presence of great work! She is a master.

Here is another image from Diana's web site showing a class of Norma's Students.

Tags: Norman-Raeben, fine art

City Scape, Acrylic on Canvas, 1978, 5' x 4' (apx) Shoosty

Tags: architecture, fine art

Self Portrait in a mirror with my daughter looking on. Her drawing somehow got on my board.
Oil on Canvas board. 12" x 12" Shoosty January 2001

In a style like Chuck Close notable differences are the almost totem pole surface qualities and the size. Chuck works very large and this image is almost jewel-like being small.


Here is another one a few more years back:



Self Portrait, 14" x 12", apx 1980 Oil on Canvas, Shoosty

This one is in the style of Guaguin. Being that he had great color sense and was a role model for running away to a South Pacific Island and living a bohemian life it seemed fitting. No kids, not married and vision of living on an island with exotic people and canvas.. too bad Paul Gauguin had a wife and children and basically abandoned them to create immortality. I love his work but at what cost. He sold his soul and his families soul to follow a path he probably could not have stopped. Warning - Painting is addictive!


Here is one even earlier, back in high school:



Ink on Paper, 14" x 12", 1974, Shoosty

This was done in 11th or 12th grade. I moved from New Jersey with strong interests in Science and Math and came to Florida discovering Fine Art.

Tags: self portrait, fine art

Oil on Canvas, Shoosty, 1978, apx. 20" x 16"

This is my first oil painting in college. there is a story here for later on but the main composition shows the bottle in the middle is brighter then the room, just like metaphysics.

Tags: Metaphysics, fine art

Happy New Year 2008.

On a roll to find a New set of books today, Jan. 1st 2008 I went back to a novel I read in 2007 called "The Adventures of Motel" written by a Jewish author in the original form of Yiddish, his name now emblazoned as one of the best of the genre is Sholom Aliechem. As it turns out he also wrote the very famous story turned into a movie "Fiddler on the Roof". Well, I found my small read and made a purchase but somehow something caught my eye, actually is was a "twist of fate" since I can't spell worth beans I first stumbled upon Sholom Alechem the Israel national song and pondered where is my author so I went to Wikipedia and she straightened me out "clear as a bell", I spelled it wrong. but wiki does not just stop at this their is a little blurb, something about his son was a PAINTER (alarm bells ring for me - Painter) and somehow this son was a huge inspiration for Bob Dylan. I guess it does not get better because second to Bob Dylan is a long distance.
Now I am sitting here listening to, you guessed it, Bod Dylan - Down in the Flood followed by Jokerman and having scoured the web for everything about this son of a famous author who was able to inspire the master of poetry and song. I found plenty a rewarding tidbit for my virtual travels.
Here is a story that I found:
The first is a simple artist story, but the kind that can change your life. A good start to 2008. You can learn more on this genre of thinking by checking out my Artist statement. But the story goes like this, I paraphrase,
...Bob Dylan was in a motorcycle accident and this left him with writers block. Somehow he learned of a yogi, well no just a simple painter who painted with metaphysics, well not really because a painter seems surrounded by paint and you can't really see metaphysics anyway. Well, this painter was confronted by a man who stumbled up the loft and put his head around the door. Well confronted is not a good word really but it was said to be spontaneous. Norman (Norman Raeben 1901-1978),the master, said "would you like to paint?" Bob did not readily pick up on this but being quick minded he said "Sure" but that is where the push-me pull-me started. The first thing the master said was "Do you deserve to be here?", Pondering this one slowly and still being quick minded Bob probably said "I don't know". A pause.
So the master gave this stranger a pad of paper and presented a vase. He said draw the vase. Bob started, I guess like a person awakening from a sleep, you know lazily, un-sure and after 30 seconds the master removed the vase and said "please continue". I guess one word for this is LOST because as the story goes Bob could not remember. It's a great exercise and one I talk about frequently... not the exact exercise but I always say drawing teaches you to see and seeing in the greater sense may very well be beyond the physical. But still drawing carefully helps ground your thinking to really see, with clarity. A lessen that should never be overlooked. Who knows you might find yourself with writers block one day and this simple lesson might just open you back up to be IN THE NOW and see what you can see with your own eyes and your own mind translating the images through your hand, like a kaleidoscope.

Bob Dylan

By the way Bob, my old buddy, is having an art show. It seems it's his first. It seems that his fame is helping this process along because I just took a look at the work and find it very Bob like. Quick witted, poetic almost musical. here is a link: http://kunstsammlungen-chemnitz.justexpertise.de/index.php?loc=ksc&content=ausstellungen_werke#7

Here is an article I found on Norman Raeben:
http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/2667/raeben.htm
and here is a small excerpt. for the whole story by Bert Cartwright click the link
     Dylan’s interest in Norman began sometime in 1974, when several friends of Sara came to visit:
 
     They were talking about truth and love and beauty and all these words I had heard for years, and they had ‘em all defined. I couldn’t believe it... I asked them, ‘Where do you come up with all those definitions?’ and they told me about this teacher.
 
      Sufficiently impressed, Dylan looked up the teacher the next time he was in New York. It was the spring of 1974 when Dylan popped his head around Norman’s door:

 
He says, ‘You wanna paint?’ So I said, ‘Well, I was thinking about it, you know.’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t know if you even deserve to be here. Let me see what you can do.’ So he put this vase in front of me and he says, ‘You see this vase?’ And he put it there for 30 seconds or so and then he took it away and he said, ‘Draw It’. Well, I mean, I started drawing it and I couldn’t remember shit about this vase — I’d looked at it but I didn’t see it. And he took a look at what I drew and he said, ‘OK, you can be up here.’ And he told me 13 paints to get... Well, I hadn’t gone up there to paint, I’d just gone up there to see what was going on. I wound up staying there for maybe two months. This guy was amazing...

Painting by Norman Rabean, Pastel on Sandpaper 16" x 20"

and here is the Wikipedia overview of Norman Raeben
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Raeben

Tags: sholom-aliechem, Norman-Raeben, art-exercise, Metaphysics, fine art