Maxfield Parrish: Living Colors

Cinderella (Enchantment) – 1913

Besides the spectacular colors, something a Maxfield Parrish painting always has, there’s also an attention to details that is unimaginable. In fact his art was always so much that it would not be mistaken for a photograph. The colors were simply too vivid, the settings too perfect. Just beautiful beyond belief.

There are quite a few Artists that I think are fantastic, those whose works I think are among the finest any man or woman has ever produced. And right at the top of that list stands Maxfield Parrish. On an earlier post you would have seen “Moonlight”, my favorite Parrish painting. I have yet to find a print of this for sale anywhere. Nertz!

Take a little time to wander through any Gallery of Parrish’s works. Soon you will be enthralled at the depth, vibrancy, power that the colors he produced hold. “Garden Of Allah” is one, and “Daybreak”. The skies Parrish produced, the water – still or falling, or waves crashing – all evoke a living world. So many painters seem to have problems making their works seem alive, whether an abstract or otherwise. There is just something missing from what they produce. In Parrish’s case it is the opposite. There is too much life! Does that make sense?

Aquamarine – 1917 (Isle of Lesbos)

When I was younger, I was a drawing, painting kid. I can still remember being punished for drawing on a nice, white wall with a yellow crayon. I hadn’t figured out that white walls were not big pieces of paper waiting for me to toddle along. And over the ensuing years I thought I would be a painter. Ask anyone in my family about the life-sized John Wayne that once adorned the door of my bedroom. I wasn’t bad, as a painter. I even read up on the techniques Parrish used for his colors. (Did you know, for instance, that Maxfield Parrish didn’t mix his colors? He used pure pigments, atop clear varnishes, to let light blend his colors. This in the age of oils not acrylics. Talk about time-consuming!)

Alas, I was not good enough, or driven enough, to enter the world of painting. But I had gained a tremendous appreciation for the works of Maxfield Parrish. Along with him I discovered N.C.Wyeth, whose children you may have heard somthing about. Others soon came along, as well.

(To be continued! Interested?)

Hallmarks

“Hometown Evening” – 1998 by Thomas Kinkade

Well, Hick, this might or might not be Placerville. But I do like it. It’s odd, seeing paintings of an America that only exists in dreams. Don’t you agree?

Thomas Kinkade has a series – Sweetheart Cottage? – that’s like that. Beautiful setting for each, but only a dream setting. And still, I have to return to gaze at it. For Kinkade, it’s that “Painter of Light” hallmark that puts him in his own class. The illusion of light – candles, lampposts, reflected moonlight, and so on – that is the hallmark of a Kinkade painting is widely imitated. Sometimes those imitations have been quite good. They are, in their way, an homage to Kinkade. But there are a mountain of bad imitations, too. Yet, you can always seem to pick out the Kinkades from the fakes.

“Moonlight Cottage” – 2001 by Thomas Kinkade

Look at the puddle, the reflection within it. Sorry, those of you who find this pedestrian, lower-class, beneath you. This is Art. I love it! Complete with Kinkade’s hallmark – the light!

Yes, Kinkade seems to be doing the Warhol thing in recent years – mass-producing product, dabbing a few bits of paint on an assembly line of canvases to add his ‘touch’ to the copies (copies that are hand-painted, just not by him) before they go on sale. That part seems tawdry at first glance. Commercial as opposed to Artistic.

Well, why not? He isn’t the first! I can’t remember if it was DaVinci or Michelangelo, but one, or maybe all of them did similar things. Using a school of apprentices to do the work under their guidance, the classic painters still garnered the credit, money, and plaudits for the finished product. Kinkade simply is doing what the painters of old did. And doing it very well, indeed!

I think that’s the worst of it, too. To the Elite critics, it’s his success that is his sin. Artists must suffer in their own time, and be incomprehensible to most people to be true artists. Otherwise they are ‘commercial’, simplistic, good only for placemats in diners.

So color me plaid and give me a Big Mac! I don’t care! The Critics are idiots with inflated opinions of themselves. Piss on ‘em!

I’m just sayin’. LOL

“Almost Heaven” by Thomas Kinkade

 

Yeah, I know. It looks kinda like something from Field & Stream, but still, it’s pleasant to see, isn’t it?

Now, I need to find something by him from his paintings of Placerville. ‘Hick’ mentioned that, so I’m looking. Click on that picture to head on over to Kinkade Central.

Maxfield Parrish coming, too!

“Moonlight” – Maxfield Parrish, 1932

What more needs to be said?

Just this: Find more beautiful Art at CGFA.

 

Also, you can find beautiful works of Art at The Art Renewal Center.

The Eyes Of The Beholder

Look, I know that we all have different taste. In many things. Food, Music, Art, Writing. Well, you name it. I know people who, honestly, enjoy eating Brussels Sprouts! Can you imagine? *shudder*

So, when I hear supposed ’smart’ people denigrating things, simply because they exist for, or appeal to, the ‘common man’, I have a pretty good idea that they are elitist snobs who need to eat some Nachos, sip some cold beer, watch some Three Stooges short films. Why do they need these things, or something similar? Because they’ve been poisoned.

Yep! Poisoned! Ever hear this, or something like this: “If you have to ask what it is, you just don’t understand ‘art’.”

I have. Oh, not aimed at me! Nosir! I don’t usually parade my plebian tastes to the Elite, y’know? But I’ve heard it. What that person usually means is, “I have no idea what it is, but the label says it is ‘Peace’ (or ‘Horse with Love Ankles’ or ‘Heart Sack One’ or … see?) and I’m not going to look foolish by saying it looks like a twenty pound slab of bacon, dipped in chocolate, and dropped from a twenty-story building.”

Thus, the Elite have denigrated Norman Rockwell for ages. They poo-pooed Maxfield Parrish. The composer of “The Nutcracker Suite”, Tchaikovsky, was nothing. And so on, for many creative people whose only crime was to create things – music, art, poetry, books – that everybody understood and enjoyed.

This is a painting that I enjoy. It’s “Garden Of Prayer” by Thomas Kinkade.

Not my favorite, mind you. My favorite is Maxfield Parrish’s “Moonlight”. But this I find beautiful. Thomas Kinkade is a solid, talented painter. He’s found a niche in the market, and his fans love him. Therefore, to the Elite, he’s dull and his work is garbage.

The same is true of some of the most popular novelists. When did you last read the book that won the Nobel prize for literature?

Thought so.

Can you look at the above and not enjoy it? Be honest, now.